On February 11th I have the honor of being featured on Emerian Rich’s Horror Addicts podcast with a story I wrote just for that show called Pyramids and Butterscotch, which is a mummy tale. I am pretty stoked to be on the show and am really happy with the story that she will be featuring. I think you are gonna dig it. http://www.horroraddicts.net
Look for an interview with me posting on Horror Addicts around the date of the podcast.
For horror fans the 1970s and ‘80s serve as a sort of wonderland of classic movies, a golden age if you will. A large reason why is that special effects really came into their own in this era and the MPAA had not clamped down yet on the gratuitous sex and violence. The movies thus were not so much better than their modern counterparts as they were nastier. Which isn’t really true but, so be it.
The Prowler is one of the forgotten slasher films of the ‘80s that has enough spirit to deserve a place on the second shelf of hack and slash classics but which is all looks and no brains.
A small town is celebrating the end of World War II when a young girl and her beau are brutally murdered by a man wearing military gear and hidden beneath a mask. The killing goes unsolved but is enough to shake the town out of having their graduation celebrations anymore. Flash ahead to the 1980s and the town has decided to celebrate the graduation of their young people and another party is planned, but for someone, this is the key that unlocks their madness and begins the murders all over again.
The film has the same over-lit yellow look of most slasher films of the ‘80s and the soft focus creates a sort of dream reality where things never feel safe. The movie itself is fun and has a lot to offer horror nerds such as great make up effects from Tom Savini but really, you are not coming for the story. The story, such as it is, has so many plot holes and dangling characters that you’d think this was meant as a pilot episode for a television show. Thankfully we don’t usually come for the story so much as the gore and scares, and on that end the movie delivers. It is disappointing that so much of the story is left open because there is some good character writing here and some decent logic therein.
While it is firmly entrenched in the second string of slasher films this is a fun film and well worth a viewing.
6 out of 10
Finishing something you have been working on for a while is a lot harder than you expect. It isn’t necessarily laziness that stops you from getting it done so much as life butting in on it. I have been working on the stories that will compromise the next book for some five years now, but then, like the novel, it wasn’t meant to be a book, necessarily. Not in the traditional sense. The first story – Messy and the Meep Sheep – was done and produced as a chapbook as I never really thought about doing more with it. Ok, that isn’t true, I never thought about ADDING to it. I always thought about getting it out as a book, though as a Kid’s Book. I wanted to find an artist to work on the art for it and wanted to sell it that way. Well, no one bit when I shopped it around briefly so I focused on it as a chapbook. Slowly but surely though I kept adding to that work, story by story until I had what could and will become a book.
I began the last story in this cycle a year and change ago, though I never really got going on it. I knew that it needed one last story, a story that took all the myriad characters somewhere and let them come to a fate of some sort, but I wasn’t sure where I wanted to take them. Over the course of the year I put together the story in my head but never really took the time to put it down. I kept getting distracted – be it other stories, other art, or the release of This Beautiful Darkness I just never took the time to make it work. Finally though a day came when I had to. When I had to sit down and focus on getting this last story done. It hasn’t been easy because the last story is so big, and must capture so much, and must sum up so much that it is hard to know what to say, what to leave unsaid, and how far to take things. As it is coming together though I know I am on the right path. The path gets rocky, for me and the characters, but it is the right path. It just took a while to find it.
Finishing the story is just the first part of the process of putting this book together but getting it done will really let me move on it. Will really let me push forward and I cannot wait. Just as I cannot wait to see where all these wonderful characters will wind up when everything is done.
c
PS, here is a pic of another awesome soul who purchased a painting from me at a Baar Bazaar I was at in December in Detroit.
In July of 2009 I released my second book – This Beautiful Darkness( https://www.createspace.com/3386414) – and was thrilled by how well the book turned out and have been excited by the response the book has gotten. I consider that book the perfect representation of where I am at as a writer but, as with all things, it does not fully show all of the things I have been up to over the years. Over the past few years, inspired by my own weirdness, and by the people in my life, I started writing stories that were far from the dark realms most people are used to me creating. These stories were of a place called the Kingdom of Man and were about a Queen, a singer, and a reporter and the adventures they have. The stories were also about the animals in this land, some of which you have seen images of or seen mention of in passing. Since the publication of This Beautiful Darkness I have had a plan in mind and that plan is coming to fruition now.
In May of 2010 I plan to release my next book, the as yet untitled collection of these ‘other’ stories. There is darkness in this place too, but more than that, there is hope, happiness, and the wonder of discovering the magic within us all. These stories are, for lack of a better term, fairy tales, and they are some of the best things I have written. I am deeply in love with these stories and hope you will feel the same when you see them. So, I have a lot of work to do in order to get the book done and out by May but believe me, it will be worth it.
Keep watching…’cause the good is getting better by the day.
Thanks
c
So I got inspired a couple days ago to do something fun and today shall bring said fun thing.
AH, but what IS it?
Hmm, and hmm indeed.
Watch through today and you shall find out, traveler.
I will post something here today that has an expiration date, and when it is up, what I posted will be gone.
So…keep your peepers peeled, friends, and see what happens.
c
Hadn’t gotten a chance to draw anything in a while so here you have it – Hullo There – a cute little fella that is just happy to see you. Drawn by hand and then colored in Photoshop.
PS – A banner for my book, just because.
interested?
As a movie nerd myself, I can appreciate the particular bit of madness that strikes people with a deep love and appreciation for movies. We are an odd breed, and we get weirder when we are horror nerds. I mean, you don’t really read or hear about comedy fans freaking out over a lost or forgotten classic the same way you get that with horror nerds. I think because with other genres America has had the lead in most cases but with horror there is always something weirder, darker, more obscure out there. Hell, when I was younger and VHS and Laserdisc were both still relevant I remember chasing foreign obscurities and uncut versions of films at comic and horror conventions. And many times the chase was better than the find. The courtship better than the romance. Such is the case with The Hills Run Red, a horror film that asks whether it is better to seek out a lost obscurity than it is to find it.
A budding young filmmaker develops an obsession for a lost horror film entitled The Hills Run Red which was so extreme and over the top that it was pulled from all theaters and all prints disappeared. To deepen the mystery there are no people that can give any information about the movie. Deciding he wants to find the truth behind the film the man gathers his best friend and girlfriend and go on a quest for the truth and the film itself. Using the director’s surviving daughter as their guide, the troupe sets off into the deep woods to find what they hope are answers but which may not be the ones they were hoping to find.
A fun, spirited romp, the biggest limitation here is its own self-referential nature. The fact that John Carpenter tackled this notion (and in a far creepier way) for Masters of Horror doesn’t help but the fact there are so many references to the situation they are in gets old. It is a creepy, and engaging premise for a film, and generally it works. The characters are sorta hit and miss, with some really obvious writing choices and some clichéd scenarios but the film is always true to itself, which says something. Hills knows what it is and never denies it, and that is a hardcore horror film. Definitely worth a look and worthy of a place on your shelf. It says something when a movie can create a compelling and creepy new icon, and with Babyface, they have.
7 out of 10
Hey kids, I was on Author’s Read today reading a story from This Beautiful Darkness. You can check it out here -
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/authorsread/2010/01/09/chris-ringler–like-cracks-in-still-water
Nearly forgot about this – I ‘portrayed’ Hannibal Lecter in an interview I did last year for a book that is finally out called Film Prodigies and Legends.
Film Prodigies and Legends is here!
Countess Dracula: Ingrid Pitt
Hellraiser’s Butterball Cenobite: Simon Bamford
The Godfather Of Gore: Herschell Gordon Lewis
The Dark Backward: Director Adam Rifkin
Chainsaw Sally creators Jimmy O and April
Monique Burril
Actor, writer, producer Jim O’Rear
Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Edwin Neal
Girls & Corpses Magazine editor Robert
Steven Rhine
FX Wizard Mike McCarty
Midnight Syndicate’s Edward Douglas
Gutterballs actor Dan Ellis
Scream Queen Monique Dupree
Spoken word performer Ryan ‘’Rat’’ Travis
Special guest interview: Dr. Hannibal Lecter
Chris Ringler
Crypt Club Productions CEO Miguel Gallego
A Man of New Horrors: Director Paul Solet
Actor Paul J. Alessi
Screenwriter Paul Hart Wilden
Saint Productions Jonathan Price
Scream Queen Scarlet Salem
Domain of the Damned Director Stacy Davidson
Ed Gein director Chuck Parello
Gruesome Slime Guy Gregory Lamberson
The Cemetery Artist / fiction by David Byron
{Dedication to Director Chuck Parello}
Joan Crawford Has Risen From the Grave – a
screenplay for short film / David Byron
Director’s Corner
Afterword by Michael McCarty
This book may be purchased through Bear Manor Media http://bearmanormedia.bizland.com/id387.html and on the NVF Films bookstore located here http://nvhmag1.webs.com
Or…on Amazon, here http://www.amazon.com/Film-Prodigies-Legends-David
-Byron/dp/1593935129/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qi
d=1262817140&sr=1-1
Feast 3
Sometimes you get the funny feeling that you are being screwed with by a filmmaker. Sure, I mean, it isn’t that they always mean to screw with you but, dammit, they still do it. Case in point – Feast 3 – a film that neither needed nor really deserved a sequel, let alone two, yet, two we got, so instead of one, terribly fun, terribly fun stand alone film we got one really good movie and two needless add-ons that got worse and worse.
Which is not to say that Feast 3 is a bad film, it’s just a needless film, and one which I am needlessly reviewing.
Taking up exactly where the second film ended, Feast 3 takes the remaining cast members from the second installment and pits them once more against the bizarre and sexually deviant monsters that appeared in the first film and seek to either eat or screw anyone they can. The entire town that the cast has holed up in has become overrun by the monsters and if they have any hope of surviving, they need to find a way out of there, one way or another.
There isn’t much more to say about the plot than that. For a seventy-five minute movie there is an odd amount of plot devices here. It was like they had a lot of ideas but no real idea, or desire to fully investigate those ideas. Characters pop up only to die ironically and other characters die off just to kill off some of the main cast. Hell, I dunno if there is a likable character here, and with this many cast members, that’s saying something. The film is well made, is certainly gory, and has some shocks, but when it’s all said and done, to what end? The film’s ending is such a kick in the nuts after three films that you just want to scream. You can’t tell if they were just screwing with you for three movies, or really expect they will needlessly make a fourth film. You watch three films and learn little to nothing about the creatures and next to nothing about the characters. And it’s hard, as a fan of the first film, and even a passing fan of the second film, to get a movie like Feast 3 as your dessert. It is watchable, it is mildly entertaining, but to end a ‘trilogy’ with another useless gag, just because that’s your modus operandi is silly. What would have worked infinitely better is to do an Army of Darkness ending where save the characters from one boiling pot only to drop them into a bigger one.
This movie, this ending, will be perfect for some fans, and so be it. For me it felt like being kicked in the nuts and that isn’t a way to end a series. With such a strong first entry, it’s a shame that the films got progressively worse. This is definitely a case where I can safely tell you to watch the first film, and avoid the other two. Call me crazy.
5 out of 10
