Cover Her Face by P. D. James

I hear of P.D. James a while ago because of a BBC TV adaptation of her Adam Dalgliesh story The Murder Room. I really enjoyed the adaptation, and Dalgliesh seemed like a pretty interesting character, so P.D. James was added to my list of used books to buy. What an excellent author, what an excellent story, and what an excellent character.

In Cover Her Face, Sally Jupp has come to Martingale to serve as a housemaid. She is an unwed mother, so many frown upon this appointment, but Sally works hard and seems to catch the eye of the young Dr. Epps. This wouldn’t be a problem if he weren’t the son of the lady of the house, so expects him to marry someone else. Soon after announcing their engagement, Sally is murdered in her bed, behind a locked door. Adam Dalgliesh must solve the crime by choosing which person in house thought their reason to kill Sally was important enough to go to prison.

Adam Dalgliesh is everything that I want in a British detective. He is thoughtful, observant, and quick-witted. The setting was just right, with the small country manor, the town fete, and the locked room whodunit. All in all, Cover Her Face was like a perfect, long lost but way more mature Agatha Christie mystery. (Don’t get me wrong; Dame Agatha is my favorite mystery writer ever. Dalgliesh is not a caricature, like Poirot or Marple can sometimes come off as being.) If you like British mysteries like Christie's, you should definitely check out P.D. James. Even if you just like mysteries that aren’t the funny, Carl Haissen kind, but more of the locked-room country estate kind, check P.D. James out.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a truly exciting, tightly written mystery

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, The Most Devestating Plague of All Time by John Kelley

I have always been fascinated by outbreaks. My favorite book is The Stand. I love plague movies like Outbreak and 28 Days Later. After reading books by Anne Benson called The Plague Tales and The Burning Road, both very good books on their own, I decided I wanted to know more about the real history of the Black Death and y pestis.

In The Great Mortality, John Kelley traces the full history of the Black Death, from its origins in Mongolia through the trade routes of Europe. He talks about the variations the plague took, from bubonic plague that had the trademark bubo, bruise like splotches on the body, and bad odor, pneumonic plague that spreads directly from person to person though coughs, and includes coughing up blood and constant vomiting, and septicemic plague, that causes extremities to become black and hard as coal. He talks about what made the medieval world so easy for plague to spread and what helped stop it after thousands died. (Estimates say numbers of a third to 60 percent of the population.) Not only does John Kelley trace these facts, he includes stories of people who lived during the plague times, straight from their own journals and letters. He talks about people who stayed by friends and family to help them, and those who ran and hid. He talks about the Flagellants, who whipped themselves sin the name of God to “save” others from plague and he talks about the rampant anti-Semitism that ran through the world before and along with the plague.

Overall, the most interesting thing I found was how John Kelley traces how the culling of the population due to the first round of plague (and the two others that followed) helped usher in a new age of development. Suddenly, the laborers were in demand, food was plentiful, and the hierarchy of the serfs and nobles was breaking down. While the plague was devastating and destroyed thousands of lives and wiped whole families out, it ushered in a new hope for all those left behind.

It's an interesting look at a world forced into change and the nasty little bug that spured it on.

Rating: 5 Purrs, for making something that could have been terribly dry into something intriguing and informative

The Gathering

From what I can tell, The Gathering sat on shelf for a while, despite having Christina Ricci as the lead. While it wasn’t a terribly suspenseful horror movie, or really a horror movie at all, it was an okay rental for a slow weekend afternoon.

Cassie (Christina Ricci) is drifting through life, passing from town to town. She finds herself drawn to Ashby Wake after being hit by Marion’s car and losing her memory. She stays with Marion (Kerry Fox – yeah for Shallow Grave!) and her family while she recovers. Cassie becomes a nanny of sorts and becomes very close to Marion’s son. Cassie is also drawn to Marion’s family and Ashby Wake for another crazy reason: Marion’s husband Simon is researching newly discovered First Century church buried in the countryside, with strange carvings of the crucifixion. Cassie starts having visions and the townspeople start showing up staring at her ominously. Dan (Ioan Gruffudd) is the handsome love interest, but what role is he really playing in Cassie’s life? Is there a murderer in the town? Why is she even drawn to Ashby Wake? What is her role there?

It’s an interesting premise overall, but you are lead to expect one thing and I was surprised at the resolution to the story. It’s not a true shocker or anything, but it’s a twist that I don’t think I have seen before. You can see why the movie went straight to video, while the actors were okay, you could tell there just wasn’t a whole lot for them to work with.

Rating: 3 Purrs for a decent straight to video mystery thriller that sad to say, was better than the Da Vinci code.

Night of the Demons

“Angela is having a party, Jason and Freddy are too scared to come. But you'll have a hell of a time.”

Hee! This is just another one of those 80’s slashers, chock full of teenagers drinking, having sex, and then getting chopped up by scary things. This time around, the group of teenagers decides to celebrate Halloween in an abandoned funeral parlor, naturally rumored to be haunted by the Hull family who were murdered there years before. So what do you do when you party in a haunted house, especially when you party with a Gothy chick? You have a séance of course, right smack in front of a mirror. This awakens the demon that lurks in the basement, and all hell breaks loose. Angela, aka Gothy chick, is possessed, and each teen fights to get away with his or her life.

Linnea Quigley, everyone’s favorite B-Movie scream queen, shows up as Angela’s friend Suzanne, with such awesome lines as, “Do you guys have sour balls?… Too bad. I bet you don't get many blow jobs.” She meets her untimely end, turns into a demon, and gets to eat people up herself. It looks like she is having a blast.

This flick was obviously entertaining enough to spawn 2 sequels, all with Angela returning, and even played by the original actress Amelia Kinkade. It was silly, not that scary, but the gore effects were decent enough. It’s funny on a bad 80’s horror flick sort of way, but if you aren't a horror freak like I am, you might just steer clear of this one.

Rating: 3 ½ Purrs, always for Linnea Quigley and the lipstick breasts scene

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

The book Arthur and George tells the story of the real-life meeting between the very famous Arthur Conan Doyle and small town lawyer George Edalji. Julian Barnes paints a very vivid picture of what life was like for Doyle and Edalji in Late-Victorian Britain. It’s a real life mystery, where Doyle gets to use the skills he builds up in his Sherlock Holmes stories, which is why I bought the book in the first place. It was a good read, once I got several chapters in to the story.

The novel is written chronicling the two men’s lives from birth onward, slowly bringing them together, with Doyle eventually becoming George’s savior. George is a near-sighted, shy half-Indian living in Great Wyrley, a small country town whose residents aren’t very accepting of George and his family. He is victimized for years, from childhood where he is accused of theft and sent harassing letters, to later, where Doyle comes in, when he is accused of mutilating the animals of Great Wyrley. Arthur Conan Doyle began studying medicine where he meets Dr. Bell, the man who inspired his character Sherlock Holmes. He later becomes quite famous, marries and has children, and later falls in love with the love of his life, Jean (despite being married). The two men meet when George is finally set free after serving time for the animal mutilations (found guilty on shady circumstantial evidence), and Doyle decides to take up the case and investigate, mostly because he has sunk into a depression after his wife dies. He wants to bring justice to George, and you hope along with him that he can find it. In doing so, he hopes to find peace within himself.

I almost put this book down at the beginning. The first few chapters were very long-winded, but I kept plowing along and in the end, I was glad I did. The book is such an interesting tale of two men who would never have met, but when they did, they made such a difference in each other’s lives that it changed where they went from there. It is a good mystery, but even more it’s a character study and a story of love, loss, and family. It’s wonderful to think of it being a true story (fictionalized accounting of course), that Doyle became his famous detective for a short while and found new purpose to his life, and that George found happiness in the end.

Rating: 4 Purrs. I’d give it five but I can’t because of the very slow start to the book.

The Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

The Dragonlance Chronicles: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, and Dragons of Spring Dawning by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

Let me just say up front that I am not a fan of fantasy novels, especially those you could call “dragon books.” You know, the ones with the elf-lords running around with swords, mages calling up spells with capes, all that stuff. It’s a bit too much D&D for me. Okay, a lot too D&D for me. You might wonder why in the world, if I dislike fantasy so much, I would have ever read these books. I never would have on my own, but my husband has insisted for years that I read them since they were his favorite books when he was younger. I broke down. I’m a little embarrassed. Never had I believed that Tolkien influenced fantasy writers more than I do now, because boy, he sure did with these two.

The trilogy starts out with a group of friends meeting at an inn. There is an evil spreading, and they by chance join up to help Goldmoon, a barbarian woman and her lover, escape from the bad guys. They want her magical staff, so of course, our life-long friends jump to her aid. They must travel the land of Krynn to find its owner and keep it from the forces of evil. (Sound familiar? Yeah, me too.) This group of friends includes Tanis, the half-elf with a past, torn between two loves, Laurana the beautiful elf maiden and Kitiara the swordswoman. There are the two brothers, Caramon, the big warrior with a head of mush and a heart of steel, and Raistlin, the mage who could be evil or could be good but of course has a growing power and lots of magic. Flint Fireforge, the crusty dwarf, and Tasselhoff Burrfoot, the kender, who pick peoples pockets and provides comic relief, supposedly. There’s Strum Brightblade, the knight who still believes in valor, and the flighty old magician that shows up and wrecks havoc, but naturally has a secret that we will only discover at the very end. Once they journey on, find out about the staff and the war has broken out, the group of friends is separated (Two Towers? What do you think?) You meet more elves, learn a bit about the dragon lances and dragon orbs, and find out there is more to Laurana than you thought and wonder if Tanis is really turning to the dark side. The third book finds the friends fighting a hard battle, brothers being separated, and some friends are lost. The friends meet the evil Queen of Darkness, Takhisis, and the big battle begins. Will Tanis choose Laurana or Kitiara? Will good beat out evil? Why do they want the Everman? Will the metallic dragons help the people of Krynn fight the evil dragons?

I found this trilogy to be difficult to read, especially at first. I really enjoyed The Lord of the Rings trilogy, so this just felt like a cheap rip off. I must admit, to be truthful, I did get caught up wondering if Raistlin would end up a bad guy. It was actually the only reason I kept reading the trilogy all the way through. Everything else just felt like I was watching the TAMS kids larp back in college.

Rating: Hiss, for making me read all three books and then taking the easy way out.

Pulse

I saw the original Kairo a year or so ago, so when I heard they were remaking it, I was very interested. I thought Kairo has an interesting premise, but I felt it was lacking something, so I thought maybe the remake would fill in whatever that was. Unfortunately, it didn’t fare any better as a remake, although I did enjoy it a bit more than the original.

In Pulse, a computer hacker finds a new signal and somehow releases a computer virus of sorts, only this time, it can come through and infect real people. People start acting weird and disappearing, committing suicide, or melting into ash. Ghostly figured start appearing, haunting people. Mattie’s (Kristen Bell) boyfriend is one of those affected, and while searching for the truth, she and her friends get drawn in to the dangerous signal. Soon, they search for an answer on how to stop it, but are they too late?

I love Kristen Bell. Veronica Mars is one of my favorite TV shows. Some of the spark is missing here, but she still shines brightest in the cast. Ian Somerhalder is her new friend Dexter, a computer junkie who helps her track down the cause of the pulse and the ghostly figures. He’s also very good (and I will always miss him on Lost). Everyone else is pretty much unnecessary, except for ghost fodder. The atmosphere is sufficiently creepy, and some of the scenes kept over from the original movie (the plane crash, the tower jumper) still get me even though I have seen them before.

There are plenty of plot holes, but overall, it’s an apocalypse movie, so I can’t help but like it. The end made me cringe, if we had done without the cheesy end of the movie voice over, it would have been a much better ending. If you like the original and you want something just as good, I would avoid the remake. It’s really only good for Kristen Bell fans or people like me who love visions of the end of the world. If you do like Pulse, you should check out Cell by Stephen King. It’s a very similar take on the whole evil cell phone idea.

Rating: 3 ½ Purrs for Kristen Bell cuteness, Ian Somerhalder’s baby blues, and the very effective Tower scene

The Return

I rented this movie because it seemed like it would be one of those Asian horror movies wrapped up in American cinema packaging. It definitely wasn’t what I expected, but it was still a pretty good movie.

The Return is about Joanna Mills (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a young traveling saleswoman who has nightmares and waking dreams about a place she doesn’t remember ever being and a woman she's never met being murdered. Her life is falling apart, with her paranoia interfering with her job and her obsessive ex-boyfriend stalking her. While traveling for work, she finds herself near the town she is dreaming about, and decides to try and track down what it is she is dreaming and who murdered the woman she sees in her dreams. She befriends a man named Terry, who is somehow linked to the murder. Did he kill the woman in her dreams? Is the killer stalking her? Why is she having the dreams at all?

Sarah Michelle Gellar feels a little young for the role, but it’s not too bad. The atmosphere was dreary and stark, and perfect for a mystery. There were some real scares there, and the pacing was good once you get past the weird boyfriend showing up out of nowhere.

Overall, I was disappointed in some of the cuts to the film; I watched the deleted scenes and thought to myself – oh, now I get why that guy was even in the story at all. I know why they made the cuts they did, they wanted to speed the film up, but I really feel the movie suffered for it. I think that this movie would have performed much better in theaters if it had been marketed as the movie it actually is – a mystery/thriller, rather than an Asian horror rip-off. I was pleasantly surprised. As a thriller, it was good; as a horror movie, it lacked.

Rating: 4 Purrs for a surprising thriller in a pretend Asian horror package

Old Time Radio Podcasts

I have become addicted to old radio mysteries and horror stories, and pod casts have brought all of that joy back to me. I became fascinated with them when I first saw George Lucas and Steve Spielberg’s movie, Radioland Murders. Now when I hear these podcasts, I imagine all of the sound effects guys, the writers trying to finish up the scripts, and the actors performing in front of those tall retro microphones. I subscribe to several, but the following ones are my favorites.

Radio Detective Story Hour – The host for this podcast is just wonderful. Each episode introduces a detective series, and the host gives a wonderfully researched background of the show. He sometimes includes guest speakers and some previously taped interviews. I like this one because you get a deeper understanding of the history of the series he presents.

Tales of Horror – This series podcasts old radio shows like The Weird Circle, The Mysterious Traveler, and other shorts similar to the old Night Gallery and Twilight Zones of Rod Serling.

Suspense! – This podcast is replaying the old radio show, Suspense! It’s another one if those 30 minute horror anthologies, and the stories are pretty good.

Old Time Radio – This is a new group of podcasts that plays mysteries, detectives, thriller, and sci-fi. I have five of them in my podcast list, and each of them have a great mix of stories. I wish there was a little bit less intro to each episode, but that’s because eit is a bit commercial heavy at the front.

There are several podcasts out there full of old radio shows, but these casts post regularly and the quality of the shows is good. Usually you can count on the radio shows having decent sound, and of course, the commercials and political ads are a great way to look back into the past. It’s funny to hear how much women characters have changed over the years. Even when the women are main characters, such as Candy Matson, she still works to keep a few minks in her wardrobe, and of course, on the side, smash evildoers and help people.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a history lesson that’s entertaining, especially down on the waterfront of San Francisco, wearing a slick hat and hunting the evildoer

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

I can hardly believe I rented Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. I liked the remake, and I liked the original, so I thought I would give this one a try. After all, it has Jordana Brewster in it, and I’ve liked her since The Faculty. Ugh. It wasn’t much to speak of, and brought nothing new to anything.

In TCM: TB, we see that the Hewitt family is in trouble. The meatpacking plant where they and Leatherface worked is closing down. The family faces starvation, and since they are obviously backwoods hicks with several screws loose, they follow right along when the head of the family kills off the sheriff of the town and serves him up as dinner. A trend is born, more or less, and old Leatherface gets to keep on doing what he is doing. This time, the first time, he gets to do it to a couple of brothers and their girlfriends on their last trip before shipping off to Vietnam. The four are appropriately pretty and very, very 70’s. Blood and guts follows, and madness ensues.

Diora Baird does a better job than I expected, since all I have seen her in before was some bit parts in movies and a Playboy photo spread. She does bring a bit more to the part than just a pretty face. She is terrified and stupefied in just the right moments. Jordana Brewster also does a good job being the plucky heroine who preservers and tries to kick butt. R. Lee Ermey is the nutso head of the family, but pretty much plays the same part he always plays: the loud, mean, crazy leader. Leatherface is just one big old lunk hauling around a chainsaw. He isn’t scary; he’s just sad and deformed.

I really hate the trend I have seen lately in horror films. There’s little plot and mostly just guts. There was no reason for this film except to show a bunch of people getting gutted and tortured. Now, I am not opposed to blood and guts. Giallo films are chocked full of it. Jason chops people in half all of the time. Honestly, I really don’t know why I disliked this movie so much. Maybe I am just tired of rampant blood and torture; maybe it’s just that there was no excuse for this movie anyway. Or maybe it was the fact that I am very, very tired of Texas always being the place where people are portrayed as backwards hicks who breed with their families, raise deformed serial killers, and scream crazy religious crap to terrorize sexy teenagers. Regardless, this movie was a waste of time, and for me to say that, you know it’s got to be bad.

Rating: 3 Hisses, for all the crazy backwards Texans and chainsaws up the gut and 1 Purr for Jordana Brewster and Diora Baird for playing sexy 70’s chickies and rising above the ickiness of this movie

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein

I have had a copy of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers ever since I saw the movie version by Paul Veerhoven. I liked the movie version; I found it just over the top enough to be entertaining, despite the little “commercial” snippets separating the chapters. I am not a huge fan of sci-fi or fantasy novels, but Heinlein is one of the masters, so I thought I would finally give Starship Troopers a chance.

Starship Troopers is a novel about a futuristic military state. I can see why it was labeled “controversial” on the cover, because it pokes holes in just about every tenet our society has grown to hold dear. Johnnie Rico is a soft, not so smart guy from Terran. His parents are rich and he has never really had to struggle for much of anything. In his world, to be a citizen, you have to be a veteran, and on a whim, our Johnnie signs up for a term in the military. He gets assigned to Mobile Infantry, and it’s the roughest thing he has ever done in his whole life. Boot Camp is brutal, but he ends up being more of an adult than he ever expected, and when Terran goes to war against the Bugs, he is shipped out to battle. Here is where he proves himself.

There is a whole lot description of the future gadgets, strategies, and the basic truths of the futuristic world, much like a softer version of For Us, the Living. I wish there had been more female characters; I felt like I was reading Lord of the Rings again. Carmen has a few paragraphs, but the military, for the most part, was male. Johnnie was just not an interesting enough character for me to really care about. He was too much of a “go team” sort of guy, and one who even though he supports his military, never really seems to question why he is there. Of course, that might have been part of the point.

What I found most interesting about Starship Troopers has less to do with the book and more in comparison to Ender’s Game, another futuristic military novel I read just last year. How these two authors look at the future of war and the security of our world both turn back and critique how we are functioning now, and both end up raking holes in so many of the basic “truths," especially now. Both books have children being turned into warriors; both question the validity of war. But, and maybe it’s just me, I got more of a “go military” vibe from Starship Troopers. It seems to present a value in controlled violence, a need for children to be disciplined, and a need for things like corporal punishment and the death penalty.

Starship Troopers was an all right book. I’m just not sure I would recommend it to anyone who wasn’t already a big fan of Heinlein’s work. I’m discovering that I am not.

Rating: 3 Purrs

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

Finding The Brief History of the Dead was a complete stroke of luck. The cover image intrigued me, so I ordered it from my book club. (If you like a variety of surprising and intriguing books, you should check out Quality Paperback Books.) What I found inside was intriguing, a tale of death and life, a fable of relationships and memories.

The whole book is based on a belief held in some African societies: once you die, you still live in the memories of those left behind on earth. These recently passed, if they can be called to mind or talked about in stories, are living-dead. Once the last person on earth who knew them dies, they pass on to the truly dead. Brockmeier takes this belief and creates a place where people come after death, a city of the dead. Many people live and work there like they did in life. They rejoin their families, they continue on as though they were living. One day, people start disappearing at a rapid rate, and the city itself looks to be shrinking. Luka Sims, newspaperman, is determined to find out what is going on with the city and where the people are disappearing to. What is going on in the world of the living that is causing so many to die, and of those, so many of the dead to disappear?

The whole story is like a richly woven fabric of characters and inter-connectivity. There is a complexity to the tale that you wouldn’t expect from something so simply written. After about half way through the book I figured out the “surprise” twist, but it didn’t diminish how much I liked the book at all. In fact, I loved the way every player down to the random teenager in the street were connected. It's a nice thought.

The ideas and lessons in this book found me at a time when I needed them most. I had recently lost my aunt to a very difficult fight with cancer and the story Kevin Brockmeier told in The Brief History of the Dead was a poignant one for me. While that was the case for me, I think it would have been just as amazing had I read it at any other time. The idea, the color, the underlying truth of the story is truly universal. Not only that, it is told without any kind of syrupy Oprah Book Club nonsense, so never did I feel like my heartstrings were being pulled in any artificial way. I can’t wait to see what else Kevin Brockmeier has to offer.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a quirky tale told with great care. It’s not often you find a book about death that makes you feel good too.

Recent Aquisitions to the Library

I am way behind on keeping track of the new additions to my library, but here are some of the more recent purchases:

• See No Evil - Mia Farrow thriller from way back.
• Demons, Demons 2 - Argento produced zombie demon movies.
• Night of the Comet - My very favorite movie of all time.
• Endless Night - An Agatha Christie mystery with a grown up Haley Mills.
• Stardust by Neil Gaiman
• The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder by Daniel Stashower
• The Monk by Matthew Lewis
• American Elf Volume 1 by James Kochalka
• The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl
• Destination Morgue! by James Ellroy
• The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld
• The Meaning of Night: A Confession by Michael Cox
• Fluke by Christopher Moore
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
• The Father of Forensics: The Groundbreaking Cases of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, and the Beginnings of Modern CSI by Colin Evans

Silent Hill

I have never played the game Silent Hill, so I can’t really compare the movie to the game outside of what I have read from other’s comments. I do know that I liked Silent Hill much better the second time around on DVD than I did the first viewing in the theater.

Rose and Christopher have a daughter, Sharon, who has terrible nightmares and sleepwalks. While she sleeps, she shouts "Silent Hill," and Rose, determined to figure out what is going on, takes Sharon on a trip to find the deserted town. On the way, a lady cop Cybil, (Laurie Holden – X-Files! Woot!) follows her into town, and Sharon disappears. Game on! Rose must track down Sharon, and in doing so, solve the mystery of why Silent Hill is haunted by really cool creepy crawlies.

On first viewing, I didn’t like the game feel to the movie, but I loved the creepy creatures and the story, so I thought I would give it another try on DVD. I loved it the second time around. Everything meshed for me then. The playing levels, the actors, the Silent Hill dimension versus the real world all came together just perfectly. Even the added on feel of Sean Bean’s scenes didn’t bother me all that much. My favorite creepies – Pyramid Head and his buggies, closely followed by the creepy janitor guy.

I thought Alice Kridge cast as the crazy religious nut was perfect, but not very inventive. She does have a way, though, of just freaking you the hell out. She has this way of enlarging her pupils to where her eyes seem black and she seems so certain. Overall, the religious nuts as the center of the story are a pretty regular turn of horror events, but as I understand it, it’s the heart of the Silent Hill games, so it doesn’t turn me off. The end was a whiz-bang. From Cybil meeting the flames (ick!) to Rose bringing in the dark, to little Sharon being turned (or is she…) it’s a great end to a very creepy horror/game movie.

If you like creepy, but not necessarily want to see a bunch of gore, and don’t mind a bit of crazy religious nuts sprinkled on top, check out Silent Hill. I can’t wait to see what Christophe Gans comes up with next; he definitely has a great eye for horror movies with substance.

Rating: 4 ½ Purrs, with extra nuts and buggies on top

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The Haunting of Hill House is a classic horror story, no getting around it. Shirley Jackson is a true master of taking something that seems everyday and turn it into a vision that stays in your dreams. I read this book a while ago, and even though I knew the twists and turns, it still kept me reading and taut with tension.

If you don’t know the story, it’s a step above your run of the mill haunted house story. Hill House has a long history, and the villagers nearby won’t stay there at night, and most won’t approach it in the day. Dr. Montague wants to figure out why there are bumps in the night at Hill House, so he invites some people who have had some sort of psychic experiences to come and stay at the house for the summer, to help him record any unusual happenings. Eleanor, or Nell, has cared for her mother for years and now, for the first time, is out on her own. She’s your typical wallflower and is very unsure of her place in the world. Theo is vivacious, self-centered, artistic; she is used to being the center of attention. Luke is there because he will one day inherit Hill House. You could describe him as a liar and a rake. These strangers are brought together and different petty jealousies erupt. Is it the house playing tricks on them? Are the loud noises and cold spots they feel a true haunting or their imaginations?

The Haunting of Hill House is tightly written, full of suspense. The characters are well built. The haunting scenes are tense and while you read them you are on edge with the characters. It doesn’t surprise me that Stephen King, among many other writers, cite Shirley Jackson as an influence. I recently read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, another of her novels, and it was almost as good as this. I now have a mission to hunt her other work down.

Rating: 5 Purrs for haunted house perfection

The Changeling

I rented The Changeling ages ago, and when I saw it on Amazon for 5 bucks, I snatched up the DVD to add to my collection. This movie made me jump even though it was the second viewing and I already knew the story. The Changeling must be one of the best haunted house movies I have ever seen.

George C Scott is John Russell, a composer who has just lost his wife and child in a car wreck. He moves to Seattle and into an old house owned by the historical society. As he settles in to the house, he starts hearing strange noises. He spends time digging through the house and discovers an old room filled with children’s toys. Since he identifies with the lost ghost child as a substitute for his lost daughter, he then decides to solve the mystery of the house. Creepiness ensues, noises and furniture moves, and he digs deep into the mystery with a séance and a sidekick, Claire (Trish Van Devere, Scott’s real life wife).

I love the atmosphere in this movie. The house is huge and full of opportunities for scariness. The somber Seattle weather makes for a beautiful color palette. The story of the lost child and a lost birthright isn’t groundbreaking, but it is well written and well paced. George C. Scott is just excellent, as usual. He plays the grieving father and the curious intellectual with aplomb.

If you like haunted house movies, especially ones with a good mystery at the heart of it, you should definitely check out The Changeling. It’s definitely one of the better ones out there.

Rating: 5 Purrs for that first loud noise that made me jump out of my seat and the scene at the end with the wheelchair – wow!

The Door in the Hedge by Robin McKinley

Robin McKinley is one of my most favorite authors ever. She’s had me at The Hero and the Crown, and she hasn’t let me go since. I love the way she tells a story, and I think at this point I have read everything she has written.

The Door in the Hedge is a collection of four fairy tales, two reinterpretations of old tales and two new tales. In the first tale, called The Stolen Princess, is quite lovely in tone. In the kingdom that borders Fairyland, children are sometimes stolen from their beds, never to return. The Queen’s sister was one of those children, and now, her daughter is spirited away. Only this time, things will be different. In The Princess and the Frog, McKinley reinterprets the traditional fairytale of the princess losing her golden ball in a pond, only to promise a frog a kiss for returning it. McKinley’s version has a bit more meat to it, and this time around, the Princess isn’t passively accepting her fate. In The Hunting of the Hind, McKinley borrows from many tales I have read in my favorite fairy tale collection, the Andrew Lang fairy books. There is a golden hind who drives those who hunt her mad. The Princess’s brother hunted her, and now he is dying. The Princess decides to seek the Golden Hind and break the spell. In the final tale, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, McKinley doesn’t change much of the original story, except she fleshes out the hero and makes him a soldier who finally learns why he fought for his King.

I liked this small collection of fairy tales. McKinley has written similar reinterpretations in almost all of her works, with her greatest being the creation of Aerin the Dragon Killer and the world of Damar. If you like fantasy with a light feminist twist, you should read her more robust stories, Deerskin, the Outlaws of Sherwood, and Spindle’s End. If you have read her before and liked what you read, you should check out her collections of short stories. The Door in the Hedge was finally reprinted, and The Knot in the Grain has some Damar related stories.

Rating: 4 Purrs

I'm still here, but I'm watching my TIVO.

I know, I know. I have been lazy. Blame it on Chiller, my lovely new horror channel on DirecTV. They have Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Freddy's Nightmares, Friday the 13th The Series, and The Night Gallery for cris'sakes. How am I suppossed to do anything else?

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

I wasn’t sure about watching The Exorcism of Emily Rose because I had heard mixed things about it. Luckily I was warned ahead of time that it was more a courtroom drama than a true horror, otherwise I may have been disappointed. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose is about Emily Rose (duh), a girl who is off to college and away for the first time from her overtly religious and somewhat stifling family. She begins to have visions, auditory and olfactory hallucinations, body spasms; you name it, which lead her doctors to believe that she is suffering from epileptic seizures and some psychological disorders. Her medication doesn’t help, and her symptoms get worse, which leads her back home to the help of her family priest. She thinks she is possessed, and her priest and her family decide on an exorcism. She doesn’t live through it, which is where we are at the beginning of the movie. The priest is brought into court and accused of killing Emily Rose. The movie focuses on the trial, and tells Emily’s story in bits as the trial progresses.

The cast is just outstanding in this movie. Laura Linney plays the defense attorney, an agnostic who discovers more about faith than she expected while defending Father Moore (played by Tom Wilkinson, who I have loved ever since seeing him in In the Bedroom). Wilkinson shows Father Moore to be compassionate and selfless, with his true motives out for all to see. Campbell Scott plays Ethan Thomas, prosecuting attorney, picked for the fact that he is a churchgoer, and yet his faith doesn’t allow him to see what Emily Rose stood for or allow for the idea that she might have been possessed at all. Jennifer Carpenter (from Dexter) plays Emily Rose in the flashbacks, and she is very effective in what she is given. She’s scary, tormented, excited, and hopeful; she’s able to fit whatever the part calls for.

Overall, I liked The Exorcism of Emily Rose, but I probably wouldn’t have if I had gone into expecting a big scare fest. It has its moments of creepiness, but it really is more of a drama than a horror movie. It’s a lot like The Exorcist in that way. Sure, there are some creepy, make your skin shiver scenes (think the spiderwalk), but overall it’s giving you a message and making you feel for the characters and their story. Just like your gut clinches for Regan, you hurt for Emily Rose.

Rating: 4 Purrs for a scary movie with real drama and characters

The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins is a Victorian sensation novelist that I found by chance because of a recommendation from my always wonderful paperback book club. After being out of print for some time, the club had a copy of The Woman in White, one of the more famous of Collins’s work. I snatched it up and enjoyed it so much I picked up a copy of The Haunted Hotel, a well-developed novella of his, plus several others of his work as I can find them.

The Haunted Hotel is a supernatural detective story. The Countess thinks she is being haunted after her husband, Lord Montbarry, dies unexpectedly while they are on their Venice honeymoon. Their marriage was unexpected, as the Lord dropped his fiancée, Agnes, to marry the unknown Countess. Their marriage is one plagued by gossip since the Countess is in constant attendance by her brother, Baron Rivar, who is rumored to not actually be her brother. After the Lord dies, Agnes and the Montbarry family end up in the same place where Lord Montbarry died, and those of his family who stay in his room are haunted by various dreams, visions, and smells. Agnes and Henry (the Lord’s cousin, currently in love with Agnes) are determined to find out the truth behind the supernatural events, and in doing so, end up solving a mystery.

The Haunted Hotel is a nice little supernatural mystery. It’s nowhere as good as The Woman in White, but it’s a nice piece of work from a very good Victorian writer. The plot has a few twists and turns, and the prose is descriptive. The supernatural occurrences are not anything particularly new, but still are spooky enough to give you a few old fashioned Victorian chills.

If you like Victorian ghost stories or mysteries, I’d recommend the longer The Woman in White from Wilkie Collins, but if you are short on time and what to get a glimpse at his style, The Haunted Hotel won’t steer you wrong.

Rating: 4 Purrs