Saturday, October 6, 2012

A Need For Darkness

I had a need for darkness Thursday night. A need for evil.
This comes over me from time to time and I like to indulge it.
Carol was stumping for President Obama so I turned down the lights and lit up the tube with a movie called Dolan's Cadillac.
Christian Slater was in it so I figured it was good.
Speaking of dark, have you ever seen True Romance starring Slater and Patricia Arquette and Gary Oldman and Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper? Amazing lineup.
Amazingly dark, evil, violent, twisted and quite tasty movie. One of my all time favorites.
I don't like cheesy horror movies. I like horror movies with an ominous mood, a good story, violence and revenge.
Dolan's Cadillac started out kind of thin and I thought I had made a mistake but it got thicker and I ended up totally digging it.
It fed the blackness in my soul.
A guy seeks revenge from a Vegas mobster who killed his wife. Slater is the mobster. Wes Bentley is the guy. Wes Bentley played Ricky Fitts in American Beauty and brought that same intenseness, that understated (until the end) oddness and focus to Dolan's Cadillac.
I won't give you a blow by blow, but I will tell you that revenge was had and it was original, and dark, and evil and it tasted so damn good.
If you want to see the movie don't read the next sentence.
All I can say is that if you are going to be buried alive, it might as well be in a Cadillac.

I am in a Halloween mood this year. Some years I really need it.
IFC usually runs a bunch of horror movies leading into that magical night. I don't know if they still do but I aim to find out.
I used to watch IFC and Sundance all the time. They were very cool, very original. They got away from that and I got away from them.
I'll have to give them another shot.
Anyway the horror movies featured on IFC are typically those of renowned foreign film makers, so they are probably not something you have seen before. They are frequently quite gory too, which I don't look for in a movie but on Halloween I can dig it.
I'll watch as many of them as I can and hope some of the horror and viciousness and revenge and evil seeps into my soul.
Not too much. Just enough to give me the weapons I need to fight back against life.
I like to turn down the lights and light up the candles and sip a little whiskey. Slip into another dimension.

Horror story idea:    A guy really wants to get into Halloween. He is feeling off balance, out of place, a little lost and frustrated with his life. He figures if he throws himself into the holiday he can lose himself for a while and come out cleansed.
He's searching the house for cool costume props. Checking out the severed hands and heads he has collected over the years. The bloody rubber knives. The grotesque masks.
He breaks out tubes of fake blood and experiments with application to different body areas for effect.
He plays Nick Cave's delicious album called Murder Ballads over and over in the dark.
Nothing works. Nothing he tries gives him exactly the vibe he is looking for.
By candlelight, he catches his reflection in a mirror as he reaches for a rubber machete. A dirty, smudged, cracked mirror.
And he stops dead in his tracks.
He sees a fifty eight year old man. An underachiever. A man with squandered potential who nevertheless keeps fighting back and pumping fists in the air. A man filled with fear. Fear of The Mortgage Vampire. Fear of The Grim Reaper. A bewildered man who can't quite shed the beer belly, who can't quite reach the rung of success, who just can't quite. Who screams silently in repulsed horror at his own existence. A man who hears a clock ticking relentlessly and loudly in his brain. So much so that it drives him to madness.
He realizes he has found the perfect costume. Truly horrifying. One that will not be uncomfortable like a rubber mask because he wears it every day.
He straightens up, drops the rubber machete, and grins into the mirror. A twisted, lopsided grin that arranges the creases on his face in a pattern he has not seen before. A pattern so unnatural it gives his face the appearance of a death mask contorted in unbearable pain. His mouth looks to be split in two;  part evil smile, part twitching grimace.
And the eyes.
The look in those eyes would send any kid screaming for his momma. Any adult as well.
Poisoned reflection of anger, frustration, disbelief and a thirst for revenge. Vengeance personified. Focused in a stare that could kill a bull moose in its tracks.
Or a frail human.
He shakes his long hair like a lion's mane and begins to laugh.
The laugh slowly transforms into a scream. A scream from which his cats flee. A scream that shatters the mirror and any illusions about his life he may have had.
Yeah he is ready for Halloween.
He has been all his life.

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