The Desolation of Peter Jackson

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug: adapted and directed by Peter Jackson with Phillipa Boyens, Fran Walsh, Guillermo del Toro, and the Hollywood Screenwriting App, based on The Hobbit and portions of the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, starring Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins), a bunch of people as Dwarves, and Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln (2013): Oy.

There's about 45 minutes of decent material in this second of three movies based on The Hobbit. Smaug the Dragon looks pretty good, and the fact that he yaps away like Stephen Bloody Fry for 45 minutes pretty much necessitates CGI so that his lip movements look realistic. For a talking dragon, anyway.

So, you know, Smaug, who doesn't do nearly enough flying but does a lot of waddling around inside the Lonely Mountain's Dwarvish treasure caves where he's been asleep for the past few decades until being awoken by Bilbo Baggins, who at this point in the story should clearly be elected King of the Dwarves because of his much greater competency than any of the dwarves trying to get back their homeland. Home-mountain. Whatever.

So, you know, Smaug. And there's an interesting arm-wrestling match between Gandalf and Sauron. We learn that molten gold is mostly harmless in Middle-Earth, which begs the question of why the dwarves try to pour a lot of it on Smaug in the first place. I mean, everyone's standing around beside endless volcanic, oceanic amounts of the stuff without really breaking much of a sweat for lengthy periods of time. Why is this going to be trouble for a giant, nigh-invulnerable lizard who shoots fire out of his mouth? Middle-Earth molten metal once again appears to be room temperature.

So, you know, Smaug. There's a barrel race that seems to be a preview of a ride at the Hobbitland Amusement Park, opening in New Zealand in 2018. Orlando Bloom really looks a lot older than he did in the original trilogy. Given all the CGI thrown around, you'd think they could have fixed his face. Maybe Peter Jackson's elves age backwards, like Merlin in T.H. White.

So, you know, Smaug. Some dwarves crawl out of a toilet. What larks! The laws of physics are pretty much Looney Tunes at this point in Jackson's Middle-Earth. Almost all of the major emotional plot points have been lifted from The Lord of the Rings and stubbornly hammered on here. A reluctant king reclaiming his throne! A poisonous Morghul knife! A cliffhanger ending for part two! An elf and a dwarf making googly eyes at one another! Well, OK, is that last bit lifted? It's heterosexual googly eyes this time rather than repressed homosexual googly eyes. I don't know.

Apparently, the third movie will climax with 45 minutes of anal sex between Smaug and Shelob. Or a 45-minute battlefield sequence. I'm not sure which. Did I mention that Beorn looks like the love-child of Chewbacca and the Lorax? It's pretty rad, bitches.

Stubborn Angels

Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg (1978): Top-notch melding of the horror and hard-boiled detective genres by Hjortsberg, whose bibliography seems to contain more unproduced screenplays than anything else. He did adapt this novel into the 1987 movie Angel Heart (a.k.a. the movie with controversial nude sex scenes featuring The Cosby Show's Lisa Bonet playing a voodoo priestess), though there are significant differences between the two works. In terms of location, the novel stays pretty much in New York while the movie headed to New Orleans, I'd assume to make the voodoo action more... believeable?

Hjortsberg nails the cynical prose-poetry of the classic hard-boiled detective novel, with P.I. Harry Angel handling the world-weary, occasionally cruel but mostly well-meaning first-person narration. Angel repeatedly comes off as the world's oddest New York City tour guide as we move in and around the New York of the late 1950's.

A mysterious client hires Angel to track down a popular singer in the Frank Sinatra mode who was supposed to be in an upstate mental asylum after injuries sustained during World War Two left him mentally and physically disabled. The only problem is, the singer -- stage name Johnny Favorite -- isn't at the asylum, and hasn't been for years. And the trail is cold. But as Angel pursues Favorite, everything starts to heat up, and people start dying in increasingly horrible ways.

Variations are worked on the usual suspects and usual characters of hardboiled detective fiction and film, from shadowy businessmen through shady lawyers to jilted heiresses. As Angel's case proceeds, odder characters arise, and previously introduced characters get odder. There will be voodoo. There will be Satanism. There will be horoscopes and morphine addicts and one weird trip to the theatre.

Hjortsberg's period and genre-specific style works wonderfully throughout Falling Angel, falling always just on the serious side of near-parody. Angel's a tough customer with no friends and his own troubled past, but like all great hardboiled detectives, his essential quality is absolute stubbornness. He'll solve the case regardless of the cost. And what a cost! Highly recommended.

Horror Comics Old and New

John Constantine Hellblazer: Reasons to be Cheerful: written by Mike Carey; illustrated by Leonardo Manco, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Lorenzo Ruggiero (2004-2005; collected 2007): Excellent but frustratingly short collection of Constantine stories really ends halfway through an arc. This is something DC used to do a lot with its adult-oriented Vertigo collections, I'd assume in order to squeeze as much money as possible out of the trade paperback reprint market. They're now re-collecting Constantine's Vertigo title in lengthier collections from the start of the comic. I'd assume this arc and the subsequent The Gift will appear in one reasonably priced volume some time in about 2016.

Carey's an excellent writer, and really the second-last great writer of Constantine's now-cancelled Vertigo Universe title. The art by Leonard Manco and others is solid and moody, and the horrors suitably horrific. Of course, Constantine is Odysseus-like in his on-going ability to get everyone associated with him killed. As the main arc partially collected here deal with a threat to Constantine's relatives, friends, acquaintances, and people and things he only met once, a high death toll is assured. Who will survive and what will be left of them? Recommended, but you should probably wait for a new, more complete collection.

The EC Comics Library: Shock SuspenStories Volume 2:  written by Al Feldstein and Ray Bradbury; illustrated by Johnny Craig, Wally Wood, Joe Orlando, Jack Kamen, Reed Crandall, George Evans and others (1952-53; collected 2007): Shock SuspenStories was the Whitman's Sampler of EC Comics during that comic-book company's brief, brilliant run as the best comic-book company in the United States in the early 1950's. Stories reflected the breadth of EC's comics line, from social agit-prop stories (known as "preachies") to science fiction, horror, and suspense.

If one wants to see EC in all its glory, Gemstone's over-sized SuspenStories collections are the way to go. Grotesque horror stories with terrible puns in the title include "Beauty and the Beach" (illustrated by Jack Kamen), in which two jealous husbands enact ridiculous yet appropriate vengeance on their sunbath-loving wives, and "Seep No More", a riff on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-tale Heart."

There are also two excellent adaptations of Ray Bradbury stories here -- "The Small Assassin" and "The October Game", both suitably under-stated and horrifying in their implications. Notable "preachies", which were pretty much always illustrated by the great Wally Wood, include "Fall Guy," a gimmicky story with a visual bit riffed upon in Watchmen; "Came the Dawn!", a loopy ax-murderer tale with the sexiest woman Wood ever drew for EC; and "...So Shall Ye Reap!", a justifiably much-lauded tale with dual, unreliable narrations.

Also included is artist Reed Crandall's terrifically grotesque "Carrion Death," a story of murder and vengeance meted out by the natural world. We also get not one, not two, but three stories about Martians -- and only two of those Martian races hostile -- and for unintentional laughs the bizarre and ridiculous anti-drug "preachie" "The Monkey," in which recreational marijuana usage inevitably leads to murder, as it so often does. In all, highly recommended.

Superb Ace

Icon Volume 1: A Hero's Welcome: written by Dwayne McDuffie; illustrated by Mark Bright and Mike Gustovich ( 1993; collected 2008): Milestone Comics tried to break up the unholy whiteness of mainstream superhero comic books in the early 1990's with several comics with multi-racial, multi-ethnic casts. Icon was really the flagship title, a self-conscious riff on Superman's origin.

Dwayne McDuffie and Mark Bright give us the sole survivor of an alien space-liner, his life-pod crashing to Earth in the 1830's. The biotech of the alien lifepod is so advanced that it can reconfigure its occupant to look like the dominant species of a planet in the event that the planet is uncivilized and rescue perhaps far off. But in this case, the reconfiguration makes the alien an African-American slave in the pre-Civil-War American South.

However,  the alien is also mostly immortal, so he endures slavery and a lot of other things. Time passes. He becomes rich. Periodically faking his own death and then returning as his own "son," by 1993 the alien now known as Augustus Freeman IV is an extremely conservative Republican, verging on libertarian. There's a reason Clarence Thomas was a fan, though he seemed to take the wrong lessons from the book.

But then a robbery of "Freeman's"  house gone awry introduces him to an independent firebrand, 15-year-old Raquel Ervin. In thwarting the robbery, Freeman reveals that he can fly and possesses great strength. Raquel asks him why he doesn't try to help people, with his powers, with his money. So he takes the name Icon and we're off!

The American racial politics that weave throughout Icon's stories are as fresh and vital today as they were in the Rodney King era. The title of the volume is itself ironic -- icon's first appearance as a seemingly African-American superhero draws a volley of gunfire from the mostly white police, not gratitude. But he and Raquel, now outfitted with alien tech that allows her to be Icon's super-powered sidekick, perservere. They also grow as characters, and grow on you. McDuffie was a fine writer even early in his career, and these superhero stories function as entertainment with a defineable viewpoint on the world. One of the great superhero sagas. Highly recommended.

Originals

A Book of Horrors (2011), edited by Stephen Jones, containing the following stories, all original to this volume:

• A Child's Problem by Reggie Oliver: Brilliant English ghost story in the tradition of M.R. James, with a neat extrapolation from a real painting and real-world historical events during the Victorian era.
• Alice Through the Plastic Sheet by Robert Shearman: An increasingly surreal and perhaps a bit overlong tale of some very bad neighbours.
• Charcloth, Firesteel and Flint by Caitlin R. Kiernan: Almost a vignette or mood piece of a woman who's drawn to fires.
• Getting It Wrong by Ramsey Campbell: Black comedy about trivia contests and a lonely, misanthropic movie buff.
• Ghosts with Teeth by Peter Crowther: Enjoyable piece overstuffed with increasingly omnipotent ghosts. The flash-forward at the beginning negates much of the suspense.
• Last Words by Richard Christian Matheson: Short gross-out. Maybe it's supposed to be profound.
• Near Zennor by Elizabeth Hand: Absolutely brilliant, muted piece that sends a widower on a voyage into rural England in search of answers about a part of his wife's childhood that he was unaware of until she'd died. Both a lovely character study and a detailed, slowly building work of quiet but unmistakeable horror.
• Roots And All by Brian Hodge: The Wendigo vs. Breaking Bad: The Road to Victory.
• Sad, Dark Thing by Michael Marshall Smith: Sad, moving story of loss and depression.
• Tell Me I'll See You Again by Dennis Etchison: Typically excellent, under-stated, odd story from one of a handful of the greatest American horror writers of the last fifty years.
• The Coffin-Maker's Daughter by Angela Slatter: An interesting, unpleasant bit of dark fantasy set in an alternate world, or perhaps yet another world of The New Weird.
• The Little Green God of Agony by Stephen King: The supernatural elements are a complete dud; the sections on physical rehab after a horrifying accident are excellent: this would be a lot better as a non-supernatural story.
• The Man in the Ditch by Lisa Tuttle: Some very nice M.R. James-like supernatural events in a story that really lacks the sympathetic characters that can carry this sort of thing.
• The Music of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer by John Ajvide Lindqvist: Disturbing tale with some fascinating, Sweden-specific supernatural elements from the writer of Let the Right One In is also Lindqvist's first story written expressly for English-language publication.

Overall, this is a top-notch, all-original horror anthology. None of the stories are terrible, and several (Reggie Oliver's and Elizabeth Hand's entries, to name two) are absolutely top-notch all-timers. Highly recommended.

Brief Curtains

Beyond the Curtain of Dark (1967/1972): edited by Peter Haining, containing the following stories:

Lizzie Borden Took an Axe... (1946) by Robert Bloch: Interesting but a bit long and fairly obvious; a sort of thematic companion piece to Bloch's earlier, superior "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper."
The Snail Watcher (1964) by Patricia Highsmith: Brilliant, gross, and very short from the creator of the talented Tom Ripley.
Chickamauga (1889) by Ambrose Bierce: Haunting and horrible tale of war as observed by a child.
At Last, the True Story of Frankenstein (1965) by Harry Harrison: A mostly funny, EC Comics-like entry in the school of 'that story was actually sorta true!'
Fever Dream (1948) by Ray Bradbury: A creepy tale of infection still resonates with body-fear in the Age of Ebola.
The Other Celia (1957) by Theodore Sturgeon: A fascinating character study of a voyeuristic loner and the strange fellow lodger in a boarding house whose oddities attract his attention.
The Oval Portrait (1842) by Edgar Allan Poe: Short-short from Poe, and not all that rewarding.
The Monster-Maker (1887) by W. C. Morrow: One crazy scientific monster story from the late Victorian Age.
Come and Go Mad by Fredric Brown: Brilliant piece of science-fictional paranoia, and an unusually long story from the often terse Brown, one of the two or three absolute masters of the shock-short.
The Survivor (1954) by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth: Derleth expands brief notes from Lovecraft into a story. You will see the ending coming. Fun but derivative.
The Ancestor (1957) by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth: Derleth expands brief notes from Lovecraft into another story. You will see the ending coming. Also fun but derivative.
The Mortal Immortal (1833) by Mary Shelley: A melancholy non-Frankensteinian work from Shelley. The ending suggests a possible future team-up between the eponymous protagonist and the Creature.
Dr. Heidegger's Experiment (1837) by Nathaniel Hawthorne: One of Hawthorne's funnier excursions into a bleak assessment of human character.
By These Presents (1953) by Henry Kuttner: Clever deal-with-the-devil story.
Whosits Disease (1962) by Henry Slesar: Brief and disposable.
King Pest (1835) by Edgar Allan Poe: Another of Poe's less-anthologized works is a funny-nightmarish walkabout in a plague-ridden port town. The extreme physical oddities of most of the characters, and the oddly jolly, macabre situation of the story suggest Tim Burton.
Mayaya's Little Green Men (1946) by Harold Lawlor: Very much telegraphed and pointlessly nasty.
For the Blood Is the Life (1905) by F. Marion Crawford: Maybe the prolific Crawford's oddest horror story, with a really striking revelation of a ghost as seen from afar.
The Human Chair (1925/translated from the Japanese 1956) by Edogawa Rampo: Very creepy little tale from a Japanese master of horror.
The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh (1838) by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: The great Le Fanu plays with narrative points of view.
Return to the Sabbath (1938) by Robert Bloch: Relatively early Bloch melds Hollywood and the Satanic in an early indication of how Bloch's horror writing would develop.
The Will of Luke Carlowe (1906) by Clive Pemberton: You will see the ending coming.
Eyes Do More Than See (1965) by Isaac Asimov: Nifty and unusual inclusion of a science-fiction story set in a far, far future in which humanity has evolved into immortal energy beings.

Typically eclectic and wide-ranging anthology from the prolific anthologist Peter Haining. Not everything hits hard, but the breadth and occasional rarity of the selections make it a worthwhile read. Recommended.

Tales to Admonish

The Best Horror of the Year Volume 4 (2011): edited by Ellen Datlow, containing the following stories: The Little Green God of Agony by Stephen King; Stay by Leah Bobet; The Moraine by Simon Bestwick; Blackwood's Baby by Laird Barron; Looker by David Nickle; The Show by Priya Sharma; Mulberry Boys by Margo Lanagan; Roots And All by Brian Hodge; Final Girl Theory by A. C. Wise; Omphalos by Livia Llewellyn; Dermot by Simon Bestwick; Black Feathers by Alison Littlewood; The Final Verse by Chet Williamson; In the Absence of Murdock by Terry Lamsley; You Become the Neighborhood by Glen Hirshberg; In Paris, in the Mouth of Kronos by John Langan; Little Pig by Anna Taborska; and The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine by Peter Straub (all stories 2011):

Ellen Datlow's Best Horror anthologies tend towards an area of the horror axis in which weirdness and relationship problems are the highest values. It's not my favourite area of horror, but if it's yours, you may find Datlow's anthologies more rewarding than I do.

Certainly nothing here is badly written. The entries from Glen Hirshberg and Laird Barron are typically excellent. I like how Hirschberg lays out the long-term psychological effects of a brush with the supernatural, while Barron's world of muscular protagonists faced with an enormity of perverse, hidden horrors always gives me a kick. "Blackwood's Baby" seems like the sort of fever dream Hemingway might have had after getting punched in the mouth by Cthulhu.

The John Langan story is also good, though the ending is telegraphed all the way back to the title. Stephen King's story seems to be included solely to get King's name on the cover -- it's a curiously limp affair in which one can call all the plot points several pages before they occur and be right every time.

Peter Straub's story disappoints in a much different way. It's weird and creepy for awhile, but the eponymous couple's peculiar sexual fetish, once revealed, acts to distance one from any investment in the narrative's outcome. The ending comes several paragraphs too late, as a third-party explanation of what we've just read blunts whatever horror remained in what we'd previously read. Chet Williamson's otherwise excellent "The Final Verse" also has a problematic ending, as it veers into a sort of jokey, EC-Comics nihilism that doesn't fit the rest of the story.

Stylistically, the stories are well-written. Would I like more stories that are actually scary? Oh, yeah. I do like that Datlow includes a list of stories as 'Honourable Mentions' at the end of the volume. There's something weird and off-putting about it.  I could also probably go to the end of my days without reading another Bradburyesque story with the plot-engine removed, or another Weird Incest Tale. Weird Incest Tales: the worst fantasy magazine ever. Lightly recommended.