Review: The Secret Book of Repo Fanfiction. Warning: NSFW

I'll admit it, with no small amount of sardonic smirks on my end--- I love fanfic.

Whatever fandom I've been a part of from puberty on, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer all the way through to my current fixation on Supernatural, I love to read fanfiction. I've been a member of Internet communities that celebrate it, and I've written more than my fair share. If done responsibly, it can be a great exercise in creativity; you're taking pre-made characters and a ready-made environment and then twisting them to tell your own tale. I've read everything from amazing flashback scenes, gorgeous-with-potential alternate universe fics, and filthy smutty sex scenes between characters, and written more than a few of each myself. Some writers of fanfiction are genuinely talented enough to be uber-successful published authors if they pursued their craft. It's not all Mary Sues and self-insertions.

But fanfiction is the redheaded stepchild of most fandoms, and for good reason. Many creators themselves are forbidden to read it by law; they could glean ideas from the authors and then be sued for royalties. Many actors, musicians and authors have stated publicly that they find it creepy or unsettling, and avoid it at all costs. Thus, most fanfic writers keep their craft under their hat, like a shameful hobby that they only confess to on the anonymous terms of the Internet; they use pseudonyms and screen-names to hide behind, and obviously their work can never see print or profit. It's a labor of love, not sensibility.

So when my fascination and involvement with all things Repo! The Genetic Opera began, I started to follow several people involved on Facebook, including Spooky Dan Walker, one of the friends of the film's creators and the head of the fan movement. A few months ago, I saw Spooky Dan leading a discussion on his Facebook page about submissions of Repo! fanfiction, and was curious and more than a little confused.

By tradition, when a show's creators or people affiliated with it in an official capacity authorize something--- say, for example, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer tie-in novels that were hugely popular in the late 90s/early 00s--- then the contents of that work are accepted into the fandom as 'canon'. Thus, if Repo! creators and their fan club condoned a fan-fiction book, this introduces all kinds of complications to the actual backgrounds and outcomes of the characters as written by the film's original creators, doesn't it? Also, fanfiction has been around for free for decades; why would anyone pay for a collection of it when you can go to sites like fanfiction.net or, if you like it smuttier, adultfanfiction.net and read it for free?

However, when I voiced this opinion on Spooky Dan's Facebook wall, quite a few fangirls jumped on me to accuse me of not supporting Repo! (right, because I've dedicated almost a full year of my life and a ton of money into my love of this film and its stars, not to mention my current involvement in shadowcasting the movie). So I decided, alright, if everyone's so passionate about it, I'll buy the book and see what's going on with it. See if it's worth the hype. After all, these were touted as 'exclusive' fics of the highest quality, hand-selected by the biggest Repo! fans to please a wide variety of audiences. And at $14 plus shipping for 21 stories, you were paying a pittance for each tale. Surely even if the majority of them were bad, a few good seeds could redeem the cost?

The books were being advertised as extremely limited edition, with only 100 copies in the original printing. I placed my order and sat back to wait.

When it arrived, I was surprised by the tackiness of the overall design. I understand that the books were done on a very low budget and were printed at an independent press; thus the paper and cover cardstock are not the quality of a book you'd buy, for example, at Barnes & Noble. However, you would think that the people affiliated with this project could've used Photoshop a bit more; the cover is a dim photograph of two members of a shadowcast portraying Amber Sweet and a Eunuch, and the title is a dark, blurry graphic pasted in the top right corner. The book is done in a boring font with lines skipped between paragraphs (sometimes--- this is inconsistent throughout the book) and the margins fluctuate at will. Spelling errors and typos abound, which leads one to believe that the book was edited quickly and fairly sloppily; I picked out several mistakes throughout the book that were easily spotted and should've been caught before the book went to press.

The book is divided into two segments, a 'canon'-style section and a 'smut' section. The 'canon' section focuses mostly on Graverobber, who is obviously the main wank fodder for most fans of the film. And true, Terrance Zdunich is a beautiful man and a terrific performer, but the portrayals in the stories in the book read like a teenybopper dream. Several stories fixate on Graverobber having a sexual relationship with Shilo (something I never picked up in the film, but I guess people can read anything they want into it when they watch) or on the relationship between Nathan Wallace and his victims. There is also a lesbian story featuring Mag and Marni for anyone so inclined. The crackfic "Nathan's Secret Hobby", while supposed to be 'fun', reads like a sour taste in the mouth--- apparently Nathan is fond of secretly opening his organ delivery bags, dressing the organs up in Barbie clothes, and acting out scenes with them before turning them in to GeneCo. While I can appreciate off-the-wall humor, the story is just absurd and throws off the vibe of the stories bracketing it; it's the only one of its kind in the book, and it really doesn't belong in the flow of things.

It's the 'smut' section that really takes a turn for the worst. The opening story "Fucking Repo" is one of the most nauseating pieces of shit I've ever had the misfortune of laying eyes on. The story is told from the point of view of a man named Chad who does not want to go to see the film, but his friend drags him to a midnight showing anyway. 'Chad' (writing under the oh-so-clever synonym 'Anon E. Moose'-- die in a fire, won't you?) then proceeds to degrade every shadowcaster present, discussing one overweight cosplayer as disgusting and using several pages to degrade anyone in the cast he found less than attractive. He then proceeds to talk about a GenTern cosplayer sitting on his lap and grinding on his cock during the pre-show, a henchgirl giving him a handjob, and another GenTern letting him finger her during the remainder of the pre-show. He also gets a blowjob from the cast's Pavi, titfucks Amber Sweet, and finally succumbs to the dubious charms of the 'hippopotamus' (his term, clearly, not mine) cast member, who gives him a blowjob to finish him off.

Number one, while I know this is fantasy, this is the most degrading story I've ever read and I can't believe that people who claim to admire the cosplayers and shadowcasters would allow this story to be put in the book. It has NO redeeming qualities whatsoever; the author literally trashes every individual cast member, making a live Repo! show out to be a complete clusterfuck orgy where the shadowcasters are clamoring to fuck a newbie every showing. Please.

Secondly, are we supposed to believe that Anon E. Moose is actually able to sexually withstand six or seven castmates taking him to third base and beyond? Again, please. He goes to great lengths to convince the readers of his heterosexuality while the cast Pavi is deep-throating him, a contradiction which I find truly hilarious. By the end of the story, I wanted to knee him in the groin--- this is what they call smut? He just made an entire fandom out to be either vile, promiscuous whores or fat pigs who are dying to slobber on his cock. He wishes.

The remainder of the 'smut' stories seem to focus on Amber and Graverobber--- apparently every author has seen the deleted "Come Up and Try My New Parts" scene, then, since the stories take on a tired rendition of it. And the book wraps up with a Pavi/Graverobber scene to truly nauseate what little sense you have left.

While the book may have been done in fun, I am truly appalled at its final outcome, and wish I'd saved the money to blow on something else--- something from the official CafePress site, maybe, rather than the Repo Army since disagreeing with Spooky Dan got me attacked on his page. The book is EXACTLY what I thought it would be--- an exercise in Mary Sue sexual fantasy and a collection of mediocre fiction, with a few genuine pieces slipped in to mediate the monotony. The few standout stories that're genuinely good and enjoyable--- "And I'll Throw These Words Out There..." (the Mag/Marni lesbian tale, well-written and delicately worded), "Fathers" (a surprisingly touching piece from Nathan's viewpoint), and "Exit, Stage Left" (a death-fic from Graverobber's viewpoint, beautiful and poignant) are so spaced out that you genuinely have to sift through a mountain of mediocre crap to find them, and it's like finding diamonds in a sea of cubic zirconia. Everything in the book glitters, but not all of it is something you'd genuinely want to keep as a treasure.

Final thoughts: Save your cash and take your chances on fanfiction.net if Repo! fanfic is your bag. This was an interesting experiment from Spooky Dan and Co., and I'm sure most of the sort of people who would buy it will love it (or profess to, anyway), but for me, the book was a big disappointment and what began as something I already found weird and unsettling only solidified my concern and skepticism.

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.

Short Film Review: "Jack's Bad Day"

Perhaps the toughest thing about a short film, and the most intimidating to first-time directors, is the need to tell a complete story and develop characters in a very limited amount of time. Much has to be left to innuendo, context clues and clever pacing, and the audience is left to fill in the gaps themselves. For this very reason, I prefer short films (and short stories, for that matter) to full-length works in most circumstances, and the debut clip from director/writer Shawn Ewert, "Jack's Bad Day", is a great example of how to do it right.

The short focuses on Jack, a prolific serial killer who has been terrorizing his neighborhood and leaving corpses in his wake for weeks prior to the film's opening scene. Jack is your everyday guy, someone you wouldn't look twice at. The hilarious comedic timing of actor Steven Good lends a lot to this role, which is written (as is the entire film) with minimal dialogue. Good's performance is solid, and he hits his mark every time; whether it's distress over his morning shower going ice-cold without warning or huffing and puffing as he descends twenty flights of stairs, you are snickering or outright laughing with each expression on his face and inflection of his voice.

We've all had days like our poor Jack, unfortunately; the day when you burn the toast, lose your keys, and mismatch your socks all before even leaving the house. Jack decides that killing a girl will put him in a better mood, but the Murphy's law theme of the film indicates that no, this is not in the cards; not one but three botched murder attempts later leave him a very discouraged man indeed.

One of the funniest background performances comes from Jayson Champion, a tall fellow who looks like he just wandered out of a heavy metal concert. Jayson is portraying a character billed only as 'Scruffy Man', who lurks in the peripheral of several key scenes before the twist ending reveals his true purpose in the short. Jayson only has a bite-sized portion of dialogue, delivered in the last few seconds of the film, but his facial expressions and body language make finding out his role even more funny. Likewise, cameos from local genre legend Abel Berry as a weatherman and the director's husband Jeff Hamielec in a split-second cameo as a drunken lout are like spotting the silhouette of Hitchcock; it's an inside joke that rings true with people familiar with the director and his circle of friends.

The film is not flawless; the lighting is fairly mediocre and at times the sound has a hollow, echo effect from subpar audio equipment. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the overall product. A soundtrack score by Guthrie Lowe truly adds a professional dimension to the short, and the pacing of the script is clever and funny. The scenes are concise, and while some of them cut a little TOO quickly, none of the gags are milked so long that they outlive their welcome. The film's length makes it a convenient little watch, and the DVD layout is pleasantly sprinkled with special features like outtakes, a behind-the-scenes stills gallery, and a snippet of film involving a toaster that is entirely funnier than it should be.

'Jack's Bad Day' is a funny, quirky little ride done with very little time and money and overall, it delivers. For a first effort, this fun short film shows immense potential of bigger and better things to come from Ewert's Right Left Turn Productions, and fans of humor and horror will do well to keep their eyes and ears peeled for future projects from this promising filmmaker.

Is Two Better Than One? A CD Review of "Evelyn Evelyn"

Having been a fan of Amanda Palmer since the first time I heard her sing "Coin-Operated Boy" as one-half of the punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls, naturally I began to follow her various social media sites. Amanda is quite the controversial artist, with constant storms of discussion swirling around her Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, message board and webcam site. She has done everything from pose as a seven-foot-bride busking for cash on street corners to serenading Stormtroopers with her ukelele at San Diego Comic Con, but recent antics such as stripping completely naked on webcam, changing clothes in the middle of the red carpet at the Golden Globes (and consequently upstaging her nominee fiancé, graphic novelist Neil Gaiman), and soliciting over $10,000 in donations from fans and then bragging about her 'haul' on various blogs around the Internet has her audiences raising their eyebrows.

The latest scandal to involve Ms. Palmer is one that is a hotbed of discussion on many forums, debating the morals and merits of her newest project, Evelyn Evelyn. Quite awhile ago, Amanda announced that she and longtime friend and fellow musician Jason Webley had discovered a pair of conjoined twin sisters who were also musically skilled. The sisters, Amanda said, went by the single name Evelyn and had the nasty habit of finishing each other's sentences. They were strange beyond comprehension, refusing to do interviews, afraid of people with facial hair, and terrified of planes; therefore, Amanda said, she thought travel or touring would be impossible for them. But via her blogs and Twitters, she swore that the twins were terrific musicians, had to be heard to be believed, and that she and Jason both felt that it was very important to get their message out to the world. The twins, she said, had been sold to a circus when they were young and had been sexually molested for their entire childhoods, resulting in their fractured and fragmented minds. They were either madly in love with each other or fighting like cats and dogs, depending on the moment, and they were very difficult to get on the phone so that Jason and Amanda could coordinate their studio time.

As time stretched on, the fans began to grow more and more interested in the project, and Amanda's answers became more and more elusive and mysterious. Jason, always the more tacit of the two, remained mostly mum on the situation. Eventually, however, the word got out--- Evelyn was a scam, a product of Amanda and Jason's crazed collaboration, a strange artistic role they were playing for an upcoming project. A designer made dresses that both of them could fit into, to make them appear as conjoined twins; Jason shaved his long-standing facial hair and wore makeup for the single press photograph that the pair leaked.

Some fans were outraged, feeling duped and deceived; they felt that they had come to care about the sisters, the intricate tale of their complex and fascinating lives. They had felt sympathy for the two victims of sexual abuse, social ostracism and workplace exploitation; they had been eager to support these twins in their rise to stardom and their escape from their terrible pasts. Now that they knew that it was just a marketing scheme by Amanda and Jason, a new way to stir up controversy and attention from the notorious talking-point Amanda more specifically, they were angry.

Others were infuriated because they felt it was ableist, completely exploiting the plight of real conjoined twins and disabled individuals as well as those who had suffered sexual abuse or discrimination in order to sell records. "Glorified cripdrag", several feminist and disabled-activist blogs called it snidely, enraged that Amanda and Jason would have the balls to actually pretend to be conjoined. It was a gimmick, nothing more than an attempt to garnish attention to their collaborative side project.

Still others argued adamantly that this was what art was about; it was controversial, it was painful, it made you think. Obviously Amanda and Jason had been successful to some degree because people had been duped for a very long time in regards to the project; its sneaky execution and clever subterfuge meant that there were people completely taken into the illusion, the smoke and mirrors doing their jobs perfectly. Amanda and Jason were creating a buzzworthy project, something that made people argue and debate; that was the entire point of true art, not just putting out records but putting out something meaningful. Was this album really any different than, say, David Bowie taking on any of his personas, Ziggy Stardust or The Thin White Duke, coming out onstage in the costume and mannerisms, singing autobiographical songs about a man who never existed? Was there a difference between this Evelyn Evelyn project and The Who's Tommy? It was just a concept album, about a fictional pair of conjoined twin sisters. If the music was good, who cared if it was actually performed by sisters from Walla Walla, Washington?

When the album dropped at the very end of March (very nearly timed to be an April Fool's joke, actually), I picked it up via iTunes out of curiousity. My chagrin over some of Amanda's more recent publicity stunts aside, I still love her music, and I've seen her play live four different times; seeing the girl whale on a piano or strum a ukelele while she sings her heart out is truly something to behold. And honestly, I'd never heard of Jason Webley prior to Amanda's constantly touting him in her blog; he's got a big underground following, but he wasn't anyone on my radar until the last year or so. So I gave Evelyn Evelyn a try.

Honestly, the first advice I can give you is that if you're a fan of either musician independently, chuck your preconceived notions of how they sound out the window. Amanda's voice is softer, less abrasive than any of her work has showcased to date, and Jason's is feminine and feathery. Their music is strange, definitely capturing the old-fashioned circus vibe of the twins' backstory, but at the same time the tracks with narration, such as "The Tragic Events of September", are genuinely haunting and eerie.

The opening track, "A Campaign of Shock and Awe", depicts several vocalists taking turns as barkers and ringleaders, touting the freakshow that is the sisters. Meanwhile, the sisters harmonize the line "Isn't it nice that they're being so nice to us? / If I'm not mistaken I think they might like us / Aren't we lucky to be here? Stop moving, they're taking a picture! Smile for the camera, Evelyn!", alternating who sings which line each reprise. This is our introduction to the Evelyn twins; they are depicted as freaks of nature, God's blunder, and we hear people arguing over how much to charge for their novelty. From there, we are taken on a whirlwind of oddities. The song "Chicken Man", about the chicken farmer who raised the girls and kept them in a cage, fed like his fowl for years before his demise, is creepy and unsettling, discordant and odd. There is a lot of accordion in this song, as well as strange Danny Elfman-style vocal work. When listening to "The Tragic Events Part II", we are told the story of how the chicken farmer died while the girls were locked in the cage, and no one knew to come and let them out; they were there for days, starving, before they finally broke free and stumbled into the open air. The song "Chicken Man" consists entirely of the two title words being repeated, first in normal singing voices, growing increasingly desperate to get the man's attention before degenerating into howling horror as they realize he isn't coming and they're going to starve. I've never before heard a song that incorporates only two words and somehow still tells a story with them.

The eery unsettling feeling brought on by this song is complimented nicely by "Evelyn Evelyn", the title song where the two sisters sing gently to each other. Amanda plays the more optimistic of the sisters, while Jason's takes a more literal and maternal approach. He is the more mature sister, the one who comforts Amanda's sister in several of the songs. Jason's twin is also the more promiscuous of the two it would seem, singing lines such as "Do you think I should marry him?" while Amanda counters "You just met him yesterday!" The song has a very soft feel of loneliness, and for a moment we the audience are transported into this strange bisected world, sympathetic to what it would be like to wonder if you could be an astronaut or a fireman, if your entire life revolved around your sister and you had never been your own person for even a moment of your life.

Some of the songs, such as "Elephant Elephant" and "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?" are firmly tongue-in-cheek and playful, jaunty tunes that will get in your head and refuse to come out without a fight. "My Space" is a joking dedication to finding love on the Internet, pointing to the fictional way that Amanda and Jason 'discovered' the Evelyn sisters (they claimed that someone anonymously sent them a link to the Evelyn sisters' Myspace and that was where the friendship began). The song has a soaring 80s sound to it musically, complete with amusingly epic vocal work and a strange back-echo on Jason's vocals in particular, but I feel that it's a weaker point on the album and doesn't jive with the rest of the sound. On the other hand, if the album is meant to be as confusing, inconsistent and schizophrenic as the sisters themselves, it's a roaring triumph.

The album is rounded out with a gorgeous cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart", featuring melancholy ukelele strumming and absolutely beautiful, soft voice work; in this rendition Amanda is heartbreaking, her voice cracking on the highest notes, and Jason is hauntingly melodic. The two of them sound like they are singing each other a lullaby that is startling in its intimacy, the plinking piano work accompanying it adding to the surreal ephemeral quality.

In short, without delving into my feelings about the controversy surrounding its origin, Evelyn Evelyn is a provocative effort. I believe that it set out to do what it meant to do; it created an outlet for the two musicians to collaborate without being Amanda Palmer or Jason Webley. Amanda was no longer the sassy and shameless redhead who is ever-vocal about her sex life, her discontent with her record label, and it's impossible to picture the beard-sporting street performer Jason toting an accordion and a slouchy hat when listening to this music. No, we are transported into a striped circus tent where for ten bucks a head (the cost of the album on iTunes, incidentally) one can catch a glimpse with the exotic Evelyn Sisters, and that is exactly what was intended in the creation of this album.

At least ONE Film that's worth the title 'to Die For'... "Dread"

I can still remember the brilliant ad campaign for the original run of the After Dark Horrorfest '8 Films to Die For'. I remember the shrieking, haunted soundtrack, tantalizing snippets of gore-soaked victims and maniacal killers and angry spirits, and the tagline about every year some films were too extreme for theaters. And I remember the raging gorewhore inside me arching its eyebrows and going "Well now, that does indeed seem to be something we should look into."

I also recall buying tickets for the film "Wicked Little Things", because in my hometown they weren't showing the full cinema-run of all eight films. I went with a few friends who were also horror fans, in the mindset that 'Oh, this film involves creepy, possibly-possessed children'. As any horror fan will tell you, creepy kids rank up there with mongoloids and unmarked shortcuts on the Thrill-O-Meter; if they're in the film, you're in for at least a mediocre good time.

Usually.

I remember that film being a complete waste of time, a total piece of schlock, and I walked out of the cinema not even angry, just... disappointed. I felt misled. That film wasn't 'too extreme' for theaters, it was too crap and was unable to find a distributor willing to shell out the bucks to promote it. Still, I remained optimistic and rented the rest of the run of those first films... And every single one fell short of its promise. The second run was better, but still a long way from good, and the third... well, it included a direct-to-DVD sequel to The Butterfly Effect, if that gives you any inclination.

However, despite my inherent and oft-vocalized dislike for the Twilight phenomenon, I am indeed a firm Jackson Rathbone fan. If the Twilight films included a single five-minute shot of Jackson sitting there playing with a straw wrapper, I'd go see every one of them in theaters, probably twice. It isn't just his good looks, which are considerable, or his acting chops, which ironically outshine everyone else in the lackluster cast; there is a charisma about this young man that calls to mind a male equivalent of someone like Thora Birch. Jackson sticks to independent films with controversial subject matter, and he can command a shot and eat up scenery like nobody's business. So when I found out that he was the star of the film Dread coming out in this latest batch of '8 Films to Die For', I decided to give it a go on my Netflix queue.

What can I say about Dread without turning into a rabid fanatic?

...it's everything a horror film SHOULD be.

And it may easily be the best psychological film I've seen in years.

Part of this can be accredited to the concept, which comes from the second volume of Books of Blood by Clive Barker. Yes, Clive Barker, the sick fuck who brought us such delights as Hellraiser, Candyman, Lord of Illusions, The Midnight Meat Train, Nightbreed, and a whole slew of other brilliantly-conceptualized stories that've been adapted into films. Dread is no different; it has the same sly, cunning wit that is trademark to Clive's work, yet is brutal enough to make even the most steel-hearted audience member cringe. The terror is not merely a freak with a hacksaw or a businessman who slays hookers by night; this is more carnal, more primitive, getting to the root of mortal fear by addressing the actual cause of the sensation 'dread'.

Still, I've seen films with brilliant scripts that were hard to sit through. So then let's discuss the director, Anthony DiBlasi. Checking out his IMDB won't do you much good; everything else he's done is tied up in post-production, and every single project, interestingly enough, links back to Clive Barker. The two have formed a very tight partnership, and DiBlasi is also helming the Hellraiser remake as well as an upcoming Tortured Souls project. I will say that before Dread, it would've taken me a lot of resignation to see my beloved Hellraiser remade... but if this man is behind the lens, I'll be there opening night. That should speak volumes to the powerful directing in this film. The movie is shot beautifully, with powerful scenes that are well-lit, with immaculate set design and perfect choices for transitions. You honestly cannot tell that this film was an independent feature; it is lovely, and looks better on a screen than some recent big-budget Hollywood-backed films I've seen in latter days.

Now let's move on to the special effects. One word, or possibly two--- 'cringe-inducing'. In the good way, not the 'we can see the wires' way. The few CGI scenes in the film are very few and far between, and tastefully done; they are blended with a real FX artist's work to make a seamless transition, and you could almost swear they aren't CGI at all. Most of the effects used involve an actual layman with prosthetics, squibs, gallons of blood, and peeling latex; this is a dying art in the technology age and it's beautiful to see. The film isn't especially gory throughout, which is actually a nice change. Most films these days that call themselves 'horror' think that if they throw a few buckets of red corn syrup on someone it's 'scary'. DiBlasi understands that fear is much more than gore, and he uses that to the utmost of its potential. Still, the effects are phenomenal, and completely believable. At no point did I call bullshit, and I'm a sucker for a good makeup job.

 Perhaps the most important part of any film is the cast, so let's discuss. I've already professed my love for Jackson Rathbone, but allow me to expand and be more diplomatic. In this film, Jackson plays a young college filmmaker named Stephen Grace. Stephen is shy, painfully awkward, and yet completely endearing; his Robert Smith hairdo and trendy college goatee make us believe that he is the quintessential odd-man-out who is trying to fit in and find his niche in the social heirarchy of his school. One day in his psychology class, Stephen encounters an intense young man named Quaid who invites him out for drinks to discuss their upcoming class project. Quaid is portrayed beautifully by Shaun Evans, who channels a younger and much more psychotic Jeff Conaway--- I've never seen Shaun in anything else, but he has a rare smoldering ferocity in his delivery that sells you on anything that comes out of his mouth. Rounding out the cast are the females--- the cynical and sexy Cheryl Fromme is played by Hanne Steen, and Laura Donnelly is cast as Abby, the beautiful and sweet girl who is disfigured by a dark birthmark that runs the entire length of her body and causes her daily distress and social problems. This cast delivers in a way that is so RARELY seen in current horror cinema; every single one of them brought their 'A' game to this film with flying colors.

The film follows Stephen, Quaid and Cheryl as they embark on a quest to interview people around their campus to find out what they're most afraid of. It is learned through these interviews that Stephen's older brother died in a drunk driving accident many years before, leaving Stephen afraid of losing control, and Cheryl was molested by her abbatoir-worker father, which caused her to become a hardcore vegetarian who can't even stand the sight or scent of meat. The darkest secret by far belongs to Quaid, who witnessed as a child his entire family slaughtered by an axe murderer who remains at large to this day. As the interviews progress, Quaid becomes obsessed with finding the 'true' nature of fear, getting to the most base instinct that causes people to feel true dread; he calls it 'facing the beast', and he decides to take matters into his own hands and force others to face their fears in an attempt to see how far their psyche will allow them to stretch before it snaps under the terror. This begins a series of impossibly brutal, horrific experiments on the people whose stories impacted him the most, and ends in a breathtaking finale that will leave the audience sitting there with their jaws on the floor.

Honestly, I have no idea how this film didn't get wider buzz, particularly with Rathbone tied in; his Twilight connection alone probably guaranteed this a high number of rentals. However, I'd pay money to be in the room when any number of those sweet sparkly-vampire-loving girls puts in this DVD and is treated to the terrifying twists and turns of this psychological thriller. Dread is everything a horror afficianado can come to expect and hope for from a scary movie, and yet it's not specifically targeted to a demographic the way many films in this genre are. There are no wink-wink-nudge-nudge insider jokes, no recurring tropes, no played-out cliches. The most stereotypical thing in the entire film is Quaid's fear of the rogue axe murderer, and the subsequent hallucinations he sometimes suffers; beyond that, everything in this movie is fresh, original, and put together incredibly well.

All in all, go rent Dread. If you want something that'll make your pulse pound and your stomach twist, this is the film for you. THIS is horror too extreme for theaters; THIS is something not for the faint of heart. Finally, After Dark Horrorfest lived up to their promise.