Monster Scholar

Yours truly is going to be a monster scholar with an official title if all goes well at my masters comps this Friday. I decided to get a pass-through masters but the downside is I have to take the exams. I have three hours to complete two essays on several literature readings (too bad it’s not horror films). You can read more about it here . As a result you will be seeing less of me this week, but as always I’ll be back. Wish me luck!

Roman Polanski, the visionary director of such films as Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion was arrested in Switzerland when he visited the country to receive lifetime achievement award at the Zurich film festival. Some are outraged by the action of the Swiss government against Polanski who has had a house in the country for over twelve years. There has been speculation that the arrest was the result of a sinister plot between the US and Switzerland: Polanski in exchange for leniency in cases of US tax fraud involving Swiss banks. As I mentioned in my comments on Pax Romano’s blog ( Where'd You Get them Eyes? ) there is a sexual double standard being applied Polanski’s crime versus the very similar case of Victor Salva, who was also accused of molesting an underage child. The crucial difference between the two indiscretions lies in the gender of the victim. Polanski drugged and raped a 14-year-old girl while Salva molested a 12-year-old boy on video tape. I find it odd that people...

With Zombieland set to hit theaters this weekend, I figure it’s time for one last hurrah of Zombie Kill of the week. So I have something special planned, the top Zombie Kills via YouTube in no particular order. Enjoy. Tom Savini simulationeously pistol whips and shoots a zombie Crowbars are good for all sorts of things. Did anyone order a screwdriver? The party's just started. Bitch isn’t standing now. There’s a girl in the garden

A strange plague has overtaken the college campus where I live and work. The half groans, stifled coughs and bleary eyes of thousands of sick college students have crescendoed into something akin to zombie hysteria! Almost everyone I know has succumbed to flu-like symptoms and I am tempted to teach class in a hazmat suit. I'm actually washing my hands on a regular basis and not indulging in the five second rule (yes, I have eaten food off the floor before--but it was a triple-decker fudge brownie!). So wash your hands, cover your cough and for goodness sakes, please don't touch me! (for anyone who got that last reference to famous horror musical, kudos to you).

Monster Land has received the coveted HZA award for excellence in horror blogging! This prestigious award comes from the master of mayhem himself, Pax Romano at Billy Loves Stu . Here is what Pax had to say about yours truly: The Best Damn Written Blog That's So Good, It Puts Everyone Else to Shame ... award goes to th e Monster Scholar, Jeanette , and her labor of love, MONSTER LAND . Well executed, painf ully res earched, and often witty, Jeanette brings some much needed class to the horror blogging community. I feel a bit like Kristin Chenoweth when she won the Emmy for best supporting actress in a comedy. "This is heavy...::squeak::"

I went to a showing of Sorority Row at my local Movie Tavern expecting the usual from a modern remake of yet another 80s slasher. I leaned back in my seat and prepared for an hour and a half screaming bimbos being pursued by a masked killer with a pimped out tire iron. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by a film that critiques the sorority system as one that revolves around male stereotypes of women and argues that female solidarity can only exist outside such an oppressive system. To give a broad synopsis of the film, five sorority sisters are stalked by a vengeful killer after a prank ends in the death of their friend Megan. They are Cassidy, the hold-out; Ellie, the nerd; Chugs, the alcoholic; Jessica the queen bee and Claire. In on the secret is Garrett, the one technically responsible for killing Megan. Looking first at the hooded killer, it is obvious that he represents a patriarchal threat much like the psycho paterfamilias in the original Stepfather , the remake of which is ...

I was on MySpace when a Zombieland promo popped up with Woody Harrelson and that kid from Juno giving tips on how to survive a zombie apocalypse. This bit of fun seguewayed into the trailer and I was about to click off when I noticed the zombie stripper that chases the Asian businessman out of the nudie club (an image that has stuck with me since my first viewing of the redband trailer) was now wearing a digital bikini top! Check out the regular and restricted trailers at the Zombieland website to witness the hilarity.

With all the good reviews of Grace going around, horror seems primed for yet another killer baby movie. This time it’s It’s Alive and the trailer has got me as scared of motherhood as I’ve ever been.The plot of the original is simple: a mutant baby born to unsuspecting parents goes on a killing rampage whenever it feels scared. Don’t wake the baby. The birthing scene reminds me of the alien autopsy in I ndependence Day , an appropriate parallel considering Lenore’s baby is an alien menace that kills at will and a commentary on the nature of birth. It is also interesting to note that Lenore’s repeated concern that there is something wrong with the baby goes unheeded by the male medical establishment that dismisses her female intuition. I enjoyed the near-closing dialogue of the trailer. Someone tells the father “It’s dead Frank,” to which he replies “No. It’s alive” This snippet is of course referring the film’s title, which riffs off of fears of the in-between nature of newborns. For ...

As Victorian scholar and a connoisseur of vampire literature I was excited when I came across Mr. Darcy, Vampyre , a modern continuation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice . I imagined the proud and obstinate Darcy as a man who struggles to tell his bride Elizabeth that he is a creature of the night. I hoped that the book would use the tropes of vampire literature in a way that commented on Austen’s original, or at the very least provide some steamy passages between Elizabeth and Darcy. I was sorely disappointed on both points. Grange’s work is an unappetizing mix of cheap melodrama and tired vampire lore. The former is not surprising when you consider the source. Pride and Prejudice is filled with frivolous women like Mrs. Bennett, whose only goal in life is to see her daughters well married and constantly swoons from shocks to her delicate nerves. But as to the second part of Grange’s novel, there can be no excuse for the mishandling of the prevalent themes of vampire prose. Mr. D...

After many moons, I was finally able to watch the remake of Last House on the Left thanks to my well stocked local library. To be honest I was timid about watching an updated version of the film because I feared it might not live up to the high expectations I had from the original. As it turns out, I was right to fear and the remake, like so many rehashes of the sixties and seventies horror canon, does not have the same impact as its progenitor. The first Last House on the Left was an angry film reacting to the horrors of Vietnam and the general distrust of the establishment. This is reflected in the comedic police officers who several times come close to saving the kidnapped girls, but through their incompetence fail time and again. The violence in the film is startling and hard to watch as Mari Collingwood and Paige are kidnapped, raped and tortured by a band of degenerates led by an escaped convict named Krug. The brutality is senseless and heart wrenching while in the remake the ...

One very lucky cat named Brownie from Bloomington Indiana is recovering after being shot in the head with an arrow. According to the vet who treated Brownie, the arrow was most likely lodged in his head for three days. Brownie had surgery to remove the arrow and suffered no damage to his brain or vision, making him a very tough feline. While animal cruelty is nothing to scoff at, Brownie's brush with archery does bring to mind the deaths of Kevin Bacon in the original Friday the 13th and annoying teenager #2 from the remake.

At the very mention of vampire plants most people conjure up the image of Audrey II, the behemoth singing vegetable of the 1986 film musical Little Shop of Horrors , in which Seymour Krelborn, a spineless shop assistant discovers an obscure plant with a thirst for human blood. But Audrey II is just the latest in a long line of vampire plants in fiction, stretching back more than a century to Phil Robinson’s 1881 tale “The Man-Eating Tree” and Fred M. White’s “The Purple Terror,” written in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. Set against the backdrop of this imperialist struggle, British author Fred. M. White crafts a tale of horror and conquest in the heart of the Cuban jungle. West Point naval dandy Lieutenant Will Scarlett must brave the unexplored terrain to deliver a letter from Captain Driver of the Yankee Doodle in Porto Rico Bay to Admiral Lake at Port Anna. His journey will take him into a portion of Cuba dominated by pro-Spanish insurgents where he meets Tito, a man who agre...