Purple Rhinestone Eagle/Northern Swords/Forsorcerers
Fantasy Quest 7″
Poison Apple

What the fuck is going on in Portland, Oregon? I thought my recent discovery of Purple Rhinestone Eagle was rare, but it turns out the whole town is full of secret covens in hidden lairs amassing a cohesive army of high priestess power, steadying themselves to strike like a seething force of Joan of Arcs. Joining Purple Rhinestone Eagle on this particular battlefield (Poison Apple’s split seven inch, Fantasy Quest, from November 2009) are Northern Swords and Forsorcerers, and together they rock in the name of glory, freedom, honour, and death.

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Why does it always seem that the only way a horror movie premise can work is if one or some of the lead characters display a complete lack of common sense? Take Dread, for instance. In this 2009 movie based on Clive Barker’s short story from his Books of Blood: Volume II, college film student Stephen Grace meets some dude on a smoke break outside one of his classes, Quaid, who apparently is also a student, but that’s not made very clear. To me he’s a creepy dude hanging out at a school in a shitty Luke Perry kind of way. Anyway, right away Quaid starts jabbering on about human psychology and behaviour, and asking really weird questions, and where most people would butt out their smoke and move away from the stranger, Stephen thinks, “Oh, hey, a friend!” So, when Quaid shows up at Stephen’s work the following day (how did he know where he worked?) telling him that he really wants to talk and that Stephen should come to his house, it’s all just par for the getting-to-know-your-new-creepy-friend course. Quaid’s house, of course, is some run down number in the woods, where as a six-year-old he once witnessed his parents’ murders by a crazy, axe-wielding maniac. He’s been living there ever since, I guess, in abject squalor, reliving the gruesome act over and over again. Stephen shows up (because how can this horror movie get any steam if Stephen doesn’t take up this stranger’s invitation) and is not at all put off by the house or its location or the fact that there’s a note on the door telling him to come down to the basement. Will Stephen run away and forget he ever met this creepy guy or will he go search out the basement? That’s right…basement it is.

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The House of the Devil (2009) is, as advertised, based on true and unexplainable events, and set in the early 80s, a time when 70% of American adults believed in the existence of abusive Satanic cults. I had high hopes. First of all, not only is it set in the early 80s, but it also looks like it was shot in the early 80s. This movie has an excellent retro feel to it, from the music to the film quality to the kind of suspense building found in such earlier horror classics as Black Christmas, most of which is supplied in the first hour and fifteen minutes of the movie wherein Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) explores and acclimatizes herself to the countryside mansion she’s “babysitting” at for the evening. However, that kind of intense mood can come across as slow, but I didn’t mind the pace too much. What I did mind was the pace at the end of the movie, when the action and blood rolls in, because it came and went in a flash compared to the rest of the movie, and left me scratching my head. But hey, at least there was some blood and action, so let’s get to that now.

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