Tuesday, April 29, 2008

ZOMBIES!!!

OK, really who doesn't enjoy a good Zombie flick? Hordes of flesh eating undead poised to mindlessly eliminate Humanity. There is without a doubt subtle social/political underpinnings rampant throughout the sub-genre, but oddly enough when the mood for a good Zombie film strikes me I'm really in the mood for some mindless brain-munching (and a bit of good old fashioned, not-too-over-the-top gore).

Recently the Zombie sub-genre has received new life, if you will, with the recent addition of "Diary of the Dead" to Romero's list of canonical Zombie films, Horror legend Vincent Price's "Last Man on Earth" gets a remake with "I am Legend", and even more pseudo zombies in "28 Weeks Later". Beyond that the Zombie walk took home a Rondo Award for Best Fan Event of 2007.

But amongst it all there is one little shop churning out the best zombie products possibly of all time and you may not be aware of. It is Todd and Kerry Breitenstein's Twilight Creations Inc. Their brain (munching) child is first and foremost ZOMBIES!!! the board game. Put away the PS3 or your Xbox and enjoy gaming the way it was meant to be with a set of dice, a deck of cards and 100 little plastic zombies (and some real living human beings for competition and social interaction too). There are even some that glow in the dark! How cool is that!

From the get go you'll see this game is by fans for the fun of it, and not some slick heavily marketed game like Magic. Although the production quality of this game is on par with the best of them IMO, it has a down and dirty-mashed out in the basement over a night of Zombie flicks, poprocks, Jolt Cola and Rum stolen from the folks liquor cabinet- feel. Even the instructions can be a bit blurry at times, but that's OK they heavily promote the idea that "it's your game, play with the rules you like." I tell you no customizable card games were ever this customizable. As a matter of fact one of their latest expansion packs was a set of blank cards for you to make your own with.

Twilight Creations have just recently released Zombies!!!7 which is actually the eighth expansion set. Some sets require the main set others can be played on their own. So depending if you want to go for an all night marathon with a mall, a Military base, and/or a University all attached to the main town site(set) or just a time limited 45 minute romp, there are options.

Product pimping aside this is a good old fashioned hands-on game that is well worth picking up for any zombie fan, even if for nothing else but the horde of little plastic zombies.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

LOTT D on the move

OK I admit I've been not so spot on as of late. But LOTT D has a bunch of new members that will definitely keep you entertained. Please check the links on the left. Fantastic blogs!

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Eyes! Eyes! Eyes! partIII

My first impulse was to take a shot at them, and the I realized that it would be suicide to do so. Old Heinie could snipe us if we tried to leave our hole and and if we fired a shot he would know where we were. Then I wondered if the eyes belonged to a German scout who had made himself a listening post under the debris. But no man could possibly have wormed down between those crossed steel rails, and I was certain that the eyes did not belong to any sane person and certainly any German soldier would have given up our position. All at once a Heinie machine gun opened up and bullets were cracking and snapping over us for five or ten minutes. Pete was sure that Fritz had discovered us and begged me to throw a Mills bomb into the hole when the eyes returned.
I talked to him and quieted him but he kept whimpering every once in a while and pushing against me so that I could feel him shaking. That place was enough to try anyones nerves, but he got my goat and I talked to him harshly until he stopped his whimpering. I had the safety of my rifle released all the time, and a couple of Mills bombs ready to throw. A bunch of aeroplanes droned over us but there was no other sound. The machine gun had stopped firing as abruptly as it had began. The sun got fair over head and the heat was suffocating. Flies had come in clouds and they were all over the dead Heinie, at his wound, in his ears, clustering in his hair, and around those staring, ever watching eyes. A large dark rat appeared and approached the corpse and sniffed at and nibbled at the bloody bandage, all the while it too kept me in sight, watching with dull unintelligent eyes of it's own. I had taken all I could and had to shift over to the other side of the pit.
Yet this was no relief. The eyes were there in the dark hole again! They appeared as if my glance had summoned them. For a full minute they stared into mine and I began to feel as if I were becoming mesmerized, then there was nothing but the void between the rails. I wondered if the sun was playing tricks with us, there was after all, heat waves dancing all over the wreckage. For a long time I watched the wreckage, but could only see the black gap.and was beginning to feel quite relieved, when once again the eyes appeared.
An hour went by. I had been looking at my watch every twenty minutes since morning. Sometimes the eyes were there sometimes they weren't. I was beginning to fear I would become as bad off as poor Pete. He wouldn't' take watch now, he just sat there huddled down in the hole making funny little noises like a hurt thing.
The sentry stayed on is plank and stared in his stolid way. He must have been tortured by the heat, but never moved but to regularly scratch himself. I ducked down beside Pete and tried to eat my ration of bread and cheese, but a feeling of nausea welled up inside again and I found I was quite unable and now unwilling to eat. Pete wouldn't even try he simply moaned and wanted to know how much longer we had to remain there. I stood up and those livid eyes beneath their rail seemed to jump up at me. It gave me such a queer sensation I immediately had to squat back down. When I rose up aain they were still there, and more malignant than ever. I Prodded Pete, "You get up and take a turn" I said as savagely as I could, "I'm tired of looking all the time."
Reluctantly he got up-looked toward the dead German-and ducked, white faced and trembling. I had to clap my hand over his mouth to keep him from crying out. "He's moved-he's moved" Pete gulped through my fingers.
The sweat on my skin turned cold. He was telling the truth. That Fritz had moved. He had shifted so that his hand had dropped down black and curled like a hen's foot, and his tunic collar was right under his chin as his head tipped forward. He seemed somehow NEARER to us now!
I tried to soothe myself, for I was getting mighty shaky. There was some explanation, surely. It was only three o'clock, five hours to go before we could reasonably expect a relief. I squatted down again. " Youve got to look over part of the time." I growled, "It's too hot for one man to keep his head up all the time, and if we don't watch the Heinies are likely to sneak over on top of us."
He muttered about something under his breath and then raised him self up. Then shot down again, gasping. He sobbed with fear and on his way down caught me about the knees. Panicked I grabbed a bomb and jumped up ready to face an onslaught from Fritz, or possibly worse as my imagination suggested it might be the dead corpse himself at our hole. But no it was just the filthy rad, its bloodshot eyes peering at me through the weeds not a foot away. I spat at the foul creature and squatted back down.
Pete clung to me now and wouldn't listen to anything I said. Resigned to the fact Pete would no longer be taking his turn , I looked up again after a while. I found my self drawn to look for the eyes beneath the rails, they had taken a sort of fascination over me. I squirmed around Pete and looked to the left at the dead man. One long look and I was almost as bad as Pete. I pulle him to his feet. "Look over there ," I said "I'm going to beat it before something else happens, That Heinie's moved again I swear!"
Pete stood and shuddered and licked his lips. "He moved, he moved, he moved" he whispered in an almost sing-song fashion, and then began to blab about eyes.
The German had moved again!. One leg, the unwounded one, as almost doubled now. Not a shot had been fired since noon and there had been NOTHING to move him. I began to feel faint, that all around us there were eyes, and eyes and eyes, staring, glaring, beady eyes, dull unmoving eyes, eyes without faces; eyes...eyes...eyes.
Then I began to yell, Pete caught at me like a wild man. Flies had swarmed all over the dead man's nose and as I watched I saw his dull staring eyes close! As Pete grabbed at me, I fought him back and jumped out of the pit. Without thought of the German sentry I jumped out of the hole. I hurdled a shell crater, hopped over old razor wire and slid into the trench were or section was- and was lucky not too get shot, with Pete right behind me.
or chaps had been half asleep when we cam tumbling into the trench and we startled them as they scrambled for their weapons. Pete was now shaking uncontrollably and was sent back to the transport lines with a couple of other chaps. Apparently he got worse with every step and was quite incapacitated by the time they reached their destination.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Back on line

Sorry for the disappearing act. But the computer is back operational again and no data has been lost. Will be posting again tomorrow.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Alas sorry for the break

Suddenly things have gotten extremely busy, just got in the door and I'm back out of town again tonight. Stay tuned and part 3 will be added Monday morning.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Eyes! Eyes! Eyes! partII

Finally I made myself look at the wreckage of a machine gun emplacement. A big shell had made a direct hit and sandbags. and timbers and steel rails were scattered in all directions. A sap had led to the post, and it was blocked completely. Where it entered the main trench the parapet ad been blown away, and as I watched I saw a man raise his head. It was a Heinie, and I knew that by the way he got up and looked around that he had no idea that we were here.
I watched that place for over an hour and in that time I saw eight or ten Germans. Then an officer came and got up and looked over our way. After that I couldn't see anyone except a sentry who had stayed in plain view. It was very quiet. Not a plane was over and none of our guns were firing in that sector. The war was away over on our flanks.
It began to get hot. There was no breeze at all and the sun was blistering hot, choking hot in our burrow. Sweat scalded and blinded us. After a while the distant guns seemed even to relent in the heat and became silent, until even the quiet itself became irritating. Then flies, the big blue ones, began to buzz about the dead Heinie, and we noticed the dreadful smells. I focused my attention inwards to prevent my stomach from turning due to the stench.
it seemed an eternity before noon. We had sneaked out to our pit before light and there was no hope of being relieved until it was dark again. We had only a little water with us and it had got so warm and brackish and amongst the foul smell of the rotting corpse, it was not even remotely drinkable. The German sentry at the sap head got himself a plank seat and sat on it as he watched our way. I had my field glasses and focused them on him. He was dirty and unshaven and very tired looking, staring vacantly in a manner that vaguely reminded me of the dead Heinie to our left.
All at once Pete grabbed me again. "Eyes!" he hissed in a way that made me jump and sent a chill down my spine in spite of the pressing heat. "Just eyes."
I squeezed over beside him and he pointed at the debris near us, where crossed rails, tangled in a V, seemed to cover a small dark opening of sorts there beneath them. "There were eyes in that hole," he whimpered " I seen them."
I watched and watched as the minutes dragged by. I was cussing the smells and the flies and was properly fed up with everything-when I saw them. My scalp seemed to crawl and for a moment I froze. Two eyes had certainly appeared in the gap under the rails and they simply glared into mine. I felt as though I had taken a glimpse of an unholy monster from beneath the ground. One instant was all I saw them, then they vanished as quickly and unexpectedly as they appeared.
It was so utterly unreal, I leaned back to collect myself, wiped the sweat from my forehead and brows and, and looked again. For a long time I didn't see a thing but that black narrow empty space beneath the wreckage-then suddenly the eyes
seamed to leap into place and there they were. Even in spite of the fact I sat watching and waiting for them, their appearance caused me to start. They stayed longer that second time and upon holding onto my composure I tried to imagine a face to fit them into, but couldn't. I never saw such a mixture of fear, hated and madness of any kind as I did in those faceless orbs beneath the rails.

Eyes! Eyes! Eyes! part I

It was the morning after the Parvillers was captured, and Pete and I were out in a sort of fox hole we were using as a listening post. We figured that we were about half way across No Man's Land, but things were in such a jumble down there that we couldn't be sure.It was a jungle of old wire and trenches where the fighting the day before had been bloody and hard, and where our guns had smashed things completely.
The hole we were in was a pit like a well, deep enough for us to stand in, and big enough to let one sit down when he was on watch.There were big weeds and thistles all around the hole and we could look through them. I thought it was as good a place as any for the day, but Pete was nervous. During attack on the 8th he had nearly taken a bullet, and his nerves hadn't' quite recovered.
When it got real light I got up and did first sentry. I reached out and made little lanes through the weeds and we had a corking good field of observation. I watched to the right for a while at first, and it was one grand mess of rotting sandbags and jumbled timbers and and old trench revetting and broken brick. Pete got to his feet after a while and started to stare out on the left. Then he gasped and grabbed my arm. "Look-see," he gurgled.
To the left of out pit, seated in a hollow, was a Heinie (derogatory slang for a German soldier; colloquial corruption of Heinrich Henry) . His steel lid lay at his feet and his face was a pallid, pasty
bluish gray colour that nearly matched the tunic of his uniform. He was sitting among the rubble of a splintered plank, braced there as if something had drawn his attention, but to the contrary he was stone-dead! The throws of rigor supporting his lifeless frame as he had been at the time of his death.
There was a blood-clotted bandage lying beside him and we could see that he had been trying to dress an awful wound in his thigh. he must have died of shock and exsanguination as he sat there, or else a bullet had pierced him cleanly through the heart while he worked to save his own life. It was his eyes one could not help but notice and it was them that gave me an uneasy feeling that gnawed at my insides. They were dull and unobservant, but curiously disturbing, for they seemed to be focused full on us, as if here were watching us in a disinterested stare. Pete insisted on changing sides with me at once. "I can't stand the look f that man's eyes," he whispered, and his whisper was shrill.
I'll own I found it a test myself. I couldn't seem to avoid them, and their dull, unwinking stare was enough to give the steadiest of men the creeps. I tried looking away beyond him and studying other things. I tried to pick out Heinie's new lines, to see a machine gun post, to watch for aeroplanes, anything I could think of, but in five minutes it would be as if I were simply forced to look into those wide-open, expressionless eyes.



Eyes! Eyes! Eyes! Introduction

It was then the "Prairie Squirrels" were at Parvillers that Pete Mullins was sent down the line as a shell-shocked case, with every man in his platoon knowing that he had not been near a shell explosion. Yet none of them derided him, or said that he was swinging the lead, for he was, for the time at least, as pitiful physical wreck as one would care to see.
He kept hiding his face with his hands, and shuddering, and when they got him to bed at the hospital he lay for six days with his face to the wall. When they spoke to him all he would say was "Eyes-eyes-eyes."
Ted Hiller was with Pete all that terrible day when he saw the eyes, and it was Ted who told me the story.

A tale so chilling it could only be true

Hello again fellow traveler, and thank you for joining me in this bizarre land.

Yesterday in my travels I came across a tale so macabre it could easily have been penned by the likes of Poe or Lovecraft, yet the author is not an up and coming genius nor an over looked master. His pen will not present another tale such as this as I suspect he has long passed on, and I truly pray his soul will receive the peace it deserves after the horrors it has endured. For the Author of this piece was a veteran of the Great War, and the tale too terrible is in fact true.

As I am thrilled by classic horrors, they are typically born of the early twentieth century. Naturally I have an affinity for this time period, and one could hardly ignore the most amazing and terrible events that occurred and shaped the world ever after. Naturally I am speaking of the Great War: WWI (1914-1918) and WWII (1939-1945). True to life tales of heroism and suffering. Men living on earthly soil in conditions more resembling a tale of Dante's Inferno than sunny France or perhaps peaceful Russia. And everywhere around them were the dead and dying. Bodies purifying and decaying for days or longer until at some point they could be claimed and placed to rest if at all.

So it is perhaps not so surprising that this macabre terror I am about to bring to you over the next few posts comes from the accounts of an individual who survived such atrocities. Originally published in the LEGION MAGAZINE and later compiled into the book True Canadian War Stories, I bring you William R. Bird's Eyes! Eyes! Eyes!

To their left the staring dead eyes of an enemy's corpse festering in the heat of day. To their right mysterious hateful eyes that could only be in their imagination and to move would mean certain death.



Tuesday, April 1, 2008

King of Fools

Greetings and Condolences once again my friend. Certainly you didn't think I would let April Fools Day go by without a post. While other Horror sites and blogs are undoubtedly posting about a sub par 1980's slasher flick titled as such, or it's 2008 remake, I aspire to present slightly greater moments in movie history.


The Year is 1482 and city of Paris is in celebration. Here in a great square before the Notre Dame Cathedral it is the Festival of Fools. High above it all we are introduced to Lon' Chaney's Quasimodo, "Deaf - half-blind - shut off from his fellow men by his deformities the bells were the only voice of his groping soul. To the towns people he was an inhuman freak, a monstrous joke of Nature and for their jeers he gave them scorn and bitter hate."


His heart was cold and black with spite for all humanity. But there was one whom he would open his heart to. To her he would offer his love, his devotion, his protection and in the end ultimately his very life.

Esmeralda, a gentle and fair beauty. A champion for what is good and pure. To the unjustly condemned Gringoir the poet she would offer justice and release from his fate. To beautiful and charismatic Phoebus de Chateaupers, Captain of the guard she would offer her heart and desire. So what would she offer one such as Quasimodo?

To him she offered pity and nothing more. The same as she would likely offer to a flogged nag, or a beaten mongrel. She would eventually look upon him kindly but that would be all she was willing to give. And when Quasimodo died, she was enjoying a happy ending in the arms of another and only the bells and his one true friend the Cathedral's minister mourned him.

Perhaps he was the King of the Fools after all.

****Celebrating the 125th anniversary of Lon Chaney Sr. birth April 1, 1883****
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