"Wet Dog Perfume" in Tales To Terrify, Volume 1

A few months back, "Wet Dog Perfume" was performed in a podcast for Tales to Terrify. Today, it appears in print once again in Tales to Terrify, Volume 1. You can read a great introduction to both the podcast and the book here.

If you need a little more convincing, check out the table of contents:

"Jumbo Portions" by Christopher Fowler

"Wet Dog Perfume" by Michael Penkas (hey, that's me)

"Seen Through Flame" by Gary McMahon

"Just Around the Corner" by Alexei Collier

"In A Country Churchyard" by Bev Vincent

"God of the Razor" by Joe R. Lansdale

"Bread and Circuses" by Felicity Dowker

"Chair" by Martin Mundt

"Grandmother’s Road Trip" by Cat Rambo

"In The Dust" by Tim Lebbon

"The Last Few Days in a Life of Frost" by Joe Pulver

"Green Apples, Red Nails" by John Everson

"Just a Suggestion" by John Shirley

"Working for the God of the Love of Money" by Kaaron Warren

"Rat Time in the Hall of Pain" by Lawrence Santoro

"The Short Go: A Future in Eight Seconds" by Lisa L. Hannett

"The Goosle" by Margo Lanagan

"Lost and Found" by Mark Morris

"An Eye for an Eye" by Nancy Kilpatrick

"All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Piggy Class" by Nicole Cushing

"Big Rock Candy Mountain" by Weston Ochse

"Bluebeard" by Angela Slatter

"The Tree is My Hat" by Gene Wolfe

You can order it in hardcover, paperback or a variety of e-book formats.

"What Everybody Sees" in Queer Fish, Volume 2

Pink Narcissus Press has just released the second volume in their gay fiction series, Queer Fish. My contribution, "What Everybody Sees," focuses on a gay man in his sixties, contemplating lost love and the changing face of gay culture. It's about missed opportunities and how sometimes we hide secrets from ourselves better than we can hide them from anyone else. Fair warning, it's mostly guys talking to eachother in a coffee shop and there's nothing near as steamy in it as the PG-13 cover would suggest.

You can order a copy directly from Pink Narcissus or from Amazon. Either way, it's $14.95. If you like it, check out some of the other books in the publisher's catalog and go to their Facebook page. And, as always, let me know what you think.

FEWDIO Horror: Road Rage

And we wrap up October with “Road Rage”, a film that’s not very scary, but still close to my heart after years of maneuvering through the traffic labyrinths of Chicago. A woman vents her rage at all the passing motorists around her until one of them decides to take it personally. It’s basically “Duel” condensed to nine minutes with a clever trick ending. One of those films where everything goes wrong at the worst possible time.

Despite the rage this woman expresses to passing motorists, we get enough information to see that she’s basically a good person who can’t handle stress well. That said, she makes a pretty stupid move near the film’s end.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

Marvel Feature 2 review on Black Gate

You can check out the latest in my Red Sonja review series here. As always, let me know what you think.

FEWDIO Horror: Neighbors

The weird part about this one is that I’ve grown so accustomed to the roles being reversed that I suspected the real killer before I even realized I was supposed to be misdirected. This one’s more funny than scary.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Firsts

A young woman is considering losing her virginity while being harassed by an overbearing aunt. The ending isn’t terribly surprising, as this is basically the generic slasher movie formula condensed down to five minutes.

The aunt was a bit one-dimensional and the niece only developed a bit more than her. The final line is a nice play on words; but you’ve probably heard it elsewhere.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Next

Ah, Chatroulette … a website that’s tailor-made to be a horror movie plot device. A lonely guy is running through the usual cast of bored Internet surfers until he comes across someone creepy. He doesn’t like what comes next.

After the trend towards more character-driven pieces, this one feels like a bit of a step backward. There’s nothing too surprising in it; but it’s less than two minutes long, so it’s not like it has time to drag either. Nice creepy guy make-up.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: O.C.D.

Once again, Fewdio produces a film with more character development in six minutes than many feature length films put into ninety. A couple meets on the Internet and it’s not until they meet face to face that it’s revealed one them has obsessive compulsive disorder. Like “The Feed”, this could have been a quirky little romance, but it went the horror route instead.

A woman has a number of strange compulsions and her date tries to convince her that nothing bad will happen if she stops doing them. Guess what? This is another film where the fairly predictable ending is saved by genuinely endearing characters.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Baby Sounds

Here’s a rare one where the background information is essential to making the story work. A woman is trying to become pregnant and having no luck. She spends the evening researching fertility clinics when she hears a baby crying. She follows the sound to find something unexpected.

Without the first minute spent setting up this woman’s desire to have a baby, all we would have is someone investigating a strange noise. By establishing this desire, we can understand the hope that accompanies her curiosity. She’s not just the person who happens to hear the sound. It calls to her for a reason. In fact, it’s the deep character work that saves what would otherwise be a mediocre ending.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: A Helping Hand

A young woman calls her boyfriend to complain about her invalid mother. I’m not one who demands total veracity in my ghost stories. Fine, it’s horror and sometimes people do stupid things in horror movies. But as you watch this one, ask yourself, Would you say this sort of thing if you knew it was being recorded?

Otherwise, nice character work. We learn quite a lot about the young woman from her dialogue and her delivery. But the scare at the end didn’t really have any sort of irony to it and I was really hoping for more of a “punishment fitting the crime” resolution.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Five Minutes Earlier

This one is subtly brilliant at two and half minutes. A woman wakes up at 3:15 to a knock at her door. She investigates. Not a word is spoken.

What’s brilliant is that the film opens with loud screaming hints of what’s happened to this woman. We know her life is about to become hell. The rest of the film takes place as a flashback five minutes earlier. The rest of the film can be quiet because we know what’s coming. And because the rest of the film is quiet, we don’t get that jolt release at the end, just a mounting tension that doesn’t dissipate as the credits roll. One of the best Fewdio films I’ve seen so far and a prime example of how limiting the time frame can be a strength.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

Marvel Feature 1 review on Black Gate

My overview on the origin of Red Sonja, that ran for the last three weeks on Black Gate, leads to issue-by-issue reviews of her comic appearances. The review of her appearance in Marvel Feature 1 is now posted on Black Gate. It's a slight issue that yields a slight review, but I'm having a lot of fun going through this series. As always, let me know what you think.

FEWDIO Horror: The Prey

Horror has a strong tradition of the hunter becoming the hunted. It’s to the point where a “twist” ending would be if the roles AREN’T reversed by the story’s end. So when “The Prey” begins with three gangsters planning to rob a handicapped man, it’s fairly obvious where this is going.

At six minutes, we get enough information about the gangsters to tell that one is a wannabe and two have done this sort of thing before. There is a nice little touch at the end with the pawn shop, but all things considered, this is one of the weaker entries in the series. Strong characters, but a weak plot.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Shadow Puppet

Another funny one at ninety seconds. A man decides to amuse his dog with some shadow puppets. The dog is more scared than amused and his owner discovers the reason just a few seconds too late.

Just to re-assure anyone watching, nothing happens to the dog. It’s funny how people are about horror movies and dogs. Any terrible thing can happen to the human cast, but if the dog doesn’t make it to the end, the audience is in tears and writing angry letters to the studio.

Not many horror movies can end with a banjo tune, but this one pulls it off.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: The Feed

This could have been a love story. This could have been a surreal love story. This could have been a supernatural love story. This could have been some quirky romantic love story. A man’s television is receiving the security camera feed from the lobby of an unknown apartment building. He spends his free time alternately looking for the building and watching the mysterious woman who is forever waiting in the lobby.

Had this been handled differently, the man in this film would have been nothing but a creepy stalker; but there is something innocent about watching a mysterious video feed that he has no control over. He’s curious about the video first, then the woman. I knew better than to expect a happy ending from Fewdio, but the story was rendered well enough that I would have forgiven a happy ending this one time.

The ending we get is a bit of a surprise, although it’s pretty clear something bad is going to happen when he finally finds the lobby he’s been watching. And while I generally like how these films don’t bog us down in exposition, this time the ending seems to really come from left field. You won’t expect this ending simply because nothing leading up to it suggests what’s going to happen.

So, strong characters, compelling storyline, but an unsatisfying ending.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Conviction

What makes us believe in an afterlife? Is it knowledge? Faith? Or desperation? This five-minute film explores the idea just a little with an atheist explaining her viewpoint of oblivion as reward.

Unlike some of the earlier Fewdio works, the dialogue is meant to be more than filler here. It really does outline some of H.P. Lovecraft’s own ideas about religion and the afterlife. Of course, Lovecraft also had some ideas about the things that lurked in those philosophic realms.

Stay tuned through the credits for this one, as one final ironic piece of dialogue answers the question for one character.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: The Collector

This one’s a bit more graphic than your average Fewdio video as it follows an evening in the life of a serial rapist. As with most of these stories, things are not as they first appear and the collection is something far stranger (and larger) than what you at first expect.

I wasn’t surprised by the general ending, but the specifics of the “collection” was a welcome surprise. As usual, we don’t get bogged down in a lot of boring explanations. The film gives us just enough information to follow the story and nothing more.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Ninja Clown Monster

Clowns are creepy. Dolls are creepy. A clown doll that moves whenever you aren’t looking at it is going to be creepy. This one is a minute long and doesn’t waste time with dialogue or background. The post-credit scene is either creepy or silly, depending on your feelings about clowns.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Marie

One of the longest of the Fewdio videos, but it doesn’t drag at all. A hit man is left with a mystery about his latest victim. The mystery insists on being solved.

The set up of this video is straightforward enough that I had no trouble believing that a hit man would investigate his victim’s dying word. It also left me guessing right up to when I saw Marie, at which point it was kind of obvious where the story was heading. The finale was predictable, but the build-up was well-paced.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

In Defense of Red Sonja, Part III

I've posted the final part of my three-part overview on the origin of Red Sonja on Black Gate. As always, let me know what you think.

FEWDIO Horror: Dinner Date

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m usually not a big fan of erotic horror. Nothing prudish. I just find most of it to be poorly-produced rape fantasy. But occasionally, someone presents a story about how horrifying our intimate fantasies can become.

This one’s based (very loosely) on a true story about a couple that meets on the Internet and agree to consummate their unorthodox fantasy. It’s a nice slow reveal where the dialogue suggests one thing, while the visuals reveal something far different. The reveal is appropriately graphic, while the final image is chillingly subtle.

You can check it out on Youtube . And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Curse

Basically, five minutes of dialogue followed by one minute of suspense. A man with a briefcase hires a contract killer for an unusual assignment. The target and the payment leave us with more questions than answers. I found the religious background to be unnecessary and, even at six and a half minutes, this one could probably have been trimmed in half. If he’d started with naming the target and had a briefer dialogue, this could have been a much tighter film.

Best detail was the unique handcuff on the briefcase.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: The Tale of Haunted Mike

This one makes up for yesterday’s disappointing “Scare!” More than makes up for it. A wonderfully rare blend of humor and horror (which is a much more difficult trick than you’d think). How can I not love a character named “Haunted Mike”? The story involves our title character running an online auction site specializing in “haunted” items. Of course, it’s quickly revealed that Mike just makes up all the spooky histories of his mundane collection. A jaded profiteer who makes his living by exploiting believers in the supernatural … we all know how those guys end up in horror movies.

The real McCoy haunted item is just perfect, the sort of thing that would creep most people out even if there was no grisly back-story. Of course, the question at the end of the film is whether something is playing off Mike’s lies or he in fact has some subconscious psychic gift that he discounts as merely imagination. The last scene is great simply because the jump-scare we expect is exactly the opposite of the one we get.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: SCARE!

They can’t all be gems. After almost two weeks, I ran across the first disappointing film in the Fewdio series. Two pranksters watch a joke backfire with horribly bloody results. This one feels like the intro scene to a feature film with a gimmick killer. The “real life” part of the premise is an interesting start, but it seems like no one really knew where to go with it beyond killer scarecrow. Hopefully, tomorrow’s short makes up for it.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: The Cellar

It’s kind of interesting to see one of these films put together with multiple scenes. The plot develops with two guys investigating a man living in a cellar, followed by their discovery of his true identity, followed by their fleeing the scene. I’ve often wondered why more characters don’t just run when the weird stuff starts and this one provides a believable motive for fleeing, as well as a believable motive for exploring the house further.

The make-up effects in this one are top-notch, but so far the Fewdio films have impressed with their ability to tell stories without showing very much of the scary stuff. Here, the blatant shock scenes aren’t frightening so much as interesting to look at. This one feels more like a mainstream film than the ones preceding it and might not be to your taste. That said, the last line of dialogue is wonderfully creepy.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Vargel Geroth, Monster from Hell

After the last two character-driven films exploring guilt and madness, Fewdio manages to surprise us with something that’s actually funny. We’re tipped off during the title credits when the book of incantations is none other than the Necronomicon ex Mortis (from the Evil Dead films). A wonderful ninety second piece. The eponymous Monster from Hell puts in a wonderful performance, despite having no lines and a mask that obscures all facial expression (it’s all in the body posture).

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Cleansed

This one is set some time after a brutal murder has been committed and the police investigation is finished. We follow the activities of a crime scene clean-up specialist whose job is to remove the grisly traces of the crime from the home. Obviously, some traces are easier to remove than others.

Cleansed is over ten minutes long, a rarity for Fewdio. Does it drag? Not really. The film is mostly silent, letting the condition of the house tell the story. We can figure out what’s happened from a wall of photographs and which two rooms are covered in blood. Even the cleaner’s dialogue in the beginning, which at first comes off as needless character exploration, provides a vital clue to what is happening. My favorite detail in this one is the dead woman’s ankles.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

In Defense of Red Sonja, Part II

I've posted the second part of my three-part overview on the origin of Red Sonja at Black Gate. I got some nice responses to the first part. Check out the second part and let me know what you think.

FEWDIO Horror: Smoke

So far, this is my favorite of the Fewdio films. A wordless tribute to Edgar Allen Poe’s classic, “The Telltale Heart.” In four and a half minutes, you know everything you need to know about this nameless man, what he’s done and how he feels about it. You can see his dilemma and understand why he takes the actions that he takes. One of my favorite details is the collection of photographs pasted on his bathroom wall.

It’s a wonderful example of how a brutal story doesn’t have to be graphic. A bit of visual poetry that I imagine Poe himself would appreciate.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Mockingbird

And we snap back to the tight-format filmmaking. In ninety seconds, you know everyone in the story and what’s happening. There’s a plot twist, a creepy line of dialogue and then black out to credits. We know what happens without having to see gory effects and we don’t need to know why it happened for it to horrify us. Nicely done.

This was actually the first Fewdio film I saw, following a link posted by one of my friends on Facebook. You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Breach

I’m not sure why this one is subtitled, “Wes Craven Exclusive Terror Short!” There’s nothing in the credits to indicate that he had anything to do with the making of this film.

A home security system keeps indicating that there is a breach, but the home’s occupant can’t see any intruder. He goes outside to explore. Eventually, there’s a jump-scare and the film ends.

Honestly, this one feels like a step backwards as the filmmaker takes twice as long to build suspense as was needed just three or four films ago. After five minutes of build-up, the pay-off is actually more laughable than shocking. Not much of a Wes Craven tribute; but a pretty good use of the suspense tactics used in John Carpenter’s Halloween. The acting and directing are solid, but this one needed more of a script to justify the time.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Door 17

Honestly, I’m usually not a fan of erotic horror. Most of it is just rape fantasy. Maybe it’s a monster committing the rape. Maybe it’s a rape-and-revenge. Maybe it’s nothing but last year’s news with the names changed.

While Door 17 easily fits the category of erotic horror, the easy scare of depicting a sexual assault is avoided. A man visits a peep show and begins to negotiate with the performer about how much he gets to see. Since it’s a Fewdio film, he obviously gets far more than he paid for.

The finale was a nice twist ending with only one reservation. Personally, I would have found the video more disturbing if the supernatural element had been removed. It is, unfortunately, completely believable that people would do this sort of thing to one another and enjoy it.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Anniversary

Inevitably, as the films go on, they start to get longer. The characters aren’t quite so generic. The shock-scare or twist ending isn’t enough for the creators. They’ve learned the basic riffs of horror and want to tell more complex stories.

To be sure, six minutes is still a brief time to establish characters, background and escalation; but “Anniversary” is still twice as long as the longest episode to precede it. Arguably, some of the first minute or two (where our heroine is getting ready for her anniversary date) might have been trimmed; but there’s still that slow build. You can tell that something horrible is going to happen; but your first two guesses are likely going to be wrong. It’s a surprise ending that reveals character. And the image of her walking towards the tree at the four-minute mark conveyed character just in the way her back was bent and her feet were clomping on the ground.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: The Laundromat

Honestly, if you watch this one first, you probably wouldn’t even get it. The Fewdio videos don’t actually have a continuity. It’s not like characters from one video appear in another. But there is a sort of mood that gets set from watching a string of them in a row.

And that’s why "Laundromat" works better if you’ve watched the earlier episodes before it. The suspense from these episodes comes partially from the fact that we know we’re watching a horror film, so we expect bad things to happen. This one has one of those surprise (not jump-scare, but one-eighty turn) endings that peek through from time to time. The look on Tom Proctor’s face in the final shot is just perfect.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Viral

This one actually has a bit more plot than the earlier ones; but it’s still sparse enough that it doesn’t get in the way of scaring you. Really, one after the next, the Fewdio videos are just great object lessons in how to present just enough plot to get the story moving without bogging us down in background trivia.

There’s a photograph of a killer called Albert the Carnivore. How many people did he kill? What did he say at his trial? What city did he live in? What are the names of the two men talking about him? It doesn’t matter. You get all the information you need to follow along. As with a lot of the Fewdio films, the title gives a clue to what’s going on.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

In Defense of Red Sonja, Part I

I've posted the first of a three-part overview on the origin of Red Sonja on Black Gate. Check it out and let me know what you think.

FEWDIO Horror: Bedfellows

Another quiet piece with a jolt-scare ending. Normally, I like the monsters to stay concealed, showing only enough of themselves to let you know that they’re there. But the face in this one is so primal that the story would actually be weaker if you didn’t see it. In fact, it’s the face that Drew Daywalt and Fewdio would use as a de facto logo in much of their marketing.

One of the things that makes these short films work better than many feature-length horror films is that their brevity prevents a lot of boring exposition. We don’t waste thirty minutes “getting to know the protagonists” before the good stuff starts. We also don’t listen to corny explanation tying the monster to Native American legend or pop psychology gobbledygook. These are the lousy ninety minute horror movies with the lousy eighty-eight minutes taken out, leaving only that first visceral scene the writer had in his head before he ruined it by putting a dull narrative around it.

You can check it out on Youtube. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.

FEWDIO Horror: Creep

So after posting a brief review of The Easter Bunny is Eating My Candy a little over a month back, I began going through the rest of the Fewdio film catalog. Frankly, there’s enough content to post a review every day for a month … so that’s what I’ll do. I’ll be celebrating Halloween this year by posting a quick review of one of their nightmare videos every day this month. Many of the videos are only two or three minutes long, so it might actually take you less time to just watch them then to read my explanation of why you should watch them.

With all that said, Creep is a nice introduction to the series. It’s all shadows and quiet conversation. The empty passenger seat and lights from passing cars are tricks that Val Lewton would have used in his films. And at two minutes, it gives just enough slow-burn suspense to make the pay-off worth it, without dragging on for too long.

You can check it out on Youtube or Fewdio. And if you want to support the people who make these films, consider picking up the DVD collection, Nightmare House.