Thank God It's Friday The 13th: Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning!

Spoilers throughout.

One year after bowing out on a high note with the still-classic-feeling Part 4, Friday the 13th entertainingly shit the bed (and every bed) with a fifth instalment in which Jason is replaced by a guy in a Jason costume, making this technically Scooby Doo.

Despite the fan outrage that their beloved murderous retard in a hockey mask was replaced by a cheap knockoff murderous retard in a hockey mask, that angle is by far the least of the flick's many, many problems. And when I say "problems" I mean it in the sense that microcephaly is a problem.

A nice detail is you can tell he's not the real Jason because he has blue stripes on his goalie mask instead of red.

Tommy Jarvis, the young man who, as a child in Part 4, killed Jason, is now in a halfway house for nutter butters, convinced he keeps seeing Jason around every corner despite the insistence by the cops that Jason's body was cremated - a plot point point-blank ignored by the next instalment, as was the twist ending and pretty much everything else from Part 5. For all that exceptional individuals like me like to go over the continuity of these series, there effectively isn't any. However, this is good, as the alternative would be reddit-tier werld berlderng.

Friday the 13th is not about plot.

So one of the unstable kids at the halfway house axe-murders another of them because they gave him an axe like dumb-dumbs. Axe-Boy is arrested but later someone in the town starts killing again. Has Axe-Boy escaped? Has Tommy snapped? Is Jason back from the grave? Or is it a guy we saw for two seconds at the start and won't remember by the time we find out it was him? It's the last one, but also maybe Tommy, except that the twist ending, as mentioned above, is dropped and never mentioned again, making this possibly the most pointless Friday the 13th movie, which is like being the most neurotic twitter user, or the fattest person over 400lbs.

"Alas, poor Not-Jason. I knew him, well, not at all really" - Tommy

Jason would look way more creepy in a patient's gown than the random ass hobo clothes he normally wears.

Worse still, it's the most annoying Friday the 13th movie, thanks largely to the fat tard who initiates the whole comedy of errors by pissing off Axe Boy and the two most obnoxious red neck stereotypes in motion picture history, which is quite the achievement since if there's one thing skinnyfat Hollywood hacks hate more than adult heterosexuality (there isn't), it's the rural working class. These "gross hicks" chew up the scenery and what feels like about fifteen minutes of screentime shrieking, being dirty and hacking up unappetising chicken meat before getting unceremoniously bumped off, making not the merest difference to the plot but giving child-molesting liberals something to feel superior to while pissing everyone else off.

Stunning and bravely punching up at poor people.

On the plus side, there's a guy named "Demon" who is a Michael Jackson fan, and a girl that does the robot while listening to new wave music, just to remind you that it's 1985. The final chase sequence is pretty good too, and includes a brief face-off between a chainsaw and Not-Jason's machete. As we know, the real Jason is afraid of chainsaws, so this is a neat little tip-off that it's not really him (as if that was planned).

Fortunately this would be the absolute low point of the series at least until Jason Goes To Hell (but let's call it a tie).

Sweet Dreams: Wes Craven's New Nightmare!!!

RIP based spoopy movie man.

You could be forgiven for tuning out (of life) after Freddy's Dead, and audiences at the time did (the first part), leaving Wes Craven's return to the series he created to underperform at the box office. That's a pity, because against all reasonable expectations the seventh Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the best in the series and a perfect way to wrap things up and go out on a high. Faced with the reality of a series that had devoured itself in an orgy of stupidity, Wes Craven did the only sensible thing you can do: he stepped outside the series.

I for one welcome our new dream demon overlords.

New Nightmare posits the first six films as just that: movies, entertainment that exists in the pop culture of the "real world" in which it's set. Wes Craven is a real person who makes films, Robert Englund is a real actor who plays Freddy Krueger, and Heather Langenkamp is a real actress, wife and mother who is called upon to play Nancy and stop Freddy one last time, but for real this time.

This prop seems to be inspired by a scene in 5. Despite Craven's ambivalence toward the other sequels, New Nightmare is full of these little nods.

Freddy Vs Godzilla still in development hell.

One thing that stands out about this approach is that Craven doesn't go for the cheap and obvious gag of having Freddy slaughter the hacks who made Freddy's Dead. Although that would have been satisfying, it would have been fix fic, and run the risk of verging on Chris Chan tier revenge fantasy bullshit. Instead, the focus is squarely on Heather as protagonist, with the Freddy-demon released from the prison of the film series returned to his roots as a mostly-straight-faced villain. The idea is simply floated that he slipped the bonds of his confinement in the story world because the suits ran the series into the ground, and that's all you need.

Together again.

Heather's husband is named Chase and works as an effects technician on horror movies. Her son is played by the kid from Pet Sematary. She does the chat show circuit and deals with autistic fans, creepy phone calls, and a nurse who thinks she's going crazy and is a bad influence on her son on account of her movie roles. Craven has fun sending up the culture and the perennial moral panic over scary art, but never quite tips over into soapboxing.

Freed from the 80s, she actually has great hair.

Heather humours her spergy driver.

Me on the left.

One night Chase falls asleep at the wheel and is killed by Freddy, leaving Heather alone to protect her son and kill the dream demon once and for all.

"Cut to the Chase FX" - kino foreshadowing.

New Nightmare feels more naturalistic compared to the previous instalments. There's less stylised lighting and surreal imagery, and in some ways that's a shame, but it helps separate the "real world" from the "movie world". Real-life events such as Langenkamp's stalker and a contemporaneous earthquake are rolled into the script too, making the fake-real-world even a little realer. Freddy gets a redesign too, which was probably necessary to distinguish him from the cartoon character he had become by Freddy's Dead. They even recast Freddy with...himself:

Freddy Krueger is a successful actor and you're a NEET.

It doesn't seem like high praise to say this one gets it right, but given everything that's happened in this series, you couldn't expect a better conclusion. It was seven films, a TV show, a game and various comics, novelisations and merchandising that veered erratically from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again, packed with effects, jumps, deaths, one-liners, waifus, retardation, darkness, surreality, brilliance and catharsis. Freddy Vs Jason and the r*make would follow, but thematically, New Nightmare was the perfect ending.

Absolutely cathartic.

The final scene even suggests a sort of looping back to the beginning, an infinite recursion as of a classic story being endlessly retold. Based Nancy always keeping Freddy down in the boiler room so we can all sleep soundly in our beds.

Sweet Dreams: A Nightmare on Elm Street!!!

A Nightmare on Elm Street is the best kino of all time. This is the famous movie in which a burn victim with knives for fingers stalks a group of teenagers including Johnny Depp and the best Final Girl ever, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp). I have the series documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, and I've watched all four hours of it and all the extras twice. I have a copy of I Am Nancy, the Nancy documentary, signed by Heather Langenkamp, and I've seen everything in the series at least five times, even the bad ones. I even have a DVD of the first three Freddy's Nightmares episodes that was released in the UK (they never put out another one). On my assburgers diagnosis, this movie is listed as the cause.

Remember poster art?

The movie starts with Tina (Amanda Wyss) having a nightmare about 80s synth music, which is rudely interrupted by a cackling boogyman we'll come to know as Freddy Krueger. Tina is set up to be our Final Girl, but is killed off in a sweet switcheroo involving a revolving room gag from a Fred Astaire movie. It's a Hitchcockian twist so audacious it would have shocked audiences everywhere, if not for the fact the poster clearly identifies Nancy as the Final Girl. But who cares? It's a great poster, featuring the best tagline ever: "If Nancy doesn't wake up screaming...she won't wake up at all".

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a rarity among slasher movies for having a plot and character arcs and all that screenwriting bullshit you used to get in movies in the olden days. Nancy grows up, takes charge of her life, learns to beat the monster, and bitches out her drunk mom all in the space of 90 minutes. Compare and contrast: The Hobbit (2012-2014).

Nancy becomes the voice of everyone who hated hall monitors (everyone).

So Nancy, who is into survival, does some detective work and finds that she can pull items out of her dream, specifically Freddy's hat, from which she learns his name, uncovering the dark secret her parents have been keeping from her. We've all had these moments in our lives when we discover that the world isn't quite right, and I don't think I've ever seen it captured better in a movie. But whereas most of us turn into bottle-pissing shut-ins who write blogs about horror movies, Nancy instead decides to use her knowledge to overcome her demons, which is pretty typical of the earnest positivity in post-Hills Have Eyes Craven, which is rare in horror, and kind of refreshing.

*Blocks ur path*

I haven't talked that much about Freddy yet, because the movie isn't really about him in the way the sequels were. Clive Barker described the original Hellraiser as a twisted family drama, and that's kind of true here too. Nancy learns her parents are murderers whose dysfunctions are manifestations of trauma from burning a guy to death, which must be an adjustment to say the least. But Freddy is scary in this film, which is easy to forget if you've seen some of the sequels. This is the one where he reaches up out of the bath with his knived glove and sprays Johnny Depp all over his room.

I think if this movie hadn't had all those sequels and become a great big merchandising machine, it would be regarded among the top tier of horror movies where it belongs. On the other hand, some of the sequels were underrated and good, and others were Ed Wood-like in their Icarean aspirations.

Thank God It's Friday The 13th: Friday the 13th Part 2!!!

Every Friday the 13th two things happen: Jason goes on a killing spree, and I write an article in tribute to him. This time our subject is arguably the best film in the entire series, Friday the 13th Part 2. This article contains spoilers and gluten.

The movie opens with Alice, the sole surviving camp counsellor from the first instalment, who is still haunted by nightmares of her ordeal at Crystal Lake. This seems to have been done mostly to pad the movie out to feature length, which is always a good way to start. Alice gets a call from her mother, who is as concerned as you might expect. This is an interesting point because the dialogue suggests she still has unfinished business at the lake, setting her up to be the protagonist again. This is, of course, an effective fake-out which, like the mystery element from the first film, is sadly no longer effective. Nowadays, we all know she's about to get whacked.

Another story tragically cut short because it would require character development.

So Jason kills her with an ice pick to the temple, which presumably he found in her abode, since it's unlikely he keeps one in his shack in the woods. Had she been staying in a hotel he'd have had to order room service to get something to kill her with. But first he pranks her by leaving his mother's rotting head in her fridge, the absolute madman.

I've got worse in my fridge tbh

With his mother's killer now avenged, Jason returns to his woods to live a quiet life of contemplation and ease. Unfortunately a new batch of camp counsellors decide to set up shop by Crystal Lake, so he pretty much has to kill them all too. I mean, it was that or not kill them, and keep being a hermit in peace, and, really, what kind of choice is that?

Given the state of Jason's cabin, his motive may just be the search for new piss bottles and cum socks.

Sack-wearing Jason aside, one thing that elevates this movie above the pack is the Final Girl, Ginny Field, played by the legendary Amy Steel.

Literally waifu tier.

Ginny is by far the smartest and most resourceful of the Friday the 13th Final Girls, and beats Jason with an uncanny knowledge of psychology the writers made up. It's her analysis of Jason that basically sets the template for our understanding of the character: he's a child trapped in a man's body, unsure what to do without his mother's guidance. You can kind of argue that the reason she is able to survive is she's the only one who cares to try to understand Jason, which is a pretty interesting idea. She also wails on him with a chainsaw at one point, which is pretty sweet.

She also pisses herself during the final chase scene, but nobody's perfect, unless you're into that.

But then there's also the fact that Part 2 is scary, which puts it in rare company with Part 1. Zombie Jason was never scary and from Part 5 or 6 (depending on how much you credit Part 5 for intentionality) the series became more of a broad comedy with gore. Part 2 uses the innate scariness of the woods to good advantage and the hallucinatory atmospherics of the ending are still effective.

Next Friday the 13th we'll cover Part 4, which isn't really scary but is atmospheric and the last "good" instalment. After that things get real retarded real quick, but as the 80s wore on, the distinction between retardation and brilliance wore, at times, extremely thin.

Doctor Bastard: now a major You Tube creepypasta reading with a cast of thousands

Doctor Bastard is now available to make house calls in video format.

The original pasta can be found here on this very blogge.

Doctor Bastard

The first weeks of your therapy went better than expected. You would easily recommend this guy to anybody, unfortunate name withstanding. No one ever seemed to get inside your head so quickly, or with such polite detachment. Deft with words, like a surgeon with his hands. The things he could elicit from you practically without any effort, it was almost disconcerting even as it reassured you. In the first hour you cried. The next time you went back the weight was lifted, and you felt you could get down to some real talking. By the third session that ticking clock went by unheard, and you were surprised, even a little sad, to come to the end of your immersion in that little room.

At some stage you began to really think of him as a surgeon, so clinical and so precise with where he took you, doing light exploratory work on your half-open mind with God knows how many other cases to juggle. You know how they say those experts make it look easy?

And then there's the funny smell coming from his desk some days, and those surgical gloves in the bin over in the corner. At first you thought maybe a surgeon used the room sometimes for whatever reason, but given your read on the guy, maybe your first instincts were right.

You asked him about it once, trying to keep it casual. He said he practises surgery every once in a red moon. Dropped the old joke about leaving his watch in a patient, maybe to play it off. But he didn't really laugh about it like it was a joke - more like when you're remembering a story from your college days or some shit. It's a cautionary tale against the pace of modern life I guess. The guy doesn't know something's wrong until he finally sits down in the quiet of his own home, and he hears it deep inside himself.

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

You can picture this guy walking around like the fucking crocodile from Peter Pan. Whoever heard of a surgeon practising therapy in his spare time? Or the other way round?

People talk about a sixth sense. Everything appears to be well, but there's a voice in the back of your head insisting it's wrong. It's paranoia, and it doesn't want you to get better. You've got to keep telling yourself that. Voices in your head and talking to yourself too now. Wasn't this supposed to be going in the opposite direction? This is the best progress you've made in years and you're starting to feel like he's not a real doctor.

And you can tell the anxiety's kicking in again, cause there's that clock on the wall creeping into your consciousness, driving you crazy. It was all going so well, like you were scaling the heights, and then you backslid halfway down the fucking mountain again. You don't need this shit in your head, and now you're thinking that your therapist is leaving shit inside his patients for real. Well why couldn't it be possible? He's doing open surgery on your deepest trauma centres every week, right there under the lights. Who knows what could've slipped in?

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

One day you'll find yourself heading to the twins' room with a kitchen knife in your hand. You'll do a double take, and stare at it in horror. You don't remember anything for the last couple minutes. You're a parent now. You can't be blacking out and listening to commands left rattling inside your head. You start to hope your dreams were dreams. You had to physically stop yourself there. You don't know what the fuck is up.

So you call in to the hospital and they talk to you like you're some fucking kid asking to see Hugh Jass. You're getting madder and panicking now. You swear to them you're not fucking around. You drive for miles on nothing but muscle memory from the times you used to drive there every week, you're fucking shaking so much.

You practically march up to the reception desk. She's looking over those glasses at you like it's the reason she bought them. But her attitude changes when she learns what you're there for. Her face turns grey, and she mutters something about checking with her boss. Then in the quickest time you've ever waited in a place like this, she's back with an administrator saying you'd better leave. Since February they've been getting these calls in from people asking for a Doctor Bastard. No such person works there. There's no one named Bastard in any hospital in the county. It's starting to scare them.

Everything you've read for months there's something in the margins, links or targeted ads, like creatures milling at the limits of your vision, all about surgical malpractice. Lawyers. Tales. Stories about people with live animals and infant forelimbs sewn up inside them. Somebody was admitted down in Kettering. They found a baby's arm was pressing on his lungs. Another lady had a mother rat inside of her deliver a litter. She came in shitting blood from what they'd gnawed out from inside of her.

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

Every night you sleep later and later. Every corner of your room there's someone's shadow. In your dreams a man in a white coat stands there, in your kitchen, in your home, watching you, smiling. You don't want to sleep. You won't go to the twins's room. You hear them crying in the night and pull your knees up like you don't trust your feet not to go. Everything's plastic in your kitchen now. You eat with sporks and shit. Takeout every night you can get it, and he's still at that conference in Chicago, totally unaware. You want to turn yourself in, have someone open you up, take off the top of that head. Maybe you'll do it yourself. You don't know what the fuck you'll find in there. Maybe no one should be exposed to it. Doctor Bastard? Was he a symptom of this madness? Or did something ancient as fuck find a new way to fuck with the sad world? There's a wailing from the room you never step foot in, down that corridor you walked every day before you ever thought to open up your mind.

The Thing in the Fridge

It's been there for six months now. Every time I open the door I try not to look at it. I must have bought it when I arrived.

I think it must have been food once. Something you'd eat, or put into your mouth and chew and swallow. Some kind of vegetable perhaps? Or maybe a bar of something. It's so hard to tell under the foam and mould and eyes.

I try not to look at it, especially when it looks at me.

I wonder if it's actually alive. If it's developed a brain stem, or if it just moves unthinkingly. It wouldn't bother me, except...

...It's growing bigger.

I barely sleep anymore. The heater in my room is on full blast, but I don't dare to take it down, in case the thing comes in. Could it survive outside the fridge? I don't know, but I'm not taking the chance.

I haven't had anyone over in at least six weeks. The last time anyone came over they went into the kitchen together. I don't know if they saw what was in there, but when they returned they looked like they had seen a decomposing food item of unknown origin.

To this day I've never asked them what it did to them, but I received a message the next day. It read simply, "dude, clean out your fridge".

What did it mean? The words haunt me to this day.

Let's solve Jack the Ripper!

As you know, I am a fan of Jack the Ripper and associated mythology. I read The Final Solution (which is the one about how the Freemasons did 9/11 to prevent Bongland from finding out the royal family are degenerates), and became fascinated by the stories of Saucy Jacky and his poor spelling.

In this article I will give a token gesture to srs study by omitting the stupidest theories, like Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll did it.

The Crimes

I will be using the "canonical" murders as the only ones that count, those being the murders of Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes (the double event), and Mary Jane Kelly. Some people like to think Jack started with Martha Tabram, only later developing his signature style. Others consider Kelly to be someone else's kill due to certain variations on the old MO. Still others contest whether the Ripper was responsible for both parts of the double event, since Stride was not gutted nor strangled. Jack's body count may then be as low as three, if Stride and Kelly were each killed by someone else. Dropping three bodies would only just make Jack count as a serial killer, but in defence of his reputation, I think someone else doing a murder like ten minutes' walk away from his on the same night seems like a pretty big coincidence, and if his alleged correspondence is to be credited, he did tell his dear old boss that he'd do two in one. The objection to Kelly's inclusion is plausible but would require us to identify the copycat as well, and the method of murder bears enough similarities given the difference in location and time available that we can call it Jack's if we want to.

The Usual Suspects

William Henry Bury

Suspected for similarities between the stab wounds found on Polly Nichols and the ones he put in his wife. "Jack Ripper is in this sellar (sic)" was also found written on his door. Hilariously, after turning himself in, and before they hanged him, he would make sulky innuendos to the effect that he was the Ripper, but stopped short of saying it outright, just to spite them.

David Cohen aka The Leather Apron aka Nathan Kaminsky

According to this theory Nathan Kaminsky was mixed up with formerly confirmed Ripper Aaron Kosminski, who was just a window-licker, and was briefly committed to an asylum under the name David Cohen, which was at the time like "John Doe" for Jews. This is a plausible story, but not much seems to be known about Kaminsky otherwise.

Aaron Kosminski

Still a popular subject, Kosminski was institutionalised at the right time for when the murders stopped. He was sometimes said to be violent, and was definitely schizophrenic, because he thought voices were telling him not to eat food that people gave him, and eat bread from the gutters instead. This has nothing to do with his ripping or otherwise, but it does prove one of history's first accounts of someone trolling himself.

Michael Ostrog

Generally ruled out these days, Ostrog was arrested about once a week for petty theft. Such a congenital fuckup was unlikely to avoid capture for the more srs crime of murder.

Nichols

A Midwife Did It

This theory, apparently raised by Inspector Abberline himself* postulates that a midwife could have done the killings as she would have been trusted by the victims, have a reason to be out late at night, and be able to explain blood on her clothes due to her work. This is a cool ass theory, but there's no direct evidence.

Francis Tumblety

Chiefly suspected for the size and sharpness of his moustache, Tumblety was a quack with a perhaps apocryphal affection for collecting uteri and a sizeable case of unwarranted self-importance. It was said that he might have sought revenge on prostitutes because he found out that his wife had been one, which is a fine origin story, but of debatable veracity. He was in England at the time of the murders but fled to America after the end of the canonical murders, and liked to use aliases like a villain in a Sherlock Holmes story.

Dr John Williams

A doctor who seems to have crossed paths with a Mary Kelly and possibly other victims in a professional capacity. He had a knife that matched the description of the murder weapon and was generally a bit of a dick. This is all circumstantial though. It probably wasn't him.

Francis Thompson

A poet who was homeless by the time his work became popular, Francis Thompson studied medicine and liked to write about murdering women, and is thought to have been in Whitechapel at the time of the murders. A great deal of circumstantial detail makes him seem a plausible suspect, but he was left-handed, whereas the Ripper is understood to have been right-handed.

Chapman

Alois Szemeredy

Implicated due to his commission of a similar crime in Buenos Aires, Szemeredy was convicted and committed to a loony bin. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any evidence that he was in London at the time of the murders.

Robert D'Onston Stephenson

A much-travelled former surgeon hospitalised in Whitechapel at the time of the murders, Stephenson wrote about his own Ripper theories involving killing in a cruciform pattern for black magic purposes, and spoke at such length and in such detail on the killings that people started to suspect him. This theory does require him to have sneaked out of the hospital where he was faking illness, which is farcically absurd and therefore stupid.

James Maybrick

Allegedly wrote a diary all about being the Ripper, which is generally agreed to be a hoax but makes him to this day one of the most discussed suspects. No one will remember you for anything.

Jacob Levy

A Jewish butcher and formerly committed nutter, Levy fit some of the details of the police profile, and may have been observed with Catherine Eddowes by his neighbour Joseph Levy shortly before whacking her. Then again, as we know, the police were useless when it came to keeping track of Jewish names, so maybe it was Joseph that did it. Oy vey.

Stride

Severin Klosowski, or George Chapman

This fuck was named by Abberline himself after he was convicted of poisoning his wives some time pursuant to the five Ripper murders. The problem is that poisoning is a very different way of killing someone as compared to strangling them, slitting their throats and gutting them.

Hyam Hyams

Loopy tune committed to Colney Hatch for stabbing his wife. Few details match eyewitness testimony.

James Kelly

Another cuckoo fruit and nut bar banged up for stabbing his wife, Kelly was sought after the Mary Jane Kelly murder but whether he was even in London is unknown. Rozzers quickly gave up on him and he spent much of the rest of his life waiting around trying to be arrested, and they didn't even bother. That's what you get for being a 19th Century schizoid man.

George Hutchinson

Famous eyewitness who claimed to see Mary Jane Kelly with the Ripper shortly before her death. Some people think he made up his account and some think he did the murders. There's no direct evidence, but people like the character. Claimed to have spent all his money going to Romford, which may be the most suspicious thing about him.

Eddowes (censored for your comfort and convenience)

Carl Feigenbaum

Executed in New York, serial murderer Feigenbaum was connected to the Ripper based on an alleged confession to his lawyer that he suffered from a madness that compelled him "to kill and mutilate the woman that falls in my way". Feigenbaum had been a merchant sailor and the theory goes he would have alighted at the London docks, whacked a hooker or two, and sailed back to Germany, leaving Abberline himself and the rest of the Keystone Kops running round in circles looking for someone who wasn't there. This is a good theory because it's funny, but relies on gaps in the shipping records. Feigenbaum could have been anywhere at the time of the killings, and it's known that the lawyer made up a bunch of bullshit to connect him to other murders around the world that had nothing to do with him or didn't even happen.

Joseph Barnett

Mary Jane Kelly's ex was raised as a suspect on the basis that he resembled eyewitness accounts and might have had access to the room where she was killed. It has been suspected that he may have written the "Dear Boss" letter which introduced the name "Jack the Ripper", and this "trade name" may have referred to his work with fish. Some also believe he only killed Kelly, using the Ripper murders as a cover. This is plausible, particularly as he was observed to be around her in the days immediately prior to her murder. However, this theory still leaves the OG Jack unaccounted for.

Montague John Druitt

Seemingly considered a suspect on the basis of suspicious innuendo, Druitt became an hero shortly after the killings, providing a possible explanation for why they stopped - if it was him. No direct evidence supports him as a suspect.

Someone Else

It is very possible that it was someone else entirely. London is very big and lots of people live there, and Whitechapel at the time was a crowded slum. It may be that the Ripper is someone everyone has overlooked both then and now. This idea isn't taken very seriously by Ripperologists because that would be history cheating, and an unwinnable game is a broken game, and should be scorned.

Kelly (everyone's favourite)

Elimination

I believe out of the suspects presented here, the only likely options are Bury, Kaminsky, Tumblety, Levy, Barnett and Someone Else. The most compelling case against Barnett hinges on his relationship with Kelly, which inclines me to think if he were guilty it would be of the Kelly murder only. If that were the case, Bury, Kaminsky, Tumblety or Levy could have been the original Jack. A lot of the case against Tumblety rests on hearsay, and there is not enough information to confirm the Kaminsky/Kosminski switcherooni, which leaves Bury and Levy the most likely candidates for the original Ripper. Both are good, but Bury closely resembles the FBI profile. He was confirmed out all night every night there was a murder, and he fucked off posthaste as soon as the heat intensified. He even had items reminiscent of trophies taken from the victims, like the rings missing from Chapman. And he had butcher experience, just like Levy.

The cases against Kaminsky and Levy are plausible because of the paucity of detail which surrounds them. Knowing more might implicate them to a greater degree or rule them out entirely. The case against Bury is strong because of positively determined facts. Bury is therefore the most likely Ripper, and the one who shall be starring in my next opus, "Whitechapel!: A Musical Comedy Extravaganza", starring Neil Patrick Harris. Look for it.

Think you know better than me who Jack the Ripper was? Leave a comment, butt head.

*In Ripperology, Abberline is always referred to with "himself", because he was clearly very important despite failing to catch the killer. If you don't call him "himself", you will be excommunicated from Ripperology.

Saws: http://www.casebook.org/suspects/

The Poughkeepsie Tapes!!!

Thought you ran out of good horror movies years ago? Never seen a good found footage movie after The Blair Witch Project? Under 6 feet tall? Then you might just be a disgusting manlet that should be exterminated from the gene pool.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes was never released, lending credence to the conspiracy theory that Hollywood is this bad intentionally and scuppers anything good on purpose because Hollywood hates you. This theory is true, but fortunately you can probably find a copy on line. The first version I saw I immediately realised this was the horror movie I had been missing all these years, but the uploader CUT THE GOD DAMN ENDING OFF. Anyway, it was really good. WATCH IT.

For those of you PEASANTS who don't know, The Poughkeepsie Tapes is about a serial killer in New York State who seems to be loosely based on Ted Bundy (who even gets a shoutout in the movie), the Zodiac Killer and the fictionalised Henry Lee Lucas from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (like whom he switches up his MO to confuse everyone). He videotapes all his kills (for he is in the 90s, I think), and wears this beaky mask thing just for jolly wouldn't you?

But perhaps the most interesting part of the movie concerns what I'll call his favourite victim. I won't give away what happens to her, but it's quite unlike what happens to most characters in horror movies, and confers a note of poignancy which makes the whole experience more interesting. Watch The Poughkeepsie Tapes, and sort out your life, in either order.

Razorback!!!

Have you ever wanted to watch a really stupidly well-made movie about a great big giant pig that eats everybody, like Lena Dunham? Well Razorback is just such a film!!!

lol guess who?

The movie stars no one of consequence, and concerns a man's quest to find what really happened to his girlfriend, who, of course, was eaten by a giant pig. Along the way he encounters an old man who lost his kid to the said pig-monster, and a pair of kangaroo hunters who drive a big beast that looks straight out of The Road Warrior. Maybe they don't realise that movie wasn't real, or maybe to Australians it was.

Get in, loser. We're going to get the guzzoline.

Anyway, this assortment of protagonists pursues Moby Pig with the dogged determination of Captain Ahab. It's Jaws with a pig. Jaws is Moby Dick with a shark. I read Moby Dick in high school and that's all I did.

He's dead Jim.

The best part of the film is when the hero gets lost in the desert and has to sleep up a creaky windmill or something to escape from pigs. He yells at the pigs "Ha ha you stupid pigs! You are pigs and cannot reach me!" He was so happy. But then the thing collapsed. Then he wandered around in the desert and goes fucking bonkers and starts seeing visions and it's really super cool because it comes out of left-field so you share him going crezzy.

holy crap look at this fucking shit

Like all 80s movies, it ends with a fight in a smoke-filled industrial space (The Terminator, Empire Strikes Back, Cobra), and the hero whacks the pig and makes so much bacon that all Australia could eat for a month.

ain't no Razorback girl

What's confusing about the movie is that it's a simple, basically inconsequential story about a few people chasing a pig, but it's one of the best visual movies ever seen. Every single shot in this movie could be framed and hung on your wall, even the ones of the giant pig. Definitely see this movie, it's way better than whatever stupid crap you like.

Album review: LIE: The Love And Terror Cult, by Charles Manson

Hey folks it's that time of year again!!! The time when I review an album of music for your listening pleasure. Today's album is a bit of a classic, yet sorely overlooked by the music press due to its singer/songwriter being involved in some interesting side projects. Charlie "Jesus Christ" Manson was a hippy who auditioned for the Monkees and squatted in one of the Beach Boys' houses, before breaking away from show biz to develop his own sound. I used to own his live album too, but I sold it because it sucked balls. It was recorded in a prison and the main instrument was the toilet flushing in the background. But LIE: The Love And Terror Cult, an album released to help fund his trial expenses, is his real artistic statement.

Sadly, Charlie's image was a little too unorthodox for the mainstream charts.

The album starts with "Look At Your Game Girl", which would letter be covered by the Guns and Roses. This sets the standard that will be maintained throughout the artist's oeuvre, in which the lyrics start off coherent and flatten out into a repetitive drawl like something a crazy wall-slapper would say over and over. He then lurches into "Ego", an uptempo meditation on Freudian theory with a nice string break for variety.

In fact there's quite an impressive variety of sounds on this album, though almost all anchored to this cool-ass chunky guitar sound. Charlie's vocals are similarly varied, as he tries on different personae on the various tracks. "Mechanical Man" he sings like a mechanical person of some sort, and relays the sad story of his pet monkey who died, although this may not be entirely autobiographical.

Charlie also lets the Family girls chime in on "I'll Never Say Never To Always", which sounds exactly like the kind of slightly-off nursery rhyme type melody they used to put in horror movies in the 70s, so maybe Charlie invented the trend.

The production is a little rough around the edges, but that's good because it allows Charlie to spread out his ideas, which often seem like sketches and half-finished musings, but are always tuneful and intriguing.

It's a shame Charlie didn't pursue his music more successfully, because you could slip some of this stuff into a playlist of late-60s standards like Buffalo Springfield and Jefferson Airplane and Crackerjack Fuckface* and you'd never know. In a parallel universe somewhere Charlie is remembered as a rock star like Jim Morrison, instead of a crazy-eyed cult leader who cut a guy's ear off and his hangers-on killed people.

9/10 very good album.

*This is not a real band.

Academia is carving out new frontiers in flimflam and chicanery.

Have Hugh ever wondered how to write an academic paper? What with the vertiginous standards of contemporary writing out there, no one would blame you for feeling intimidated out of it:

Real.

As you can see, this is real cutting-edge stuff. But don't be discouraged: with a bit of coaching, you too can write important essays on identity cults and the narcissists who love them. Follow these six simple steps to ensure your intellectual prolapse will pass for the real thing.

• Add "-ness" to words that don't end in -ness. Examples could include "unknowableness" or  even "being-ness". "Otherness" is a must.
• Always remember to pluralise words that don't need to be plural, in such a way as to imply that there are subtle differences within and around a concept that only you can understand. For example, never speak of "postmodernism" but "postmodernisms". Use this even with collective terms like "public" (publics). If you combine this with the above tactic, you score a combo which is worth at least 1000 ticks. Be sure to write about "Blacknesses" and "subjectivenesses" for mad approval.
• Find someone who is different from you and accuse them of "othering" you (or the minority you purport to speak for, if you're feeling in the mood for condescending to yet another group that are unlike you). If you do this quickly and stridently enough, nobody will notice that you are the only one "othering" people by bringing up irrelevant details about them like their sex or hair colour.
• Make sure to "reclaim" words like "bitch" and "queer" so you can pretend to be rebellious while getting headpats from a quintessentially establishment institution. I remember when I first learned that "queer theory" was used by professionals. You might as well call it "bumming studies". Troll academics by pointing out that this is cultural appropriation of black people, who invented reclaiming so they would have something to rhyme with trigger in their rap songs.
• Never write in the first person, as this makes it too obvious that everything you're saying is your unexamined left-lib prejudices. Instead of removing your ass-ignorant worldview from your writing, just remove all references to "I", "me" and "mine" (this is what academics actually teach).
• Astute readers will note that all this stuff relates to form and style. This is because the substance of academic writing ceased to be important in, like, probably the 50s. No one cares, for instance, that Hamlet is all about Shakespear's Sister's depression over their dead son, the decline of empire, and the existential horror of not knowing what comes after death. Is Hamlet gay? Does he exhibit othernesses? Academia demands to know.

If you but follow these few steps, you'll soon be well on your way to balding, supercilious glory.

Which is the gheyest politically correct term?

Hi everybody. My favourite politically correct term is "differently abled". This is a good and accurate term for people in wheelchairs: look at Professor X, he can read minds.

But not all politically correct terms are as on point as this. Take for example the term "people of colour". This is quite obviously just the old racist term "coloured people", they just changed the order of the words around. This is like calling a gay guy a "person of faggotry". I think politically correct people don't realise that that's how stupid that is, because their orthodoxy has eroded their brains like Creme Eggs erode teeth. Creme Eggs must only be eaten frozen. Put them in the freezer, they taste better. Be careful though: they may chip your teeth if you bite down on them like a dummy.

Sometimes "people of colour" is shortened to "POC", because nothing encapsulates respect for peoples' unique cultures and heritage like lumping them all in a homogeneous mass of not-whiteyness, and then reducing them to an acronym. If politically correct people were in charge of Hallmark, your happy retirement card would read "you're going to die soon", and they'd spend your retirement party bringing it up to everyone to tell them not to bring it up.

If this dystopia ever ends, history will look back on political correctness as a long, unbroken string of idiots shooting themselves in the foot for no reason, by first declaring pre-established terminology offensive, and then replacing it with something even worse, while the rest of us sat around wondering why you would need to invent ugly euphemisms for human beings in the first place.

Movie Who Cares Presents: The IntruderÜø¿×É»Ö{ê─×¢¥┐└┴♠◙♂•◘♣♦♥♫3☼

The Intruder is a movie about everybody dying in a supermarket. Despite this, it is slightly more good than depressing.

I may be a grave robber, but at least I don't work here.

The movie starts out documenting the shenanigans of the aforementioned store's employees. It's night, and the last few shoppers are going home. We get some nice POVs from their trolleys, which might make you wonder: why? and huh? 

You'll never live like common people. You'll never do whatever common people do.

Then an old man tries to buy some shit, but everything falls out the bottom of his paper bag, which is a metaphor for life.

Aw, darnit! First World War 1 and now this.

Sadly, the plot then kicks in, as our heroine is menaced by a mullet, and her ex boyfriend, who is wearing it:

Ladies, take heart: if you were born after 1972, you didn't date this guy.

The mullet gets in a big fight with everyone, and runs off into the store, instigating a sequence in which the staff try to hunt him down, Alien-style, which is reasonable when dealing with the pathologically bemulletted. This would be enough plot for the rest of the movie, but we're not so lucky.

Die Hard with a Mullet.

This isn't a very good movie, but it has a very unique and interesting visual style, which involves putting the camera inside things where a camera doesn't normally go. For example, here is a POV shot from inside a rotary phone:

Whose POV is it? Do the phones have gremlins? Sadly, this line of inquiry is never developed, like most of the characters.

Why is this shot framed like this? Are we looking at a mirror? Why? I picture the director jabbing his crazy fingers at the cast and yelling "dammit they're too up-and-down! Make them more sideways!", not because that's necessarily what happened, but because I'd like to think it is.

Say, do you think someone's going to get that through their face?

So anyway, long story short, someone starts butchering the cast. Is it the mullet? The store owner? Ted Raimi? Godzilla? Barbie? Does it matter? As befits these type of movies, the killer's motivation, when revealed, makes absolutely fuck-all sense, but the actor gives one of the gurningest, most gleefully batshit insane performances ever seen outside my special ed class.

The main thing about this movie is the way the supermarket location is used. People go up and down the meat conveyor, the killer chases the final girl over the tops of the checkout counters, and they all play bumper cars in the trolleys (well, not really, but they might as well have). The slasher plot is kind of extraneous to the enjoyment of the movie, which centres on the fun of watching people get to wreak havoc in a supermarket. Just like in Dawn of the Dead and the greatest movie of all time: Career Opportunities. It was while writing this review that I decided all I really want in life is to trash a supermarket.

Get out while you can, Final Girl!!!