Review (and thoughts about Buffy and Angel) coming up later. Whenever I figure out how to write about this stuff without sounding like a squeeing fangirl. Haven't had that feeling for a long time. Damn it.

Edited 13.8.2012 Right, let's try this. NOTE! If you haven't seen Buffy or Angel yet, you might want to skip the following chapters and move on after the asterisks. Then again, if you're not interested in the TV shows, you might not care.

I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel when they were first shown on TV. The former especially was the highlight of my week, campy after-midnight fun. Although I only watched a couple of episodes, don't know why. Maybe the channel at that time didn't show it from the beginning. Anyway, a few days ago I felt like watching the whole series again, plus the last season of Angel (reason will be specified later on). That might have been a bad idea, considering that instead of studying to my entrance exam for minoring in history, I barely ate and slept while I watched all seasons during a very short time period. Ok, I did go to work, but needless to say I couldn't focus there very well. I knew I'd be in trouble when the series didn't have any episodes left, but I just kept on going like a steam train.

Now, the character of Spike. He first appears in Sunnydale in the episode School Hard, where he tries to kill Buffy during a parent teacher meeting, but her mother hits him with an axe and he escapes. See, campy fun! Here we also learn that he has a girlfriend named Drusilla (eery nutcase), and together they're like undead Sid and Nancy. Well, maybe girlfriend is not the right word, but they are definitely the best example of affection between vampires in the Buffyverse. Turns out that I loved this kind of portrayal of vampire villains. Spike has the funniest lines in the entire series, and the fact that he's British makes him a tad more funnier. He's also an incredibly complex character.

What's weird, though (and kind of spooky) is that I don't seem to remember him very well from the time I watched Buffy for the first time. Granted, I only watched a couple of episodes, but I remembered the episodes where he was really well. In his place there was just black, like there had been no one! Though now that I watched every single episode and all seasons from start to finish, it hit me what I had missed. I don't normally go for his kind of guys, but I can see why Spike has a large following. It's like he has this strange magnetism that even came through my computer screen.

Then about halfway through season four I got spoiled about his fate. Damn it Whedon, why always the good ones? During season seven finale it didn't stop me from crying my eyes out, though. Fortunately I found out that he's resurrected at the beginning of season five of Angel. I was a bit disappointed that his character was reduced into a very small sidekick-y part, but at least he was alive and well! And he was awesome in the episode where he's kidnapped by a demented slayer. I wasn't that interested in Angel to begin with, so I decided to just watch the cross-over episode where Spike makes an appearance and the whole season five.

Now, let's go back a bit. When I said Spike iss one of the most complex characters of Buffy, I meant it wholeheartedly. There are many flashbacks of Spike when he was still a human, an aspiring poet named William who got heartbroken and later turned into a vampire by Drusilla. All these flashbacks give depth to the character. Although Spike got his nickname from torturing his victims with a railroad spike, you are reminded that there are still some of his human traits in him even as a demon. First off, he's a one woman man. Second, as a devoted companion he is motivated my love. He might make (a lot of) wrong decisions, but he does everything he can to maintain or get the love of the woman he wants (whereas Angelus only cares about lust). When Drusilla left him, he was a real wreck and returned to Sunnydale without his usual swagger. He even tried to get Willow to make a love spell to get her back.

As a kid I liked Angel, now he annoys me. I don't know how I'd have felt about Spike if I'd gotten a full picture of him, but most likely I'd have still fallen for the more broody type. Now Angel just seems like a broodypants to me, with the words of Spike. Angel and Buffy were kind of like Romeo and Juliet, a young and sweet high school couple that would never have worked in the real world. When Spike fell in love with Buffy, it caught me off guard. I wasn't sure what I felt about this turn of events, but it worked out great and made Spike even more complex. Everything Whedon did with them, I approved. Considering Spike's personality, having a real fucked up relationship with Buffy made complete sense.

There's a couple of things people tend to ignore. First, Buffy didn't love Spike. She was confused and numb, because after she died she was resurrected by her friends. They thought she had been in hell, but in fact she had been in heaven, where "There was no pain / no fear no doubt" (according to the lyrics of one of the songs at the end of the awesome musical episode). Just before Spike's and Buffy's kiss, she sings: "This isn't real / but I just need to feel". Says it all, doesn't it? No matter how much I and others wanted this to be a fairy tale, it was far from it. Buffy wanted to wake up her frezed emotions and become part of the world again. It was obvious that these two had raw animalistic attraction to each other, just look at the scene where Buffy wanders off to Spike's crypt and stays behind the closed door, while he's on the other side and can feel fer as well.

Then the rape scene. It was so uncomfortable that I doubt I want to see it ever again, but it was an important reminder that even though Spike loved Buffy passionately ("There's a traitor here beneath my breast / And it hurts me more than you've ever guessed. / If my heart could beat it would break my chest."), he was still a demon. In Buffy vampires are real monsters. The chip the government implanted into Spike's brain (...) made him more mellow, but his instincts didn't die even if his behaviour changed. In fact, after the attempt of rape he was horrified that he tried to do it, but he was also equally annoyed that he wasn't himself, that he stopped. This sparks him to go on his journey to "give what Buffy deserves". I'm not sure if he intended to get his soul back, or to get his chip removed and got tricked by the demon (I think by what he said he meant that Buffy deserved an ensouled Spike, just as she had had Angel, and with the soul he wanted to punish himself for what he had done), but he got his soul back and things changed.

Now he was comparable to Angel who also has his soul. Yet again people tend to forget that Angel's soul was forced on him as a curse, whereas Spike fought for his soul (even if he didn't mean it to happen). Buffy is horrified, but I think from here on she begins to feel emotionally connected to him (the comfort scene where she just laid there in his arms was beautiful, not to mention the scene where Buffy tells Spike that she believes in him). I don't know what would have happened if Spike hadn't died, but I think Buffy will always consider Angel as her friend and lover, and Spike as her protector and ally. Then again, I guess I'll see if I was right when I start reading the next seasons of Buffy in comic form. I hear Whedon has not completely forgotten Spike, they just had problems because some other company had rights to the character. Good, good! Can't wait what Whedon has in store for him!

Oh, and a few words about Angel vs. Spike. The way I see it, Angel as Angelus (his soulless alter ego) is a more conventional evil (BUAHHHAAAHHAA, I'm EVIL!!) and Spike is more layered. In Lies My Parents Told Me (I think) Spike says that Angel made him the monster he is. He's right, you know. Angelus had made Drusilla into a vampire, and when she did the same to William and brought him to him, Angelus was glad that he finally had some male company. They rampaged together and killed and killed and killed, and Angelus was the one who taught William to be a vampire. Eventually he became Spike. But not before Angelus had had his way with Drusilla, angering William into a point of no return.

It was also pretty annoying that Spike saved the world by dying, and no one even said thanks...

* * *

Finally, a few words about these Spike comics. I didn't particularly care about the one-shots, the artwork looked too Photoshopped, the stories weren't that special, and they had continuity problems. The artwork in Spike vs. Dracula varied (sometimes making Spike ridiculously unrecognisable), but the stories were entertaining and you learn why Spike had the two weird vampires with him in the submarine in Angel's episode Why We Fight (gotta love the comics' references to both series). Asylum and Shadow Puppets on the other hand were great. Franco Urru is a fantastic artist, I'd like to read more of his comics. These two were also the only ones where Spike's personality fully came through. The following quote is a great example.

"- Alright, you sodding son of a... No. No no no.
- Yes yes yes, sodding bloody brilliant wanker luv git bollocks. Pip pip, long live the queen, bangers and mash. Any and all spike-isms out of the way, cupcake? Good good.
- For one thing, admiring your decor. I mean, wow. It's Dungeons & Dragons meets freshman college dorm.
- It's from something called Ikea and it's cheap. A champion doesn't need much, just...
- a Klippan love seat with lumbar support. No, I can see that."

And another one:

"This group is a joke. No slayers, no Vahla Ha'nesh demons, not even a smart-ass with an eye patch. And they want a vampire with a soul to lead them."

I also spotted a comment in some random post about Spike vs. Angel, and I think this sums up my post pretty well:

"He was never either the guy who broods or the eeeevil guy, he could be funny and scary and annoying and sweet and murderous and loving and vulnerable and snarky and sexy and sappy and silly and smart and bad and good - all AT THE SAME time, within the same episode or even the same scene. He could be a punk rebel and a dorky Victorian poet and a dark demonic lover one moment and a bloke who’s into watching soaps the next one... He was a far more unconventional and unpredictable character than Angel."

I've already read the 1001 versions of books and movies (and slowly going through them), so as a big horror fan I thought I should check this cute little pocket-sized volume. I knew there wouldn't be much left to watch (eleven, turns out), so I was mostly just curious to see which films had been included.

I was pleasantly surprised about the mixture of mainstream and lesser-known stuff, but of course there were, once again, the same films from the 20s and 30s that are always included in every single list, and only one from the 1910s. Which is wrong, by the way, because The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premiered in 1920 and the shooting didn't conclude until January 1920. How, then, could it have been released in 1919? Besides, aren't there really no good horror films from the 1910s? I just can't believe it, so I must investigate this further.

Steven Katz's essay about Dracula (1931) is refreshingly scathing (Tod Browning is one of my favorite directors, but Dracula is hands down one of his worst films, in addition to being one of the flattest one about the count). Then again, Katz also claims Lon Chaney was in Freaks (1932) (he probably means The Unknown [1927]), which is a mistake that should have been caught during editing. Not an important one, but still. Katz also thinks London is a baffling relocation for Dracula (in the essay about Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), but is it really? It was the Victorian era, an era of prosperity and flourishing trade routes in Britain. Makes sense to me that the count chooses one of the most biggest and influential cities in the world as his new home.

Dejan Ognjanovic, in turn, has a disparaging view of pulp literature (at least it sounds like it, when he calls Dennis Wheatley's novel The Devil Rides Out (1934) his "usual sensationalistic meandering pulp"), yet he seems to have no problem with pulpy horror, because he likes the Hammer adaptation of Wheatley's novel. Mikel Koven has a pretty firm idea about those who dislike torture porn: "What media pundits who got their liberal knickers in a twist over the so-called "torture porn" controversy seem to forget is that what made these films so disturbing in the first place was that they were actually pretty good". First of all, you don't have to be liberal to dislike torture porn. Secondly, does Kaven mean that despite the disturbing aspect of the films in the subgenre he thinks they're good, and it's somehow wrong to dislike them? My taste good, your taste wrong.

The thing I have the biggest issue with are the spoilers. As far as I recall, 88 texts out of 101 (I decided not to read about the eleven films I haven't seen when I realized they might contain spoilers as well) managed to avoid spoilers (and it really isn't difficult to go round a plot point or the ending). The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Vanishing (1988) were another story (there were actually a few more that I now see other reviewers spotted, as well as a few other mistakes). Ok, knowing the ending of the former might dilute the second viewing (I don't like it that much anyway), but in the case of the latter...

The Vanishing is just as powerful after multiple viewings, but the first time is everything. Everything that occurs before that sickening moment of realization at the end is of course stellar in its subtleness, but the film as a whole relies on gripping the viewer by the throat. There isn't anything that hints what might happen, so one can't use the old "but it's great to see the journey that leads to the ending, and wait when it will happen and whether it's foreshadowed" -thing as an excuse (for me, that's something that reminds me of a rewatch or reread; Agatha Christie might occasionally be an exception, if I remember the murderer), and that's what makes the movie brilliant. Making sure a whole experience isn't ruined from those who don't want it is simply polite, even if you're okay with spoilers. It should also not be presumed that every single person in the world knows the ending of every single classic film or book out there, because it's not about the age.

Regardless, 101 Horror Movies shows pretty well the progress of horror cinema since the beginning of the 20th century. The essays are mostly of good quality, and a few inspired me to rewatch my old favorites and those that I've considered mediocre at best. I'm also extremely excited to have found out that there's an actual name for films featuring older women becoming mentally unstabled: psycho-biddy (also referred to, according to Wikipedia, as Grande Dame Guignol, Hagsploitation, and Hag horror). Makes it so much easier to search for more films belonging to the subgenre. Bette Davis is my queen, and she's amazing in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), but I'm convinced there are more gold pieces waiting for me out there.

Hitchcock's masterpiece is considered one of the greatest horror films of all time, and it's definitely one of my favorites, too. Reading the essay collection Kolker edited, you realize how the film lends itself to various interpretations. The music essay I had to abandon, because it had so much music theory that I might as well have been reading a Hebrew Bible or something. Some of the viewpoints were repeated throughout several essays, but each was still good and perceptive in its own way.

Sometimes film (and literary) analysis reaches a bit too deep for my own taste and might try to point out something that isn't really there, but this collection was mostly saved from that. I felt like watching Psycho again, and other Hitchcock films will also get my attention in an entirely different way. Examined superficially, Hitchcock might seem mere entertainment, but in reality the films are extremely polished entities both visually and thematically. An amazing mixture of auteurism and mainstream suspense. Although he was mentioned to have considered his films funny, so maybe there was more twinkle in his eye than you would think. I have Hitchcock's biography waiting, and I expect it to elaborate on that aspect.

"Once a psychiatrist wrote me. He had a young patient who had heard of Freddy Krueger and was having nightmares about him. I really wanted to help, so I got in touch with Robert and asked if he would say a few words to the kid into a vidcam. Not only did Robert do that, but he did it while he was being put into, and then out of, his Freddy makeup, describing each step of the way how Freddy was nothing more than latex and glue, and nothing to be worried about."
- Wes Craven

I think the first time I saw Robert Englund was about ten years ago when the Masters of Horror anthology series aired in Finland (I love anthologies by the way; film or tv show, it's always exciting to see what the next segment looks like), where he played an MC at a night club with dead strippers. At that point I had already heard of his legendary reputation, but it was only a few days later that I watched the classic A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). I wasn't that impressed, but I hadn't yet become an avid horror fan, so I had no real knowledge about the history of horror film and what place Elm Street has in it to appreciate the movie.

I've since watched only two other Englund movies, Urban Legend (1998) and The Phantom of the Opera (1989), both of which were, er, less than stellar, but I was intrigued by Englund's performances and dedication. The latter shows a mile away, and his memoirs proved me right: he accepts scripts he likes the most, and doesn't care about the financial success of his movies, or whether they win awards and critical acclaim. He just seems like a guy who genuinely respects horror and always puts a hundred percent on the table, and also fully embraces his fanbase (I cannot even remember how many times I've heard how nice and warm he is in person). It's sometimes difficult to see behind a celebrity's public persona, but Englund is one of the few I'm sure is just as nice as he seems to be.

The tone of the memoir is very conversational, because co-writer Alan Goldsher wrote the book based on Englund's dictations, but that suits his style. He has a great sense of humour, and reading this felt like I was sitting at a diner with him eating pancakes, drinking coffee, and listening to him talk about his escapades. No dirt here, though, he only discusses his work and leaves most of his personal life out, which I respect. It should also be remembered, that being a memoir of Robert Englund, this really does focus on him and his point of view of his career, so there's no reason to expect a whole book to be just about Freddy (despite the cover).

There's a lot of repetition about the problems Englund had with makeup and naturally the focus is on his, I presume, favorite projects, but I guess at least the latter is expected when space is limited. A thick tome wouldn't have been as alluring, although I still would have liked to get a little deeper look of the movie industry from a horror actor's perspective. So, although I didn't passionately adore the memoir, I think it's still worth the read for every horror fan (doesn't matter if you're an Elm Street fan), even if it's just for 'hearing' the voice of the man himself.

Most of the anecdotes are entertaining, and it's always great to hear a bit about the behind-the-scenes stuff. Saying how enjoyable it was to work with the legendary Roger Corman is fine, but "catering that consisted of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner" or mere plastic chairs in the depressing dressing rooms are more telling things about Corman and his frugal ways.

I also felt a sting of jealousy that Englund's childhood was surrounded by the entertainment industry in the most positive way, like stumbling into Clark Gable in the grocery store, visiting the sets of his uncles' tv shows, or "watching cowboy stuntmen do horse falls on the RKO backlot behind my house". It's interesting how his parents took him to see scary adult movies, and they somehow stayed with him so that despite a stint as a California surfer (!) and a classically trained theater actor, he became a horror icon. It's also due to the brilliance of a modern musical (Stephen Sondheim's Company) that made him realize art could be both popular and meaningful. I wish I'd seen him play Judas in Godspell, that would be one of my time machine destinations.

Surprisingly, there was some Finnish presence as well: I had no idea Renny Harlin had directed a Freddy Krueger movie! I'm not a fan, but Englund had nothing but positive things to say about him and his modesty and perceptiveness. Anyway, Freddy Krueger sneaking around the Desilu Studios (where, strangely, the home of I Love Lucy was) is something I want to see again, so I'm going to be rewatching Elm Street soon. Maybe even tonight, it's already dark. Although I need to stop thinking about the story how the concept of the film was conceived. That was scary as hell. I'm glad I live in an apartment building.

Ugh, I can't finish this. I just quickly browsed through the rest of the articles, and it was all the same: random unfunny quips (what's Bogart's toupee got to do with anything?), unimportant trivia (yes, Mary Astor went through a humiliating divorce, but how's that relevant when dealing with The Maltese Falcon and its influence on the genre?), and severe lack of actually interesting information ("Also missing from the film version was the comma in the title." You're kidding!? Not sure if that was supposed to be a joke, though.).

Hughes promises detailed analyses and the tracing of the developments of the genre, but instead relies heavily on plot synopses and brief mentions of actor filmographies, both of which I would check from Wikipedia or IMDB if there was a need for that. The choice of films is a matter of taste, so I'm going to let that go. Overall I understand this is supposed to be an overview, but the lack of focus is distracting and renders the book shallow. Lists don't offer insight to anything, as was proved here.

Occasionally repetitious but serves its purpose as a decent introduction. The design is pretty and the pocket size is handy.

The media section (literature, film, and television) was horribly superficial, though. The history section and the all ghastly stories of creepy creatures was ok, but there was no effort whatsoever with the latter part of the book. Occasionally the author recounted whole plots with nothing else to say, in addition to merely listing stuff. For example, with Bram Stoker's Dracula she did nothing else than tell the plot from start to finish and introduce Bram Stoker. No analysis on its influence, nothing. Oh, and why the hell would you introduce Hitchcock when he has nothing to do with vampires? Just because you talk about horror films, it's not necessary to bring him up because you're talking about a particular genre that he didn't have a direct influence on.

There were also a few inaccuracies that made me cringe. McLeod constantly misspells names, which is embarrassing since you can check them from Google in a few seconds. Jonathan Harper, Gerald Butler, Georges Méllès etc.? No. Just - no. Second, Carl Theodor Dreyer is not Swedish but Danish. These things are very tiny, but they made me a bit paranoid about the rest of the information I wasn't so familiar with. How can I be sure she wasn't more careful with the rest of it?

Unfortunately, this seems like a book that was hashed together in a hurry to cash in on the newer vampire phenomenon.