#((to the firefly family; going out in a hail of bullets; and had it just been left as a duology with 'house of 1000 corpses'))

[theheadlessgroom]

@beatingheart-bride

"I hope I didn't make you uncomfortable asking, Emily," June said gently, as she pushed her dinner around her plate (a part of her could hear her father admonishing her for it, but truthfully, she was much too nervous to think about eating), adding, "I just...well, it's like you said, you don't feel like you're over a hundred years old and, well...you certainly don't come across that way."

That night that she and Wilhelm kicked Emily out of the house (a night she continued to regret), her perception of the young woman had changed, going from a sweet, soft-spoken young lady her son was smitten with, to a manipulative monster looking to sink her teeth into Randall's soft flesh, and that image stayed with her long after that night...

...but now, in the gentle light of the kitchen, looking at her now, that familiar visage of a good-natured, gentle-hearted woman returned, though more tinged with melancholy, for reasons June now understood, and was sympathetic towards. She saw not a monster, but a very lonely soul, in need of love.

"Well, uh," Wilhelm commented, similarly eating little (despite his usually strong appetite, it was, like his wife's, waning this evening) as he took a stab at humor, joking lightly, "You look pretty good for a centenarian, lass!"

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 14: Love Keeps The Monsters From Our Door] [Series Finale]

A/N: Thank you for your encouragement, enthusiasm, laughter, rants, screeches of anguish, and unapologetic thirsting for “sexy undead Italian man” Joseph Francis Mazzello. I hope you love this conclusion more than Baby Swan loves pineapple pizza. 💜

Series Summary: Potentially a better love story than Twilight?

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield. (The #1 song I associate with this fic!)

Chapter Warnings: Language.

Word Count: 7.7k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk @rhapsodyrecs​

Mercy

We have to stay in the Vladivostok palace until her transformation is complete, and I hate it.

The floors are cold and sterile and every clang of noise ricochets off them like a bullet. The earth outside is stripped bare and hibernal. There is no green to interrupt the bleakness of the sky, the cruel absence of color: no spruces or hemlocks or bigleaf maples, no evergreen forests, no verdant fields, only a grey that bleeds from the sky in sheets of hail and driving rain. This land is a stranger. So many of the faces, too, are strangers, although they try. Honora sits with me—her large dark eyes, like mirrors of mine, polished and wet with aching pity—and braids my hair. Morana invites me to bake homemade bread with her. Austin tries to make me smile. Cato visits me as much as he can, because he feels responsible; or maybe he would do it anyway, maybe lessening suffering is as instinctual to him as bloodshed is to so many of our kind. And when Cato is with me, I do feel a little better, like my story might belong to somebody else, like it’s a name I can’t quite remember, like it’s a transitory moment of déjà vu I can catch glimpses of but never touch. And yet, still, I send him away.  

I don’t want to be with Cato. It’s painful for him to be around me, I can see that. It’s painful for Rami, and for Ben, and for Joe, and for Lucy and Scarlett. It’s even painful for the Irish Wolfhounds that Cato found locked up for safekeeping in Larkin’s study; they skulk around the palace vigilantly but leave great swaths of uninterrupted space around me like open water. So I conjure up a mask of brave, hopeful acceptance and wear it everywhere I go.

Joe says very little, never leaves the girl he calls Baby Swan’s side, dabs her scorching skin with washcloths soaked in ice water and murmurs in sympathy when she screams through the unconsciousness, from beneath the ocean of fire we all know so well. He nods off sometimes, snatching minutes of sleep like fireflies in a jar, before jolting awake to make sure her heart is still beating. When Ben isn’t checking on them, he’s with Cato, helping to draw up plans for the future, reminiscing about the past with slick eyes and clinking midnight glasses of whiskey. Scarlett sprawls across the desk in what was once Larkin’s study and spends hours on the phone with Archer as she gazes up at the ceiling, telling him how to care for the farm animals and the garden, reassuring him that we’ll be home soon, whispering things to him that I try not to hear; and I know she wouldn’t want me to anyway. Lucy weeps delicate, ceaseless tears as she perches on the staircase landing and Rami entombs her in his arms, never having to ask what she needs from him. And I wander meaninglessly through the echoing, unfamiliar hallways like a moon without a planet.

I know what they all think about me, perhaps even Rami, for I keep it buried as deep as all skeletons should be: that I’m irrevocably kind, effortlessly forgiving. That I’m as incapable of bitterness as I am of aging. But they’re wrong. It’s a choice, and it always has been, ever since a late-November dusk in 1864 when madness eclipsed mercy. Every day I choose whether to surrender to the beckoning, malignant hatred that lurks in the back of my bedroom closet, in the dusty and ill-lit loft of the barn roped with cobwebs, in the twilight tree line of the western hemlocks crawling with shadows that whisper through fanged teeth. Every day I decide whether to become a monster. And it has never been harder to remember why I don’t.

My future is unimaginable. The nights are endless. I feel black, razored seeds of what I am horrified must be bitterness burrowing beneath my skin and taking root there. I am consumed by infected, fruitless questions that I can’t silence: Why Gwilym? Why Arthur? Why Eliza and Charlotte? Why is it always fire?

The first words that Gwilym ever spoke to me, as I unraveled from unconsciousness under a grove of sycamore trees with smoke still clinging to my unscarred skin, rattle around in my skull like windchimes beneath thunderous skies. His voice was colored with an accent I couldn’t place, and yet it sounded like home: You’re in a dark place right now. But you don’t have to stay there.

That might have been true once. That might have been true in the ruinous autumn of 1864. But now I can’t find my way out.

Seventy-three hours after our arrival in this barren corner of the world, Charlie Swan’s daughter  wakes up as a vampire. Her heart is perfectly still, her skin faultless, her senses sharp, her mind as impenetrable as ever; at least, that’s what Lucy says when she finds me. And Lucy tugs at my hand, wearing her first smile in days, insisting that I have to come meet the newest member of our coven, to welcome her. I don’t know how to tell Lucy that I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to love this girl, that I don’t have it in me to love anyone but ghosts. And yet—compliantly, yieldingly, expecting nothing but disappointment in the monster I have become—I follow her.

The door is already open to the Swan girl’s room; chattering, beaming vampires flood in and out like the tides. I step inside. And I see the way that Joe looks at her, the way that Ben does; and all those seeds that I had feared might be bitterness blossom into nothing but open air.

It’s Not A Fucking Wedding (A.K.A. 13.5 Months Later)

The ocean is a universe. Its arms are not ever-expanding, spiraling galaxies of suns and planets and nebulae and black holes, this is true; its belly is not a vacuum of inhospitable oblivion, its bones are not invisible strings of gravity, its language is not a silence older than starlight, older than eternity. But the ocean is a universe nonetheless, its borders tucked neatly around the seven continents, slumbering there until the next hurricane or tsunami or ice age comes conquering; and inevitably equilibrium is restored—like defibrillator paddles to a heart, like naloxone to an addict’s blood—and our two worlds can coexist side by side once again.  

The ocean’s arms are sighing waves, bubbling and brisk, grasping and retreating in the same breath. Its belly is swollen with life from immense blue whales down to swarming clouds of single-celled, sun-hungry phytoplankton. Its language is ancient whispers; not parched and blistering and brittle sounds like the desert’s but cool, serene, supple, engulfing. And I can hear them all, if I listen closely enough. I can hear the sentient whistling of orcas, the breaking of waves against rocks, the scrabbling of sand crabs beneath the earth, the gruff distant barks of sea lions, the rustling of evergreen pine needles in the breeze. And I understand now why it was always so easy for vampires to be introspective, to lapse into thoughtful, unhurried silences. I could imagine spending decades just sitting here with my knees tucked to my chest and my hair whipping in the brackish wind, watching the seasons roll by like a wheel.

Joe was coming back from the gravel parking lot. I turned to watch him: red U Chicago hoodie, messy dark auburn-ish hair, a pizza box clasped in his hands. The GrubHub delivery driver was returning to his car with the toothiest of grins.

“Buon appetito!” Joe announced, dramatically presenting me with the pizza box. It had become our post-finals tradition each semester: pizza at La Push beach, half-pepperoni, half-pineapple.

“Grazie, sexy undead Italian man. Your accent is getting so good!”

“I know, right?! I’m on a twelve-day Duolingo streak. I can’t let that little green owl dude down.”

“I’m impressed, I’ll admit it. I gotta brush up on my Welsh. Why’s the GrubHub driver so cheery?”

“I tipped him $500.”

I smiled, opening the box and lifting out a semi-warm slice of pineapple pizza. Elastic strands of mozzarella cheese stretched like rubber bands until they snapped. “Aww, really?”

Joe plopped down onto the cool, damp sand beside me. “No. I lied. We’re actually having a torrid love affair.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “How could you possibly have time for all that?” Between school, business ventures, family activities, and me, Joe was very rarely unoccupied. And he preferred it that way.

“I’m so glad you asked. I’m very speedy, if you recall. And that’s just one of the exclusive services I offer. I am a man of many talents. I make people’s wildest dreams come true. Who am I to deny the GrubHub delivery man the wonderland that is my spindly, annoying body?”  

“You are the fastest,” I said, winking.

“Oh shut up! I mean, uh, uhhh, silenzio!” He pointed his slice of pepperoni pizza at me reproachfully. “That’s not what I meant. I’m not the fastest at everything.”

“Whatever you say, mob guy.”

He lunged for me, pinned me down in the crumbling sand, both of us laughing wildly as the crusts of our pizza slices bounded off and were snatched up by diving, screeching seagulls. He growled with mock savagery, braced his hips against mine, kissed his way from the corner of my jaw to my lips. That oh-so-familiar commanding, craving ache for him came roaring to the surface; and now there was no bittersweet edge to it, no inescapable backdrop of lambent numbers ticking down from five or ten or fifteen years to zero. Now there was only the calm, unurgent promise of forever.

“Joe—!”

“You have besmirched my honor, Baby Swan. I am left with no recourse but to refresh your clearly flawed memory and prove you wrong.”

“Public indecency? That’s illegal, sir.”

“Okay, you gotta stop stealing my catchphrases. It’s extremely difficult for me to come up with new ones. I’m almost a hundred years old, you know.”

“Alright, I guess you’re not bad in bed for a basically-centenarian.”

He smiled down at me, his dark eyes alight, the wind tearing through his hair, one palm resting on my forehead, uncharacteristically quiet.

“What?” I asked, worried.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just really glad we’re a thing.”

“You better be. You’re kind of stuck with me now. You’ve stolen my virtue, you’ve made me fall in love with your entire demented family, you’ve forced your torturous immortality upon me. I’m not going anywhere. Unless you ever stop funding my pineapple pizza addiction, of course.”

Joe chuckled as he climbed off me and took my hand in his, pulling me upright. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, by the way. Your insistence on being a sort-of vegetarian. It’s embarrassing. You’re the wimpiest vampire ever. You’re a disgrace to the coven.”

“I eat animals!” I objected.

“Yeah, when you have to.” And Joe was right: I steered clear of flesh outside of the two or three times a week when I hunted. For environmental sustainability reasons, I mostly consumed deer or rabbits; although the very occasional shark was my guilty pleasure. Joe gnawed on his second slice of pizza and peered out into the overcast, dusky horizon, wiping crumbs from his stubbled chin with the back of his hand. “We only have one more of these left,” he said at last, a little sadly. “One more finals season at Calawah University. One more celebratory dinner at La Push.”

“We’ll just have to get used to a new view. Pizza by the Chicago River, maybe.”

Joe looked over at me, thoughtful again, smiling. He had received his acceptance letter to the University of Chicago three weeks ago. I got mine eight days later. “It won’t be hard for you to leave Forks?”

“It will be. Once upon a time I didn’t think that was possible, but I will miss Forks. And not just because of Charlie and Archer and Jessica and Angela and all the Lees. But it was hard to leave Phoenix, and I’m sure one day it will be hard to leave Chicago. Just because change is hard doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.”

Joe nodded introspectively. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

“Don’t quote classic rock songs at me, mixtapes boy.”

“You love my mixtapes,” he teased, circling his left arm around my waist, pulling me in closer, touching his lips to my forehead. Mint and pine and starlight sank into my lungs like an anchor through the surf. “And that saying actually goes all the way back to Seneca, my dear.”

“Don’t tell me he’s still philosophizing in some cloudy corner of the world somewhere.”

“Not to my knowledge. Although that’s an intriguing thought. We need more famous vampires. Caligula would have made for very interesting conversation. Lincoln, Napoleon, Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Dante...I guess it’s possible that anyone is still around. Maybe we should turn Meat Loaf. You know, for the good of posterity.”

“Is it not enough that they’re already cursed with student debt and global warming?”

Joe cackled, took my face in his palms, kissed each of my cheeks one after the other, then nudged my nose with his. “You ready to go, Baby Swan? I suspect we’re expected to participate in some holiday festivities tonight.”

“I’m ready,” I agreed. We threw our leftover pizza to the seagulls, disposed of the grease-spotted cardboard box, and walked back to my 1999 Honda Accord with our pulseless hands intertwined.

The evergreen trees along Routh 110 fled by beneath a sky freckling with stars. Sharp winter air poured in through the open windows. And I could feel that it was cold, in the same way that I could feel the warmth on Forks’ rare sweltering days; but there was no discomfort that accompanied that knowledge. Pain only came when the sky was unincumbered by thick clouds churning in off the Pacific, and then it felt something like staring into the sun had as a human. Sunglasses helped, but the surest remedy was avoidance, was surrender. And what an inconsequential price to pay for forever.

“Wait,” I said, spying the mailbox that marked the start of the Lees’ driveway. “They still deliver mail on Christmas Eve, right?”

“Uh, I think so, why...?” And then he remembered. “Oh, yeah, let’s check!”

I pulled up beside the mailbox and Joe leaned out, returning to his seat with a mountain of Christmas cards and business correspondence and advertisements from Costco and Sephora. He sifted through them until he found a single white envelope from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. It was addressed to a Mr. Benjamin August Hardy. Joe held it up to show me as we drove down the driveway, the Lee house coming into view and ornamented with a frankly excessive amount of multicolored string lights and inflatable reindeer.

“Oh my god!” I squealed, drumming the steering wheel.

“You want to be the one to give it to him?”

“Are you serious?! Yeah, can I?”

Joe passed the envelope to me as I parked my geriatric Honda, which Archer had pledged to keep alive as long as physically possible. In return, Ben let him and Scarlett borrow the Aston Martin Vantage no less than once a week. I dashed out of the car, up the steps of the front porch, and into the house that bubbled over with the sounds of metallic kitchen clashes and frenetic voices and Wham!’s Last Christmas.

“Ben?!” I shouted.

“Hi, honey!” Mercy called from the living room, where she and Lucy were putting the final touches on Scarlett’s gown. Scarlett was playing the part of semi-willing victim, wearing gold heels and an impatient smirk and her hair out of the way in a milkmaid braid; her train of vivid red lace billowed across the hardwood floor. From the couch, Archer and Rami were playing Mario Kart on the big-screen tv and nibbling their way through a tray of homemade gingerbread cookies.

“Oh wow,” I said, clutching the envelope to my chest, mesmerized. I kept waiting for Scarlett to start looking like a normal person to me, and it never happened. Tonight, in the glow of the flameless candles and kaleidoscopic Christmas lights and draped in lace the color of pomegranate seeds, she was Persephone: a goddess of resurrection, a face that death himself could not pass by unscathed. “You’ve outdone yourself, Lucy. Seriously.”

“One day I’m going to get you out of those thrift shop sweaters,” Lucy threatened me, placing a pin in the fabric at Scarlett’s waist.

“Yeah, okay. Let me know when that shows up in one of your visions.”

“Bitch,” Lucy flung back, snickering, knowing how improbable that was. I still appeared in her visions extremely infrequently, and then only when I happened to be standing next to whoever the premonition was actually about.

“Language, dear,” Mercy tutted, inspecting the hem of Scarlett’s gown.

Joe arrived beside me, his arms still full of mail. “ScarJo, I almost didn’t recognize you! Why do you have, like, no cleavage or fishnets or thigh slits?”

“Why do you have like no eyelashes?” Scarlett replied. “See, I can ask unnecessary and invasive questions too.”

Joe frowned, wounded. “What’s wrong with my eyelashes?”

“Lucy, darling, I think it’s just a tad uneven on this side,” Mercy said, showing her. “Maybe by half an inch...?”

“No, seriously, what’s wrong with my eyelashes?!”

Mercy replied distractedly: “Nothing, honey, you’re perfect just the way you are.”

“Mom!” Joe groaned.

“It really is gorgeous,” Mercy marveled as Lucy flitted around her to investigate the hem situation. “And so Christmasy. So perfect for the season. Scarlett, dear, you were right after all, and I’m so sorry for doubting you. I’d just never heard of a red wedding dress before.”

“Mom, it’s not a fucking wedding!” Scarlett exclaimed, for probably the thirtieth time since Thanksgiving. “It’s a nonbinding, informal celebration of an egalitarian romantic partnership. Will somebody please inform this woman that it’s not a wedding?!”

“Yes, yes, of course, whatever you want, sweetheart,” Mercy conceded dreamily.

Joe pointed to Archer. “Isn’t he supposed to not see the dress until the day of or something?”

“What a great question!” Archer replied, still deeply invested in Mario Kart. “You see, that would be the case if this was a wedding. However, I’ve been informed in no uncertain terms that it is most definitely not.”

Scarlett grinned triumphantly at Joe. “There you have it.”

She might snap petulantly, and she might complain, but Scarlett wouldn’t be doing this if she didn’t want to; we were all intimately familiar with the futility of trying to force Scarlett into anything. The not-wedding, as improbable as it seemed, had been her idea from the start. And she wasn’t doing it for herself. She wasn’t even doing it for Archer. Scarlett was doing it for her mother.

The first six months had been hell for Mercy. She didn’t resent me, as I had feared she might; Mercy made that clear, and Rami confirmed it. But she was gutted. She wouldn’t speak of Gwil, wouldn’t listen to us talk about him, locked every photograph of him away in dark drawers, wandered around with a remote, uncanny, unseeing smile until she walked straight into walls; and then she would blink inanely up at them, as if they had dropped out of the sky rather than been built by her own hands. She baked hundreds of cakes and almost never slept. She told us she was fine every time we asked, which was more or less constantly. But on the very rare occasions when she was left alone, Mercy would unfailingly end up in the field behind the Lee house, gazing out into the forest of western hemlock trees with tears snaking silently down her cheeks, the muted light of the cloud-covered setting sun flickering red and furious on her face like wildfire.

And then one afternoon, a package had arrived from Arviat, Canada, where Cato and the rest of the surviving Draghi had relocated shortly after the rebellion at Vladivostok. It was five feet tall and another three wide, and what we found after carefully peeling away all those layers of foam padding and packing tape was a portrait of Gwilym so skillfully painted that it could have been mistaken for a photograph. Mercy had stared at it for a long time—ignoring Lucy’s attempts to guide her away, deaf to any of our concerns—until she at last picked up the portrait herself and said, quite evenly: “I think we should hang it in the living room, don’t you?”

Things had been better since then—very, very gradually, and yet unmistakably—and Gwil’s portrait remained mounted above the living room couch like a watchman, his eyes sparkling and blue, his faint smile stoic and fond and omniscient. But even in the wake of Mercy’s continued improvement, none of us kids were about to risk another agonizingly despondent Christmas. So the solution was obvious. We would keep Mercy preoccupied with what thrilled her more than absolutely anything else: the pseudo-weddings of her children. Rami and Lucy had already secretly volunteered to go next year...and after that, who knew? And there was one other thing that was making Mercy’s burden a little lighter these days.

Charlie sauntered into the living room, wearing an apron covered in cartwheeling Santas and wiping white dust like snow—powdered sugar? flour? baking soda?—from his ungainly hands. He was palpably proud. “The sugar cookies are officially in the oven. And I managed to fit them all on one baking sheet, isn’t that great?! Cuts down on dishes!”

“Why, yes, I suppose it does!” Mercy said, alarm dawning in her eyes. Had my beloved father placed the globs of dough too close together? Would we end up with one hideous, giant monster-cookie? Only time would tell. Providentially, Archer and Joe could be counted on to eat just about anything.

Joe sniffed the air, his forehead crinkling. “What’s burning?”

“Nothing should be burning,” Mercy replied, almost defensive, forever protective of Charlie and all of his profound, incurably human imperfections. Sometimes I thought that she preferred him that way, that he was a link to a simpler world in the same way I had once been, that he was a puddle of memory she could drop into, that maybe he wasn’t so unlike her first husband Arthur. “Not yet, anyway. The cookies need at least ten to twelve minutes at 350.”

“Wait, 350?!” Charlie exclaimed, horrorstruck. “I thought you said 450!”

“Oh, this is tragic,” Scarlett said.  

“I can fix it!” Mercy trilled buoyantly, breezing off to the kitchen as Charlie followed after her with a fountain of apologies. She shushed them away affectionately, patting his chest with her soft plump hands, chuckling about how luckily they had fire extinguishers stowed away in almost every closet just in case. And there were other reasons for that besides Charlie’s perilous baking attempts, but he didn’t know them. Now the record player was belting out Queen’s Thank God It’s Christmas.  

Archer lost another round in Mario Kart and exhaled a great, mournful sigh. “Hey, Baby Swanpire, can you do something about this guy?” He nodded to Rami. “This is criminal. It’s nowhere near a fair fight. He knows every freaking time I’m about to toss a banana peel.”

Rami smirked guiltily up at me from the couch, not bothering to deny it.

“Do you mind?” I asked him.

“Not at all,” Rami replied. “I want to show this loser I can beat him even without the benefit of mega-cool extrasensory superpowers.”

“Rude!” Archer cried.

“So rude,” Scarlett agreed, smiling.

“Okay, here we go.” I sat down beside Rami, still holding Ben’s envelope in my right hand, and laid my left against Rami’s cheek. And I felt a fistful of numbness—like instant peace, like milk-white Novocain—pass from my skin into his, rolling into his skull, deadening whatever telepathic livewires had been ignited there in the August of 1916. The effect would last anywhere from thirty minutes to a few hours; and it worked on every vampire I’d met so far.

“Whoa, trippy,” Rami murmured. “It’s still weird, every single time.” He peered drowsily around the room. “It’s...so...quiet?! You guys really live like this? No one is constantly bombarding you with sexual fantasies or romantic pining or depressive inner monologues? How do you function?! Now I’m alone with my own thoughts, that’s actually worse!”

“Hurry up and beat him while he’s all freaked out and vulnerable,” Scarlett told Archer.

Archer laughed, picking up his Nintendo 64 controller, radiant with the promise of vengeance. “Yes ma’am.”

“Any good mail?” Lucy asked Joe.

“Yeah. Coupons and a ton of Christmas cards from random people. The vet sent us one with alpacas on it, so that’s cute. Oh, and here’s one from our favorite Canadians.”

Joe held up the card so we could all see. The picture on the front showed Cato and Honora sitting on a large velvet, forest green couch with a hulking Christmas tree illuminated in the background. The others were arranged around them: Austin, Max, Ksenia, Charity, Araminta, Akari, Morana, Phelan, Aruna, Adair, Zora, Sahel, and a few new faces I couldn’t name yet. They were all wearing matching turtleneck sweaters. And every single one of them was smiling.

Joe cleared his throat theatrically and read the text on the inside of the card:

“Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

(Oh, and Scarlett, congratulations on your not-marriage.)

- Cato Douglass Freeman”

“That bastard,” Scarlett muttered.

Rami offered me his controller. He had just slipped on a banana peel and rocketed off a cliff. “You want a turn?”

“No, thanks though. I have to talk to Ben. Is he around?”

Rami shrugged ruefully. “I would help, but my brain is temporarily broken.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes, taking a gingerbread cookie from the tray and biting into it as Lucy batted crumbs from the red lace dress, exasperated. “I think he’s out in the hot tub.”

“Cool. I shall return.”

Joe took my spot on the couch as I departed, shoveling cookies into his mouth, seizing Rami’s controller and kicking his feet up on the coffee table.

I opened the door to the back porch, and frigid December air rushed in like an uninvited guest. The field was coated with a thin layer of snow, the animals safe and warm in the barn, the garden slumbering. And in the spring and summer, when blossoms of a dozen different varieties came open beneath the drizzling grey skies, Mercy’s calla lilies didn’t bother my allergies at all. Nothing did anymore. Ben was indeed in the hot tub, puffing on his vape pen, wearing only a beanie hat and swim trunks.

“What flavor is that cartridge?” I asked as I approached. “Gummy bear?”

“Close. Strawberry doughnut.”

“Ohhhh, yum!” Ben passed me the vape pen, and I took a drag as I kicked off my boots and sat near him on the rim of the hot tub, slipping my bare feet beneath the steaming, roiling water. Then I handed his vape pen back. “So. Guess what I have for you.”

“Uh.” He glanced at the envelope. “Jury duty.”

“Better.”

“Someone I hate has jury duty.”

I flipped the envelope around so he could see the University of Chicago logo on the front.

“Oh god,” Ben moaned.

“Don’t you want to see what it says?”

“Not really,” he admitted, grimacing.

“Come on, Ben. Open it.”

“Nah.”

“Why not?!”

Ben sighed. “Look, if I open it and it’s bad news, it’s gonna make Christmas weird. Rami will know. They’ll all know. They’ll all feel bad for me and it’ll be pathetic and depressing and awkward. You can look if you want to, just don’t tell anyone else yet.”

“It’s not going to be bad news,” I said, tugging at the floppy top of his beanie hat. He swatted my hand away, but he was smiling grudgingly.

“You have positively no way of knowing that. Unless Lucy’s had a vision I’m unaware of.”

“She hasn’t. You know she never sees anything important.”

“She saw you coming,” Ben countered.

“She saw human-me and Joe in love and gobbling down pretzels at a Cubs game. So I’d say there were at least a few minor details missing.”

“There’s no way I got in,” Ben said, his green eyes slick and fearful and now fixed on the envelope. “We can’t all be geniuses like you.”

“That’s an unfair accusation. I’m far from genius. I’m just obsessed with the ocean.” I’d written my senior thesis on the feeding habits of Pacific angelsharks, and my advisor was still trying to figure out how I, an amateur scuba diver at best, had managed to get so many quality photographs with my underwater camera. The secret, of course, was superhuman agility and not needing to breathe.

“I fucking hate calculus. The MCAT wrecked me. I got a 517.”

“And their median score is a 519, so I’d say you still have a fighting chance. Plus you have like eight million volunteer hours.” Ben had spent the vast majority of the past year either in class or at the hospital. The psychiatrist-in-chief, Dr. Siegel, had been more than happy to take one of Gwil’s foster children under her wing. Every human in Forks except Archer believed that Dr. Gwilym Lee had drowned in a tragic boating accident while he and Mercy were on vacation in Southern California, and that his body had never been recovered. The town had held a wonderful remembrance ceremony and dedicated a free clinic at the hospital in his honor. “Now open it.”

“You do it,” Ben relented finally. “My hands are wet. Go ahead, open it up and tell me what it says. And then kindly euthanize me to end my immortal shame.”

“That wouldn’t work,” I pointed out, tearing open the envelope. I pulled out the tri-folded piece of paper inside, flattened it against my thighs, and read the typed black text.

“...Well?” Ben pressed, vaping frantically.

I looked up and smiled at him.

“No way,” he whispered.

“I hope you like pretzels and bear-themed baseball teams, grandpa.”

And for a second, I thought he might bolt up out of the hot tub, hooting victoriously, splashing water all over the back porch as he danced around bellowing that he’d gotten into one of the best medical schools in the world, that he would be following me and Joe to Chicago. But that wasn’t Ben. Instead, a slow smile rippled across his face: it was small, but perfectly genuine. Pure, even.

“Goddamn,” he said, watching me. Venom doesn’t just resurrect or ruin; it forms a bond that is simultaneously intangible and yet immense. It’s an evolutionary adaptation, a way to facilitate stability and the building of covens in an often violent and ruleless world. And now that he had turned me, Ben had family here in Forks in more ways than one.

“Gwil would be so proud of you, Ben.”

“I hope so. I really do.”

The back door of the house opened, and Joe stepped outside. He studied Ben for a moment, and that was all it took for him to know. “Benny!” he shouted, elated.

“I know, I know. Fortunately, I look amazing in red. Thanks, supermodel genes.”

“This is going to be so fun!” Joe said, sprinting over to wrap Ben—who was characteristically lukewarm on this whole physical displays of affection business—in a hug from just outside the hot tub. “We’re going to go furniture shopping, and eat deep-dish pizza, and find apartments right next to each other, and mail home Chicago-themed care packages, and get you hooked up with some gorgeous Italian woman...or whatever you like, I guess I shouldn’t assume. Women. Men. Gang members. Marine mammals. Jessicas. Whatever. There are options.”

Ben laughed as he playfully shoved Joe away. “Sounds like a plan, pagliaccio.”

“Oh my god, stop learning Italian without me! You realize you have to tell Mom now.”

“I will,” Ben agreed, with some trepidation. “I’ll wait until after Christmas.”

“It’ll be hard for her,” I said. “But she knows it’s what you want. She knows it’s what’s best for you. So she’ll get through it. I think it would be worse for her if you didn’t get in, if she had to see you unhappy.”

Ben nodded, exhaling strawberry-doughnut-flavored vapor, gazing up at the stars, Orion and Auriga and Lynx and Perseus reflected in his thoughtful jade eyes. “She’ll still have Rami and Lucy and Scarlett here with her. And Archer. And Charlie.”

“Especially Charlie,” Joe said, grinning.

Mercy would have to leave Forks eventually, of course. The Lees had already been here for nearly four years; they could stay another ten, perhaps fifteen at the absolute maximum. And there had been a time when ten or fifteen years seemed like quite a while to me, but now it felt like I could doze off one afternoon and wake up on the other side of it, like swimming a lap in the sun-drenched public pool back in Phoenix. We would find a new home somewhere after Joe and I finished our PhDs, after Ben finished medical school, maybe Vancouver or Buffalo or Amsterdam or Edinburgh or Dublin or Reykjavik. Wherever we went, I hoped it wouldn’t be far from the sea. But Mercy couldn’t bear to leave Forks yet. It was the last home she had shared with Gwil, the last house they would ever build together, and leaving it would make his loss all the more irrevocable. She would be ready to leave someday, but not today.

In the meantime, there would still be visits for breaks and holidays. Scarlett and Archer had the shop to keep them busy, a brand new eight-car garage that held a virtual monopoly on both the Forks and Quileute communities. Lucy had opened a bohemian-style clothing boutique downtown, which confounded most of the locals but attracted more adventurous customers from as far away as Seattle. Rami was interning for a local immigration lawyer and entertaining the possibility of applying to U Chicago’s law school in another few years. And Mercy had the farm; and she had Charlie. He had asked her for cooking lessons to try to help rouse her a few months after Gwil’s death, and it had grown from there. If it wasn’t romantic just yet, I believed it would be soon. And there were moments when I thought my father might have figured something out, when his eyes narrowed and lingered on me just a little too long, when his brow knitted into suspicious, searching lines, when the hairs rose on the back of his neck and some innate insight whispered that we weren’t like him and never could be again. But then he would chuckle, shake his head, and say: “You’ve gotten weird, my gorgeous, brilliant progeny. But Forks looks pretty good on you.”

“Can I talk to you upstairs?” Joe asked me suddenly; and did I see restless nerves flicker in his dark eyes? I thought I did.

“Sure,” I replied, climbing down from the hot tub. “Ben, are you coming inside? My dad is trying to bake Christmas cookies and failing miserably. It’s pretty hilarious. Not that you should be the one to critique other people’s kitchen-related accidents.”

“I do enjoy your company a lot more now that I don’t want to murder you and slurp you down like a Chick-fil-A milkshake,” Ben said. “Yeah, give me a few minutes and I’ll be there.” And as Joe and I headed into the house, I saw Ben pick up the acceptance letter that I’d left on the rim of the hot tub and read it for himself with incredulous eyes, grappling with the irrefutable fact that it was his name on the opening line, that he had somewhere along the way become the sort of man who dedicated his immortality to saving lives rather than ending them.

In the living room, Scarlett was back in her yoga pants and absolutely brutalizing Archer in Mario Kart. Rami and Lucy were entwined together on the loveseat, murmuring, giggling, feeding each other pieces of gingerbread cookies. In the kitchen, Charlie was leading Mercy in a clumsy waltz to Meat Loaf’s I’d Do Anything For Love, and each time he fumbled his steps or mortifyingly trod on her feet she would cry out in a peal of laughter brighter than the sun she had learned to live without. Joe spirited me up the staircase, into his bedroom—which, honestly, was more like our bedroom now, in the same way that my room in Charlie’s house had become Joe’s as well—and closed the door.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “Your dad totally ruined our song. Now I can’t hear it without thinking about some moustached guy in plaid trying to seduce my mom.”

“It’s the best Christmas gift I could ever ask for. Meat Loaf is vanquished. Oh, just so you’re aware, Renee and Paul are getting an Airbnb and coming up for New Years.”

“Cool. Do they still think I have a super embarrassing sunlight allergy and will break into hives and asphyxiate and that’s why we can’t visit them in Florida?”

“Yup.”

“Spectacular. Also, can you please tell me what’s wrong with my eyelashes?”

“They’re just a little sparse, amore. But I still like you.”

“Well, I am only moderately attractive, you know.” Then Joe steeled himself, taking a deep breath. Uh oh. He was definitely nervous. I still couldn’t believe I had the power to make him that way, but here we were. “So I get that we’re doing presents with the whole family tomorrow morning, and you do have some under the tree, so don’t worry about that. But there’s one I wanted to give to you alone. You know. With just us. Without an audience. Or whatever.”

“...Okay...?” A secret gift? A naughty gift? “I hope it’s a new vibrator.”

“Shut up,” Joe begged, laughing. “Here.” He reached into the drawer of his nightstand—our nightstand—and produced a small blue box topped with a turquoise bow. It wasn’t a ring, I was sure of that; I didn’t feel especially attached to the idea of marriage, and neither did Joe to my knowledge. How could rings or papers seal commitment when you already had eternity? I was right: the mysterious present was not a ring. When I removed the lid and emptied the box into my palm, what appeared there was a small plastic airplane.

“What is this?” I asked, amused but puzzled.

“Are you not college educated? It’s a plane.”

“Well, yeah, I can see that. But it’s also like two inches long.” I scrutinized the plane. “Are you magically transforming me into a tiny, tiny, little plastic person? Is that my gift? Because I actually got you something good.” And I really did: there was a collection of vintage Chicago Cubs photographs from the 1910s and 20s downstairs under the Christmas tree, packaged in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer wrapping paper.

“We’re going on a trip,” Joe said, grinning. “The day after Christmas. It’s just a short trip, nothing huge, don’t get too excited, we’re not going to Mt. Everest or Antarctica or anything. I think you’ll still like it. But I don’t want you to know where we’re going until we’re there.”

“How will that work? Considering the tickets and signage and pilot announcements and obnoxiously noisy other passengers and all.”

“ScarJo’s going to fly us.”

“Really?!” We were taking the jet. We almost never used the jet. “What’s in it for Scarlett?”

“She found out that Archer’s never had In-N-Out Burger before and is very much looking forward to initiating him into the cult of deliciousness.”

“Oh nice. I could go for a vanilla milkshake myself, now that Ben mentioned them.”  

“Obviously I’m gonna buy you all the milkshakes and animal-style fries you want. Bankrupt me, bitch. But we have to get one other thing taken care of first.”

“So it’s somewhere they have In-N-Out Burger...” I pondered aloud. California? Texas? Las Vegas? I felt a brief but unambiguous pang of homesickness for Phoenix. But there was nothing there for me anymore.

“Stop,” Joe pleaded. “I’m sorry. I’ve already said too much. Please forget that. Get a traumatic brain injury or oxygen deprivation or something.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m rather indestructible at the moment.”

He smiled wistfully. “I wouldn’t want you to be any other way.”

There was laughter downstairs in the living room. I could detect the aroma of a fresh batch of sugar cookies baking in the kitchen, mingling with the cold night air and pine trees and peppermint candy canes. I loved Christmas. The entire world smelled like Joe. The U Chicago décor, classic rock posters, and Italian flag were now interspersed with National Geographic pages and photos of the two of us together. The Official Whatever You Want Pass hung in a small, square picture frame on the wall above Joe’s bed. Our bed.

“How real is it, Joe?” I asked quietly. I climbed onto my tiptoes, linking my hands around the back of his neck with the tiny plane still tucked between my fingers. “Seriously. The wishes thing.”

“The world may never know. Akari never met me as a human, so she wouldn’t be able to say. But if I had to place a bet...” He shrugged, grinning craftily. “Kinda real. Kinda not real. Just like vampires, I guess.”

“I am alarmingly glad that you’re real, mob guy,” I said, abruptly somber. “I never thought I’d meet someone who saw me as remarkable, who could make me see myself that way. And it’s miraculous. And it’s terrifying too, honestly. Being a thing with you. Falling for someone you could have for centuries and lose in a second.”

“It’s the scariest thing there is,” Joe concurred, taking my hand to lead me back downstairs.

Joseph

Scarlett looks like a goddess, and she knows it. But she’s not one of those magnanimous, fragile, harp-plucking, pastel-colored goddesses. She’s ferocity and wildness and crimson like blood, and that’s exactly why Archer loves her. And as they stand in front of the Christmas tree with their hands clasped together—ivory on bronze, snow on sun—with matching sprigs of holly in Scarlett’s hair and pinned to the jacket of Archer’s suit, reciting truths but no promises, I can’t help but watch the other faces in the room: Rami, Lucy, Ben, Charlie, Mom with her beaming smile and shining eyes, the woman I met sixteen months ago and now can’t fathom life without. And it occurs to me for the first time that love, in its cleanest form, isn’t something that changes people as much as it allows them to become who they truly are.

On the evening of December 26th, as soon as the sun dips beneath the western horizon, we board the jet in the Forks Airport hangar. It’s much easier for Scarlett to fly at night; otherwise she has to wear two or three pairs of sunglasses on top of each other, and even then it’s still painful, it still feels like blinding needles burrowing into the jelly of her retinas. That’s not a wrench in my plans or anything. It needs to be night where we’re going, too.

Vampire hyper-acuity notwithstanding, FAA regulations require Scarlett to have a copilot, so Archer joins her in the flight deck with his newly-minted license and spends most of the journey flipping through the latest issue of Motor Trend. As we begin our descent, he peeks back at us and teases: “It’ll be your turn eventually, guys. Scarlett and I did our time. Rami and Lucy can go next year. And after that...unless Ben happens to find someone worthy of a not-wedding...” He wiggles his black eyebrows.

“Bring it on,” I reply casually. “Fake wedding are my jam. It’ll be ocean themed. Or Roaring ‘20s themed. And we’ll all do the Cha-Cha Slide in the living room and shame Ben as a bonding activity.”

“Mercy can set up a mashed potatoes bar,” Baby Swan adds.

“Yeah. With pineapple.”

“No. Not on potatoes.”

“Yes on potatoes.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Too late,” I tell her, touching my lips to the knuckles of her cool, steady hand.

We touch down at a small noncommercial airport just outside the city, and Scarlett and Archer stay back to secure the plane as Baby Swan follows me outside. And she realizes where we are as soon as the wind hits her, as soon as her eyes soak up the sand and cacti and cloudless night sky like rain swallowed up by parched earth.

“Phoenix,” she whispers, smiling like a child.

“But wait, there’s more!” I announce in my best Billy Mays voice. I take the little glass bottle from my pocket, walk across the runway to the naked desert, crouch down when I find a suitable spot, and fill the bottle with dry, sandy earth that crumbles in my palms. Then I seal the bottle with a tiny cork and bring it back to give it to her.

“I know what it’s like to have to leave home,” I say. “You’ve had to say goodbye to Phoenix, and soon you’ll have to say goodbye to Forks, and next will be Chicago, on and on forever. You’ll always be leaving the places you learn to call home. Every five or ten or fifteen years, we start over again. Like a snake shedding its skin, like a hermit crab swapping shells. Like the water that travels from rain to seawater to mist and then back again. But now you can always have a little piece of home with you, and maybe that will make it easier.”

She takes the glass bottle and shakes her head in disbelief, in wonder. Because this is exactly what she wanted, what she needed, even if she didn’t know it yet. “Joe...how did you...?”

“What’d I tell ya? I’m a talented guy. Now you have to dance with me.”

She laughs. “Oh no. Hard pass. I don’t dance.”

“When we’re alone in my bedroom you do. So just pretend we’re alone now. In, like, a really really spacious, sandy bedroom. With probably some lizards.”

“Fine. But only because I’m willing to degrade myself for milkshakes.”

She slides the glass bottle of Arizona earth into her pocket and takes my hands. She’s still a pretty terrible dancer, honestly. She hasn’t lost that. And I love that about her. I love damn near everything about her. And it took me a long time to figure out what exactly her subtle yet peerless cocktail of fragrance is, because it wasn’t somewhere I’d ever been. The scent that drifts from her pores—the scent that now lives in my bedsheets like a shadow or a ghost—is sunlight and heat and clarity and resilience and wisdom older than the pyramids. Her scent is the desert.

Now she’s mischievous, her eyes gleaming with the reflections of the Milky Way and the full moon and the stars that are dead and yet eternal, just like us. “So what, you think you’re Vampire Boyfriend Of The Year material now or what? Some dirt and In-N-Out Burger? That’s the height of your game? Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my perpetual existence? I totally should have pursued that polyamorous triad with Scarlett and Archer when I had the chance—”

“Yeah,” I say, very softly, smiling, tilting up her chin to kiss her beneath the universe and all its eccentricities. “I love you too.”

[ashleylikeshorror]

3 from Hell | Review

“Hello, America. Did you miss me?”

When I first heard that Rob Zombie was getting the gang back together for a third chapter in the Firefly family’s journey, some pretty bittersweet emotions were experienced. It wasn’t just myself that felt a confusing mixture of “but, why?” and “FUCK YES.” It seemed as though a lot of Firefly following online didn’t think this needed to happen, but welcomed it anyway with an anticipation so unsure you could feel the tension a mile away. 

The day of its release, 3 from Hell answered all of our questions we didn’t have about Otis, Baby, and Spaulding until its conception. Was the answer we needed satisfying? Was the film as good as we were hoping to be? Were the Firefly family truly back again to cause just as much havoc as we’ve seen them cause before? 

This review could potentially be my shortest yet, as one could easily sum this movie up with two words: “womp womp.” How unfortunate 3 from Hell didn’t live up to expectations; especially when the expectations across the net weren’t that high to begin with. I’ll go ahead and get my few compliments for it out of the way, and then we’ll sit here and drown in the negativity, because I’m dead serious when I say this one was a stinker. 

1.) Otis is more palatable, less over-the-top. (This could also be a negative)  2.) Richard Brake knocked it out of the park as Wolfman. Literally the only saving grace of the movie.  3.) Stellar soundtrack typical of Zombie’s films  

There. Now that those two bits are out of the way, let’s dig in. 

If you look at the description above that I screenshot from just a simple “3 from Hell” Google search, you can see that the description states “Crazed killers Baby Firefly, Captain Spaulding and Otis Driftwood unleash blood mayhem after escaping from prison.”  That’s two-thirds of the way correct. Due to his health, it was understandable that Sid Haig couldn’t be a big part of the Firefly reunion. In the film, Captain Spaulding is understandably sentenced to death, and while we thought he was killed in the car scene from Rejects, this was an OK way for him to go as well, imo. So, no, Google, Spaulding doesn’t escape from prison. 

One of the immediate questions that sparked for everyone as soon as 3 from Hell was announced was: “they’re not dead?” The last time we saw the three, they were headed full speed ahead into a hail of bullets, not backing down from a fight, and as a result - being pumped full of lead. Shockingly, they survived. I have so many unorganized thoughts on this alone that when I go to speak on it, all that comes out is a deep, clearly audible sigh. Before 3 From Hell, the Fireflys had the death they deserved, and one that fans were happy with even. Now they’re suddenly alive? It doesn’t make sense, but there wouldn’t be a 3 from Hell if it didn’t happen that way, I guess. 

We don’t see too much of Otis in prison, but we do see quite a bit of Baby in prison, and she isn’t doing so good. She’s got a number of violations, not applicable for parole, and what’s left of her sanity is swirling down the drain as we see her firsthand experiencing hallucinations while in segregation. Moon’s acting is what you’d expect, but this time around it doesn’t feel like Baby is... Baby. Yeah, we’re obviously looking right at Baby Firefly on screen, but something is off. It’s not because she’s behind bars, but it’s because her character’s portrayal is so forced to the point I just don’t care anymore. I get it, you’re mentally unstable, but unfortunately now, you’re just not interesting or half as compelling as you were once before.  

Otis on the other hand, a character that shouldn’t under any circumstances be allowed to see the light of day, nor have his cunning taken for granted, has (you guessed it!) his cunning taken for granted (SHOCKER) as he’s given a chance to see the light of day and uses this to his advantage to escape - all of which is caught on camera. Predictable, right? Why would any prison think that a murderer and psychopath to the extent of which Otis Driftwood is, is safe to be taken out from behind prison walls? Fuck whatever good behavior he might, or might not have displayed while inside the prison. Why would ANYONE with at least one functioning brain cell think that taking this man out of the prison anywhere is a good idea? Rant aside, this scene gives us a brief shot of Danny Trejo before he takes a laughably shoddy, beyond rotten CGI effect of a bullet to the head. With the help of his half-brother (portrayed by Richard Brake) we’ve never heard of til now, Otis makes his escape. Where does he go? Straight to the Warden’s house to work on getting Baby freed. 

I hated the scenes at the Warden’s house. Despite the fantastic performance of everyone involved, these scenes just felt empty. The terror was visible as those held hostage are being hurt with no remorse by one of America’s most wanted, but other than the purpose of getting Baby back into the world, these scenes seemingly had no point. We already know what Otis is capable of, and Wolfman being a relative of Otis and Baby, we get that he’s liable to be one bad mother fucker himself. That being said, why did these scenes have to drag on so fucking long? It would have been much more appropriate, and less of a bore, to show Otis going in the home, and coming out with a body trail behind him. Our imagination alone of what could’ve happened would have been more entertaining than what was shown. 

With Baby now out of prison, Otis makes the comment to his brother that prison did a lot of damage to Baby as what was left of her sanity is beyond fucked now. Baby, not too long after Otis’ sentiment being expressed, suggests going to Mexico as there’s no one looking for them there. The one individual who’s probably the most not sound of mind, that they didn’t even want to let go to the soda machine alone, comes up with the idea that can potentially secure their freedom. Seems a little out of place, but whatever. 

Once in Mexico, surprise, surprise, trouble follows. A place they’d stated no one was looking for them had people that were - you guessed it - looking for them.  Remember when Trejo was killed? His son, the leader of The Black Satans, wants vengeance for Otis having killed his father. Aquarius is tipped off where the three are staying and sends The Black Satans over to handle the job. This would have more than likely ended how Aquarius was hoping if Baby’s plot armor didn’t kick in by noticing the Satans pointing at her window, giving her a chance to notify her brothers resulting in a head start at surviving the situation. 

The Black Satans come in and kill pretty much anyone that stands between them and who they’re after. After a bunch of innocents die, Baby and Coltrane (Wolfman) are taken hostage themselves while Aquarius offers Otis a chance at saving them via a one on one machete fight, not with Aquarius, but Creep, a very large member of The Black Satans. Otis abides and while we’re sitting here wondering what the fuck is going on, why the Firefly group is fucking going up against a gang, a cartel, whatever the fucking Satans are, plot armor kicks in again to save the day as a friend Baby has made cuts her and her half-brother free. Shit goes down and the movie ends not too long after with the three of them free to do as they please.  

Even Richard Brake’s stellar performance wasn’t enough to save this Zombie film, just as it wasn’t enough to save 31, leaving him as one of the few highlights of the film. I’m not sure if I had more questions before seeing it or afterwards. They get out of prison that easily? Why are we just now hearing about Coltrane even though he’s apparently a notorious murder himself? How is Baby going to be batshit insane behind bars noticeable enough to where her brother - the nut job he is - makes a comment about it, then the second and third act come and she’s seemingly sound of mind? Why the fuck are we expected to believe that three killers, one of which is completely mentally insane to the point of creating her own reality behind bars, is able to defeat an entire fucking gang in what seems to be less than an hour? This film went off the rails in a way it truly didn’t have to. It is understood the Firefly family can get up to some crazy shit. It’s well known they’re dangerous individuals that you do not under any circumstances want to fuck with. It’s like Rob Zombie decided to construct a cash grab with some of his well known characters, yet had nowhere to go with it, so he decided to write the script as a failed ode to badassery.  

All in all, this film had all the elements you’d expect from a Firefly movie and followed the same formula (if you will) as its two predecessors before it. There was blood (oh, lord, was there blood), plenty of violence, shitty acting on Moon’s part, tension, and plenty of memorable lines. We’re introduced to the gang again, shown how vicious they are, how insane they are, how ruthless, smart, and evil they are. We got what we knew we were going to get, but this time around it fell flat. Why? Because it was unneeded. The Firefly gang should have been left for dead at the end of Rejects. That Freebird backed ending was was the ending they needed. That was the ending the viewers needed. Instead, what we got was them miraculously surviving a hail of gunfire only to escape from prison and have loads of plot armor they didn’t really need. 

Now having seen it, my only course of action for this movie is to just pretend it doesn’t exist. Rob, I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed. Really, really disappointed. 

3 out of 10. 

[moonlightmadnessreviews]

Rob Zombie’s 3 From Hell, or The Fear of Spoiling a Good Thing

It’s high noon and we watch as the sun shines down harshly on a dusty blue Cadillac. The camera flys over the long hood, the topless car giving us a good view inside the car. We look down on a bloody, dirt covered family as Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd begins to play over shots of home videos, the family appearing happy and worry free. The scene pulls at your heart string as we see the car drive down the road towards a police blockade. You root for them as they load up shot guns and six shooters, and your heart breaks as you see them riddled with bullets. The movie ends, the room is black, and when the lights come on you remember this family was responsible for the death of multiple people in a hotel room and they’d been hunted for most of the movie by a sheriff driven mad after they murdered his brother!

This is the climax of Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, released on this date in 2005. It is a ripe cherry atop the “Tutti Fuckin’ Fruity” masterpiece Zombie helmed as the follow-up to his first full length film, House of 1,000 Corpses (2003). When it was announced there would be a follow up this year, I didn’t understand where the story of the Firefly Family could even go from here. I felt the ending I’d watched time and time again, the one I’d discussed with friends countless times, one I’ve praised and screamed about to anyone who’d listen was going to be torn apart. In some ways, 3 From Hell will ruin that ending and rather than greeting their return with fanfare, I’ve been driving myself mad trying to deal with the sudden and shocking retcon to the end of the Firefly Family. But would Zombie allow this installment to slap fans of the original films in the face?

We’ve seen this happen time and time again: A studio or film maker goes into a movie for the wrong reasons and what they serve up the fans is not only disappointing but a complete mess of half finished ideas, studio interference and often times it’s even insulting. The most recent examples I can think of are The Cloverfield Padadox and Jeepers Creepers 3. I was excited for the former, following the recurring ARG for a few weeks before it’s Netflix release (the original ARG and movie hold a special place in my spooky little heart) and, though I’ve come to appreciate it as much as I can for what it is, it was a disappointment for most of the fandom. The latter was shrouded in controversy, much of it stemming from director Victor Salva’s disgusting past, and was a sorry excuse for an installment. The movie stomped along directionless, wedging itself in an awkward spot in the timeline, and answering NONE of the questions it promised to address.

As a series thus far, the story of the Firefly Family couldn’t be more different from one installment to another. Much like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, one film is a flashy neon light show with characters who buzz just as bright, and the other is a dusty Western of sorts, dark and unforgiving yet beautifully shot. Sid Haig, Sheri Moon Zombie and Bill Moseley will return as Captain Spaulding, Baby and Otis Firefly respectively. The movie seems to answer the question of their resurrection by saying “Well, we never actually saw them die.” It’s the simplest of retcons, and helps to give them an air of supernatural force, one that was somewhat hinted at in House of 1,000 Corpses by their involvement with Dr. Satan. A jailbreak plays out and it looks like we’ll be following Spaulding, Baby and Otis as they get help from fans and other “family members”, much in the way Ken Foree (as Charlie Altamont) played a part in their ill fated escape in The Devil’s Rejects.

Since 3 From Hell was announced, I’ve been nervous to get my hopes up at all. I’ll admit, the first time I watched House of 1,000 Corpses, it flew clear over my head. I knew I loved how wacky it was, but it was like looking through a kaleidoscope of gore and characters who were larger than life. With a few more watches, and more appreciation for the grind-house type films Zombie was paying tribute to, it became a favorite of mine. The Devil’s Rejects floored me in the way it made such a shift in style, yet managed to retain its brutality. Zombie pulled his characters out of the funhouse and into the light and somehow managed to make them even more terrifying. How could he possibly improve upon what is already such an iconic series?

Much of my fear comes from my feelings towards Rob Zombie’s last outing, 31. I felt the film lacked much of what made his previous efforts click for me. The outlandish characters, brash dialogue and violence was all there, but with the exception of Doom-Head (Richard Brake), there was really nothing that made me want to rewatch it. It almost felt like the film was trying too hard to be a Rob Zombie film. In fact, I’d jokingly commented to my wife that maybe I’d outgrown Rob Zombie’s style of film making. This along with my aversion to what this new movie means for the end of the story painted in The Devil’s Rejects has made it a somewhat sour lead up.

At the end of he day, the only way I was able to calm my nerves was by reminding myself who I was talking about. This is Rob Fuckin’ Zombie! The man has garnered both praise and ridicule for his films (Halloween vs H2) and he’s faced them both with the same punk, Could Care Less attitude. This is not a director that a studio can dig their claws into in hopes of making a film THEY want to see. Zombie is going to make the film he wants to make, he’s is going to be unapologetic in his sincerity and the film will be completely genuine to who he is as a film maker. The Firefly Family are classic characters from the mind of a madman and I’m confident that his passion for them will result in one of his best films to date. 3 From Hell hits theaters September 16th through the 18th, and I cant wait to stare down this next installment with the same bravado as the Firefly Family had when driving headfirst into a hail of gunfire!

[daledoesdrafts-blog]

Tim Drake’s Timeline (WIP)

I’ve been going through Batman and Robin comics trying to figure out how Bruce and Tim’s timelines fit into each other. The easiest way to do that is to list the Batman/Robin comics in chronological order, with a brief explanation of why they’re significant.

1. Batman: Year One - The start of Bruce’s career as Batman. 2.  Batman: Zero Year/Dark City/Savage City - Batman takes on the Red Hood gang (which presumably results in the creation of Joker) and meets the Riddler for the first time. 3. Batman: The Man Who Laughs - Batman encounters Joker for the first time. 4. Batman: Haunted Knight - A good introduction to Scarecrow and Mad Hatter as characters. 5. Batman: The Long Halloween - Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face. 6. Batman: Dark Victory - Dick Grayson becomes Robin. Tim Drake is in the circus audience when Dick’s parents are murdered by mobsters. 7. Robin: Year One - Dick Grayson takes on Killer Moth, Two-Face, Firefly, and others. 8. Batgirl: Year One - Barbara Gordon becomes Batgirl after proving herself to Batman. 9. Batman: Tales of the Demon - Introduces Ra’s al Ghul as a character. 10. Batman: Son of the Demon - Damian Wayne is conceived. 11. Nightwing: Year One - Bruce fire Dick as Robin, and Dick becomes Nightwing. (Somewhere in here Jason Todd becomes the second Robin.) 12. Batman: The Killing Joke - Barbara Gordon is shot through the spine by Joker. She’s paralyzed from the waist down, but still helps Batman as the computer hacker, Oracle. 13. Batman: A Death in the Family - Joker kills Jason Todd. 14. Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth - Joker takes over Arkham Asylum. The story shows Batman during the dark phase of his career where he’s mourning Jason’s death. 15. Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying - Tim Drake becomes the third Robin. 16. Robin: Reborn - Tim travels overseas to be trained by Lady Shiva, and takes on one of Batman’s old enemies, King Snake. The encounter teaches him how to fight without the use of his eyes. 17. Robin: Triumphant - Tim strikes up an alliance with Huntress to fight King Snake again. While Batman is away overseas, Tim manages to defeat Joker single-handed. 18. Batman: Knightfall - After breaking many of Batman’s villains out of Arkham Asylum, Bane watches as each fight wears Bruce down before finally breaking his back. Bruce appoints Jean Paul Valley (aka Azrael) as Batman. Jean Paul doesn’t believe he needs a Robin, and ostracizes Tim. 19. Robin: Solo - Tim takes on the villains Jean Paul can’t be bothered with, forming an alliance with Stephanie Brown (aka Spoiler). Together, they take down Stephanie’s father, the Cluemaster. 20. Robin: Turning Point - Tim and Dick team up to fight the villains Jean Paul ignores. 21. Batman: Knightquest - Jean Paul brings down more of Batman’s villains, becoming more violent and eventually killing Abattoir. Bruce returns to Gotham to take back the mantle of the Bat. 22. Batman: Knightsend - Bruce defeats Jean Paul. While he trains to regain the strength he had as Batman, he appoints Dick as Batman. Tim and Dick fight Two-Face, giving Dick the chance to confront a mistake he made while facing the villain as Robin. Bruce returns when he’s prepared to be Batman again. 23. Batman by Doug Moench and Kelley Jones - takes place directly after Knightsend and shows Bruce struggling with his identity as Batman. 24. Robin: War of the Dragons - an Asian gang war breaks out in Gotham, resulting in Bruce and Tim fighting King Snake again. Bruce scolds Tim for putting too much trust in Huntress. 25. Batman: Contagion - a deadly strain of the Ebola virus hits Gotham and Batman, Nightwing, Robin, Huntress, a reformed Azrael, and Catwoman team up to stop it. 26. Batman: Legacy - another strain of the virus emerges, this one controlled by Ra’s al Ghul. 27. Batman: Cataclysm - already damaged by the virus, Gotham is further crippled by a deadly earthquake. 28. Batman: No Man’s Land -  Gotham becomes a lawless wasteland that is divided into territories held by its most powerful figures. Cassandra Cain appears as Batgirl. 29. Robin: Unmasked! - After finding his costume, Tim Drake’s father requests that he retire as Robin. Stephanie Brown becomes the fourth Robin, but is later fired by Batman after she disobeys one of his orders. A romance develops between Tim and Stephanie. 30. Batman: War Games - Stephanie Brown returns to her career as Spoiler. Tim Drake breaks his promise to his father and becomes Robin again. Stephanie is “killed.” 31. Robin/Batgirl: Fresh Blood - Tim Drake trains Cassandra Cain to be the second Batgirl. 32. Batman: Hush - Batman goes up against Hush, aka Thomas Elliot, once a friend of the Wayne family. 33. Batman: Under the Hood - Jason Todd returns as Red Hood after being resurrected by Ra’s al Ghul. 34. Identity Crisis - Tim Drake’s father is killed by Captain Boomerang. 35. Robin: To Kill a Bird - Tim moves to Bludhaven while mourning the deaths of Stephanie and his father. 36. Infinite Crisis - Tim’s friend, Superboy, dies. Tim changes his costume from red and green to red and black to honor his friend’s memory. 37. Robin: Wanted - Bruce adopts Tim as his son. Tim is framed for Cassandra Cain’s murder and has to find a way to clear his name. Later, it’s revealed that Cassandra snapped after discovering that she had a sister that her father loved while he abused Cassandra. This lead her to join the League of Assassins in the attempt to murder her father. Tim is hurt by her betrayal after they formed such a strong friendship. Tim is also forced into a temporary alliance with Captain Boomerang Jr., the son of his father’s killer, in order to find and disable a nuclear bomb hidden by Joker. A wannabe superhero, Dodge, begins interfering with Tim’s crime fighting, insisting that Robin needs a sidekick. 38. Robin: Teenage Wasteland - It’s revealed that Dodge has the ability to teleport via a special belt, but when the belt is damaged by a stray bullet, Dodge falls into a coma. Later, his body goes missing after he absorbs the belt’s teleportation powers. He vows he’ll get revenge on Robin, who he blames for his condition, and sells deadly metahuman drugs to Cassandra Cain. 39. Robin: The Big Leagues - After assembling a gang of metahumans, Dodge takes over a hospital, demanding the police hand Robin over to him. There’s a disagreement among the gang, however, as to whether or not Robin should be killed or just “taught a lesson.” Dodge ends up taking down the rest of the gang before fading into nothingness, and Robin hails him as “the real hero.” After a series of murders, Tim finds himself becoming increasingly moody and violent as Robin, and realizes that it’s the anniversary of his father’s death. He swears that he’ll no longer use his father’s death as an excuse for violence. 40. Batman: The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul - Ra’s al Ghul’s disciples attempt to restore him by transferring his mind into a new body--Damian Wayne’s.  41. Robin: Violent Tendencies - Stephanie Brown returns as Spoiler and helps Tim take down a vigilante known as Violet. 42. Batman: R.I.P. -  43. Final Crisis - Bruce Wayne “dies.” 44. Robin: Search for a Hero -  45. Batman: Battle for the Cowl - Dick Grayson becomes Batman and “fires” Tim as Robin. Damian Wayne takes Tim’s place as the fifth Robin. Stephanie Brown becomes Batgirl, and Tim becomes Red Robin. 46. Grant Morrison’s Batman and Robin series -  47. Red Robin: The Grail - Convinced that Bruce is still alive, Tim launches a quest to acquire solid evidence that he’s right. In order to gain that evidence, however, he’ll have to work alongside the agents of Ra’s al Ghul. During his search, Tim discovers a cave in which an ancient Bat-symbol is painted on the wall. 48. Red Robin: Collision - Continues Tim’s search for evidence that Bruce is still alive. After a betrayal by Ra’s, Tim vows to take down the entire League of Assassins from within. 49. Batman: The Black Mirror - Dick Grayson’s solo adventures as Batman, where he goes up against Joker, Great White Shark, and Barbara Gordon’s sociopathic step-brother, James Gordon, Jr. 50. Red Robin: The Hit List -  51. Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne -  52. Red Robin: 7 Days of Death -  (Somewhere in between here Red Robin is presumed dead. Tim Drake effectively retires from crime fighting, allowing everyone--including the Bat Family--to believe he’s dead.) 53. Future's End - When a supercomputer from the future known as Brother Eye threatens the present day, Terry McGinnis (aka Batman Beyond) is sent back in time to kill its designer. However, Brother Eye uses the bodies of Joker and Bruce Wayne to create a cyborg that kills Terry before he can complete his task. Because Tim Drake is touching the Batsuit at the time, he’s temporally displaced into Terry’s future, where he becomes the new Batman Beyond. 54. Batman Beyond: Brave New Worlds - Tim goes up against the cyborg versions of Earth’s greatest heroes and teams up with an older Barbara Gordon to take down Brother Eye. 55. Batman Beyond: City of Yesterday - Still stranded in the future, Tim follows Terry’s brother Matt to the ruins of Metropolis after they discover the last Green Lantern power ring. With it, Matt hopes to resurrect Earth’s fallen heroes. 56. Batman Beyond: Wired for Death - One of Terry’s old nemeses, Rewire, shows up in Neo-Gotham. The problem is, the original Rewire is dead. As they uncover this new Rewire’s identity, secrets about Bruce Wayne’s past are revealed. Eventually, it’s revealed that after Brother Eye was defeated, Terry McGinnis showed up in Neo-Gotham alive, but confused as to his identity. This made him easy prey for Spellbinder, who brainwashed Terry into believing he was Rewire. After defeating Spellbinder and reversing the brainwashing, Tim’s temporal displacement ends, leaving the reader to speculate as to whether he was returned to a timeline in which Brother Eye no longer exists, or if he simply faded into nothingness. (Note: the current run of Batman comics depicts a future Tim Drake as having become Batman, but eventually turning to guns and killing criminals as a vigilante known as Savior. It’s made pretty clear, however, that this is an alternate universe Tim Drake and not the same one described above.)

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Halloween 2021 - Day 14 - 3 From Hell (2019)

HE CALLS THEM HIS FIREFLIES, MAGGLE!

Much like tying up the duology of the 28... series on Day 2, today we round out Rob Zombie’s ‘Firefly’ trilogy dealing the homicidal family of the same name. First we had House of 1000 Corpses, then Devil’s Rejects and now we have 3 From Hell. Or should that be 2 From Hell...2.5? We’ll get onto that.

House I covered many moons ago in 2014 and Rejects I watched the following year but after I had fallen off making actual blog posts about the movies. Which is a shame as I could have talked about DDP being that one. Both, as I’m coming to understand with Rob Zombie movies, were filled with gross shit, excessive violence and weird imagery. Namely that merman thing that ended up happening to Rainn Wilsons character in House of 1000 Corpses.  But quite why it needed a sequel is a little beyond me. I guess it did fairly well for itself financially but the ending resulted in the remaining Firefly family members facing their final showdown with the police as they raced towards a police checkpoint guns glazing, only to be taken down with a hail of bullets to the sounds of Free Bird.

Or, so we think, as the opening of 3 takes the form of some sort of news cast telling the story of their miraculous survival before facing trail for their crimes. I like how the names of the movies crop up in the backstory, the House of 1000 being the name given to their initial killing spree and the Devils Rejects being referred to as a cult name.

This newspiece really sets the tone for this strange level of sympathy levelled towards the family throughout the whole movie. All these talking heads from the general public who see Captain Spaulding as this anti authoritarian voice and Baby as a sex symbol. Otis too, I guess in that weird way that women will write love letters to these serial killers in prison. Rounding off with some rousing cries of ‘Free the three!’.

I guess it’s always been there in the series, like the double turn you get towards the end of Rejects where the Sheriff is torturing the Firefly family and hunting down Baby like The Most Dangerous Game. Still, it’s just kinda weird to see the movie try to elicit this reaction in relation to a bunch of rapists and murderers.

So, about the title, I know Sid Haig who played Captain Spaulding died around this time and that obviously impacted filming as he’s written off fairly quickly as having received the death penalty. It doesn’t seem to have been the result of any terminal illness but his gaunt appearance certainly comes across that way. It’s a shame as he’s always a strong part of these movies, there’s something amusing about how curt he is with people. I guess he’s kinda deceptive being the clown and all, like people would never approach Otis as he looks shifty as all hell and Baby has the sex appeal thing going so it’s usually a bunch of guys being tricked into following her because they think they’ll get laid but with the clown makeup, I guess people find him more approachable which he really isn’t.

There’s a Firefly half-brother who is drafted in though to make it a trio again but yeah, it’s not really the same. He helps spring Otis from a work release outing which results in the death of Danny Trejo’s character who has returned from Rejects, and this leads into the big plot point in the final act of the movie when his son comes looking for revenge. This is becoming a bit of a chain here, the Sheriff hired Trejo and DDP to help catch the Fireflies so he could have his revenge, then Otis kills Trejo for his revenge, then Trejo’s son wants to kill them for his revenge. An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind.

Also, what kind of TV news just shows a man being executed on live TV?

But that still leaves the small matter of Baby who is locked in her prison, often in solitary unless she’s been let out by a guard who promptly shoves in a cell with two other crazed inmates looking for blood. You see what I mean about the sympathy angle? You kinda want to root for the person on the bad end of a handicap match. Still, how is Otis going to get her out?

By taking the warden’s wife hostage of course, along with another one of the higher ups in the prison who helped deny Baby her parole. Of all the great mysteries in cinema and all the debates that take place, I feel like this one should be a big one:

What were those two couples planning on doing that night when they invited the clown over. That seems like a weird thing to do for anything other than a kids party so...was it a sex thing? What kind of weird orgy is this between two couples and a clown?

So the warden has to sneak Baby out of prison by dressing her in a guards uniform and bringing her back to the others. Where she promptly helps slaughter everyone held captive. Which, I get that the guy is just wanting to help his wife and friends but, how can you possibly trust this bunch of maniacs? You know exactly what they’re capable of. Either just bail on everyone or, at worst, call in a fucking S.W.A.T team. Did you really think you were just going to walk out of there alive? Or that you’d be able to sneak attack them during their family reunion?

It does give us the delightful scene of Baby chasing one of the wives down the street and knifing her to death in front of some old lady who’s just chilling in her yard and gives his rather meek wave back to Baby.

So the Firefly family make their way across the border where they seek to hide from the long arm of the American law whilst taking in some of the local customs. Only, they’re sold down the river by one of the locals who alerts the aforementioned son of Danny Trejo’s character.

He has this whole Lucha inspired hit squad all decked out in white suits and masks. Pretty sweet looking, it’s like something out of Saints Row 3. Oddly enough, the music playing as they make their way into town is ‘In a gadda da vida’. That’s really weird how that comes up again for the second time in as many days. Is this going to be the new It’s a Wonderful Life?

3 From Hell feels like a fairly mediocre way for the series to sign off. Maybe they already had too much invested to pull out once they realised how sick Haig was but, just looking at him, was it not already obvious from the start? Plus, it feels like if you’re going to bring the series back after 10 years, you should have some grand idea in mind that you want to see play out but there’s really anything extravagant going on. There’s not much of the weird imagery in play outside of that implied stuff with the clown or a woman having her face cut off but we’ve seen that before. Doesn’t seem to have been worthwhile resurrecting the franchise from either a critical or financial point of view, the movie apparently running at a loss, and you undid that cool ending from Rejects. Going by the ‘good guy’ undertones surrounding the Firefly family, maybe Zombie just couldn’t stand the idea that these guys were dead and wanted to take the opportunity to have them ride off into the sunset rather than a Bonnie and Clyde style shootout like last time.

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Heroes and Thieves, Ch. 3

Title: Heroes and Thieves Fandom/Universe: BTAS, pre/post-RotJ flashback

Summary: A story about second chances, healing, and having hope.

Rating: PG-13, for references to character death, child psychological torture and trauma.

Genre: Romance/Family/Friendship/Hurt/Comfort

Word Count: 3,853 Previous Chapters: 1, 2

Also on ff.net and AO3.

One, two boys by the river Down by the water tellin' riddles in the dark With fireflies under the moonlight Carvin' the insides of a tree with a knife You ever hear the one about the boy's big sister His best friend come along He tried to kiss her

-The Wallflowers, "The Difference"

Now.

Dick rolled over in bed as his cell’s ringtone blared loudly, glaring and groping for the obscene noisemaker. Checking the time, he squinted blearily as he noted the Caller ID, unsurprised by the label listed.  Though he briefly considered the option of ignoring, he was conditioned to respond to every evening page as if it were an emergency (and, considering the extending party’s “extenuating circumstances”, it could very well be something important; he’d never forgive himself for not being there a second time when his younger sibling needed him).  In fact he was rather used to being awoken at odd hours by now – or sometimes the other way around – even if he’d also since ceased his other “nighttime activity”.  …Still, old habits tend to die hard.

He flipped open the phone and greeted groggily, speech slurred somewhat.

“Hey, bro.  Whassup?”

His hearing was immediately hailed by a jumble of words, tumbling from the receiver like a drunken tirade (which, in his heavily inebriated state, didn’t help the matter of his own increasing headache).

“Whoa, whoa, slow down. What’s this about you and Steph?”

A curved shape stirred under the comforter next to him, wrapping naked appendages around his shoulders. He could feel an ample pair of voluptuous volumes pressing against his back, alcohol and cherry-scented lips nibbling sensually against the scruff of his neck.  Feminine fingertips concurrently tracing contours of collagen craters over hardened hide – gradually fading but forever permanent – circular scars pockmarking his skin.  Within. Teasing broad blades and spine (where a bullet remained lodged, buried evidence of a decisive battle that felt so long ago – but still stung like yesterday).  A cloying query purred, sickeningly saccharine:

“Who ya talking to?”

“Hold on,” Dick murmured into the speaker as he gripped the hand spider-crawling light across his chest, slowly snaking down to his waist.  Gently but firmly, he pushed the owner off, sliding to a stiff sit on the edge of the mattress.  Balancing the phone in a semi-awkward position (which most people who weren’t as flexible would probably find pretty difficult to maintain, even if his own elasticity was halved compared to before), he hurriedly pulled on his pants and rose, staggering to the door.

“Sorry babe, I gotta take this.”

“Mm, hurry back, hot stuff~”

Swaying slightly, he lumbered out into the hall and down the stairs from the loft, making sure to put a secure measure between himself and the bedroom.  (Though navigating around the familiar furniture and gym equipment was a fairly easy task, he had to be extra careful descending the last step, as even without the spirits in his system, he was still getting used to the whole “reduced depth perception” thing.)  Once he was sure he was out of eavesdropper’s range, he resumed the call.

“Back.  Sorry ‘bout that.”

“Were you… with someone just now?”

“Maybe.”

“I wasn’t interrupting anything, was I?”

“S’fine.”

“Sounded like a girl.”

“Jus’ some lady I met at a bar last night.  …Come to think of it, I don’t think I got her name.”

He could virtually hear the shaking head on the other end, more than mildly exasperated.

“Unbelievable.”

“Hey, last I checked, having a healthy sex life isn’t a crime.”

“And you’re totally not overcompensating for a lack of the latter in your life.”

“Look, are we gonna talk about my issues with women or yours?”

“…”

More soberly, he asked:

“Do you need me to go over there?”

“No.”

“Then talk to me, Tim.  What happened.”

The silence was stark as opposed to the initial outpouring.  Dick lowered his tone, softening to a hush.  Tentatively, he prompted again via the one clear bit of info he had caught from the earlier conversation before it was cut off.

“You said she’s the Spoiler.”

Just to be safe, he cupped his palm to contain the whisper.  Again, old habit.

“I… confronted her about it.  Tried to get her to stop.  And I- I ended up telling her.  About us.”

“How much?”

“Enough.”

“Tim.”

“Look, I just mentioned the fact that I used to be… you know.  I didn’t say anything about ‘that’.  …I couldn’t.”

“And?  Then what?”

“She kept asking about it…  About why I quit.  I couldn’t tell her the whole truth.  I mean, how could I?  There’s just no way.”

Dick sighed, scraping a hand through his hair.  He could understand where the kid was coming from, sure, but based on personal experience, taking the easy way out had never worked out well in terms of keeping long-term commitments before (at least any of his actual attempts at them).  …Especially when it came to withholding secrets from each other.

“Listen, Tim, if you’re really serious about this girl, then you’re gonna have to make some compromises. Take it from someone who knows, honesty is key to being in a relationship.”

“…Says the guy who takes advantage of his disability by using it as a way to get laid.”

“Hey, what can I say, chicks dig the patch.”  Dick shrugged, eyeballing his half-masked appearance in the window’s reflection.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“I prefer to think of myself as an ‘equal-opportunist’.  …Anyway, like I said, this is about your love life, not mine.  ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ and all that jazz.”

“Except I’m not like you.  I’m not some super pick-up artist, I can’t just go gallivanting around broadcasting my ‘condition’ to the world to garner sympathy.”  The air quotes in the dialogue were distinctly audible.  “It’s not exactly something I can pretend to boast proudly about, unlike your ‘stupid sexy eyepatch’.”

Dick clenched his fist, trying not to get riled by the bitter sarcasm rolling off the other’s barbed tongue. As much as he generally avoided overreaction to insensitivity, it was still a sore subject – especially when the instigator in this case couldn’t contend obliviousness – ignorant bliss – about the actual origin of his wounds (and vice-versa).

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Sorry, low blow.  It’s just…  What the hell am I gonna do, Dick?  There has to be some other way to convince her.” A pause, followed by a swallow. “I never wanted her to get involved in any of this.  How can I even break it to her without her wanting to break up with me?”

“Sometimes that’s a risk you have to take if you want to make progress.”

“…It’s too late now anyway.  I already messed up big-time.  We got into a fight afterwards.  Like, an actual fight.  Dick, I… I almost hurt her.”

He sounded scared, like he was about to cry.  Growing concerned, Dick reached for his pocket, fumbling for the keys to his cycle as he tried to remember where he put them after returning home in such a stupor.

“I’m coming to get you.”

Maybe they were still in the ignition, or his jacket.  Crap, he forgot to put on a shirt.  He’d have to go back upstairs for that as well.  And then he’d be forced to explain to the erotic nymph draped over his blankets why he was bailing in the middle of their “date”.  …Just like old times.  It was almost nostalgic.

“No, I’ll…  I’ll handle this.”

“Are you sure?  ‘Cuz I can come pick you up, no prob.”

“Yeah, right.  You’re intoxicated right now, aren’t you?”

“…Okay, you got me.  Frankly it’s a miracle I didn’t get into an accident earlier.  Almost crashed into a pole actually.”  He sank onto a balance beam with a groan, rubbing his brows.  “…I may or may not be seeing spots at the moment.”

“If Barbara knew you were driving drunk around Gotham city she’d have you arrested in a heartbeat.”

“You really gotta bring her up now?”  The furrows of his forehead deepened as Dick frowned.  “Anyway, she’s off-duty today.”

Sharp as a razor, Tim seized smoothly on the discrepancy.

“…How do you know that?”

Dick flinched, grip tightening on the cellular.

“I just do, okay?”

There was a moment of quiet, before Tim’s voice continued.

“Dick.  When’s the last time the two of you spoke?”

Dick heaved a long exhale. Somehow, talking to Tim when he was under influence always seemed to land back on this topic.  Curse whatever was in that mix for making him maudlin.

“What happened between us is our business.  It’s got nothing to do with you.  Besides, it’s ancient history now.  She moved on, and so did I.  These things happen.  You should just focus on maintaining ties with your girlfriend.  …Actually, maybe you should go see her.  Babs, I mean.  She’s closer to you, and she can probably help you out better than I can.”

“…I’m already on my way there.”

“Ah.”  A beat.  “Good.  Let me know how it goes.”

“Yeah.  I’ll talk to you later.”

“…Tim, wait.”  Dick stood up again, feeling frustrated at his own uselessness, restless and remorseful.  He hobbled, wobbling to the wall, leaning with one arm against it for support instead. “I know I haven’t been the greatest role model to you, especially recently.  Hell, it’s practically my fault you wound up this way.  If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my own affairs, if only I’d looked out for you more…”

“Dick, we’ve been over this.  I don’t hold any of what happened in the past against you.  Like you said, it’s ancient history.  You’re the one who wanted to put an end to the blame game when you got… ‘injured’.  We’re even, remember?”

“I know, but still. Here I am, supposed to be the responsible elder relative, and yet it feels like I’m the one constantly getting lectured.”

“Are you kidding, you’re the best big brother I could’ve asked for.  You’ve always been there for me since then.  I’m grateful for the effort, really.  …Even if I haven’t always acted like it.”  As if embarrassed by his own admission of sentiment, Tim added: “Plus, you’re a perfect example of what not to do when it comes to dealing with angry females.”

“Har har.  Touché.”

Despite the jab, it relieved Dick a little, that Tim was still able to josh like this on occasion.  He’d been doing it more often ever since he met the female in question, actually. Dick had discreetly observed the difference over the past several months, and truth be told he was a mite jealous at times.  Watching those two together reminded him of days spent hanging out with another certain tenacious gal who refused to listen to his warnings, and kept tagging along on various dangerous assignments, impressing him each time with her capabilities…

“I’m joking, but…  I meant what I said earlier.  You didn’t have to stick around Gotham after that whole ‘fake Joker’ fiasco, just to keep an eye on- watch over me, you know.  You’ve got less reason to want to be here than me, what with ‘that guy’ and Barbara both being nearby…  I mean, considering the entire mess that followed the first… ‘incident’, everything that happened between you and her…  For you to move back on my account…  Sometimes I feel like I ruined both your lives, like I’m dragging you all down with me…”

Dick wasn’t about to allow Tim to start wallowing in self-pity again.

“Look, I made the decision on my own.  Those two had nothing to do with it.  I was worried about you, so I stayed.  Simple as that.  …Besides, it’s not like there’s much I can offer Blüdhaven at this point.”

“Yeah well, maybe you should let others worry about you for a change.  I still wish you would’ve let me come with you that time.  …Maybe then at least one of us would still be doing the hero gig.”

“Trust me, it was a long-time coming.  My wake-up call just happened to occur a little later.”

“But-”

“Tim, I appreciate the concern.  But right now you’ve got bigger problems to deal with, don’t you? Listen, you’ve got a good thing going for you.  You should hold onto it, and… Don’t let go, because once you lose that chance…  It’s gone.  Don’t screw it up by making the same mistakes I did.  …Believe me, if any one of us deserves a shot at happiness, it’s you.”

For a minute, his partner remained mute, perhaps debating whether to protest further.  Dick held his breath, prepared to shoot down any deflecting arguments.  Finally though, Tim simply stated:

“I gotta go.  I’m at the door.”

“All right.  …Say hi to Barbara for me.”

“I will.”

“Good luck, Tim.”

“Thanks.”

As he disconnected, Dick’s partial vision lazed, traveling hazily towards a poster on the partition he was propped against.  In its center displayed an image of his junior self in circus garb, surrounded by his smiling mom and dad: The Flying Graysons, in all their erstwhile glory.

He wondered, idly, if his parents would be proud of what their son ultimately turned out to be: a drunken and debauched bachelor, hung over and hung up on muddled memories, making up for current paucity of meaning or purpose with an abundance of casual hook-ups.  A disgrace to the Grayson title, prodigy turned prodigal.  Who went from valiantly saving citizens with a wink and grin (not like he could even pull off the former now) to sleeping around on a whim, “swinging” from clubs at night rather than rooftops – trying in vain to fill some void, a hollow hole left in his heart.  Tim was right; he was just seeking to sate a starved hunger for attention, a voracious need for validation he’d long been denied.  Appetite for affection.  Acknowledgment.  Acceptance.  Substantiate some sort of worth after everything he (thought he) knew was stripped – stolen – from him (literally and metaphorically – in more ways than one), for the sheer sake of sustaining his existence.

Unlike Tim, it wasn’t the first time he’d been betrayed by his ideals.  …Hence all the more reason he’d stormed out in a huff (seemingly for good), thanks to the final straw – or rather bullet – that broke his back (which he’d already been stabbed in once before).  …And yet, no matter how many times he endeavored to completely break away, set sail on his own private path, he kept coming back to the same place, somehow ending up exactly right back where he started.  Desperate for other forms of contact after cutting nearly all ties to “family” and friends (not just within the gloomy house where he grew up, but foregoing second sanctuary, his summer “haven” as well), he found himself drifting aimlessly since then, treading water and clinging to wreckage just to stay afloat, now that so many bridges were burnt beneath his feet.  …Harboring hatred towards ‘that man’ most of all – maybe moreso than Tim.

To keep from sinking in a sea of longing and lingering regret, he quickly discovered a different method to dispel wrath in place of punishing felons (which in turn had progressively become a surrogate for rage-punching a fraud of a foster “father”, whose loathsome face he still sometimes visualized when he sparred in solitude).  Where Tim eventually took to literature as a diversion (even if Dick was unfortunately just as aware of other, more abusive addictions – although those had steadily been improving as well of late), instead he turned exclusively to liquor to escape loneliness, slake an insatiable thirst for vengeance and quench resentment. Quell fury without resorting to fists. (Even if firewater sometimes fueled violent urges further instead of dousing ire.)  Simultaneously satisfying desire for warmth by throwing himself into an endless series of one-night stands, (self-)disgust disguised as lust.  Hate replaced with fervent heat, tangling and tangoing under sweat-stained sheets.  Ravenously ravishing, savoring strangers’ touch.  Relish in passing pleasure.  …Easing exhaustion and envy (over an ex dumped years ago, an old flame gone cold – even though he’d extinguished the last spark himself) through empty embrace.  To console a weary, guilt-ridden soul by trading duty and sacrifice for decadent vice. From Robin to Bluebird to Cardinal sin. Downing his own woeful sorrows and demons by drowning them in sex and tonic and gin.

Granted, most days he managed to uphold a relatively respectable impression, fronting as a well-adjusted and decently functioning member of society despite debilitation (even if his was more physical than psychological).  In contrast to Tim’s total retreat into depression – regression – going through the minimal motions in order to survive, he told himself he needed to be strong – to be the dependable brother he never really was (at least when it counted).  Still, his insecurities merely manifested in different ways, relying on showboating and overindulgence as an invisible crutch.  Resolutely rejecting the rigorous manner (nevermind manor) in which he was sternly brought up and raised – trained to remove empathy out of the equation for the objective of the so-called “mission” – out of staunch determination not to become like him.

…For all his resolve to resist such strict teaching techniques though, even he recognized the suave playboy in the mirror nowadays was as much a persona as his previous mentor’s was.  Hiding hostility and apathy behind an altered ego, a modified mask.  Concealing consciousness over obvious flaws beneath another façade, exuding false confidence.  Even if outwardly he wasn’t as gruff or tough as his former instructor (or rather false “idol”) – certainly nowhere near as mean and demanding in demeanor – underneath the fortified exterior was essentially nothing but a spiteful shell.  His real self had become just as brooding and detached – deflated – suppressing jaded cynicism beneath dry wit and humor.  Honestly, who was he even to give counsel when he could barely claim to be any better at coping with his emotions?

Things changed – were changing – for Tim and for Barbara.  For the better.  …Meanwhile, where did that leave him?  A part of him felt cheated, like he was being left behind – abandoned in the same way he (ironically) once did to them – and it made him afraid.  The truth was he was the only one who stayed the same by declining to let go the past, bearing grudges beyond their prime to the point they festered deep within his rotten gut.  Rancid rancor.  Sour and stagnant, just like…

“God, I really am starting to sound like him.”

He muttered as he realized he was no longer mentally making excuses, but apologizing aloud to his folks’ memorial portrait.  He seriously was smashed.

To distract his buzzed brain, he shifted concentration to a more menial matter.

“Keys, keys…  Where the hell did I leave those damn things.”

“Looking for these?”

He rotated to find his guest poised suggestively against the entry frame, dangling the chain from her digit.  She was wearing his top too, go figure (though her bottom half was still clearly undressed).   She pouted as he approached and made a grab for the brass ring, withdrawing the prize behind her back.

“You weren’t planning on leaving me here and running off, were you?”

Dick hastily put on debonair airs, flashing a signature winsome beam that would make any damsel melt.  He slipped his hands over coyly cocked hips, causing knees to weaken as he drew her in close (subtly stimulating lower regions).

“’Course not.  Why on earth would I want to leave such a gorgeous goddess?”

Duh, I live here.  Where the hell would I even go.

She gave a giddy, high-pitched giggle (almost grating), greedily eating up the compliment as she arched into his grip, linking limbs around his collar.

“Good.  Shall we head back upstairs then?”  She mewed demurely whilst playing with a lock of red as she pawed at his breast, thoroughly admiring the rough ruggedness of solidly well-built muscles, rippling beneath bare pecs. Still sturdy and studly (even if somewhat out of shape compared to past prime’s peak).  “You said you were going to show me your ‘love nest’, and I don’t think I’ve seen nearly enough yet.”

Dick winced inwardly at his own lameness.  Sometimes he couldn’t believe the dumbass phrases that spouted out his own mouth.

She inclined forward to seal said mouth with an intensely intimate kiss, and he let her libido lead him up the stairwell.  (He sensed she was trying to keep considerate of his blind side, insistently guiding to prevent any potential bump or blunder – and wasn’t sure whether to be obliged or offended.)  As they walked, half-wavering, half-waltzing, she inquired curiously again:

“So who was that?”

“Just my little brother.  He needed some advice.  Girl troubles.”

“That’s sweet that you care about him.”

“Yeah.”

Bored of the discussion already, she steered impatiently towards the bedchamber, eagerly shutting the door behind them.  Animalistic hormones raging and roaring, raring to pick up right where they left off; rid any remaining decency by delightedly ripping dress off.

“Now then, where were we?”

Like a stage, she dimmed the lights to arouse an amorous atmosphere.  …And yet, despite the dark ambience and scantily clad, seductive beauty growling, prowling before him like some exotic creature – a primal lioness primed to leap on his loins – he couldn’t bring himself to express quite the same enthusiasm as before.  Mood mismatched to setting or pace.  Mind in alternate place.

Rather, he felt suffocated, trapped inside a stuffy, sultry cage of his own creation (as much as he accused the ringmaster of orchestrating from the start, manipulating and pulling puppet strings for his own selfish benefit).  Grounded avian prey, unable to fly away – waiting to be devoured by some carnivore, a carnal carnival.  Like his own innocence (whatever was left of it) was about to be deflowered.

Because he knew the drill by now.  Relentlessly rehearsed the same routine, practicing – perfecting – perfunctory performance over and over, too many times to keep track of.  They’d share a few wild nights of tender passion, tearing through clothes and covers and countless condom wrappers with reckless abandon.  (For all the uncomfortable scoldings his allegedly appointed legal “guardian” – let alone purported “parent” – gave him on using protection, you’d think the old man would at least be able to follow through with his own recommendation –especially when it came to the most significant person his ward – “son” had cared about since college.  …Whom he’d planned to make his own proposal to, planned a whole lifetime together with – only for her to weep over crushed dreams and canceled wedding bells – before settling down as someone else’s happily ever after instead when he stubbornly – stupidly – wouldn’t take her back. Turned his back.)

Then.  She’d start to get too clingy, too close – and he’d dodge and dismiss – distancing – fleeing on frigid feet, promising to call her – only to break that promise and her heart. Afterwards, when she finally manages to get ahold of him – maybe she’d stumble into him in the street, or, if she were persistent enough – already in bed with another – she’d cry, scornfully slap his (im)perfect visage, yell that he’s a dick (as if he hadn’t heard that line a thousand times before), and when she tearfully demands an explanation for such abrupt rebuff, all he can sincerely answer – from the bleak bottom of his blackened integrity – is the same tired failsafe he’s fallen back on for years:

“Things change.”

One boy lives in a tower With bow and arrow and the artificial heart With his girl, maid of dishonor He loaded the cannon with a jealous appetite They say that children now they come in all ages And maybe sometimes old men die with little boy faces

The only difference that I see Is you are exactly the same as you used to be

[michaeljtraylor]

Rocky Horror Icon Barry Bostwick Takes on Rob Zombie’s Three from Hell

As many of you know well and good by this point in time, writer-director Rob Zombie (Halloween, The Lords of Salem) has an all-new entry in his infamous “Firefly Family” franchise headed our way in early 2019, called Three from Hell. It’s been a whopping thirteen years (holy hell) since we’ve seen these three psycho killers grace the big screen, and Zombie recently teased that they will be joined this time around by a bunch of “bizarre cameos” including Chaz Bono. And today Zombie let us know that he’s added another classic genre actor to the cast with The Rocky Horror Picture Show star Barry Bostwick.

Rob Zombie took to Instagram to announce this new cast member writing:

“Another exciting 3 From Hell cameo! Here I am with the one and only Barry Bostwick! As a huge fan Rocky Horror, it was a blast to have Barry join the cast.”

Barry Bostwick is best known for the role of Brad in The Rocky Horror Picture Show yes, but the man also had a lead role in Michael J Fox’s long-running sitcom Spin City as well as roles in such classic films as Weekend at Bernie’s II, Spy Hard, Hannah Montana: The Movie, and Grand-Daddy Day Care} as Dynamite Dan North. I’m kidding. But seriously, Bostwick has had some quality genre roles in the past few years such as Mr. Abbadon in “The Night Billy Raised Hell”, director Darren Lynn Bousman’s segment from the recent horror anthology Tales of Halloween, and Santa himself in Slay Belles. Good to see Bostwick back in the genre, I say. Keep it going!

Rob Zombie is writing and directing Three From Hell, and he is also producing alongside Mike Elliot. Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon Zombie will be back in full force as The Firefly Family, with all three confirmed to be reprising their roles. Zombie shot the movie last year before heading out on tour, and then he let the footage sit and simmer a bit, before jumping into the post-production process earlier this year. Hopefully the movie will be in theaters this fall.

Related: Three from Hell First Look at Sons of Anarchy Star Emilio Rivera

Captain Spaulding, Otis B. Driftwood, and Vera-Ellen “Baby” Firefly were first seen in House of 1000 Corpses. That movie was originally supposed to be released by Universal, and was shot on their backlot. But there were a lot of problems behind the scenes. The studio dropped it, and it was later picked up for distribution by LionsGate only to become a huge cult hit. The Firefly family later returned in the much grittier sequel The Devil’s Rejects, solidifying Zombie as a strong force in the horror movie world.

Danny Trejo will be back this round as Rondo, with Daniel Roebuck starring as Morris Green in this latest gruesome joyride. Other cast members getting down in the dirt this time around include Jeff Daniel Phillips as Warden Virgil Dallas Harper, Richard Brake as Winslow Foxworth Coltrane, Pancho Moler as Sebastian, Bill Oberst Jr. as Tony Commando, and Clint Howard as Mr. Baggy Britches. Other icons have also been announced, and include Dee Wallace reuniting with Zombie after her appearance in The Lords of Salem, along with Wade Williams, Austin Stoker, Emilio Rivera, and David Ury. Comedian Tom Papa is showing up in an unspecified role after Rob Zombie directed one of his comedy specials. Yes, that actually happened. And it was pretty amazing. Especially considering that Tom Papa is one of the few ‘clean’ comedians working today.

House of 1000 Corpses followed a tale of sick and twisted killers and the poor saps who had the unfortunate luck to run into them. That movie even starred Rainn Wilson in a pre-Office appearance that some have forgotten. The movie was a fine mix of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Dan Aykroyd’s Nothing But Trouble topped with a White Zombie twist. The Devil’s Rejects picked up the story further down the road, with Otis and Baby on the run and hiding out at a Hotel. They are later joined by Capt. Spaulding for some gruesome fun. The movie ends with the trio going out in a hail of bullets. How will they be resurrected in Three From Hell? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Three From Hell was originally teased as an early 2019 release. But it’s looking more and more like we’ll be treated to this gory treat later in the year, perhaps around Halloween time. There is no release date set yet. Zombie announced Barry Bostwick’s participation himself over on Instagram.

Topics: Devils Rejects 2

Writer for Arrow In the Head, Dread Central and Movieweb.

Source link

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8312273 https://hashtaghighways.com/2019/03/02/rocky-horror-icon-barry-bostwick-takes-on-rob-zombies-three-from-hell/ from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.tumblr.com/post/183173963714

[garkodigitalmedia]

Rocky Horror Icon Barry Bostwick Takes on Rob Zombie’s Three from Hell

As many of you know well and good by this point in time, writer-director Rob Zombie (Halloween, The Lords of Salem) has an all-new entry in his infamous “Firefly Family” franchise headed our way in early 2019, called Three from Hell. It’s been a whopping thirteen years (holy hell) since we’ve seen these three psycho killers grace the big screen, and Zombie recently teased that they will be joined this time around by a bunch of “bizarre cameos” including Chaz Bono. And today Zombie let us know that he’s added another classic genre actor to the cast with The Rocky Horror Picture Show star Barry Bostwick.

Rob Zombie took to Instagram to announce this new cast member writing:

“Another exciting 3 From Hell cameo! Here I am with the one and only Barry Bostwick! As a huge fan Rocky Horror, it was a blast to have Barry join the cast.”

Barry Bostwick is best known for the role of Brad in The Rocky Horror Picture Show yes, but the man also had a lead role in Michael J Fox’s long-running sitcom Spin City as well as roles in such classic films as Weekend at Bernie’s II, Spy Hard, Hannah Montana: The Movie, and Grand-Daddy Day Care} as Dynamite Dan North. I’m kidding. But seriously, Bostwick has had some quality genre roles in the past few years such as Mr. Abbadon in “The Night Billy Raised Hell”, director Darren Lynn Bousman’s segment from the recent horror anthology Tales of Halloween, and Santa himself in Slay Belles. Good to see Bostwick back in the genre, I say. Keep it going!

Rob Zombie is writing and directing Three From Hell, and he is also producing alongside Mike Elliot. Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon Zombie will be back in full force as The Firefly Family, with all three confirmed to be reprising their roles. Zombie shot the movie last year before heading out on tour, and then he let the footage sit and simmer a bit, before jumping into the post-production process earlier this year. Hopefully the movie will be in theaters this fall.

Related: Three from Hell First Look at Sons of Anarchy Star Emilio Rivera

Captain Spaulding, Otis B. Driftwood, and Vera-Ellen “Baby” Firefly were first seen in House of 1000 Corpses. That movie was originally supposed to be released by Universal, and was shot on their backlot. But there were a lot of problems behind the scenes. The studio dropped it, and it was later picked up for distribution by LionsGate only to become a huge cult hit. The Firefly family later returned in the much grittier sequel The Devil’s Rejects, solidifying Zombie as a strong force in the horror movie world.

Danny Trejo will be back this round as Rondo, with Daniel Roebuck starring as Morris Green in this latest gruesome joyride. Other cast members getting down in the dirt this time around include Jeff Daniel Phillips as Warden Virgil Dallas Harper, Richard Brake as Winslow Foxworth Coltrane, Pancho Moler as Sebastian, Bill Oberst Jr. as Tony Commando, and Clint Howard as Mr. Baggy Britches. Other icons have also been announced, and include Dee Wallace reuniting with Zombie after her appearance in The Lords of Salem, along with Wade Williams, Austin Stoker, Emilio Rivera, and David Ury. Comedian Tom Papa is showing up in an unspecified role after Rob Zombie directed one of his comedy specials. Yes, that actually happened. And it was pretty amazing. Especially considering that Tom Papa is one of the few ‘clean’ comedians working today.

House of 1000 Corpses followed a tale of sick and twisted killers and the poor saps who had the unfortunate luck to run into them. That movie even starred Rainn Wilson in a pre-Office appearance that some have forgotten. The movie was a fine mix of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Dan Aykroyd’s Nothing But Trouble topped with a White Zombie twist. The Devil’s Rejects picked up the story further down the road, with Otis and Baby on the run and hiding out at a Hotel. They are later joined by Capt. Spaulding for some gruesome fun. The movie ends with the trio going out in a hail of bullets. How will they be resurrected in Three From Hell? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Three From Hell was originally teased as an early 2019 release. But it’s looking more and more like we’ll be treated to this gory treat later in the year, perhaps around Halloween time. There is no release date set yet. Zombie announced Barry Bostwick’s participation himself over on Instagram.

Topics: Devils Rejects 2

Writer for Arrow In the Head, Dread Central and Movieweb.

Source link

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8312273 https://hashtaghighways.com/2019/03/02/rocky-horror-icon-barry-bostwick-takes-on-rob-zombies-three-from-hell/

[nicholerestrada]

Rocky Horror Icon Barry Bostwick Takes on Rob Zombie’s Three from Hell

As many of you know well and good by this point in time, writer-director Rob Zombie (Halloween, The Lords of Salem) has an all-new entry in his infamous “Firefly Family” franchise headed our way in early 2019, called Three from Hell. It’s been a whopping thirteen years (holy hell) since we’ve seen these three psycho killers grace the big screen, and Zombie recently teased that they will be joined this time around by a bunch of “bizarre cameos” including Chaz Bono. And today Zombie let us know that he’s added another classic genre actor to the cast with The Rocky Horror Picture Show star Barry Bostwick.

Rob Zombie took to Instagram to announce this new cast member writing:

“Another exciting 3 From Hell cameo! Here I am with the one and only Barry Bostwick! As a huge fan Rocky Horror, it was a blast to have Barry join the cast.”

Barry Bostwick is best known for the role of Brad in The Rocky Horror Picture Show yes, but the man also had a lead role in Michael J Fox’s long-running sitcom Spin City as well as roles in such classic films as Weekend at Bernie’s II, Spy Hard, Hannah Montana: The Movie, and Grand-Daddy Day Care} as Dynamite Dan North. I’m kidding. But seriously, Bostwick has had some quality genre roles in the past few years such as Mr. Abbadon in “The Night Billy Raised Hell”, director Darren Lynn Bousman’s segment from the recent horror anthology Tales of Halloween, and Santa himself in Slay Belles. Good to see Bostwick back in the genre, I say. Keep it going!

Rob Zombie is writing and directing Three From Hell, and he is also producing alongside Mike Elliot. Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, and Sheri Moon Zombie will be back in full force as The Firefly Family, with all three confirmed to be reprising their roles. Zombie shot the movie last year before heading out on tour, and then he let the footage sit and simmer a bit, before jumping into the post-production process earlier this year. Hopefully the movie will be in theaters this fall.

Related: Three from Hell First Look at Sons of Anarchy Star Emilio Rivera

Captain Spaulding, Otis B. Driftwood, and Vera-Ellen “Baby” Firefly were first seen in House of 1000 Corpses. That movie was originally supposed to be released by Universal, and was shot on their backlot. But there were a lot of problems behind the scenes. The studio dropped it, and it was later picked up for distribution by LionsGate only to become a huge cult hit. The Firefly family later returned in the much grittier sequel The Devil’s Rejects, solidifying Zombie as a strong force in the horror movie world.

Danny Trejo will be back this round as Rondo, with Daniel Roebuck starring as Morris Green in this latest gruesome joyride. Other cast members getting down in the dirt this time around include Jeff Daniel Phillips as Warden Virgil Dallas Harper, Richard Brake as Winslow Foxworth Coltrane, Pancho Moler as Sebastian, Bill Oberst Jr. as Tony Commando, and Clint Howard as Mr. Baggy Britches. Other icons have also been announced, and include Dee Wallace reuniting with Zombie after her appearance in The Lords of Salem, along with Wade Williams, Austin Stoker, Emilio Rivera, and David Ury. Comedian Tom Papa is showing up in an unspecified role after Rob Zombie directed one of his comedy specials. Yes, that actually happened. And it was pretty amazing. Especially considering that Tom Papa is one of the few ‘clean’ comedians working today.

House of 1000 Corpses followed a tale of sick and twisted killers and the poor saps who had the unfortunate luck to run into them. That movie even starred Rainn Wilson in a pre-Office appearance that some have forgotten. The movie was a fine mix of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Dan Aykroyd’s Nothing But Trouble topped with a White Zombie twist. The Devil’s Rejects picked up the story further down the road, with Otis and Baby on the run and hiding out at a Hotel. They are later joined by Capt. Spaulding for some gruesome fun. The movie ends with the trio going out in a hail of bullets. How will they be resurrected in Three From Hell? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Three From Hell was originally teased as an early 2019 release. But it’s looking more and more like we’ll be treated to this gory treat later in the year, perhaps around Halloween time. There is no release date set yet. Zombie announced Barry Bostwick’s participation himself over on Instagram.

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Another exciting 3 From Hell cameo! Here I am with the one and only Barry Bostwick! As a huge fan Rocky Horror it was a blast to have Barry join the cast. #robzombie #threefromhell #barrybostwick #rockyhorrorpictureshow #freethethree #billmoseley #sherimoonzombie #richardbrake #sidhaig #danytrejo #emiliorivera

A post shared by RobZombieofficial (@robzombieofficial) on Feb 27, 2019 at 6:54am PST

Topics: Devils Rejects 2

Writer for Arrow In the Head, Dread Central and Movieweb.

Source link

Source: https://hashtaghighways.com/2019/03/02/rocky-horror-icon-barry-bostwick-takes-on-rob-zombies-three-from-hell/

from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.wordpress.com/2019/03/02/rocky-horror-icon-barry-bostwick-takes-on-rob-zombies-three-from-hell/