Southern-Style Swamp Horror!

When Halloween Eve rolled past Midnight last night, Halloween proper found me watching Crypt of Dark Secrets (1976), which is certainly not the best movie ever made, but neither is it the worst. All things considered, it was pretty entertaining. (And if THAT doesn’t tell you something about my tastes, I don’t know what to say! Heh!)

The back of the DVD case describes this movie as:

Sometimes being alone on a “haunted island” isn’t so bad, as Vietnam vet Ted Watkins learns when he’s murdered and… well… doesn’t quite die. Robbed of his cash by three motley thugs who invade his home in the swamp and leave him for dead, Ted awakens to find that instead of being deceased, he’s the pet project of Damballa, a sexy witch woman who dances in the nude when she’s not turning into a snake. After informing Ted that he now “exists in the world of the living dead” (which doesn’t faze Ted in the least), she takes revenge upon his dimwitted killers with the help of a voodoo priestess, buried treasure, a smoking mummy case, and her CRYPT OF DARK SECRETS… Shot in Louisiana, CRYPT OF DARK SECRETS is a particularly off-kilter example of Drive-In-Approved Southern-Style Swamp Horror!

This film was actually relaxing to watch. My sleep after viewing it was the best I’ve had for several nights. It was such a good sleep that I almost consider the siege of insomnia that’s been plaguing me to be broken. If tonight brings me a good sleep I’ll breathe a sigh of relief and think of the Sandman as being my friend again.

The Naked Witch

I’ve seen some excellent horror movies as part of my 2009 Halloween prep. However, The Naked Witch (1961), the movie I watched a few hours ago, is not one I’d call excellent.

Up with insomnia but too tired to continue reading, I made the decision to watch a short movie, thinking that might numb my brain enough to let sleep finally come. So I popped The Naked Witch into the DVD player. This is a recent acquisition I’d not yet seen. But it was short, only 59 minutes long, and according to its description appeared to be bland enough to do the job.

On the back of its DVD case we find the following description:

Ding, dong, the witch ain’t dead! After a college student digs up the mummified remains of “The Luchenbach Witch” and removes the stake from her ribs – shazam! – via some godawful special effects, THE NAKED WITCH is alive and well and strolling through the Texas countryside in her birthday suit! Killing off the descendants of those who condemned her to death, she also seduces the student who eventually realizes he must send his sexy new girlfriend back to the grave… A charmingly goofy, naughty-for-its-time regional rarity, THE NAKED WITCH is also the first horror film directed by cult fave Larry Buchanan, the man who gave the world Zontar: The Thing From Venus!

Actually, The Naked Witch isn’t nearly as exciting as the above paragraph suggests. It truly does contain some “godawful special effects,” I’ll vouch for that. And the phrase “charmingly goofy” is pretty apt, too.

The first few minutes seemed much more like a documentary than any kind of movie, and I checked the disc menu to verify that the right track was playing. Sure enough, it was. So I restarted it and let it run. Surprisingly, I found myself enjoying the show, and I’ll probably watch it again (though not very soon). But as a cure for insomnia it didn’t work. Darn it.

short #dream about a handful of spoons and forks

While I’m waiting for tonight’s insomnia to fade, let me record a short lucid dream from last night.

Last night’s sleep came very late (as it appears tonight’s will) and was followed by a two-hour chunk of time during which I was seriously zombied: not the hungry for human flesh and braaaiins kind of zombied, but the groggy, semi-conscious, not fully engaged with the walking-around-world kind. It’s not uncommon for me to experience lucid dreaming episodes when I’m in that condition. And that proved to be the case again.

Realizing it was pointless pretending to be fully awake and functional, I’d returned to bed and put head to pillow. Though not fully awake, I wasn’t sleeping either. I was fully aware of where I was and what was going on around me.

Closing my eyes, I found myself looking at my left hand holding two or three spoons and two or three forks. I was trying to sort them so that all the spoons were nested together and all the forks were nested together in order to put them neatly away with the other clean silverware. Only the darned things wouldn’t cooperate. The spoons and forks kept slipping and sliding and turning around and shuffling amongst each other. They simply would not align properly. It was all very frustrating.

When I finally decided the only thing to do was to put them all down then pick them up again one at a time, the dream faded.

El Muerto: one lovely, scary movie

El Muerto is one fine horror film, in my opinion. I watched it for the first time tonight, in the wee hours of Wed., 28 Oct. ‘09, and will include it henceforth in my annual Halloween prep.

Some reviewers have panned this film, but I suspect that is due largely to an anti-religious or an anti-Mexican prejudice, or possibly both, on the part of said reviewers. For anyone who lives in the border country between Mexico and the U.S., as I do, or for anyone who is Catholic and understands the importance and symbolisms of his faith, as I do, this film will smack home on many different levels. It will speak to our heart, it will embrace the language of prayer, it will pull at the strings of love, and it will prove to be one very scary movie.

Of course, if one isn’t a Catholic, or if one has no appreciation for multi-layered rituals and devotional practices involved in El Dia de los Muertos, then one is el stupido and simply does not have the understanding necessary to appreciate the beauty of this work of art. I have no patience for such idiots.

A #dream about being a high school student

I have absolutely no idea about why I should about being a high school student, but that’s exactly what I did last night.

In my dream…

Except for the fact that I was carrying a full-sized broom, I was indistinguishable from any of the other students I encountered in the crowded hallway in the big Chicago High School. The teacher standing by the doorway of the just glanced at me when I walked into her room, calmly accepted the slip of paper I handed her notifying her that I was a new student, and she paid no attention to the broom either. She told me I could sit at any empty desk

Not wanting to cause any conflict by sitting in another student’s already claimed seat, I stood to the side while everyone else came in, then finally seated myself near the middle of the room.

The teacher began her lecture at the front of the room and wrote notes on the blackboard that were almost impossible to read. Oh, I could see the board clearly, but the teacher’s writing was at once both incredibly ornate and hurriedly scribbled. Looking around the room, I noticed that none of the other students seemed to have any difficulty reading what she wrote, but it was nearly illegible to me.

Class continued, and my confusion grew when we were all given copies of the New York Times newspaper. “Why were we going to be studying from a New York paper?” I thought to myself. “Weren’t we in Chicago, and didn’t Chicago have major, quality newspapers that we could use?”

Still in the class with my broom, I turned my head and…

…found myself looking at my bedside clock. I was waking up.