10 Short Stories I Read in 2018

When it comes to short stories, I'm mostly about horror, but I'm also a sucker for a Christmas Western. Here are the short stories (and a novella or two) that I read last year:

"The Captain of the Pole-Star" by Arthur Conan Doyle



As a Sherlock Holmes fan, I was disappointed by this mediocre ghost story. Or maybe I just expected more from Conan Doyle. "Captain of the Pole-Star" is great at creating a mood, it just never pays off with a satisfying revelation about why these events are happening.

My favorite ghost stories are always also mysteries: learning why a haunting is taking place so that it can be resolved. Conan Doyle is usually great about pulling back the curtain on a mystery, so that's what I wanted here, too. Instead, he leaves the details vague, which is perhaps meant to be unsettling, but I just found frustrating.

"The Canterville Ghost" by Oscar Wilde



Diane and I saw a theatrical version of this story earlier in 2018 and that sparked interest in seeing the TV movie with Patrick Stewart as the Ghost. I decided I needed to finally read Wilde's story over Halloween.

There are some truly spooky elements, but Wilde is more interested in the satirical contrast of American and British cultures than he is in creating dread. It's a fun and funny story, but I prefer the gothic tone and philosophical exploration of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

"Lot No. 249" by Arthur Conan Doyle

This was more like it. After being discouraged by "Captain of the Pole-Star," I loved the mystery and growing horror of "Lot No. 249." It's easy to figure out what's going on ahead of the main character, but that doesn't diminish the extremely cool Old Oxford setting, the excitement of the main character's finally figuring it out, and a crazy great description of his being stalked by a truly dreadful creature.

"The Doll's Ghost" by F Marion Crawford



Unnerving and emotional. A doll "doctor" sends his daughter out into the London streets to make an evening delivery, but she doesn't come home. As a parent, I found it extremely unsettling. As a lover of ghost stories, I found it beautiful. One of my favorites of the year.

"Room in the Dragon Volant" by J Sheridan Le Fanu



A fun setup with a mysterious room in an inn that people keep disappearing from. Unfortunately, the protagonist is stupidly gullible and delivered from the threat against him by exactly 0% of his own ability.

"The Empty House" by Algernon Blackwood



In November, the little bookstore I go to put out a display of little books of Christmas Ghost Stories designed by the cartoonist Seth. After helping read a Christmas ghost story for the Weird Christmas podcast, I was all for following the advice on the books' covers and reviving the Christmas tradition of reading spooky stories for the holiday.

The first one I read was "The Empty House," a simple, but effective story about a woman and her nephew who decide to investigate an allegedly haunted house in their neighborhood. There aren't any mysteries or twists, but Blackwood's descriptions are super creepy and stuck with me after I finished the story.

"The Diary of Mr. Poynter"by MR James



I'm not sure that the story about a hair monster totally makes sense, but dang James conjures some creepy imagery.

"The Crown Derby Plate" by Marjorie Bowen



So good. Probably my favorite of the year. It's about a woman who goes to an old house to inquire about a missing plate from a set she bought at an estate sale. It's spooky and humorous with a great ending.

"Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk" by Frank Cowper



The final ghost story of the season for me. It's about a guy who goes fishing and winds up stranded on a spooky, derelict boat. It's nicely atmospheric with great details and I like how it leaves the backstory ambiguous. The narrator bugged me though, both in his defensiveness about his story being disbelieved and his foolishness in getting into the mess he got into in the first place.

"A Journey in Search of Christmas" by Owen Wister



I finished out the year with this sweet story of a cowboy on holiday who starts out looking for drink and maybe revenge (though not the kind you'd expect), but finds Christmas instead.

Guest Post | The Four Color Adventures of Frosty the Snowman

By GW Thomas

From just about the very beginning of comic books, publishers have realized that with the extra leisure and more generous spending habits of December, it’s a great time to sell more comics. Thus the Christmas Special. From Bugs Bunny to Superman, the Christmas comic became a seasonal surety on wire store racks.

1950 was the year Gene Autry tried for Christmas gold a second time. His first hit had been “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which had been Number 1 the year previous. His rendition of Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson’s song “Frosty the Snowman” proved almost as impressive (getting to Number 7), adding yet another entry to the pantheon of non-religious Christmas characters. The song would have to wait nineteen years to get a cartoon based on it, but in the meantime, the comic specials filled that void.

Dell had the popular anthology comic, Four Color, which alternated between familiar newspaper comic characters, Disney and Warner Brothers, to movie and TV adaptations. The year after Autry’s hit, readers saw the first Frosty the Snowman comic with Four Color #359 (November 1951). Written and drawn by Jon Stanley and Dan Gormley, it set the pattern for the next ten years. Gormley would draw seven of the eleven issues, each showing up in November or December.

Many of the stories are suggested by the original song. “Before I melt away” inspires several stories where Frosty needs to keep himself from melting, such as “The Heat Wave” (December 1961). “There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found” gives us several stories about the hat, whether stolen by evil snowmen or lost in a mix-up after being cleaned. Later, when the cartoons were done in the 1960s, they too latched onto these ideas.

The first full-length story, “The Evil Snowman,” features a villainous snowman with a black Russian beard. The story would get a second version (called “The Snowman Contest”) in the final issue where the evil snowman wears a checked vest instead. (After eleven years of stories, even Gormley had run dry.) This first issue also introduces some of Frosty’s sidekicks: a rabbit named Skeeter, Santa Claus (with his elves and reindeer), Jack Frost, the Straw Man, and a gang of kids who come to the rescue whenever Frosty needs them.

Most of the Frosty plots follow similar themes. There are a good number of stories in which Frosty loses his hat like, “Frosty the Snowman and the Old Top Hat” (November 1952) and “Magic Hat” (December 1958). He doesn’t turn into an immobile snowman, but he can’t walk around (or skip and dance, as he often points out) either, and it is up to kids or animals or mere chance to bring his hat back.

Other stories focus on Frosty as helper or hero, usually for a small child or animals, like the ducks and other forest creatures in “Saving Frozen Ducks” (November 1952), “Frosty the Snowman Makes the Forest Safe”(November 1953), and “Frosty the Snowman and Peter Polar Bear” (November 1954). In these tales, Frosty may go on a long journey, giving the story a grander scope than the neighborhood tales. Sometimes he is helping Santa Claus, like when the elves all come down with the flu or the toys are missing. Frosty encounters a number of witches in these stories, as they require a villain, like the one who has taken all the hobby horses in “Frosty the Snowman and the Crystal Castle” (November 1953). Wolves and foxes also show up as bad guys.

Frosty also acts as teacher sometimes to boys who have lost their way. “Bad Bobbie” (November 1953) has Bobbie tricking Frosty into shoveling the walk for him, but when Bobbie tries to get Frosty onto skis, the tables are turned. Frosty is an expert skier and causes a pile of snow to recover Bobby’s walkway. These bad boys usually see the error of their ways and become good with Frosty’s help.

And lastly, my favorite of the Frosty stories are mysteries, where Frosty acts as detective. The November 1954 issue had “Down on the Farm” where a “ghost” is playing practical jokes on the farm animals. Frosty, of course, uses his little white cells and figures out who is the culprit. “The Missing Page” (December 1960-February 1961) has Frosty help a girl find part of a missing book.

In 1964, Rankin-Bass' animated Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer would premiere. A perennial favorite, it featured a snowman named Sam, not Frosty (and modeled on the actor who played him, Burl Ives). In 1969, Rankin-Bass acquired the Frosty property and put out an animated cartoon of him that has also become a seasonal fixture, with Jackie Vernon as the loveable snowman. R-B did a crossover cartoon in 1979 called Rudolph the Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys. All of these animated shows remind me of material in the Dell comics, especially the idea of Frosty's becoming associated with Santa and the North Pole, though it is hard to say if they had any influence as many of the ideas can be found in the original song.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Holiday Affair (1949)

Who's In It: Robert Mitchum (Thunder Road, The Way West), Janet Leigh (Little Women '49, Psycho) Wendell Corey (The Great Missouri Raid, Rear Window), Gordon Gebert (The Flame and the Arrow, The House on Telegraph Hill), and special guest star Harry Morgan (High Noon, MASH) as a cop in one scene.

What It's About: A woman's (Leigh) Christmas is turned upside down when her feelings for a department store clerk (Mitchum) complicate her relationship with her lawyer boyfriend (Corey).

How It Is: What a great transition from Noirvember to Christmas. I saw this (or rather, the last half of it) a few years ago and have wanted to see it the whole way through ever since. It's totally romantic comedy and if it was remade today it would go straight to the Hallmark Channel. But it's got Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh and some other excellent performances, so its a new holiday classic for me.

This is an early role for Leigh, who plays the main character Connie. It was Leigh's tenth film, but her debut was just a couple of years earlier and it's easy to see why she was so busy so quickly. She's stunningly beautiful, for starters, but she's also crazy good and totally reels me in as a young widow trying to raise her son Timmy (Gebert) on her own. She's got support, including her in-laws and her boyfriend Carl, but she's also fiercely independent and protective of her and Timmy's autonomy. That's kept her distant from Carl - who desperately wants to marry her - and it's also a problem when she meets and becomes attracted to Mitchum's Steve.

Holiday Affair is an unusual genre for tough-guy Mitchum, but he's not exactly playing against type. He's still super confident and charming; he's just not punching anyone. And he gets a lot of opportunity to interact with kids, which is adorable.

Gebert is great, too. You could swap him out with little Ronnie Howard and I wouldn't complain, but the movie wouldn't be any better. He's a good actor and super cute.

And I quite like Corey as Carl. One synopsis I read describes him as "stuffy," but that's not the impression I got. He's solid and reliable, but he's also very clearly, deeply in love with Connie. He's a great guy and I especially love a speech he gives about the relationship he wants to have with Timmy. Unfortunately for Carl, it's also clear to the audience that Connie's not in love with him. But it'll take Steve to get everyone on the same page.

The story isn't unique, but the cast is so good that I get wrapped up in their characters. This is one I'm adding to my annual Christmas marathon.

Rating: 4 out of 5 best couples ever.

Klaus: A Christmas Comic Book Review [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Comic books featuring Santa Claus go back to the Golden Age. The Funnies, Disney Parade, Santa Claus Funnies; the four color Santa has been drawn by Irvin Tripp, Arthur E Jameson, Walt Kelly, and (much later) even John Byrne. Holiday comics are a guaranteed one-shot sales booster. They come and go like Bing Crosby tunes, Grinch cartoons, and fruit cake. So imagine my surprise when in November 2015 a comic appears called Klaus. It’s written by British comic book writer, Grant Morrison (who gave us Justice League revamps, Dark Knight adventures, and lately 18 Days) and ran until August of 2016. Christmas comics in the summer! Maybe that’s why he was worthy of Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2010. That takes some writing chops.

The seven-issue mini-series is set in the town of Grimsvig, a Medieval settlement ruled over by a cruel baron. He has made virtual slaves of the men and forbidden toys, merriment, and the Yule holiday. Sound familiar? The baron’s name isn’t Burgermeister Meisterburger. It’s not Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town, the 1970 children’s special written by Romeo Muller. Morrison begins in the same place then deviates into a power struggle between toymaker and baron that is closer to Game of Thrones than kiddie cartoons. We learn about the character of Klaus, who lives alone in the woods with his pet wolf Lilli and uses the magic of the forest, and how he was framed for murder by the baron who has also stolen his love, the beautiful Dagmar.

Klaus’s one-man war on the enemies of Christmas will appeal to comic fans who like their knights dark and their heroes bloody. Again, different than the Rankin-Bass cartoon, this comic has a nice, dark, almost Lovecraftian vein to it. The baron is not a madman, but in league with a demon trapped under the town’s vein of coal. The baron tells everyone the coal is for the king who will visit at Yule, but is in fact being cleared to free the monster. When this creature escapes we are in for a great sword-and-sorcery style fight. The terrible demon is the basis for the anti-Santa, Krampus, who wishes to devour the town’s children.

Morrison describes the comic thusly: “Klaus is the story of our hero’s greatest challenge and how he overcame it. This is the tale of one man and his wolf against a totalitarian state and the ancient evil that sustains it. Part action thriller, part sword-and-sorcery, part romance, part science fiction, Klaus has given us free rein to revamp, reinvent, and re-imagine a classic superhero for the 21st century. He’s making a list and he’s checking it twice. This Christmas it’s all about psychedelic shamanism, anti-authoritarian guerrilla gift-giving, and the jingle bells of freedom!”

The artwork in Klaus was done consistently throughout by Dan Mora, who also did the color. His work has a little Disney appeal, but can do all the realistic stuff it needs to do for a sword-and-sorcery tale, much as European artists like Crisse do. His designs for the evil Big Bad are creepy and believable at the same time that they are utterly fantastic. Mora worked on Hexed, also published by Boom, so he can draw magic stuff well.

Now the idea of writing Santa’s back story is not new with Morrison. L Frank Baum did it in 1902, and pulpster Seabury Quinn was much closer to Morrison’s version with “Roads” in Weird Tales in January 1938. What Morrison does do is write an adult story worthy of where Quinn leaves off. He gives us a hero to cheer for, an underdog with a righteous cause, a love story, and good villains who may at first seem cardboard, but become more interesting as we learn their objectives and struggles. Unlike Romeo Muller’s cartoon, Morrison hints at some origins of Christmas, but isn’t bound too tightly to it. This isn’t really a Christian tale so much as a Yuletide one. There is more of Robert E Howard than Saint Nicholas here: a celebration of love, family, hope, and light that can be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of religious belief; something comic book publishers are more sensitive to today.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Cthulhu Christmas Classics: The Festival [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

I have been re-experiencing HP Lovecraft recently. I read pretty much everything he ever wrote back in the late 1980s when I was obsessed with the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. I can’t complain. It gave me my first non-fiction and fiction sales: “The City in the Sea” in Cthulhu Now! (1987) and “The Man Who Would Be King” (Eldritch Tales #24, Winter 1990). My reading of HPL was hurried and usually with the intent of finding useful bits to use in the game. So, in re-reading him, I am enjoying his work in a new – and I think – more honest way: as a horror writer.

One of the stories I re-read is “The Festival,” which appeared in Weird Tales, January 1925. I read it from a digital scan of that magazine that included the creepy Andrew Brosnatch illustration. January issues actually sold in December, making this the Christmas issue. “The Festival” is a perfect choice for such an issue since it is a Lovecraftian Christmas story. Now don’t expect anything as tame as a Dickensian ghost. Lovecraft was a complete atheist and so he isn’t trying to retell Jesus’s story or be Clement Moore. (Though HPL was a poet and followed up “The Festival” a year later with the poem “Yule Horror”: “But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings unhallowed and old.”) Lovecraft wants to take us to the time before Nazareth and “Jolly Old St. Nicholas.”

The plot of “The Festival” will seem familiar to Lovecraft readers. He would use it again in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and elsewhere: a man who learns of his family’s ancient ties to a decrepit town (inspired by a visit to Marblehead, MA) goes to that place and experiences a terror and a realization of what his family has been involved in. Sometimes they turn out to be people turning into fish-frogs; other times devil-worshipers. The narrator of this tale has come to Kingsport, a rotting little town on the Atlantic coast at Christmas, where he hears no village noise or sees any tracks. Lovecraft indulges his love of antiquarian architecture with a description of the elder town:

…snowy Kingsport with its ancient vanes and steeples, ridgepoles and chimney-pots, wharves and small bridges, willow-trees and graveyards; endless labyrinths of steep, narrow, crooked streets, and dizzy church-crowned central peak that time durst not touch; ceaseless mazes of colonial houses piled and scattered at all angles and levels like a child’s disordered blocks; antiquity hovering on grey wings over winter-whitened gables and gambrel roofs; fanlights and small-paned windows one by one gleaming out in the cold dusk to join Orion and the archaic stars. And against the rotting wharves the sea pounded; the secretive, immemorial sea out of which the people had come in the elder time.

But the master knows that horror fiction works on mood so he gives us the creepy treatment as well:

Beside the road at its crest a still higher summit rose, bleak and windswept, and I saw that it was a burying-ground where black gravestones stuck ghoulishly through the snow like the decayed fingernails of a gigantic corpse. The printless road was very lonely, and sometimes I thought I heard a distant horrible creaking as of a gibbet in the wind. They had hanged four kinsmen of mine for witchcraft in 1692, but I did not know just where.

The wanderer on Christmas tredding the snowy country -- this could be a scene from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula’s Guest” or an MR James tale. But wait! It’s going to get much weirder. Because the narrator goes to an address scavenged from some family record and is introduced to two seemingly bland people, an old man and his wife. They accept him immediately thanks to his lineage and sit him down to wait. Wait for what? The visitor has no idea, but is willing to find out. To pass the time, some light reading: a stack of arcane volumes including nothing less than the dread Necronomicon. HPL is ridiculously close to unintentional humor here, but with his usual deftness manages to make it creepy, with the visitor realizing that this old couple are stranger than they seemed at first. He has the odd feeling that the man is actually wearing some kind of skin mask.



The time arrives and the old couple gives the visitor a cloak to put on and everybody in town is joining in, as they all file to the old church (this is the scene Brosnatch drew). At the church the man realizes nobody, including himself, is leaving any tracks in the snow. The robed acolytes take him down a long, winding stairwell to a pit that emits a cold flame. The man is forced to join in terrible rites and hopes only for escape. Then he finds out that this is only the precursor to worse things, every member of the town jumping onto the back of a winged terror to fly into a dark cavern that contains a vast sea. The old man tries to force him onto a mount and his skin mask falls off. The narrator screams and flees into the water.

The tale ends (where else?) at the loony bin in Arkham, after the narrator is rescued from the freezing water near Kingsport. The shrinks think the best way to cure him is to allow him to read the Necronomicon (again, edging toward the ludicrous) and finishes with a quote that speaks of gigantic caverns beneath the earth, filled with terrors. Not HPL’s best version of these ideas, but this was only 1923. The story, despite two rather silly points, works wonderfully in other ways. HPL parodies many Christmas themes: traveling to be with family, staying with relatives, the silly little customs we observe every year, dressing up for church, worship, and inclusion. The entire story is a black Christmas the narrator would rather forget.

Looking back at my notes from 1985, my only take away from this story was the name Kingsport and the first appearance of the “byakhee,” the flying monsters the cultists rode. It wasn’t even Lovecraft who named the beasts, but August Derleth who made them the ride of choice in The Trail of Cthulhu (1944). I completely missed all the fun Lovecraft was having with his character, like a dupe from Algernon Blackwood’s “Ancient Sorceries” stumbling onto a village of were-cats. I don’t usually think of HPL as a funny guy, but I can’t help but think this tale is meant to be just a little ridiculous even as it is exceptionally strange. It certainly is a change of pace from the Dylan Thomas and Alexander Woollcott chestnuts you find in most anthologies. And remember what old HPL says: “It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind.” Merry Cthulhu Christmas!

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

My 8 Least-Favorite Movies from 2015

31. American Ultra



I should start by explaining the weaksauce title of this list. Usually, the bottom several movies of a year are ones that I actively disliked, but that wasn't the case this time. In fact, I like some of these - at least some things about some of them - quite a bit. 2015 was an extraordinarily strong year for film, so even the bottom of the barrel has some good stuff.

For example, American Ultra is sort of Chuck: The Movie, but different enough in every way - characters, plot, tone, and setting - that it's not fair to compare the two. The two leads are wonderful (and I say that as someone who doesn't usually enjoy Stewart's performances) and the focus isn't nearly as drug-oriented as the marketing makes you think. Mike and Phoebe are stoners, but that doesn't define everything about them.

My biggest issue is that the ending undermines the theme of the rest of the movie. It doesn't ruin the film, but it does lessen its impact. Otherwise, it was a fun, last action flick for the summer.

32. Krampus



I was hoping for a horror/comedy like the House movies from the '80s or maybe Tucker and Dale vs Evil. This is more like Gremlins; mostly dark and wanting to be legitimately scary with some humorous moments.

My favorite thing about it is the creature designs. The monsters look amazing and I recommend it if only for that. It's biggest failure is the way the characters react to their situation. There's exactly one moment where I felt like a parent actually acted like a parent would when a child is in danger.

Still, it's a great-looking movie with a cool premise. Not as awesome as I wanted, but not nearly as bad as I feared.

33. The Last Witch Hunter



I had a lot more fun than I expected. I'd written this off as derivative of the numerous monster-hunter movies that came before it, but got to go to a press screening with Diane and David and we had a great time.

For those who've seen a bunch of monster-hunter movies, there's not much new in terms of plot, but it has some cool things going for it. I love Vin Diesel and he's doing his tough-tender thing here in the best way. Michael Caine is also a lot of fun as Diesel's younger associate and there's some genuine chemistry between the two of them. Rose Leslie is a unique presence too, which adds some unpredictability. And there's some great world-building with plenty of hints at things left unexplored for either sequels or just the imagination.

But the dialogue is pretty clunky, it does that thing with voiceover exposition to bring the audience up to speed, Elijah Wood's character doesn't deserve to have Elijah Wood play him, and a lot of the CGI is murky and uninspired (though not all of it; there are some cool moments).

For younger viewers - like my 13-year-old son - The Last Witch Hunter is a fine introduction to the genre. But even as someone who's seen a bunch of these, I found it to be enjoyable pulp, too.

34. Goosebumps



Not too shabby as a horror-themed piece of entertainment for kids. It's never really scary, but it's not trying to be. It's genuinely funny in parts too (though it could have used more of Timothy Simons and Amanda Lund as the cops; they were great). And the actors are all good enough to make me care about their thinly-written characters.

35. Tomorrowland



A huge disappointment. The hugest of the year. Before Tomorrowland, I would have told you that Brad Bird could do no wrong. And he seemed like the perfect person to present the ideas of this movie in a great, powerful way. I don't know what happened.

I still love the ideas of the movie, but the problem is that the themes of positivity and problem-solving are reduced to simple plot points. Rather than being what the movie is about, they're just the MacGuffin that the heroes need to defend. The movie ends up being about summer action beats and set pieces, only a couple of which are notable.

36. The Visit



The best Shyamalan film since After Earth.

That's not quite fair. It's probably his best since Lady in the Water, though that's not saying much either. It's an interesting idea and a lot could have been done with it, but The Visit settles for borrowing imagery from other horror movies to talk about how old people are scary.

I could maybe set aside the ageism in that premise if The Visit actually had any thoughts about why some people are frightened by the elderly. But nope. It's as uninterested in exploring that as it is in commenting thoughtfully on its secondary theme about forgiveness.

For all that though, the actors are all a lot of fun to spend time with and there are some great, scary visuals. The imagery may all be borrowed from The Ring, Paranormal Activity, and The Blair Witch Project, but at least it's copying great stuff.

37. Seventh Son



And now we hit the part of the list where I just don't like these movies. I think I knew that Seventh Son wasn't going to be great, but I did hope it would at least be entertaining. It might be fun on a Saturday afternoon on the couch, maybe as a double-feature with Hawk the Slayer, but it wasn't worth seeing in the theater and I feel like a sucker for having spent money on it.

38. Hitman: Agent 47



Boring. Does nothing new. I cared about none of the characters.

It's not aggressively bad, but there's nothing here to recommend. And that's too bad, because I defend the 2007 film starring Timothy Olyphant.

Movies I Missed in 2015: Part 4

28. The Night Before



I allow myself one Seth Rogen movie a year and intended to make this the one for 2015. The trailer made me laugh and I love Gordon-Levitt and Mackie. Just couldn't make my schedule work.

29. The Good Dinosaur



Wasn't super excited about this even before the unenthusiastic reviews. It's been on Pixar's To Do list for so long that my interest in it peaked a long time ago. But I do hear great things about the background animation in particular, so I'll get around to it one of these days.

30. Victor Frankenstein



Not sure this is going to be my bag, mostly because the tone seems inconsistent even in the trailer. Is it a horror movie? Is it a humorous action romp? Who knows. But I like the Frankenstein story and I like both those actors, so I'll give it a shot.

31. Christmas Eve



Everyone bags on these holiday-titled movies with huge casts of interconnected characters, but I tend to like them. And this one's got Patrick Stewart, James Roday, and Cheryl Hines.

32. In the Heart of the Sea



Sea adventure starring one of my favorite actors right now. Don't know why I'm not more excited, but I feel nervous about this one.

33. The Big Short



Love this cast so much and I hear good things. Not too sure about my interest in the subject matter, but I said the same thing about Moneyball and liked it a lot.

34. The Revenant



Sounds like an amazing experience. Not sure I want to put myself through it. Probably will.

And that's it. Thanks for letting me break this out over a couple of weeks. It gave me the chance to move a couple of films off this list and onto the other one. Next week, I'll start counting down the films I saw - least favorite to most.

Ghosts at Christmas: Dickens to Davies [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Charles Dickens gets the credit for the idea of a ghost story at Christmas. We all know Scrooge, whether it's Alastair Sim, Bill Murray, Patrick Stewart, or Fred Flintstone. The only problem is that Dickens didn't invent it. I would even go so far as to say he tried to hi-jack the idea and turn it to his own purposes: making money and instruction. I could be wrong. But Dickens wouldn't be the first person to realize that Christmas is a cash cow.

The telling of a winter's tale, a gory or fantastic story around a merry fire in the depths of the dark, cold season, is as old at least as Shakespeare. He couldn't have written the play The Winter's Tale (1623) if it had not existed. By it's very title, we know the story will not be realistic and offer a happy ending. But old Willy didn't invent it either. The tradition goes back into time wherever there were people living in northern climes and had some form of forced inactivity imposed on them. The last remnants of this tradition in North America is the campfire tale that is so often featured in movies, just before the madman starts cutting up teenagers.

So it's been around awhile. The Christmas version is usually told by a grandmother or a trusted nurse, the tale having a homely feel, but a cold shiver as its ultimate goal. It should be no surprise that Elizabeth Gaskell wrote "The Old Nurse's Tale"(1852), one of my favorite Christmas tales. The author of Cranford (1851) was doing what many women Victorian writers did, penning a ghost story for Christmas (and some holiday cash). Many of these stories were published by Mr. Dickens in his Christmas numbers of Household Words and All the Year Round. In this way Dickens did contribute to the popularity of Christmas ghosts over and beyond Tiny Tim and Jacob Marley. Fortunately for us, these tales take after Dickens' "The Signal-Man"(1866) more than A Christmas Carol (1843). For this was Dickens' other fault besides wanting to sell a lot of copies of a magazine (a sin I understand only too well): his ghosts tend to be lessons or morals dressed up in chains. A Christmas Carol rises above the lecturing because it is so entertaining and it has creepy ghosts. Other Dickens' Christmas stories such as "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain" (1848), "Baron Koeldwethout's Apparation" (1838), "A Child's Dream of a Star" (1850), and "The Last Words of the Old Year" (1851) are all heavy on message and light on supernatural thrills.

Dickens was the promoter of Christmas and ghosts, but fortunately the man they all turned to for inspiration was J Sheridan Le Fanu. Le Fanu's many ghost stories set the holiday scribes on the right path. "Madam Crowl's Ghost," "The Child Who Went With the Fairies," "The White Cat of Drumgunniol," "Sir Dominick's Bargain," "The Vision of Tom Chuff," and "Stories of Lough Guir" all appeared in Dickens' All the Year Round, usually around December. Others appeared in Le Fanu's Dublin University Magazine. Le Fanu, despite seeing himself as a serious historical novelist, is largely remembered for these and other ghost and mystery stories. The Irish writer drew upon the tales of his country for inspiration, and why not? The winter tale is related to "Marchen" or fairy tales, both being part of the oral tradition of storytelling.

The greatest ghost story writer of them all (my opinion, but many would agree) was Le Fanu's disciple, MR James. The Cambridge and Eton don wrote an annual Christmas story and shared it with students and friends. These yearly treats were much looked forward to and there was even a little prestige in being including in such a reading. The thirty-three stories that James produced over the decades are sterling examples of what a ghost story can and should do. Classics like "Casting the Runes," "Count Magnus," "The Ash Tree," "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook," and "Lost Hearts" all begin quietly, usually about an amateur antiquarian on a holiday, but end with a glimpse into the cold netherworlds that lurk near by. James' ghosts are never fun, kind, or even well-defined. They are truly terrible, half-glimpsed, and cruel. How Christmasy!

"Christmasy?" you ask. Yes, of course. The shiver that goes down your spine after a truly effective ghost story is not so much different than the feeling of outré joy that the story of Jesus's birth inspires in Christians. In a way, the whole purpose of the Christmas ghost story is to jump-start your sense of the impossible, a faculty that becomes atrophied after months of going to work, enduring the hum-drum tedium that is life. Here is a small dose of Something Greater. Dickens tried in several stories to create this jump-start from a happy place. He fails. James and his wicked spirits never do.

I understand that the idea of a scary story at Christmas is hard to understand today. I live in Canada, perhaps the most realistic country in the world. We get White Christmases, but not ghostly ones. Robertson Davies, the Canadian author, defined it as "the rational rickets." We are so depleted of fantastic imagination, we think men chasing a small black dot around on ice is fun. (Beer helps.) Despite this, Davies wrote his own book of Canadian Christmas ghosts called High Spirits (1982). It is surprising that the deft wordsmith does not reach for the black depths of MR James (who inspired Davies to tell an annual tale for the enjoyment of his college buddies), but Davies' ghosts are enchanting and humorous. As the title implies, jocularity is the key. Ghosts like "The Ghost Who Vanished By Degrees," the grad student who never received his Masters and PhD and the only way Davies can lay him to rest is to give him more and more degrees. The titles are suggestive: "The Ugly Spectre of Sexism," "The Refuge of Insulted Saints," "The Xerox in the Lost Room," and "Dickens Digested." Davies' ghosts take after the stories of J Kendrick Bangs' "Told After Supper" (1891). If you can't quite manage horrific ghosts this Yuletide, I would suggest Davies or Bangs.

Me? I'll stick to the harder stuff. Perhaps a little Algernon Blackwood, who used to read his stories at Christmas on the BBC. Feeling Victorian? Then there is no better place to go than the Gaslight website. Like a mix of Radio and print? Then the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Spooks will do.

One last suggestion: if you'd like a taste of MR James, try Mark Gatiss's BBC TV version of "The Tractate Middoth"  and his documentary about James. And if you catch the mood, there is a collection of MR James BBC shows.

Happy holidays and enjoy the ghosts!

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Not my tree topper (sadly), but check out my Tumblr for a monstrous helping of similar Christmasy goodness. I went kind of nuts this year.

Hope you're all having a happy, peaceful holiday season.

32 movies I wanted to see in 2013 (but didn't)

Happy New Year! As I've done the last couple of years, I'm going to spend the early days of 2014 running down the movies I saw in 2013 and ranking them from worst to best. I made it to 38 movies in the theater last year, which leaves 32 that I wanted to see, but will have to catch up on at home. I mention them here partly by way of explaining why some potentially great movies aren't among my favorites, but also so you can tell me which of these need to be at the top of my queue and which I shouldn't bother with.

Here they are in the order in which they were released. Some of the posters are high res, so I put most of the list behind a break for the sake of browsers everywhere.

1. Spring Breakers



Mostly just curious about Disney Princesses Behaving Badly. And I tend to like James Franco.

31 Scares of Casper #24

Merry Christmas!

Whether or not you celebrate the holiday, I hope today's a wonderful day for you.

Merry Christmas!

Taking the day off to go visiting with some friends.





[Golden Age Comic Book Stories]

Guess who's coming to your rooftop tonight?

If you'd like to read the story that goes with that cover, Four-Color Shadows has you hooked up.