When Fear Gets Fabulous: A Review of the "Fears for Queers" GLBT Horror Film Festival

While I'm proud of all of my friends and their amazing achievements in various fields, recently two of my closest buddies decided to undertake a massive affair and put together a film festival for charity. Both guys are prolific in the local independent horror-movie scene here in Texas; Andrew Rose and his wife Dione run DOA Bloodbath Entertainment, a production company geared toward putting on events and film festivals as well as producing local films, while Shawn Ewert is the founder of Right Left Turn Productions and an indie filmmaker/writer in the Dallas area. This marked the first festival collaboration of the two, and hopefully it was only the first in a long future of partnership because it was a great success.

The motivation behind the festival was to bring together horror fans in a celebration of gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual and questioning filmmakers and their works. The movies would be showcased in an all-day event, with proceeds benefiting a local gay charity organization called Youth First Texas. Youth First Texas is an outreach program for young people who identify with non-straight sexuality orientations, and it provides a multitude of services to them--- from activities like fashion shows and dances to confidential, safe STD screening, Youth First provides an invaluable service to the Dallas area, and they were very appreciative of the idea of a fundraising event to help them finance their services.

The festival, titled "Fears for Queers: GLBT Horror Film Festival", was hosted at the Studio Movie Grill in Addison, Texas, only a stone's throw from downtown Dallas. It kicked off at 10:30 AM on Saturday, June 19, 2010, after extensive promotions and flyering the metroplex area and a lovely spread in the Dallas Voice. The audience had come from all over the area, many of them driving several hours to take part; there were gay couples, straight couples, families with children, drag queens in full regalia, and everything in between. Filmmaker JT Seaton ("George's Intervention", "Night Shadows") was in attendance from California, as well as Shawn Ewert presenting the Texas premiere of his first short film "Jack's Bad Day". A swag table offered complimentary posters, flyers, business cards and programs while Joe Garcia of Fast Custom Shirts sold a number of high-quality t-shirts at his table.

The day kicked off with Creatures from the Pink Lagoon, an outrageously funny camp film set in the 1950s and featuring gay zombies. Following that feature was the short film by Stacie Ponder titled "Taste of Flesh, Taste of Fear"... which is a zero-budget short using a Barbie doll cast and featuring the Posh Spice Barbie as a vampire in the 'woods' (someone's garden, or possibly even a windowbox of flowers). The film was one of the most hilarious things of the whole festival, with the entire audience in stitches as the Barbies acted out their melodramatic Sapphic love story. Next came "The Pleasure of His Company" by Michelle Ayoub, a cannibalistic little film that took a tired idea and didn't give it too much life of its own. "Bumps In the Night" was a terrific, suspenseful little short with a great climax at the last second; the build-up was tense and well-executed, with some effectively eerie shots culminating in an awesome payoff just before the credits rolled. "Jack's Bad Day", directed by Shawn Ewert himself, is a clever little endeavor involving what happens if a serial killer has 'one of those days' where nothing goes right for him from the time he wakes up.

After the screening of "Jack's Bad Day", I was honored to be asked to host the Q&A with Shawn Ewert. Shawn was charming and funny, and gave terrific answers to the audience's questions. We moved into the screening of JT Seaton's short "Night Shadows", filmed in 2006. The short focused on an aging gay man afraid of growing old alone, thus beginning to dabble in voodoo to preserve the reanimated corpses of his young, vibrant internet hookups. The Q&A with JT was equally awesome, with JT discussing the stigma in gay culture of losing one's youth and attractiveness as well as addressing the role that technology plays in contemporary relationships. Screenings followed for "A Far Cry From Home" by Alan Rowe Kelly, a controversial film that was perhaps the one that truly put the 'horror' in the festival title, and "Mime After Midnight", a very creative and fun little short that will cause you even more of a reason to distrust mimes. The festival wrapped with Baby Jane? by Billy Clift in its test screening a few days before the world premiere in San Francisco; this was a fun and interesting homage to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? done with a cast of drag queens paying tribute to their inner starlets.

When the credits for Baby Jane? finished, Andrew and Shawn came down front and center to call down the kids in attendance from Youth First Texas to present them with a check for nine hundred dollars. It was an emotional moment for everyone involved, and a great end to the terrific day.

To everyone that came out to support Fears for Queers and Youth First Texas, thank you so much for your love and support. The festival raised almost a thousand dollars for a wonderful local charity, and we all got to watch some terrific horror films in the process. I can't wait until the next endeavor from this team of creative, selfless and good-hearted guys; I will be there with bells on, as everyone should be.

Book Review: Jemiah Jefferson's Vampire Series

I am a huge supporter of the adage 'Live and let live' as far as people's fandoms go; I try not to disrespect people (to their faces anyway!) about the things they choose to fall in love with. If you have a Lord of the Rings poster, a huge shelf of hentai comics, or a pair of Ed Hardy panties, I promise I won't make fun of you as long as you don't give me shit about my life-sized Jason Voorhees statue, my Jurassic Park toys, or the fact that I want to marry Lady Gaga.

That being said, one trend I cannot abide is this new obsession with vampires who've been neutered. Not in the literal sense of course; these things are often randier than a cat in heat. But what began with Stephenie Meyers' Twilight series has now branched into a mega-universe of sexy, chiseled men with Fabio hair and tribal tattoos (if you go by the covers of the books, anyway, which is what I shamelessly judge most of them on) who fall in love with mortal women that are just ~oh so special~ and warranting giving up an eternity for. Even authors who've been churning out straight-up bodice-ripper romance have now set their sights on the paranormal genre; they know what puts bread on their tables. And until the fanaticism for all things supernatural wanes, this is a trend that's going to continue.

However, I for one am old-school; I grew up with horror movies, and I can't abide their newfound Harlequin-romance mentality. Where is the meat? Where's the fear? This is an undead creature that exists solely to rip your throat out and drink your life, damnit! We've taken everything that makes a vampire dangerous and savage and removed it, made him 'safe';  in essence, we've childproofed the entire genre!

Enter Jemiah Jefferson.

A feisty nerd powerhouse hailing from the Pacific Northwest, Jemiah has, pardon the pun, injected life back into the undead. Her novels were originally published in the late 90s-early 00s, but are up for reprint in January 2011. As a friend and a fan, I'm telling you all right now to do yourselves a favor and slap them on your Amazon wishlists. And here's why.

When I first picked up Jemiah's debut novel, Voice of the Blood, I was immediately enchanted by the characters she'd created, the world she'd placed them in. Her narrator and heroine is Ariane Dempsey, a multi-racial biologist working as a grad student at the university and living with her charmingly befuddled English boyfriend John. John is leaving for a trip abroad and he and Ariane are sniping at each other as only long-time couples can do with such enthusiasm; when John is gone, however, Ariane's life begins to spiral wildly out of control. She is attacked by a savage beast in her laboratory one night, who then sends her an apology note a few days later after she's released from the hospital; his name is Orfeo Ricari and he wants to make it up to her.

Never before have we met a vampire quite like Orfeo Ricari; while in some ways he brings to mind Louis Pointe du Lac from the Anne Rice series, in others he is as different as they can be. Ricari is self-loathing and suicidal, but at the same time he is angsty and hypocritical to the point of pure maddening frustration. He agrees to tell his story to Ariane in exchange for her ending his life; in a funny twist of characterization, Ricari is a stout Catholic who loves being miserable, and refuses to kill himself on the off chance that he does have a soul possible to save. Ariane, of course, begins to fall in love with him, and she becomes so obsessed with Ricari that she vanishes from her normal life, abandoning the laboratory and her studies, avoiding John completely.

When the day comes, a sudden twist of events and change of mind involves Ariane being sent to Los Angeles, gravely injured, so that Ricari's offspring Daniel Blum can nurse her back to health. Ricari no longer wants anything to do with Ariane, and passes her off to Danny with the intent that he would know what to do with her.

Daniel is by far the most charismatic literary vampire since Zillah of Poppy Z Brite's cult-favorite novel Lost Souls; born in Berlin, Danny encompasses the very ideas of gluttony, self-indulgence, and depravity. He drinks blood in mass quantities whether he needs it or not, enjoys killing those he finds inferior, and is unexpectedly savage and crude. Yet he is immensely lovable; he is insecure and egotistical, narcissistic and wretched--- he is obsessed with pop culture, with being admired, with being known. He echoes Lestat, if we're keeping with the Anne Rice references, though he is not Lestat by any means. Lestat at his best was never this hedonistic; Daniel is a porn-reader's wet dream, a bisexual nymphomaniac with a harem of goth children who live with him in his derelict mansion and worship the ground he walks on. He makes no secret of being a vampire, and he intends to turn Ariane and his favorite follower Lovely into vampires at the first chance he can; he is very lonely and wants to keep them with him forever.

The latter books take turns with their narration; Wounds, the second novel, is told entirely from Daniel's perspective and focuses on his disastrous and tumultuous relationship with a charismatic and insane stripper/artist named Sybil. Fiend is Ricari's backstory, the entire novel focusing on the little Italian translator who grew up to be one of the oldest vampires in the world. And A Drop of Scarlet alternates between Ariane and John as narrators, with interjections from several other supporting characters seen throughout the series.

Other authors have attempted the gimmick of switching narrators before, but so few do it right. Jemiah Jefferson has a strong grasp of each character's voice; Ariane is intelligent but self-absorbed, Daniel whimsical and unapologetic, Ricari distracted and self-pitying. Perhaps most poignant are the broken-versed passages written from John's point of view; a mishap leaves John's thoughts fractured and incoherent with frightening glimpses of absolute lucidity, and Jemiah delivers these with a deft, unrelenting hand. Her prose is elegant and pornographic all at once; she writes what she knows, her own love of counterculture coming through in references to obscure music and locales you know that she herself has visited, her characters a conglomeration of people she has known throughout her life with her own creativity filling in the gaps.

I read the first novel back in 2000 and I still find myself wanting to walk into a Denny's in Los Angeles and see a tall goth boy with spiky black hair tucked into the corner booth, eating french fries and fondling a redhaired girl while the other patrons look on in scandalized dismay. Since 2000, Jemiah and I have become friends, but foremost I remain a devoted fan; her writing is lush and elegant, as decadent as black-market truffles, and if you are a fan of vampires who suck blood instead of sparkle and don't save sex for That One Special Girl, then Jefferson's novels will deliver exactly what you're craving.

Book Review - "Come Closer" by Sara Gran

When I was working at the bookstore one day, a customer came in with a stack of unremarkable books to trade in. It's a well-known fact that I'm a huge horror fan, but horror books are few and far between these days unless you scour the small independent presses and vanity publishing houses. The customer selected a very thin little book from her stack and slid it toward me.

"Read this," she said, giving me a knowing nod before heading off to browse.

The book was literally thinner than most of the young adult books we shelve, and an odd size that was smaller than a trade paperback but larger than a mass market one. It was a sleek black book with a woman on the cover, a woman in a white dress, and the book read simply 'Come Closer'.

Intrigued, I took it home and promptly forgot about it until I was waiting for something to download on my new computer. I had the book sitting next to my desk, so I picked it up to thumb through. Forty-seven pages later, I had forgotten all about my download and was halfway through with the book anyway.

The story is a simple one that's been told time and time again in outlets like Paranormal Activity, The Exorcist, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, A Haunting in Connecticut and dozens of others older than those. The novel introduces us to Amanda, a mid-thirties architect married to the responsible and all-American financial advisor Edward, who live in a quaint, neat loft in the city. Amanda used to be a depressed, angry person who smoked and couldn't manage her money, but Ed put her entirely into check with his organized, calm ways. When Amanda was a child, she had an imaginary friend, a woman who cared for her, but as Amanda grew older the imaginary friend eventually vanished.

The book begins with Amanda having another dream about this person, a dream where the imaginary friend tells her that she won't ever leave her. In her waking life, Amanda begins to notice unusual occurences, primarily a rhythmic tapping knock on the inside of the walls of the loft. She becomes outwardly resentful and hostile of Edward, taking up smoking again, stopping by a bar to get drunk on her way home, flirting with other men. As the book progresses, Amanda sees a psychic advisor who tells her that she is possessed by a demon and needs to clean herself. However, the exorcism they attempt only makes the demon stronger, and Amanda begins to lose touch with her sense of self and give in to the evil presence inside of her.

While I think the book is very good, it's far from the terrifying read the blurbs on the cover would have you believe. Its structure is actually its most original asset; having a very short, concise book that doesn't give a lot of backstory but rather allows you glimpses into the past that you connect yourself using context clues is a very fun take on the classic exorcism tale. We know little to nothing about Amanda and Ed; they are archetypes like The Sims, people whose specifics could be tailored to anyone's face to make the story  more personal for the reader. We can all see a bit of ourselves in Amanda, a bit of our partners in Ed; we all can relate to the feelings of resentment and quietly-bottled irritation of being in close quarters with someone who is maddeningly logical when you want to throw things and scream. And moreover, there are several betrayals and twists in the story that make it so that you never know for sure if Amanda IS demonically possessed or if she's just going through some sort of midlife-crisis/breakdown in her personal life due to her briefly-referenced history of mental instability.

Worth checking out, and a very quick read (I finished the book in less than two hours). Sara Gran has done a few other very short little works and I'm looking forward to picking those up simply because I enjoy her writing style; she gets to the point and delivers with realistic dialogue and interesting situations.