Photos from my recent visit to NIGHTMARE TOYS in Madison, AL!

Of course they'd have MADBALLS!

JAWS and KRAMPUS masks! 

Shall we play a game?

The security guard.

Be careful in this bathroom.

THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT CHRISTOPHER: WEREWOLF 

is now available for purchase! Just $2.99!

Millions of Christians the world over pray to him every day. Few of those, however, know the true history of the patron saint of travelers. Few know that this gentle, pious individual was, in fact, a Cynocephalus or “Doghead”—in other words, a Werewolf. The Confessions of Saint Christopher: Werewolf will, with its publication, change that. Written as an autobiography of the man, unearthed during a recent archaeological dig in Egypt and translated by the fictitious David Mayhew, PhD, who provides intermittent commentary, the manuscript sheds light on all the shadowed facets of Christopher’s life, chronicling his youth in Greece, where he is introduced to Christianity and first succumbs to his unholy curse; through his time spent as a pirate on the Berber coast; to his captivity in Rome, where he is forced to fight in the Coliseum against men, lions, crocodiles, and ultimately his own bloodthirsty nature; to his final martyrdom, facing down one of the dark gods of the old world, his own progenitor—Lycanon, the first Werewolf—with nothing less than the fate of all future children at stake.

The manuscript is something of a strange hybrid. It is at once an historical adventure, taking place in the bloody latter days of the Roman Empire; a Horror story, as Werewolf does battle with Vampire in the haunted depths of a primordial jungle; and a work of Dark Fantasy, as Christopher embarks on a trek in search of a lost temple defended by savage tribesmen, black magic and deathtraps. Swashbuckler, Sword-and-Sorcery epic, and Horror tale; the novel is all these things. Yet it is also inherently Christian. The protagonist is a man of deep faith, or rather he becomes such throughout the struggles of his life. At no point are the beliefs of the man who will become known as Saint Christopher offered up as an object for ridicule. Much the opposite, as Christopher’s faith is in the end the most necessary component of his heroism. (And lest any modern believers take offense, Dr. Mayhew is careful to explain that there were in fact two men know by the name “Christopher.” Both were noble and self-sacrificing. Only one was cursed with Lycanthropy.)

After two millennia, the true story will be told.

Are You Following Me?

I hope so. I'm keeping pretty busy these days, both with my "day job" as an intrepid reporter for VAMPIRES.COM, WEREWOLVES.COM, DARKNESS.COM, TOPCOMICS.COM, and ZOMBIES.ORG, and playing with the gang over at EVIL CHEEZ PRODUCTIONS. All of those above are also to be found on Facebook and Twitter, too, so there's no excuse for not staying up to date. Pretty please keep reading! I needz your support! 

A Letter to PENNY DREADFUL Creator John Logan, From His Fans:

Dear Mr. Logan:

How could you? Do you not have more respect for your audience than that? An audience that has been loyal to you every step of the way? And what of the actors and the crew members who worked so hard for those 3+ years to bring your vision to life? Do you not have any respect for them? Do you not have any respect for your own work?

I’m not a better writer than you, John. I know this. Yet I can think of a good half-dozen scenarios in which PENNY DREADFUL could have continued, and none of them would leave any of the dangling plotlines that your peremptory season finale left us with. Please don’t bother trying to convince us again that it was always your intention for PENNY DREADFUL to run for only three seasons. You are insulting our collective intelligence. A brief web search will uncover several documented instances of you making contradictory statements concerning how long you initially intended the series to run and at what point you made the decision to end it at three. Even without this corroborating evidence, however, it is obvious your decision to end the series the way you did, at the time you did, was, if not a last minute decision, at least a recent one. Or, if the plan had been in your mind for any duration of time, the sloppy, slipshod manner in which you managed the third season suggests that you were already preoccupied with other projects, that you were simply “phoning it in.”

Why introduce such a complex and fascinating character as Catriana, only to do nothing with her? Such a last-minute addition makes no sense. Why introduce Henry Jekyll if you never planned to show us Edward Hyde? What about those story points back in season one, the connection of the vampires to ancient Egypt? Why bring in Dracula, such a larger-than-life, scene-stealing, eclipsing character, then do nothing with him? Are we really supposed to believe that he would just shrug and walk away after Vanessa’s death? That he would not at the very least have taken his revenge, vented his rage, upon Ethan and the others? And what will he do next? There were so, so many loose ends, John. You are far too talented a writer to leave a project so unfinished, and yet that is what you did. Because it was always a part of your grand design? Hogwash. We know you too well, John. You proved to us, over and over again, that you are better than that. A second-rate hack might view such a flawed, contrived ending as sufficient, but not a writer of your caliber.

(As an aside, yes, we will accept that your intention was always to have Vanessa’s story end in such a way, and that particular sequence was haunting and beautiful. It would have been hard, would be hard, for you to top it. No complaints there, John. That particular ending you got perfectly right. But you jumped ahead to it, didn’t you? Yes, you did. You cut right to the grand finale at the expense of a hefty chunk of what should have been the third act. PENNY DREADFUL wasn’t JUST Vanessa’s story, John. You seem to have forgotten that.)

So stop lying to us, John. Your decision to end PENNY DREADFUL in such a way was NOT always your intent. Why did you do it, then?

We’re smart enough to put the pieces together, John. You have a new project in the works with Showtime. Bully for you. So you got bored with PENNY DREADFUL and wanted to move on, and you felt proprietary enough over the series to want to put the period in place yourself. If you cared that much, though, why not take a little more time and end it properly? Another season, or even a few additional episodes, would have sufficed. But you were in a hurry, weren’t you, John? It’s obvious to us, John, that this was the case. Why? Were you under pressure from the network to get busy on your new show? Was there a financial incentive for you to do so? Or are you just a pampered, spoiled genius who can afford to make such decisions based solely on whim, because you know you’ve reached a status of success where no one will call you on it? Does it even matter WHY you did it? Not to us, it doesn’t.

You betrayed us, John. You betrayed our trust in you. Please, tell me why we should ever trust you again. Why should we ever become emotionally invested in any show you oversee, any project you create, knowing that you are subject to, at any moment, get bored and pull the plug, or get offered a juicy new gig and decide to put a premature end to your current show, and this without even bothering to tell us you are doing so until after the fact? By waiting to let us find out that PENNY DREADFUL would end only when we saw the two words THE END emblazoned on the screen, you not only cheated us, you gave no us no advance notice, no chance to prepare ourselves. This is hardly surprising. When one is doing wrong by another, he seldom informs his victim ahead of time.

Make no mistake, John. You screwed us over. We know it and you know it. By trying to claim otherwise you are adding insult to injury. You screwed your fans. We won’t forget that, John. We won’t forgive it. Do you care? I doubt it; not yet, anyway. In the future? Time will tell. But you may rest assured, you are going forward from this point without us. You’ve lost us. Your audience. Your faithful. Your Dreadfuls have turned on you, John. You have turned your most ardent supporters and fans into, not enemies, exactly, but people who will never believe in you again. You should be ashamed, John. You’ve let us all down and you’ve let yourself down. Shame, I say.

And once more, because it bears repeating, SHAME ON YOU.

Did Dracula dip his bread--or his fried chicken--in the blood of his enemies?

I asked historian and Dracula expert Hans de Roos whether he though the mistranslation of the poem describing Vlad Dracula dipping his bread in the blood of his enemies--it should read that Dracula washed his hands in the blood of his enemies--written in the 1400s but rediscovered by Dracula biographers Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally was intentional or deliberate on their part. His response follows: 

"I cannot look into the souls of dead people, but I can tell you this, Wayne: For anyone familiar with German, or Old English, for that matter, translating "hend" with "bread" makes no more sense than translating "cat" with "sponge, "nose" with "fork," "apple" with "shoe," "water" with "book," "tree" with "donkey," etc. etc. The two words have a different spelling, a different sound, a different meaning and a different origin.. "Hend," "Hende," "Hände," "Hand" and "Hant" all come from the Proto-Germanic *handuz (“hand”) and speakers of English, Dutch, Flemish, French, Frisian, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, as well as students of Middle and Old English and Old Saxon can easily recognize it.

For "bread," by contrast, Beheim would have used the Middle High German "brōt," from Old High German "brōt" (attested since the 8th century), from Proto-Germanic *braudą, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrew- (“to seethe, to boil”); an extension of Proto-Indo-European *bʰerə- (“to well up, to boil, to be in motion (as of fire or water)”). Originating from the same root are "Brühe," "Brei," "braten" and "brennen" [Source: Wiktionary.]

For anyone seriously attempting to translate the discussed stanza from Beheim's poem, translating "Hend" with "bread" makes no sense at all; it has nothing to do with a "liberal translation" or a "far-fetched" interpretation. In my opinion, it is a fabrication that serves the interests of authors who like to extrapolate Vlad's habits (that are gruesome enough already) to a type of behavior that fits the definition of "vampire."

If McNally and Florescu would be negligent or ignorant enough to make a simple translation error, the far more plausible option would be to mix up "Hend" with "Hendl," the Bavarian word for (fried) chicken -- a term that has gained global popularity by the famous "Oktoberfest," where the "Hendl" and the "Brez'l" are the traditional companions of the good German beer ("bier" from Middle High German "bier," from Old High German "bior," from Proto-Germanic "*beuzą" (“beer”), from Proto-Indo-European "*bʰews-," "*bheus-" (“dross, sediment, brewer's yeast”).

The "HENDL" almost a homonym of "HEND".... Yes. would it not be imaginable that Vlad the Impaler dipped his HENDL in the blood of his victims??"

Director William Collins (KILD-TV), whom moi interviewd this past weekend at the LEGLESS CORPSE FILM FESTIVAL, shares some thoughts on the GHOST IN THE SHELL/Scarlett Johansson controversy

Its not at all about racial whitewashing. Stupid ignorant leftists are always trying to make everything a racial case. Its the reality of films as a business. I am a director and a filmmaker, and I think about what sells first. In this case, the issue is that Ghost in the Shell is a JAPANESE story of the highest caliber. I've been dreaming of making this since I first saw the anime. It must remain Japanese to transcend time and have its desired effect. i.e to alter conciseness and usher the era of cybernetics. And its here that the film-business regarding Johansson misses the point. Representation/identifying quality does not slave to the story of origin. A tale that transcends is racially blind, and Ghost in the Shell is that type of film. It would be smarter film-business to consider the savings of not using an super star (Ashkenazi jew /not representative of cybernetics), and make the story in the real back yard of where this is taking place (Japan). Otherwise this story has to be done in NY or San Francisco, and the type of runaway silicon valley of cybernetics would have to be created from scratch, chances are it will not be believable to anybody, killing one of the greatest stories of all time.

BLUEBEARD: THE TRIAL OF GILLES DE RAIS --World Premiere!

Our Poster

       Our Cast: 

 GILLES DE RAIS--JEREMY WOODS

PROFESSOR--TANJA LEWIS MILLER

FIRST JUDGE--SUE HASSETT

SECOND JUDGE--MARK MAREK

THIRD JUDGE--TARA FERGUSON

JOAN OF ARC/CATHERINE DE RAIS--SONIA GUETTLER

JEAN DE CRAON--GREG BRANHAM

RENE/POITOU--THOR SMITH

CHARLES/HENRIET--JONATHAN BAIN

FRANCOIS PRELATI--TODD HESS

EUSTACHE BLANCHET--FRED TAMM-DANIELS

JEAN DE FERRON--MICHAEL BRADLEY

PERRINE MARTIN--AMBER DICKEY

 MOTHER--MARCIE JACKSON

BOY--JASPER FERGUSON

Our Crew: 

SOUND: HEATHER HUBER, TODD HESS

SET: MARK MAREK, DANE WAVERLY

LIGHTS: AMBER DICKEY, WAYNE MAYHEW

Our Venue:

THE HISTORIC LOWRY HOUSE