It’s Friday…
Ahem…
I mean Frightday…
And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…
Okay…
This Frightday’s theme is…
Put…That…Damn…Book…Down!
In 1981…
A twisted little monkey named, Sam Raimi…
Burst onto the scene with a film called The Evil Dead…
And for the first time in my life…
But not even close to the last…
I uttered the warning…
“Put…That…Damn…Book…Down!”
As I shouted those five words at my television screen…
I was quite sure…
You know…
From my outsider’s perspective…
That this book…
And Professor Knowby’s little homemade audiobook…
That Ash and Scotty found in that cellar…
Were things of pure evil…
But of course…
I was safe and sound…
On my couch…
Fully aware that I was watching a horror movie…
But who knows…
Maybe if it were me…
In some rundown old shack in the forest…
And I found a strange tome within…
Maybe…
Just maybe…
I’d pick it up, too…
But hopefully…
One of you would have the good sense…
To scream at the top of your lungs…
Directly into my face…
Before I could even try to utter a word…
Put…
That…
Damn…
Book…
Down!
So, let’s take a chronological look at my favorite, scariest, and possibly even unknown to you, Evil Book Horror Movies…In the years following The Evil Dead.
Warlock (1989) – Although this film from horror heavyweight, Steve Miner didn’t reach American audiences until 1991…It was released overseas, in the summer of ’89…And you know what? That explains why actually feels more like an 80’s movie…Because…Well…It is an 80’s movie…It has the tongue-in-cheek humor…The over-the-top characters…Goofy gore…It even has what all 80’s horror movies had…Classy one-liners…Like my favorite…When Lori Singer throws this one out with a straight face…“Try saltwater, Fuck-Brain!” Anyway…The story from David Twohy (Pitch Black), is about a man, played by Julian Sands, accused of witchcraft in 17th Century Boston…But before he’s executed…Satan himself opens a portal and dumps him in the 20th Century…Once there…This temporally-displaced douche bagel focuses his attention on assembling a book called The Grand Grimoire…A tome capable of revealing to this pony-tailed prick the true name of God…A name that once spoken will unmake our very existence…Gee thanks…So…Yeah…Um…I’m gonna need you to go ahead and…Um…Put that damn book down…Yeah…That’d be great.
I, Madman (1989) – After directing one of my favorites…1987’s The Gate…Tibor Takács made this dark, atmospheric film about a young woman, played by Jenny Wright (Near Dark)…Who is obsessed with horror novels…She finds a pulpy blood-soaked piece about a maniac who disfigures his victims in an attempt to build a perfect face for himself…The film has a dreamlike quality…One that carried with it, the same after effects that Coscarelli’s cinematography did in Phantasm…This dreamy vibe really helps to blur the line between fantasy and reality…And the more she reads this bizarre work of fiction…The more non-fiction it becomes…And the more the creepy creature with a patchwork quilt for a face, played by award-winning visual effects guru, Randall William Cook steps off the pages of this dime-store gore-fest…And into our world…Here we have yet another case of…If she had only put that damn book down…Everyone’s face chunks would have been safe and sound.
The Resurrected (1991) – To say that I consider Dan O’Bannon a legend…Is the definition of an understatement…The man’s wonderful brain is responsible for hatching classic genre film scripts like…Dark Star…Alien…Invaders from Mars…Lifeforce…A chunk of Heavy Metal…Hell…He’s even collaborated with some of the greats…Starting with John Carpenter, his classmate at film school and co-creator of Dark Star…A film that made Jodorowsky want to hire him to work on Dune…Which ended up being where he met Giger who helped him bring his xenomorph in Alien to life…He went on to collaborate on two awesome sci-fi flicks with Tobe Hooper…But most importantly…He was responsible for directing the instant cult classic…Return of the Living Dead…He sat in the director’s chair only one other time…And this was it…Now despite its obscurity…This film is hailed as one the best adaptations of Lovecraft’s work…And the noir-style detective story is overflowing with mystery, magic, madness, and the macabre…Chris Sarandon was incredible in his dual role as two members of the same ancestral bloodline…And if only he had stopped reading Ol’ Uncle Joe Curwen’s diary…That’s right…If he had just put that damn book down…None of this kooky shit would be happening.
The Dark Half (1993) – I have always had a soft spot for this underrated Stephen King adaptation…It could have been the fact that one of my all time favorite horror masters, George A. Romero was sitting in the director’s chair…Or that he was finally reuniting with King, and his material, after the two created Creepshow together…Or it might have been the wicked cool premise…This story is about a famous author…Who has decided to retire his pen name, along with the pulpy writing style that has garnered him the fame…Hell he even has a mock funeral…There’s a problem…The alter-ego that he used to create these popular murder mysteries doesn’t want to stay dead…Timothy Hutton plays the nice-guy author to perfection…But his out-of-type performance as the deranged alter-ego was even more impressive…This film is one of those rare constructs that closely resembles King’s source material…Now since all the problems arose from the books that this guy wrote…I guess technically I should be saying…Put that damn typewriter down…But I think you’ll let me slide on this one.
In The Mouth of Madness (1994) – What can I say about this one, folks…It’s a John Carpenter film…That was enough for me…So…I’ll just stop there.
What? You want more?
Fine…In this Lovecraftian journey into the heart of insanity…Or as I used to call it when I was growing up there…New Hampshire…John Trent, an insurance investigator, played by Sam Neill, has travelled there…To the small, albeit imaginary town of Hobb’s End…Searching for the missing horror novelist named Sutter Cane…A man whose work has been pushing those who read it…Right through the station and onto the 5:15 Crazy Train…The film is a study in madness-inducing mindfuckery…All the way up to, and including the final scene…Which marks for me…One of those magical movie moments where you get slapped right in the face…With the business end of an axe…Sadly…My advice wouldn’t have helped poor Trent…But the madness might have been avoided…If only everybody else had just put that damn book down.
Todd and The Book of Pure Evil (Season One – 2010) – I love a good horror comedy…And in this wildly entertaining Canadian TV series…The mix of horror and comedy blend together perfectly…The series follows the exploits of metalhead, Todd…In this series…He and his friend Curtis, Jenny, the girl he crushes out on, and nerdy girl, Hannah…Have to deal with the repercussions of The Book of Pure Evil as it makes its rounds around their high school…Imagine…It’s like if Buffy the Vampire Slayer was written and directed by perpetually stoned metalheads…The episodes are gory and hilarious…Adding to the hilarity is Jason Mewes (Snootch to the motherfuckin’ bootch) as Jimmy, the school janitor…And Chris Leavins who plays the two sides of Atticus Murphy, the school guidance counselor, to perfection…One side is an uptight super-square…And the other is a member of a secret cabal of evil that has plans for the book…that is…If Atticus can ever manage to get his hands on it…So for every student that happens upon this demonic tome…Feel free to kneel down in front of your TV set…And scream at each and every one of them…PUT THAT DAMN BOOK DOWN!
Evil Dead (2013) – I find myself defending prequels, sequels and reboots more than any other type of film that I enjoy…And yes…I truly enjoy this film…It marks the directorial debut of Fede Alvarez who followed up this film with the brilliantly executed home-invasion horror Don’t Breathe…In this Raimi/Campbell approved reboot…Yeah, you heard me…Jane Levy plays Mia…A heroin addict whose brother and friends take her to a remote cabin for a little homespun rehab…The group decide to do Stupid Thing #1 when you’re in a remote cabin in the woods…They decide to explore the cellar…In addition to the wall to wall animal corpses…There is a book…Supergenius Eric begins studying the book and despite several warnings…Does Stupid Thing #2…That’s right…He begins reading the incantations penned within…That is, as you know, when all hell breaks loose…And you are not wrong…It’s sad really…Everything with this makeshift rehab would have worked fine…If that automatic drip-brained dumb-ass Eric had just put that damn book down.
A Dark Song (2016) – In this darkly twisted tale of loss, and grief…And how, at times, it can drive a human being past the outskirts of humanity…We are taken to a remote mansion in Wales where Sophia enlists the help of an occultist to attempt to reach her guardian angel with a request…The occultist, Joseph Solomon…Is played by Steve Oram who first caught my eye when he played a burgeoning serial killer in the pitch-black horror comedy Sightseers…His grounded and organic performance in this one, as a spellbook wielding taskmaster, was one of the main driving forces of the film…But as the months pass and the rituals begin to escalate…The supernatural shit-storm that this film ends up brewing…Takes the wheel away from Solomon…And then giving us a third act that feels like we’re being driven straight off a cliff…And into one of Salvador Dali’s nightmares…And you know what…As messed up as it gets…It’s only this bad because Joseph Solomon refused to put that damn book down.
Death Note (2017) – Hey…Guess what? I didn’t read the original manga that served as the source material for this Netflix original fim…I also never saw the anime series based on the manga…Or the multiple live-action incarnations that existed before this film was released…So all the hate…All the usual internet vitriol…When someone remakes something…Was completely lost on me…I actually came to this film as a fan of Adam Wingard…He directed one of my all-time favorite films…2014’s The Guest…Also the man behind the kick-ass home-invasion flick, You’re Next…Not to mention the showrunner for one of The Walking Dead creator, Robert Kirkman’s other comic creations…The cable series, Outcast…So for me…I was psyched to see one of my favorite filmmakers do his thing…And his thing in this one…Was a fast-paced, dark-as-night thriller with fantastic moments of gore…A true morality play geared for the latest generation…I mean, think about it…What would happen if an American teenager from this generation inherited a journal that allowed him or her to write down a person’s name, and the method by which they die…Yep, you guessed…It wouldn’t be pretty…And although a lot of you out there wish he never picked it up at all…Eventually we all agreed that Light should have just put that damn book down.
The Video Store Clerk 