#30 Cases of Major Zeman

[valerieandherweekofwonderz]

„Běžel jsem do ložnice rodičů. Spatřil jsem tam obraz jako z apokalypsy. Maminka ležela přes postel, měla rozbitou hlavu. Chroptěla. Nad ní stál otec se sekerou v ruce. Divně se kýval, zdálo se mi dokonce, že se usmívá. Byl jsem ohromen.“

30 případů majora Zemana / 30 Cases of Major Zeman (1974 - 1979) dir. by Jiří Sequens.

Episode 3.6 Studna / Well (1978)

[amplesalty]

Day 24 - Killer Legends (2014)

From mockumentary to straight up documentary...

There was a time when I would throw in a documentary every year for a bit of variety but that feel by the wayside for a bit. Probably because that was more in the infancy of this horror kick and I was using that as a way to pick up potential viewing material. They were normally centered around looking at the history of horror movies, exploring different periods and how styles shifted as the years passed.

This one though is looking at urban legends, specifically ones that revolve around a horror aspect. Namely; The Hook Man, The Candyman, The Killer and the Man Upstairs and The Killer Clown.

The Hook Man isn’t quite as literal because it branches off to talk about the real life Texarkana Moonlight Murders, inspiration for The Town That Dreaded Sundown. There is a comparison that is drawn to how the real life murderer used his gun as part of his sexual assault on one of his victims, so there’s a link between the penetration with a foreign, metal object there and the killers hook. As I mentioned in that post and the When a Stranger Calls ones, it’s all really about a scare tactic for young lovers. It’s interesting to see them going around talking to people in the town and hear how they were scared away from going to these lovers lane sites because of the murders.

It serves as a neat companion piece to watching the movie, seeing these real life locations and talking to people involved in the original investigation. They also talk to the promoter of the yearly screening they have of Sundown and they acknowledge this strange scenario they have where the town is becoming this extension of an urban legend. Like, kids will tell these exaggerated tales of urban legends but the town itself is doing that by showing this movie which is an exaggerated version of these real life events.

I don’t know where they sourced these illustrations for hook killers though. It looks like a Wikihow article on how to get murdered.

The second story is on tainted candy. You know, razor blades in an apple, pins in a candy bar...stuff like that. They show examples of the hysteria around it, talking heads of people who say they will check through all their kids candy, news pieces on local hospitals giving free x-rays to candy. Firstly, what hospital has time to just do that? Secondly, that just strikes me as weird that you have parents worried about foreign bodies snuck into these sweets but are fine with shooting radiation at them? I would imagine it’s going to be pretty low level but still, just seems odd.

There doesn’t seem to be many actual examples of this happening in real life, the major ones you’ve having to go back decades to find. They cover one quite majorly, Ronald Clark O’Bryan giving tainted Pixy Stix to his own kids as well as some neighbour kids who they were trick or treating with. This resulted in the death of his son but the other children survived. He originally try to pin this on the old urban legend about twisted individuals giving out poison to kids but eventually it came out that it was him, seemingly as some sort of insurance scam as he had taken out life insurance on his kids very recently. Apparently he opened the Pixy Stix, poured in the poison and resealed them before handing them out.

Again, they explore the local town talking to people to find out what they know about the incident, including going to the old O’Bryan house, hesitant to reveal to the current occupant just what had gone down there all those years ago. They even interview the former Assistant District Attorney who worked on the case and it’s almost funny at first as he looks at a picture of O’Bryan and says ‘Look at that lying son of a bitch’. But as they talk to him, it’s clear that it’s still something that shakes him up like 30 years later and that’s really understandable. It really boggles the mind to think that someone would do that to their own children.

The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs is another that they struggle to find any real evidence of, save for going back to the 1950’s. Again though, it’s still something that’s very prevalent today and they touch upon the various movies that will use this concept. Hell, like I said in the Stranger Calls post, they’re doing another Black Christmas remake this year.

This looks into the case in the 50’s that seems to have sparked this whole legend, as well as some similar killings around that time that they suspect could be linked. At the time, an Africa American man was convicted and executed for the crime but people in the town speak of a prejudice present in the town at the time, suggesting that this conviction was just a case of trying to appease the public.

The Killer Clown is one they figure can be easily traced to the 80’s when you had things like Poltergeist and IT that very much pushed the idea of the scary clown to the forefront but they found stuff that pre-dated that. A lot of talk about clowns being used to try and lure kids away.

They focus a lot on John Wayne Gacy who had his clown persona but he is a case where they suspect that he’s actually not doing it to lure victims. On the contrary, someone mentions that his makeup will feature these pointed edges and triangular eyes which can actually be quite offputting for kids.

Clearly this is true, just look at that creepy bastard in Spawn. All sorts of pointed edges going on there.

I think it definitely helps that I’ve just watched some of the movies they mention here so it’s cool to see the real life stories behind them. The one nitpick I would have with it is that they do a lot of their location visits in the middle of the night which seems a little sensationalist to me. They’ll have music start up suddenly or one of the pair will scream, only to find it was them walking into a spiders web...it’s just odd that they’re trying to go for these cheap scares in the middle of this documentary.

Maybe there’s some method to that madness though. The movie in general seems to carry this idea that urban legends actually seem to be covering up truths that are much more horrifying than the stories themselves which is interesting because the legends are what are meant to be scaring the kids. In the podcast I listened to with the director, Josh Zeman, he mentioned that these urban legends almost have to be dressed up in order to really get through to the kids because they’re just uninstrested otherwise. “Hey kids, don’t go into those woods, there’s a mad man around.” Whatever. “Don’t go into those woods, there’s an escaped mental patient with a hook for a hand.” Fuck that noise, I’m going nowhere near those woods. Still, especially the Babysitter section talking about the potential that this town was just falsely convicting people that made it easy for it’s Confederate leaning public to swallow is very worrying.

Zeman also references one of his earlier works, 2009’s Cropsey, that looks at a specific urban legend from his own childhood in Staten Island. Another one for the future.