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Eric Brummer Electric Flesh, 1996
‘Electric Flesh is a riot of images thrown at you with maximum enthusiasm. Meaning is irrelevant. The only meaning is that this is cool. It’s a 15-year-old metalhead’s Algebra I notebook brought to life for eight minutes. Well, a chaste 15-year-old metalhead as most of the ones I know would have drawn massive dicks on all of these monsters, including the skull with batwings. That would have probably had dick wings, actually.’
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Piggy Soda Dog Nightmares – My New Best Friend!, 2024
‘Dog Nightmares follows Emily, a young woman who has lost her dog, Bailey. She tries looking for the pooch, only to end up rediscovering a strange dog-man hybrid she befriended as a kid. It’s told through her old childhood drawings, clips of the William Wegman shorts on TV, and eerie photographs and video footage of something lurking in the shadows. It’s a short series that packs a lot into its grim tales, with hints of domestic abuse, trauma, and insanity on top of its offputting canine creature.’
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Mike Heynes SCHLOCK! HORROR!, 2005
‘The souvenirs of a once great movie empire have been left to gather dust as the film industry embraces a brave new world of CGI. All that remained were a few moth-eaten props and end of the line merchandising gimmicks.’
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Unknown Untitled, 2021
‘This was included in an anonymous horror compilation.’
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Alluvium Valle Verde, 2022
‘Valle Verde takes the form of a VHS tape that Alluvium found in a metal box under a strange statue in the grounds of Parque Ecológico, La Plata, Argentina. It depicts a video game for the PS1 he had never heard of before. Aside from needing a peripheral called the ‘THBrain,’ it looked like a regular, Animal Crossing-esque life sim game. But as its on-screen avatar explores the world, it starts showing strange things.’
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Noble and Sue Webster Fucking Beautiful, 2000
‘Inspired in part by their drive to Glastonbury’s music festival, and their wait on a hillside, as the sun was setting, to hear a performance by David Bowie, the couple also cite the cover of Gary Numan’s ‘Warriors’ LP as an influence on this work. ‘We’ve ascended above the trash,’ says Sue Webster of The Undesirables, thus completing (in the tradition of nihilism) a classic circuit of Western romanticism.’
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Kane Pixels The Backrooms, 2022
‘On January 7th, 2022, interest in the Backrooms creepypasta was bolstered when a YouTube user named Kane “Pixels” Parsons released a viral found footage short about a camera operator who finds himself trapped in the Backrooms, unknowingly stalked by wire-like entities, one of which eventually decides to give chase. The video was given a VHS filter to disguise the CGI nature of the project, and many viewers were impressed with the lifelike camera movements that made the video feel real.’
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Starbag Figurebreeze Blackwater-EP, 2023
‘Blackwater-EP stands out from the crowd by being an analog horror musical. It chronicles a would-be serial killer roaming through his school with a video camera, picking out his victims. Then it jumps ahead 30 years to the school’s derelict ruins, where the killer returns to the scene of the crime. It makes for eerie viewing, especially in the first half where it looks like old 1980s camcorder footage. It may even be an actual old video repurposed for the project. Even with its freaky distortion, the video would be nothing special on mute.’
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Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg One Lost Egg, 2022
Styrofoam, epoxy putty, glass, resin, acrylic paint, polymer clay, metal wire
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Parker Boisvert Various, 2020-2024
‘Boisvert’s work often gets brought up in relation to analog horror, as it does have some grungy, live-action camera work among its stark, black-and-white animations. But it’s more personal and expressive. Appearing first in May 2020 via the _Boisvert YouTube channel, it follows an antler-headed figure trapped in their home trying to live without giving in to his demons. They’re a mix of figurative dark figures, representing depression, isolation, willpower, rage, and more. Or so the interpretation goes.’
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Kyle Edward Ball Heck, 2021
‘Heck feels like a prequel for Skinamarink, and Wikipedia confirms that Ball created it as a proof of concept for what he hoped would be a longer cinematic endeavor.’
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David Zink Yi Untitled (Architeuthis), 2013
‘According to the latest scientific research, a real-life architeuthis can grow to up to 46 ft long and lives in the sea at depths of up to 12,000 ft. It was only one year ago, in 2013, that an international research team managed to capture film footage of a giant deep-sea squid in its natural habitat – a world first, although the existence of giant squid had been scientifically established since the nineteenth century with the help of carcass parts washed up on beaches. Accordingly, David Zink Yi presents his architeuthis as an unmoving, lifeless form, pressed to the floor. It seems as if this deep-sea dweller too has been washed ashore and has perished, snatched away from its natural environment.’
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Alex Kister The Mandela Catalogue, 2022
‘The Mandela Catalogue is a series of videos spread across a series of VHS tapes. Some of them play out like instructional videos, others like surveillance footage. But they all feature people in Mandela County, Wisconsin, succumbing to mysterious figures called ‘Alternates.’ They’re shape-shifting creatures that take the form of other living things, then stalk their targets before eliminating them and taking their place. They can be indistinguishable from a person’s loved ones, human, animal, or otherwise until they attack. The Alternates can also affect TV and radio broadcasts, warping the videos and changing their messages. Their uncanny looks, using real police photofits, caught on quickly, freaking viewers out across the web. Alex Kister aims to continue the series, though after some behind-the-scenes drama, it may take a while to catch back on.’
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Sarah Sitkin Untitled, 2010
‘The idea of creating moulds of the human body came to artist Sarah Sitkin while she was talking to her grandmother. “She asked me to take a mould of her foot,” the LA-based creator explains. “She wanted me to make a prosthetic appliance to correct her overlapping toes. During the mould we had a conversation about the disconnection she was feeling between the foot she knew was hers and the foot that was before her.” This conversation ultimately led Sitkin to think about what it means to simply ‘have’ a body, and the “lifelong struggle to identify with our ever-changing physicality, to preserve it, and to maintain agency over it.”‘
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Greenio Super Mario 64: CLASSIFIED, 2023
‘Nintendo 64 launch title Super Mario 64 has inspired its odd urban legends, like how every cartridge is allegedly personalized for each owner. One person’s copy of the game will play better for them because it was designed for them specifically. It’s more of a joke, but the YouTube series Super Mario 64: CLASSIFIED wonders what it would be like if it were true. They take the form of VHS recordings of a broken demo build of Super Mario 64. Through each video, it gradually becomes apparent that Nintendo was hiding a very dark secret about the game’s creation, one that may threaten the world as a whole.’
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Gooseworx D E E P _ B L U E, 2020
‘At first, BLUE_CHANNEL doesn’t offer a lot. The first video, THE_BLUE_CHANNEL, is literally just a blue backdrop with VHS distortion and the word ‘BLUE’ superimposed on it, set to wonky music. Then DEEP_BLUE occasionally changes the aspect ratio, hides subliminal messages (“You don’t belong here”), and offers a better look at the creepy figure hidden at the end of THE_BLUE_CHANNEL.’
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Kerry Stewart The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You, 1993
‘A door, off white, by Kerry Stewart, has a frosted glass pane that reveals on the other side a charity collection box boy, the type once found on every high street.’
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Martin Walls The Walten Files, 2021
‘The Walten Files involves a Chuck E. Cheese-like animatronic restaurant. The story involves a man called Anthony coming across a set of videotapes from the defunct Bunny Smiles Company. They were behind the Bon’s Burgers restaurant, which mysteriously vanished in the 1980s. It stands out from the crowd as it’s an animated series. Its main videos gradually reveal the mystery behind Bon’s Burgers, its animatronics, and its founders, Jack Walten and Felix Kranken. The visuals are crude, which adds to the disturbing atmosphere each video builds up, and lore that’s just as dark and bloody as its video game-based forebear.’
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Stephen Krasner Untitled, 2015
‘In the 2015 horror movie The Devil’s Candy, artist and metalhead Jesse Hellman moves into a new home with his wife, Astrid, and daughter, Zooey. The previous owners of the home had died, leaving behind their son Ray who regularly hears the voice of the devil. Upon the death of his parents, Ray finds that he is no longer able to drown out the voice, and begins to murder children in the town. At the same time, Jesse begins to hear the same voice and, falling into a trance-like state, paints a horrifying scene of children’s faces, their eyes smudged with black and mouth open in silent screams. Among the faces is his own daughter, who grips her head in pain and is surrounded by red-hot flames. Ray turns his attention to Zooey, and as her parents fight to keep her safe, Jesse soon realizes that all the faces he has been painting are those of the missing and murdered children in the town.’
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Paul Catalanotto The Children Under the House, 2022
‘Julia Luu, a child therapist, finds that a young girl’s imaginary friends might be more than they seem.’
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Vinyl -Terror & -Horror Samtalekøkken, 2012
‘Vinyl -terror & -horror is a collaboration between Camilla Sørensen and Greta Christensen. We are working in the field of cinematic soundscapes with a high tolerance level of possible hi- fi disasters.’
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Rob Voerman Tarnung #3, 2009
‘I try to create the architecture of fictive communities living in remote areas or occupying existing city-landscapes. The communities will consist of a mixture of utopia, destruction and beauty, a symbiosis of hippie-communities from the seventies, with their often highly decorated self-build structures, the cabin of the Uni-bomber hidden in the Montana forests, art-deco and other influences. Romanticism combined with the grim qualities of terror. It is often a direct translation of destruction in a purely aesthetic form.’
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Kazuo Adamski Non-existent person portrait #193, 2024
oil on canvas F8 (455mm by 380mm), none sketch, none model, none training, no thinking
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Alex ‘Jadusable’ Hall The Father, 2020
‘Ben Drowned combined a written creepypasta about a haunted copy of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask with video footage. The distorted music, glitchy movements, and the game’s already morose and creepy atmosphere made it stand out from its rivals in haunting terror.’
*
p.s. Hey. ** PL, Hi. Similar vegetation, that’s interesting. And strange. No, honestly, I don’t like the ‘Sluts’ cover very much. It just looks like something meant to bait gay readers. I like covers that are more complicated, I guess. If you have the artistic goods plus the looks to flirt successfully, why not, right? ** Dominik, Hi!!! I could see why people thought Berger was handsome until he opened his mouth, and then yikes (for me). I listened to a little of Soko, and, yeah, it’s quite nice. I, of course, recognized love’s karaoke of yesterday. I think that was kind of the last REM song I really liked. What is this feeling called love? What is this crazy scene I can’t work out no how?, G. ** Charalampos, That doc is hard to find? Huh. Like I just said, I don’t get Berger’s attractiveness, other then maybe technically. I’m weird, though. ** Misanthrope, Maybe they skied at a beginner slope in which case even hills could do the trick, I guess? What to do about David? Short of a forced intervention, he has become a difficult puzzle. ** Steeqhen, That’s a project indeed. I love pop-up books. If I was rich I’d probably collect them. There’s a great pop-up book store/museum-ish place here in Paris you should check out the next time you come back. I don’t think you need Diarmuid’s book to write your thing. It’s cool, but it has a number of inaccuracies too. How was the photoshoot? So nice to be needed, especially artistically, yeah. February? We need to finish the film completely, and there’s stuff to do and funds to raise to get there, so that’ll surely be February’s overriding thematic. Hoping to get to Efteling. There’s a rare screening of ‘Permanent Green Light’ coming up in Paris, and it’ll be nice to talk about that one again. Stuff like that. Did you break down and go to the ball game? ** James, It’s always blog time technically. At least in Paris, cocaine is back in vogue, I’m told, yes. Berger would have appreciated you. And probably felt competitive. Were the 2010s a good time for indie music? Why not, I guess. Oh, gosh, thanks about ‘Closer’. Keith Levy later Sherry Vine starred in one of Ishmael Houston-Jones’ and my performance works ‘The Undead’. That’s why he’s on ‘Frisk’. And in the show he sang a killer version of Husker Du’s ‘New Day Rising’ which he/she would never sing now in a million years. I’m kicking, thanks, with ice cubes for toes. Watch out. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey. Maybe that would be something to market, hm. Although in our film the only score is the sound of the haunted house, which is what she did — well, and one song sung by one character that she didn’t write — and it’s not exactly Oscar nomination material, sadly. Excellent about the writing start. Don’t worry about volume if you are, just keep leaking if nothing else. ** jay, Hi. Well, like I think I said, if I had groupies I probably wouldn’t even notice. My radar doesn’t go that way naturally. Oh, okay, it’s true that in the ‘Closer’ -> ‘Try’ era I did get fanmail where guys sent me sexy photos of themselves, and I guess I did ‘hook up’ with few boys at my readings, but we stayed in touch afterwards, so that seems different? Wow, thanks about the crush on my fictional self. I’m honored, and my past constructed self is winking back at you. I really need to get back into gaming. I took a short break, and then the habit fell by the wayside. And I do really want to play that ‘Lorelei’ game you recommended. Lots of love back from so far unstressed here and me. ** Bill, I’m actually quite surprised that book has never been translated into English. Seems kinda of inexplicable. Sorry to hear about the rough days, but happy they’ve smoothed out. ‘Spa’, okay, I’ll look into it. Thanks, bud. ** Lucas, Hey. ‘Wild at Heart’ is one of my least favorite Lynch films. But I think I’m in the minority. And I do love ‘Lost Highway’, so take that into account. There are great things in ‘WaH’ no matter what. Worth watching. Another week? Poor dude, that’s tough. Yep your chin up. And, yes, mega-luck on quitting cigs. Your future will reward you generously if you can. ** Steve, Yeah, Semiotext(e), right. I’m thinking there must be a rights issue, although it’s in French, so … It sounds like you should be nothing but amused and thrilled by his riposte. Nice you’re reviewing the new Destroyer. I’ve only heard the single, but I love it, and I just got tickets to see him live here. Curious to hear what ‘Being Maria’ is like obviously. I don’t know of Bertolucci talking about that, no, but he did stop disowning ‘Luna’ finally, which I understand he disowned because he thought it got a little too close to home, so maybe that was his reveal. I have a hard time getting Solidarity Cinema to work unfortunately. It’s molasses slow, but I keep trying again. ** Dan Carroll, RPG vibes, gotcha. Well, great for the reading time then. Cool you like Puce Mary. I’m a huge fan, obviously, I guess, and she’s a good pal of mine. Lives here in Paris. I would guess that, yes, Arca is pretty pricey at this point. I love ‘House of 1000 Corpses’ too. How awesome, and with Moseley there. I assume it was a blast? ** Chris Kelso, Hi, Chris. No, I’m not so into the idea of my books being adapted as films. They’re books and meant to work as books. More interesting to write something specially intended to be visualised. But if some amazing person had an amazing idea of how to transform a novel into a visual experience, I’d certainly engage with them. I so feel for you on the funding front. You’ll get there though. You sound like you’re sufficiently on it. I would just say try to raise enough funds to be able to cover the post-production too because those funds are even harder to raise on their own. We had no funds for the post- on our film going into it, that’s what really fucked things up. You can do a post about ‘Vantablack’, of course. That would be very welcome. I’m really excited that ‘Room Temperature’ is finally, finally going to be born, yes. Thanks a lot, man. ** Bernard Welt, Mr. Welt! Strangely I don’t think that Berger story was in the post, although it’s kind of famous, isn’t it? I did not know that about Georgia Holt. In fact, embarrassingly, I didn’t even know Lucy Ricardo ever went to Paris. I’ll see if YouTube can help me. The horribleness over there is absolutely unbelievable. And piling up higher every day. This is the key moment, right? Here’s where we find out what fighting back with sufficient force post-internet involves. Were the IRL outbursts re: Occupy or George Floyd blips or trial runs? I’m very worried, as I know you are, that people are so drugged by the belief that venting on social media is the entire playing field that they won’t be willing to invent the level of rebellion that this moment insists upon. That it’s taking time is no surprise, but … oh, I don’t know. Who knows how to fight this thing and not just hope/rely on elected officials and a romantic notion of the court system. It’s so huge. Unbelievable. Scandinavia is wonderful. Try to rent a car or something and drive around in Norway. It’ll blow your mind. Hope you get down here too, obvs. Love, me. ** Tyler Ookami, Hey, Tyler. I was good friends with this guy John Wentworth who was Lynch’s right hand man during the ‘Twin Peaks’ and concurrent films era. If you look at the credits of Lynch’s stuff back then, he’s all over them. Lynch offered to give John 1M to direct a film (he’d made a few shorts), John approached me to write the script with him. He wanted to adapt this novel ‘The Brave’, which Johnny Depp later ended up directing a film based on. But, like I said, we couldn’t agree on things. He said he was going to write the film on his own, but he never did, I never knew why. So I would have been the film’s co-writer, and John would have directed it. You and I rely on much the same sources. So great, those places, although I can’t get Solidarity Cinema to work well, even with Plex. I don’t if that’s because I’m in France or something. All hail those file swappers. What a mess. ** HaRpEr, Thanks about the premiere. I should be able to announce it in about three weeks or so. I like anecdote books too. I have a thing for oral history books like ‘Please Kill Me’, for instance. Me too, Birthday Party and the first three or four Bad Seeds albums are great. The whole preacher schtick doesn’t interest me. Maybe you have be religion damaged to fall for that something. Nice day you had, albeit with a little ouch in there. ** Justin D, Thanks, Justin. I can’t wait for the eventuality when you can see it. We’re working on how to get it out and about. MUBI featured Zac’s and my film ‘Permanent Green Light’ for about three weeks or a month. That’s what they bought, and then that was it. So it might be the same with those other films they list. But they shouldn’t say ‘not available at the current time’ or whatever as if the films will be back in play again. They should say ‘was available here in the past’ or something. That’s a bit of tomfoolery on their part, I think. Happy you liked ‘Gates of Heaven’. Such great things in it. That long shot of the woman in the red dress sitting on her stoop and meandering verbally all over the place about her son and her cat and etc. is so amazing, for instance. Snow! No snow here, just icy clear skies and a lot of buttoning up of the top button. Enjoy your daylight. ** Right. Today’s post is pretty self-explanatory, I believe? See you tomorrow.