October People
Halloween is coming folks. That age old harvest festival so changed from it’s origins but still fundementaly the time of year when we celebrate the end of the warm months and get ready for winter. There is no better season and the taste of apples and pumpkin is already on my tongue. Forgive the runons…..
24 days till Halloween, happy Friday everyone
A+++
Last night FX premiered their new show, American Horror Story, and my god what an excessive, insane, over the top, pulse pounding, gruesome, mind bending, erotic, overstuffed, lunatic nightmare it was.
The creator’s of this show clearly know horror fans and what we want to see, and my god they make sure we see everything there could possibly be. To me, the Lynch inspired, Argento style lunacy was so full of nightmare logic and unsettling imagery that I could not wait for it to be over, yet craved the next episode as soon as it was.
After a particularly awesome 1978 opening sequence, we follow a family still reeling from a few tragedies. Connie Britton plays Vivian Harmon, who has recently suffered a miscarriage as well as walking in on her husband Ben (Dylan McDermott) having an affair. To quell their troubled lives, the family pack up and move to the west coast where they buy a creepy house with a tragic past. Standard stuff, but executed with such disregard for restraint that I found the material fresh. In tow with them is their daughter Violet, who with her big hat and gothy expression channels a “Lydia Dietz” era Wynona Rider. To round out the list of insane people are Jessica Lange, basically playing Blanche Dubois meets Gloria Swanson (but, dare I say…crazier), her mentally challenged daughter, a disturbed teenage patient of Ben’s who has eyes for violet, a burn victim who used to live in the house before going all Ronnie Defeo/Jack Torrence on them, creepy ginger twins (in both breathing and non breathing varieties!), a young/old housekeeper, drug using bully girls, a leather gimp suit (‘cause at this point why the hell not), and whatever the baby/old woman clawed strobe light thing lurking in the basement is.
There is not a boring moment in the entire pilot, which moves so fast and is so intense that you barely have time to register the latest bit of madcap insanity the house is dishing out at you. Oh! Did I mention the creepy murals that not even I would allow in my house, yeah, creepy murals…and baby parts in jars….and dead….things…and….
You know what, I’m hooked; I’m along for the ride, wherever this nightmare takes me. It could almost stray into camp if it was not for the intense sense of foreboding that came with every shot. If you have ever enjoyed horror, check this one out, it’s made for us.
