memorial: Kevin McCarthy (1914-2010)

Dana Winter (left) and Kevin McCarthy (right)
in 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' (1956)

If you're a regular follower of other horror blogs like ourselves, then it's likely that you've heard the recent news of actor Kevin McCarthy's passing last Saturday. To the horror community, as well as science-fiction fans, he will be best remembered for his starring role in the 1956, black-and-white film 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers', which would later on inspire a lineage of remakes, parodies, and comparable adaptations.

Much to our regret, we admit not having seen this original feature of classic cinema. But even then, the influence of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' is so predominant that it's made its way into other films, such as 'Gremlins' (1984). Kevin McCarthy's close-up and haggard face, yelling, "They're here, already! You're next!" from Billy Peltzer's television set is an iconic image and one, which we're sure was heightened all the more in its black-and-white medium, that is truly haunting.

"They're here, already! You're next!"

This isn't to say that Kevin McCarthy didn't step out of the horror/science-fiction circle, though he was certainly talented enough that he could have remained, had he chosen to do so. Fortunately, McCarthy put his talents to use in other genres, such as drama and comedy. Certainly those of us who went through the Weird Al Yankovic phase remember him as R.J. Fletcher, the conceited arch-rival of George Newman (Yankovic) and his channel crew of upstart underdogs in 'UHF' (1989). But always McCarthy kept one foot in the former, familiar circle and 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' kept especially close by, even into the remaining years of his acting career.

'Looney Toons: Back in Action' (2003)

Apparently director Joe Dante loved 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and Kevin McCarthy, incorporating them into both 'Gremlins' films, 'Piranha' (1978), 'The Howling' (1981), 'Twilight Zone: The Movie' (1983), 'Innerspace' (1987), and the aforementioned movie, seen above.

Kevin McCarthy, at the admirable age of ninety-six, passed away from pneumonia. His life was long, and we're sure that his legacy in cinematic history will live on even longer.

Additional Kevin McCarthy memorials:

• The Vault of Horror - Kevin McCarthy 1914-2010
• Classic-Horror.com - Kevin McCarthy (1914-2010)
  

Goosebumps: Let's Get Invisible!

Presenting the sixth, on-going installment of the Niche's R.L. Stine series reviews, here's 'Let's Get Invisible!' (WARNING: spoilers ahead)

It's a special day today for two different reasons. For one, it is Max's twelfth birthday. The second? It's also the first day that he turns invisible. The story begins with Max, a rather conscientious boy, combing his hair which he claims is his best personal feature. His younger brother Noah, who goes commonly by "Lefty" since he is left-handed, is your typical annoying sibling and pesters Max until the guests come. First arrives Zack, Max's best friend, sporting a new haircut with the left side partially shaved and a gift of old comics. Next arrive Erin and April, completing the circle of friends. Unfortunately the rain has canceled the planned barbecue and outdoor activities. Passing the time with Twister and the first half of 'Terminator', the party dwindles down. Zack takes his leave and the girls remain, waiting for Erin's mother to pick them up.

In the meantime, the children decide to go upstairs to Max's bedroom (if they were older, I could see some shenanigans going on). But after a cheap scare from Lefty, who waited in the linen closet to jump out, Erin takes notice of the attic. Erin, a rather cute girl with short blond hair and a mousy voice, becomes very interesting in exploring the old attic. Max has a small crush on her, so concedes with her rather odd request. Along with the four is Whitey the family dog, who, as it turns out, is actually all black. Sniffing around the attic, Whitey paws at an otherwise unnoticed door. Curious, the children force the obstinate hinges and find a tall mirror inside the small, dark room. The only apparent source of illumination is a lamp light looming at the top of the mirror frame. Noticing a chain dangling down, Max gives it a pull. A sudden flash nearly blinds him for a moment, then dims to a more comfortable brightness. Erin, April, and Lefty look afraid, much to Max's confusion, then explain that they cannot see him.

Annoyed by this apparent practical joke and aggravated by the light, which has begun to be painful, Max pulls the chain again to turn it off. The other three are startled, but very relieved that Max has returned. But Max remains skeptical and tells Erin to prove it, to turn invisible herself, but before she can her mother arrives. The girls leave and the matter goes untouched until a couple of days later. Unable to shake what the others said, Max goes up to the attic alone one night to get some peace of mind. While he's examining the mirror, Lefty comes up from behind and gives him another cheap scare. Bothered by his little brother, but afraid of waking his parents, Max relents and together decide to test the mirror at the same time. After pulling the chain, the lamp light flashes on and they both turn invisible simultaneously. Fooling around for a few minutes, they turn the light off. However, it takes a few minutes for them to turn visible again. It seems that the longer a person stays invisible, the longer it takes for them to return.

Next Saturday, Zack comes over to visit. Having left earlier when the birthday party ended, Zack is still unaware of the mirror. Max and Lefty take advantage of this and decide to have some fun with him. In the attic, Max savors the suspense it overtakes him and then uses the mirror to turn invisible before Zack's eyes. Skeptical at first, then frightened, and finally amazed, Zack wants to try when Max returns. However Max is hesitant. During his disappearance, Max has begun to realize the gravity of the situation. Nobody knew where the mirror came from or how it even worked. Who was to say returning was guaranteed? And while in a state of invisibility, Max has noticed a strange, unsettling feeling that grows stronger the longer he's gone. First a painful sensitivity to the light, then a lightheaded sensation, followed by a rather scary feeling of floating away and losing your grip on the physical world. Of course Max keeps most of this to himself, not wanting to appear afraid. So when Erin and April pop up into the attic soon afterward, things gradually get out of Max's control.

A rather dangerous game develops: who can stay invisible the longest? First Zack, next Erin, then Max again, despite his hesitance. Going on four minutes and counting, Max feels the light enveloping him like ocean waves, pulling him away from the shore of reality as the people around him grow distant. Max desperately pleads for someone to pull the chain. His faint voice manages to carry over and Zack hurries to turn off the light, but to their horror the chain breaks. Fortunately, Erin scrounges around inside the lamp and finds just enough of the chain left to grip. Several minutes later Max returns, but even this scare isn't enough to deter the others from competing. April however, who has been resistant to the entire thing, gets worked up enough to speak out against it. "None of you are listening to me!" she cries, adding, "Answer my question. What if one of you is invisible and the light won't go out?" But their argument is interrupted when grandparents Poppy and Grammy arrive. So the friends leave, but Erin and Zack remain determined to beat the new record of five minutes, forty-eight seconds.

After seeing his friends out, Max comes to the dinner table to greet his grandparents and take a seat. Except something, or rather someone, is amiss. Like an idiot, Lefty has turned himself invisible and picks up his soup bowl from the table in a juvenile attempt to be funny. Max notices before anyone else at the table does and manages to get Lefty to follow him back upstairs to the attic and turn visible. Max is furious but Lefty is too stoked being the new record holder to care, annoyingly repeating, "I win! I win!" Despite being invisible for nearly ten minutes, Lefty claims that he felt fine the entire time. Since everyone else has been downplaying what they've felt, it's hard to say with any certainty if he's telling the truth. His testimony is even more questionable after Max makes him swear to not use the mirror by himself again, but crosses his fingers on both hands. Later that night, Max sneaks back to the mirror alone and stares at it for the longest time until he hears a whisper coming from the mirror, quietly calling his name. This frightens him enough to hurry downstairs and into bed, praying that the whisper would not follow.

The next morning, Max wakes early to get ready with the rest of the family for their visit to Springfield to see relatives. As he gets ready, Max's attention is caught by the hovering red t-shirt that comes out of his bedroom closet. Angry that Left had broken his promise, Max demands that he march right back up to the attic and turn visible again. However, Max's anger soon turns to worry when Lefty suddenly drops a pair of jeans that he was moving across the room. He calls for his younger brother, but receives no answer. He hurries up to the attic, frantically searching for Lefty. To Max's relief he answers this time and reappears, however something seems a little off with Lefty. Unable to put his finger on it, though, Max puts it out of his mind and goes back to getting himself around. Deciding to call his friends and cancel the competition once they've reached Springfield, Max feels reassured as he finishes dressing. No more mirror, no more turning invisible. But of course we know better, now don't we?

Wednesday morning, Zack, Erin, and April appear at Max's front door. Lefty, who isn't there that morning, called each of them, saying that Max had changed his mind about the competition. (Hmmm. Now why would Lefty do this, I wonder?) This puts Max in a predicament, of course, since he had not and he easily buckles to his friends. Even April, who was previously adamantly against it, has come around and wants to give the mirror a try. So the children head to the attic to continue the competition. After accidentally turning Whitey invisible with April, her turn is cut short. Next goes Erin, who remains invisible for over twelve minutes and was returned when she stopped answering. The others seem alright with continuing, but Max isn't relieved. Something seems different about Erin. Zack takes his turn and, like Erin, is brought back after thirteen minutes when he doesn't answer. (But not before he has some fun juggling tomatoes in front of a neighbor.) Also like Erin, something is not right with him. Max notices that his hair is styled the other way, but Zack denies it, saying it's simply Max's imagination.

Now it comes to Max's turn. At least this time he has the sense to refuse, content to let Zack remain the new champion. But Erin and Zack are having none of that. Rather forcefully, they move him towards the mirror and turn on the light. Invisible now, he seems to settle with it and waits until the uneasy feelings start to creep up on him. Unfortunately, as the uneasiness grows stronger and he tells them to turn off the light, Max's mother comes upstairs into the attic before it can be done. At this point, no one hears his voice and Max floats into the mirror against his will, into "the center of an undulating, rolling world of twisting lights and colors". Deeper inside still, the colors change to shades of gray and black, which gradually fade 'til everything around Max is white. And in this white void Max meets none other than his own reflection, cold and sinister. Inside the void are dozens of distorted, tormented "fun house mirror" faces, among them include Erin and Zack.

As it turns out, Erin and Zack have been switched by doppelgangers of the dastardly sort and this reflection means to do the same to Max. But through sheer willpower and fear Max strains through the incoherent colors and shimmer, crossing back over to the other side. When the other Erin and Zack see that he is not one of them, however, they force Max back to the mirror and turn the light on, turning him invisible again. Max's reflection, unlike before, remained in the mirror this time, palms pressed against the glass, assuring Max, "In a few minutes, you'll join me in here." Meanwhile Max's mother had gone back downstairs and poor April is scared half out of her wits. Then, out of nowhere, Lefty comes upstairs and throws the ball at the mirror, apparently thinking that it is Max, shouting, "Think fast!" The glass shatters, Max becomes visible, the evil reflections of Erin and Zack are pulled into the shards, and the real pair of friends return. Everything's back to normal... right? Maybe not. As Max and his brother toss a baseball back and forth between them later, he notices that Lefty is throwing right-handed.

I was pleasantly pleased with the story in 'Let's Turn Invisible!', which I wasn't expecting. Personally, I couldn't imagine how turning invisible would be scary, even if the condition became permanent. Turns out that it was all just a lure used by the mirror. The world within the mirror and the reflection doppelgangers is what made the book, even if it was near the end. Point is, it went in a creative direction. At the most I suspected that the children might turn into ghosts, the way they described sensations of feeling light and turning ethereal. Glad that it wasn't so predictable. I give it four out of five Goosebumps Gs.

Goosebumps: Stay Out of the Basement

Getting back into a reading habit tends to have a slow start, but I'm picking up some momentum, now. With the end of Welcome To Dead House, it was time to move on to the next Goosebumps novella. Presenting the second, on-going installment of the Niche's R.L. Stine series reviews, here's Stay Out of the Basement. (WARNING: spoilers ahead)

This is a book cover! What great artwork.

The setup is somewhat familiar to that of Welcome To Dead House, featuring a family of four with two children, one of each gender, with the daughter as the primary protagonist. My hunch predicts this will be a common trend in most of Stine's series. That aside, the similarities in stories ends there.

Hailing originally from Michigan (my home state, so it gets some brownie points for that), Margaret and Casey's family live in the warm, sunny state of California, though the state of the family itself is overcast. Their father, botanical scientist Dr. Brewer, had been laid off from his position at PolyTech and has, since then, been holing himself up in the basement working on a personal project. The neglect, though unintentional, still takes its toll on the children and likely their mother as well, but the story reads from their perspective. Noticing the basement door left slightly ajar, Margaret and Casey attempt their first excursion down. They only make it a few steps down before their father, hand bleeding, sternly yells the warning from which this book gets its name.

To shorten the summary, it develops into a pattern of the children, usually Margaret, noticing Dr. Brewer growing stranger. Not just in behavior, but quite literally. Leaves grow from his head and, on separate occassions, Margaret spies her father eatting plant food and green blood seeping from his wound. Adding to the pattern, the Brewer children find several opportunities to sneak back down into the basement, trying to learn what their father's experiments entail and the reason for his transformation. Between seldom being around and giving vague, often suspicious explanations, Margaret and Casey need to find the answers for themselves. A half-truth, Dr. Bower relates to the children that his experiment entails growing plants that are spliced with animal genes. The plants are fleshier, move slightly on their own accord, some with tendrils that can grasp, and apparently breathe. But it doesn't explain their father's condition, which he sidesteps as "just a side effect", or the desperate banging noise.

By now you've likely deduced the truth, as I had. In a final excursion down into the basement, the Brewer children break open a boarded-up supply closet door, the source of the sound. A collection of plant-human aberrations, subject rejects, spill out onto the floor and further inside is Dr. Brewer, bound and gagged. Cue the appearance of other Dr. Brewer, it turns into a climactic confrontation of the doubles. Unfortunately both appear physically identical, right down to the wounded hand and leaves growing from the scalp. Margaret, defensively holding onto an axe, is pressured to choose as both men vie for the weapon. However, she deduces a way to solve this dilemma by cutting the previously imprisoned Dr. Brewer's arm. Bleeding red from the gash, this is evidence enough to convince the children that this is their real father. This is further proven after Dr. Brewer chops the doppelganger in two, the fatal wound revealing a stalk without human bones or organs.

Later, Dr. Brewer details that during his experiments, which was splicing just plants in an attempt to create a type of super plant, he accidentally mixed his own blood from an open cut. A result was his hair falling out and replaced by the leafy growths, but more importantly to the botanist, he had stumbled upon a method of splicing human genes with plants. Too involved, too excited, Dr. Brewer kept experimenting without regard for his failed specimens, which he discarded in the closet. This finally caught up with Dr. Brewer when he made a specimen that was nearly identical in almost every way, even in thought and memory. Gaining the advantage, the plant-man overpowered the doctor and imprisoned him in the closet, taking his place and continuing the experiments.

Mr. Martinez, Dr. Brewer's previous boss, who was also kidnapped partway in the story and imprisoned alongside, asks Dr. Brewer to return to work at PolyTech and the doctor has the plants in the basement destroyed. Everything seems to be right again... But alone in their garden one weekend, Margaret hears a whisper at her feet. A small, yellow flower nudges her ankle, whispering, "Margaret, help me. Please -- help me. I'm your father. Really! I'm your real father!"

Stay Out of the Basement ends on this cliffhanger, but the story leads myself at least to believe that the plant-man Dr. Brewer had no ill intent towards the family. I'd venture to guess that it legitimately cared for them and believed that it was, in fact, their real father. Sometimes the duplicate believes it's the original, which is not an uncommon plot element. As for the flower in the garden, it's possible that the plant-man Dr. Brewer planted seeds in the garden before it was killed. There was an earlier scene where the children found him standing by their garden's rose trellis, examining the flowers. Again, these are my own conjectures. Although a bit predictable, Stay Out of the Basement is a good story all in all. If you like 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers', you'll probably enjoy this read. I give it four out of five Goosebumps Gs.