Final Women

 Happy Halloween! If you're looking for something to watch to celebrate the season, and, like me, you've already watched the Halloween series five million time, here are a few more recommendations: Ghostwatch This television special really spooked British audience when it first aired. Similar to Orson Welles' infamous War of the Worlds broadcast, many people though Ghostwatch was real. Even knowing that it's not, it's still a damn spooky little haunted house film. Night of the Demons series I'll admit that I haven't seen the third movie in the original trilogy - it's too hard to find a decent version of it online, and it's not available on DVD or Blu-ray. However, the first two films are excellent. The first is a blackly funny minor classic, and Part 2 is better than I could have ever expected or hoped (seriously, Sister Gloria is my hero!). The remake stars genre vets Monica Keena and Edward Furlong, and though it got mixed reviews, I personally r...

She raised the hammer again. Had he feared this moment...thinking he knew how tonight would go? No, they were only teenage girls. What could they do? He couldn't have foreseen what teenage girls could become. Teenage girls could be demons.  Hailey Piper's Benny Rose, The Cannibal King is a magnificent read for the Halloween season or any other time of year. It's a story of friendship and bravery and nightmares come to life. Warning: SPOILERS Desiree and her friends Jesse and Sierra are spending Halloween night at Gabrielle's place. Gabrielle is the new girl in town; she's moved in with her grandmother who lives in Blackwood, Vermont's Glade Street Retirement Community. Unfortunately for these girls, Glade Street Retirement Community has a secret. It turns out Blackwood's urban legend, the undead, child-eating cannibal, Benny Rose, is real. And Glade Street is his hunting ground. The teenagers are soon attacked by Rose, and he is one of the most sinister vil...

 John Hancock's The Girls of October is a novel told in news reports, interviews, essays, and film scripts, among other things.  The story it tells is that of Beverly Dreger, haunted her entire life by a boogeyman figure and obsessed with John Carpenter's Halloween. In 1981, Dreger allegedly murdered three of her college classmates in their dorms. The book presents us with evidence from Beverly's life. Evidence which could possibly explain her motives...or exonerate her from the crimes? This is a fascinating novel with a unique and interesting format. I tore through it in just a couple of sittings (seriously, I only paused it to get some sleep). Besides the compelling mystery at the heart of the story, Hancock's tale also delves into horror films, why we love them and how we connect to them. A large chunk of the later part of the novel concern Beverly's analysis of the Halloween film, which was interesting in itself, even if I don't personally agree with such a...

 As part of my Halloween themed readathon this October, I read James A. Moore and Jeff Strand's entertaining and madcap collaboration, The Haunted Forest Tour . Despite actually taking place on Halloween, this doesn't have much of a Halloween or autumnal feel to it, but that's a small complaint when a book is as fast paced and fun as this one. A slightly bigger complaint would be the objectification of women; it seemed like every single male character has lascivious thoughts about one of the female characters at least once, often at inappropriate times, and every time, it took me out of the book. I have no objection to sex or sexy characters in my books, but in Haunted Forest 's case, it came across as juvenile and distracting. If that complaint makes it sound like I disliked the book, I apologize, because that's simply untrue. I read the 350+ pages in one sitting. I could not put it down. I loved the descriptions of the various monsters that populated the "Hau...