Interesting Links December 16, 2014

Just some things that Red Molly found for me, that I’d like to share with you.

The first, 100 Overlooked/Underappreciated Horror Movie Gems, is the most interesting of all, at least to me.  Some of them look a bit too brutal for me (I’m more of a “fun creature feature” type of horror fan, rather than a “test your endurance of sheer darkness” type), but others have definitely gone on my watch list.  Of course, there are some that I’ve already seen.  With that in mind, I can wholeheartedly recommend Ginger Snaps, From Beyond, Trick ‘r Treat, In The Mouth of Madness, Braindead (known in the US as Dead Alive), The Faculty, and the original The Town That Dreaded Sundown.  I have some reservations about recommending The Burning and The Prowler, but they both have have Tom Savini, some boobs, and some decent kills.  What more can you ask of a slasher flick?

While I was tooling around on the same site, I found something that could easily have been the next Real Life Chiller:

Cursed Films: The Exorcist

Read it, and you will believe that The Devil took his due from that movie.  Probably be cause they kept mixing him up with Pazuzu.

The next two are fairly self-explanatory, and simply beautiful, each in their way:

Rock Paper Classic Covers

and

These Cthulhu LEGO Sets Will Drive You Insane With Little Plastic Bricks

Okay, so I have a fairly skewed idea of beautiful…

Finally, we have

31 Fairly Obscure Literary Monsters

And obscure they are.  I’ve only heard of about half of them, and actually met – that is to say, actually partaken of the fiction in which they appeared – even fewer.  I encountered the Damned Thing and the Great God Pan while digging in the roots of Lovecraft; I caught the Twilight Zone episode of “The Howling Man”, though this list leads me to believe that it strays from the source material; and the Morlocks aren’t actually all that obscure for those who’ve read any H.G. Wells at all.

That’s all of you, right?

And finally, an update!  It turns out that I do know Heather Arno after all!  Turns out she was a sophomore when I was a senior in high school.  Once she gave me her maiden name, I recognized her immediately.  This, of course, makes it personal.  Anything you can do to help them is not just a favor for a neighbor now, friends.  It’s a favor to me.

 

Help A Family From My Home Town This Holiday Season

McConnellsville is a tiny, one-stoplight hamlet about fifteen minutes down the road from where I grew up.  There were others like it – Florence, Taberg, North Bay.  We were all part of the same school district.  Children from those villages’ elementary schools (if they were big enough to have one; if not they just came to Camden) came to Camden for Middle and High School.  We were all part of the same extended community.

The point of all this is that Heather and Sydney Arno are my neighbors, even if I’ve never met them personally.  Even if I don’t know them, I know someone who knows them.  That means that when they have trouble, we all pull together for them.  That’s just how small towns work.

Sydney is seven years old, and she’s already been through Hell.  And on December 29, she’s going to have surgery to remove portions of her skull and brain tissue to relieve a condition that’s been causing her suffering since the moment she was born.  Literally.  It seems that the surgery itself is covered, but the family needs so much more.  You can read the whole story here.   Or you could just go directly here, and donate to the family’s GoFundMe campaign.

Please.  When last I checked, they were far short of their goal.  Every little bit helps, and if you can’t help with money, please do what you can to boost the signal.  Share it on Facebook, reblog this post, whatever you can do.  Remember, we’re all neighbors on the Internet.