CHAPBOOK REVIEW: Meet The Shrivelwoods (Kek-W)

 

Meet The Shrivelwoods is a 40-page Gothic horror-comedy written by fan-favourite 2000AD scribe, musician and artist Kek-W, available through his Bandcamp merchandise page.

The publication contains two text stories about the creepy Shrivelwood family, wealthy and decadent maple syrup magnates who bear a superficial similarity to The Addams Family but with the darkness dial turned up to thirteen.

Chapbooks are somewhere between a novel and a fanzine, an easily digestible booklet with an affordably low page count; a format with a rich and fascinating history.

The Old Dank Manse, the first story in Meet The Shrivelwoods, tells of a contemporary, failed romance writer seeking solace in the bosom of her rich Vermont extended family, at their "crumbling Gothic mansion", but finding something much stranger than she expects.

The second, Christmas With The Shrivelwoods, takes the form of a late 19th Century letter from Minnie Shrivelwood to her uncle, Heinie, who is currently restrained in the Hartford Retreat For The Insane. It's a bonkers - matter-of-fact - recounting of the family's preparations for the Christmas holidays.

Both tales blend surreality and slapstick with leftfield black humour, shock revelations and general absurdity, as should be expected by those who have read Kek-W's Dark Judges: Fall of Deadworld work in the universe of Judge Dredd.

I was also reminded of the Wojciech Has's very weird The Hourglass Sanitorium for the short stories' occasionally unsettling, nightmarish narrative logic and potentially disturbing imagery.

Rambling - by design - the chapbook's two stories are delightful, amusing, and quick reads that most definitely leave you wanting to hear more about the different generations of this peculiar, and freakish, inbred family of maple syrup-obsessives. 

Dr. Strange (1978)

With the official Marvel Cinematic Universe iteration of Doctor Strange now well established and part of the general public's consciousness (thanks, in large part, to casting Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular Sorcerer Supreme),  I thought it was time to set the Wayback Machine to the 1970s and fall under the spell of the original Dr. Strange movie.

As ever, this 1978 TV movie needs to be considered on its own merits, taking into account the budgetary and technological restrictions of its time.

The Ditko-verse

Five hundred-year-old sorceress Morgan LeFey (Jessica Walter) is tasked by her nameless, demonic master (a giant, mist-enshrouded puppet, voiced by David Hooks) to slay Earth's current sorcerer supreme, Thomas Lindmer (John Mills... yes, THE John Mills) within an arbitrary timeframe of three days. I suspect he's supposed to be Dormammu.

The legendary Arthurian villianness has been hanging around the "higher levels of the Astral plane", a set clearly influenced by the iconic artwork of Dr. Strange comic book artist Steve Ditko. This opening sequence gave me hope that the film would be treating its source material with some respect.

Morgan's scheme involves mind-controlling beautiful student Clea Lake (Eddie Benton aka Anne-Marie Martin) to push Lindmer off a bridge.

Lindmer survives, but Clea is traumatised by the event and ends up in hospital under the care of psychiatrist Doctor Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten), who wears his father's ring that bears the same symbol as seen on Lindmer's window and on a painting in his Sanctum Sanctorum.

Strange finds himself drawn to Clea and Lindmer offers to help out in her treatment, convincing Strange to come to his home where he sends the doctor off on an astral voyage to save Clea's soul.

Astral Tripping

This 2001-style, kaleidoscopic light-show - complete with a phantom horseman in the form of the demon Balzaroth (voiced by The Addams Family's Ted Cassidy) - is the visual highlight of the film, being surprisingly imaginative and trippy despite the limitations of '70s TV special effects.

After this, Strange declares he doesn't want anything more to do with Lindmer's magic, but Morgan isn't listening and after bitch-slapping Lindmer's chum Wong (Clyde Kusatsu) and then seemingly doing the same to the old man, she turns her attention to Stephen Strange.

It turns out that Morgan has a bit of a cougar-thing going and wants to use her womanly wiles (which apparently haven't seen much action during her centuries in The Dark Dimension) to seduce the good doctor. He, of course, is having none of this - as his eyes are focussed on Clea.

Dr. Strange is quite a dialogue-heavy piece, but still manages to break this up with some flashy light shows and demonic summonings, so that even in the many hospital scenes the pace never sags too badly.

However, things go bizarrely off the rails in the film's denouement - presumably these were meant as plot hooks if this pilot spawned a TV show - when Clea and Strange repeat (almost verbatim) a conversation they had earlier in the film, but neither notice, and then neither seem that perturbed by Morgan popping up on TV as a self-help guru!

There are a lot of changes from the source material in Dr. Strange, most of which I can understand for the sake of brevity, such as stripping out Strange's adventures in Tibet and making him a psychiatrist rather than a surgeon to tie him in to Clea's sub-plot.

What were they thinking?

It's a bit of a shame that in removing the Eastern aspects of Strange's backstory (thus explaining why Lindmer becomes Strange's mentor, rather than The Ancient One - who, confusingly, makes a vocal appearance during Strange's transformation sequence) they also decided to Westernise Wong and change Clea to a normal human being.

But I guess they didn't want to overload a mainstream audience with too much extraneous weirdness in a 90-minute television show about dimension-hopping sorcerers battling demons for the fate of humanity.

The worst change though is the inexplicable reworking of the classic Dr Strange look into a kitsch superhero costume with a bizarre starburst on the front.

Thankfully this only appears briefly towards the end of the film, after Morgan has magically dressed him in robes that do a far better job of emulating his comic book look.

Overall, Dr. Strange - as you would expect - is a product of its time. A bit slow in parts and very cheesy, but with some great touches along the way that suggest the people behind it had ambitious plans should it have been picked up to run as a series.

It was clearly going to be a very different superhero show to The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man and Captain America that were making similar, difficult, transitions from the comic book page to the television screen at that time.

Scream (2022)

Kicking off with an inventive reworking of the classic Scream opening (girl home alone, answers phone, ends up talking to stranger etc). the fifth entry in the franchise proclaims its creativity loudly but not smugly.

Full of meta-commentary on the nature of "requels" (films that aren't straight-forward sequels, but aren't complete reboots either, mixing in legacy characters with a crop of core characters), the self-awareness of the Scream franchise, and toxic fandom, 2022's Scream is a knowing thrill ride from start to finish (even its bland name gets a ribbing).

After Tara Carpenter (Jenna 'Wednesday' Ortega) is attacked by a new Ghostface, her estranged sister, Sam (Melissa Barrera) races back to Woodsboro with boyfriend Richie (The Boys' Jack Quaid).

It turns out most of Tara's friends have some kind of connection to the original attacks - as orchestrated by Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) - making them all potential suspects and potential victims.

As bodies start to mount up in a new wave of ultraviolence, Sam and Richie turn to retired deputy Dewey Riley (David Arquette) for assistance.

Initially reluctant, it ultimately doesn't take much to persuade Dewey that his job is to protect the imperilled next generation of Woodsboro.

The murders continue, attracting the attention of Dewey's ex-lover news reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and eventually even drawing professional 'final girl' Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) back home, reuniting the original surviving protagonists of the franchise.

Taking place 25 years after the original murders, it's not just technology that's moved on (and this certainly plays a role in the story) but so have special effects: several of the attacks are far more graphic and squirm-inducing than anything we've witnessed before in these films.

Scream is not a film for the squeamish or hemophobics.

Usually, I like a monster in my horror flicks, or some kind of supernatural aspect, but quality human antagonists - such as the ever-changing Ghostface - are able to pique my interest thanks to the elegance of James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick's screenplay, blending Scooby-Doo mystery with adrenaline-hyped action.

I thought I'd sussed out who the killer was early on, but the smart script continually wrong-footed me, proving my guess totally wrong as the film entered its blood-soaked final act, and making the eventual revelation of Ghostface's identity - and motivations - all the more satisfying.

Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who gave us the wonderful Ready or Not, Scream is laden with Easter Eggs - including tributes to the late Wes Craven - and references to other horror movies and franchises, smartly woven into the metatextual observations about these films and the people who watch them, while still being a full-on shocking slasher picture.

I was slightly underwhelmed by 2011's Scream 4, but I still can't believe it took me so long to get round to watching this 'new' offering... because it turns out that it's probably my favourite entry in the franchise since Wes Craven's peerless original.

Scream - aka Scream 5 - is the perfect wrap-up for the franchise, which makes Scream 6's impending arrival on home video in the UK all the more intriguing, especially with its non-Woodsboro setting.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

Thirty-six years after the events of the original Beetlejuice movie, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is now hosting her own paranormal reality show, Ghost House, when the death of her father calls her, her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega), and her mother, Delia (Catherine O'Hara), back to their family home in Winter River for the funeral.

Meanwhile, in the afterlife, Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) finds himself being stalked by his murderous ex-wife, Delores (Monica Bellucci), and he sees Lydia's return to her old home as his possible escape.

Settling in to Winter River, Astrid - a non-believer in the supernatural - is tricked by a malevolent ghost into swapping her existence for his, and ends up trapped in the afterlife.

Unable to think of any other way to rescue her daughter, Lydia calls on Beetlejuice for assistance.

I'll admit that when I sat down to watch Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, while I had high hopes for a Tim Burton movie with this incredible cast, I wasn't convinced that it would be able to recapture the lightning in a bottle brilliance of 1988's iconic original.

But this sequel turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It's chaotic and madcap, with a whirlwind of plot elements swirling around (not all of which make 100 per cent sense or achieve resolution) and sweeping up a legion of memorable characters.

Michael Keaton has lost none of his gnarly charisma as the demonic Beetlejuice, while the three female leads are perfection personified in their roles: Winona Ryder retains her ultimate goth girl crown, Jenna Ortega sidesteps Wednesday Addams to create a wholly believable sceptic in a family of eccentrics, and Catherine O'Hara is, of course, Catherine O'Hara and we can expect nothing less.

It may be occasionally nonsensical, but Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a hell of a lot of crazy fun, with some great visual gags and a supporting cast as strong as its main cast: from a cameo by Danny DeVito as the afterlife's janitor to Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson, the ghost-detective who was actually a B-movie actor in life.

The joyous splattergun approach to the horror-comedy narrative includes the sudden insertion of Beetlejuice's origin story. This caught me totally by surprise, but then again as The Joker of the underworld, was this his true beginning or simply a flight of fancy?

As convincing a yarn as it was, not knowing its veracity certainly adds another layer to the character of the bio-exorcist.

Under Tim Burton's guidance, with a script from Smallville creators and Spider-Man 2 scribes, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice manages, just about, to be simultaneously quite different from the original and very similar.

The Jeffrey Jones of the situation (the disgraced actor played Lydia's dad, Charles, in the first movie) is handled really deftly, through a range of tricks from a claymation death sequence to a headless corpse (and voice impersonator) taking his place in the afterlife.

While, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice mainly stays away from aping moments directly from the original, the climactic musical number - lip-syncing to MacArthur Park - could never reach the enduring heights of the legendary Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) sequence.

That tune does pops up earlier, at Charles funeral, posing a serious challenge to Monty Python's Always Look On The Bright Side of Life as the best tune to play at a funeral.

Given the surreal maelstrom of the denouement, I'm now wondering how long we will have to wait for Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.