The Seventh Night of Halloween

ON THE SEVENTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN, I am posting this, the fifth panel of my horror comic, Writhing Harvest

The Sixth Night of Halloween

ON THE SIXTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN I re-watched David Cronenberg’s first proper feature film, Shivers (1975).

I love this movie.

Its incredibly efficient opening-- a serene promotional video for a self-sufficient, pseudo-luxurious apartment high-rise-- is one of the greatest stage-setting sequences ever. For the viewer who already knows Shivers is about an infestation of mind-control parasites, this opening sets up dozens of narrative traps that will each spring gruesomely over the coming hour.

After this clinical introduction, though, Cronenberg demonstrates his genius for horror filmmaking by taking the least obvious but most rewarding path forward. Rather than a clockwork progression of building chaos, as seen in other infestation movies from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Gremlins, Shivers lurches messily and unpredictably in fits and starts, from a baffling murder-suicide to cinema verité scenes of uneasy placidity to an eruption of intestinal slugs and back to incongruous domestic bliss. This leaves the viewer in the dark, with a more naturalistic worms-eye perspective, so that there is never a full picture of the current status of the parasites’ takeover or the greater ramifications of their biology. And this anxious state of ignorance about a blossoming pandemic delivers a more potent and paralyzing psychological horror than what can be achieved by the rational birds-eye view of other infestation movies.

Of course, Cronenberg’s most (im)famous innovation on the mind-control parasite involves his version's explicit exploitation of the human libido: it turns its hosts into sex-crazed maniacs who spread its offspring through compulsory public orgies.

The Fifth Night of Halloween

ON THE FIFTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN, I am posting this, the fourth panel of my horror comic, Writhing Harvest

The Fourth Night of Halloween

ON THE FOURTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN I watched The Brain Eaters (1957), a janky B-movie about mind-hijacking (and weirdly fuzzy) slugs invading a little town. Befitting its title, The Brain Eaters has a bombastic and clumsy style with frequent comedic moments that would be skillful if they were intentional. This and the way it resolves all of its mysteries immediately upon posing them, while leaving many questions it hasn’t thought to ask eternally hanging, make it an entertaining watch, at least. The most notable thing about it is that Robert Heinlein successfully sued the filmmakers for plagiarizing the plot of his 1951 novel The Puppet Masters, which is the most seminal early exploration of the mind-control parasites trope. All of the flashes of creepy paranoia the film manages to achieve, by revealing ostensibly trustworthy characters to in fact have had throbbing neck slugs steering them, are lifted straight from Heinlein’s novel.

The Third Night of Halloween

ON THE THIRD NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN, I am posting this, the third panel of my horror comic, Writhing Harvest 

The Second Night of Halloween

ON THE SECOND NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN, I am posting this, the second panel of my horror comic, Writhing Harvest

The First Night of Halloween

ON THE FIRST NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN, I am posting this, the first panel of my horror comic, Writhing Harvest