protean depravity

Enjoy the new shorties!

It is always a very strange and a very specific pleasure to read Brian Evenson's short stories - a very own blend of latent dread, existential fears, perturbed presentation of everyday life and a good portion of chuckle humor is sure to grab and not let go until you have finished reading the last page. So, I’m more than happy to have had that pleasure again when this summer his new short story collection The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell was published. Apart from the exceptional high quality of each story, the sequencing also plays an important part in making it easy to step into the dreadful world of Glassy, which starts with a striking piece of writing that instantaneously enthralls: “Leg”. This admittedly short but remarkably absurd and intriguing piece about a sentient shapeshifter leg turning into a serial killer on a spaceship, is only the gateway to a universe of uncanny encounters, environmental urgency, body horror, folk horror but also noticeably often dystopic and eve...

Until recently, I hadn’t managed to finish Laird Hunt’s dark fairy tale In the House in the Dark of the Woods , although I always meant to and always kept on recommending it. Now that I have finally crossed that title from my TBR list and although I’m left with lots and lots of question marks in my mind, I feel really satisfied finally having accomplished it.

These are the warm up days for Halloween, guys! I have two Halloween-group reads scheduled for next month: first one is The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories , edited by Stephen Jones, from which I'll be reading one story on each day of October and second one is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski that has been sitting in my bookshelves for way too long! Until I get to finish those, you have to be content with my smaller reads here, but since I'm a little late this month with my wrap up, you will find that there are more books than usual. Hope you enjoy!

  Talking about movies - I will certainly continue doing my watch-at-home-festival thing BUT we can actually go back watching movies in theatres again! I have opened the post-corona season with Dennis Villeneuve's Dune yesterday and I can't wait to go back for the Fantasy Fimfest in October/November and The Final Girls Berlin Film Festival at the City Kino Wedding around Halloween, I'll keep you posted about the schedules and my selection.

Having finally seen The Green Knight that I longed for so much, I completed viewing pretty much all the movies in my schedule for the spring-summer season and it’s time to pick a winner… which really wasn’t easy because there were so many good ones this time!!! Just to give a little reminder, check here to see my complete lineup. There are a couple of movies that I didn’t get to watch this past season, but I’m sure I’ll catch up. Also, I watched a few movies outside of my pretend-festival and I ended up loving and here they are: In the Earth ; The Empty Man and Come True . From my initial lineup, an unholy s-trilogy stood out and made the top 3: Spiral , Son and Sator . And the indisputable winner of my Stay-At-Home Film Festival Spring-Summer is, the super original folk horror/psychological horror SATOR!!!

  My quest of reading and reviewing the complete “Rewind or Die” series for the Otherland Newsletter proceeds; a sum total of 23 retro-horror paperbacks (I recently realized that the series isn't even complete yet, so it's still counting!) inspired by 70s, 80s and 90s horror movies. Ever since I first found out about this series I am dreaming about these colorful little books with amazing cover art and extremely over the top storylines. Tongue-in-cheek, bizarro, absurd, gore-splatter, wild ride or pulpy are terms that come to mind describing this incredibly fun series that I will happily read and discuss for you guys in the near future.  

Time for new reads, enjoy! Children of Chicago by Cynthia Pelayo Children of Chicago borrows from the Grimm tale "Pied Piper" or "Der Rattenfänger von Hameln" to twist and bend into the horrific teenager killings taking place i n Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood , signed with the graffiti "Pay the Piper". Detective Lauren Medina who is in charge of the case has many demons of her own and one of them just might have to do with what happened at Humboldt Park. Following her through the investigations, slowly unfolding the mysteries of that unfortunate night, doubts will unfold if she really is the right person to treat this case. Pelayo's crime/mystery/horror mash-up should be a real treat for especially German horror readers because it doesn't only borrow its main storyline from Pied Piper, there are also tons and tons of talk about fairy tales in general, and the Grimm brothers in special, and how terrifying they actually are! Incidentally, th...

The very first review here on Protean Depravity was about Alan Baxter's tongue-in-cheek slasher/creature feature The Roo , the story of a kangaroo going amok in the Australian Outback killing people in super inventive ways - that fucken roo... In his latest, The Gulp , Baxter returns to "serious" horror; small town terror divided into five short stories set in the fictional Australian seaside town Gulpepper, or The Gulp, as everybody calls it; a place travelers should definitely stay well clear of.