Curse of the Wolf Girl, by Martin Millar / cover art by John Coulthart

“In London, Kalix is on her way to remedial college to try and improve her reading skills, Vex is going too, and Daniel is still pining over Moonglow. Yum Yum Sugary Snacks are refusing to rehearse, Dominil is getting annoyed and Decembrius is wondering what to do with himself. In Scotland, Markus, now thane of the Werewolf Clan, is wondering if he should tell his girlfriend about his habit of cross-dressing. Malveria, Queen of the Fire Elementals, and Thrix, Werewolf Enchantress, have some important fashion engagements coming up, but the werewolf hunters haven’t forgotten about them, and neither has Princess Kabachetka, Malveria’s deadly rival.”

The above is the author’s  own spirited synopsis of Curse of the Wolf Girl, a follow up to his previous effort Lonely Werewolf Girl, which introduces and follows the tale of  Kalix, the titular lonely werewolf girl, and a cast of gloriously oddball and yet remarkably compelling characters.  Their story – fraught with grunge and gore and violence galore, and underscored by a strange dark humor somehow both sly and ingenuous at once – makes for a gleefully irresistible read.

Martin Millar’s complex series – a veritable lycanthropian soap opera –  features said oddball characters, along with “multiple races, enchanting fashion trappings, business, family dynamics, music, sex, enduring love, romance, business, eating disorders, drug addiction, back-alley fights, epic battles, politics, and, most prominently, the contrary nature of werewolves”.

Millar has also authored The Good Fairies of New York, Suzy Led Zepplin and Me, and The Thraxas series (as Martin Scott) for which he won the World Fantasy Award in 2000.  See after the jump for our Q&A, in which he thoughtfully discusses past and present influences and future endeavors, while hitting The Sex Pistols, Jane Austen and T Rex in between.

Gaze upon the glory of Krackoon a film about unchecked urban development and political corruption. It may also be about a bloodthirsty raccoon which happens to be addicted to crack cocaine. In fact, it is most definitely about a bloodthirsty raccoon addicted to crack cocaine; a plot perhaps unparalleled in its maniacal greatness. It is unfortunate then that this trailer features only the slightest glimpse of the ring-tailed drug fiend in the form of what appears to be a hand-puppet entangled in offal. Instead, we are treated to a number of gentlemen in varied locales addressing the camera. This strikes me as a grave misjudgment. I realize that a trailer should leave the audience wanting more and it would be a mistake (one filmmakers too often make) to include the best parts of your film only to have little left over for the feature; but for fuck’s sake, your film is about a raccoon that kills people and is addicted to crack. Certainly, it deserves more screen time than what we get here. Still, it’s enough to pique my curiosity in what Bronx Times columnist Fish Altieri has dubbed “[…] an instant cult classic”; a sentiment that I could not agree with more.

Via Videogum

Didn’t get enough of the heebie jeebies after viewing Ross’s Gimme Pizza post? It’s OK, evil scrambled Fox News is here to help. The mysteriously-titled clip, “auspice,” presents a ghostly double-exposure view of slowed-down Fox personalities, set to an unholy-sounding chorus. The music is not credited, and any help identifying the artist would be appreciated. “I hear a little bit of Diamanda in there at the halfway point,” notes Wobbly, who sent this in.

It’s the perfect companion to this CNN piece, also submitted by Wobbly sometime ago. “Listen to me. I want to tell you something. Come closer. Don’t be upset and don’t get emotional.” Which is scarier, that CNN clip (embed-disabled high-res version posted here for your viewing displeasure), or this FOX clip?

It should be pointed out that this is, perhaps, not the best video to be watching first thing in the morning or, conversely, right before bed. The above is a clip from late 80s maudlin sitcom Full House, jumping off point for the careers of The Olsen Twins and the show partially responsible for convincing America that Bob Saget was not a perverted lunatic. Were that all it would not be here, of course (Zo’s obsession with the program and her unbridled lust for Dave Coulier notwithstanding).

What pushes this into true bizarro territory — and, hence, this post — is the fact that it has been slowed down by an unspecified number of degrees, an effect that one could be argued is overdone, but one that nevertheless is almost guaranteed to produce pure nightmare fuel. This point is made plain when the aforementioned clip turns to some of the program’s musical numbers at about 3:40, turning what appeared at first to be a bad acid trip into twisted, lecherous dreamscape. It’s really quite astonishing. And horrible. Mostly horrible.

Correction: It seems this clip is not from late 80s maudlin sitcom Full House and is, apparently, from some other, Olsen related venture. Apologies to Zo and all the other Full House aficionados amongst our readership.

Holy balls, kids. HOLY. BALLS.

These are stills from a clip of one seriously wackypants “Japanese punk rock Exorcist homage” called (appropriately enough) The Exorsister. It comes to us courtesy of the ever-terrifying and wondrous Weird Shit Magnet that is Dogmeat, who says “I’m laughing, because this is one clip where even I ask myself ‘Where do you get these?’ Stick around for the octopus attack… as if you would turn this off!”

Definitely not safe for work. Click the collection of stills above… IF YOUR DARE.

Behold. Fodder from the most über Tumblr you’ll see all day:

Via Heather Thompson. HAIL.

Tracy Widdess is currently accepting custom orders for her sublime horror and sci-fi inspired knitwear, but queue up quick! Undoubtedly, she’s about to be inundated with weirdos clients.

More images after the jump.

Motoring

In a new series titled Machine Punk, artist Laurie Lipton (previously on Coilhouse, with a cameo appearance by Caryn Drexl) skillfully renders a series of cumbersome, beautifully sprawling machines whose tangled wires and polluted textures conspire to create a sense of unease. Lipton states that the series was inspired by steampunk, but notes that the machines in her images run on “madness and electricity” rather than steam. “I was vacuuming one day, and noticed the amount of plugs and cables on the floor… a veritable wasp’s nest of wires and sockets connecting a hoard of gadgets and doo-dads intertwining around the house and my life. I was trapped like a fly in an electrical web. What had happened? Were these things making my life easier or more complex?” The resulting series features contraptions ranging from rickety flying machines to torturous exercise equipment, and critiques – among other things – CCTV surveillance, a broken recycling system, and the empty thought-calories of spending too much time online. Most of the images in this series are best enjoyed at a larger size, so click here to see them all.

Machine Punk will be on display at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles from November 5 – 28th in Gallery 1, side-by-side with artist and Coilhouse collaborator Jessica Joslin in Gallery 2. Also, if you’re a fan of Laurie Lipton’s ghostly older work, it’s worth mentioning that she recently collaborated with clothing company AllSaints to produce a line of t-shirts featuring the wraiths and skeletons of her previous work, and that some of these shirts are now on sale. [Many thanks to the awesome Coilhouse reader who sent this in – I received your submission a while ago, but can’t find it now to credit you! Was it via Twitter?]

The Fates

Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Born on this baleful day back in 1890. Portrait by Bruce Timm

“There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life. But some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy.”

–from H.P. Lovecraft’s “Celephais”

Previously on Coilhouse:

• Read Any Good Books Lately?
• Cthulhu Meditation: Listen on Dry Land
• What Made Coilhouse Readers Weird
• Cthulhu: The Movie
• The Dunwich Horror: Sweet…. Horrendipity?
• Tentacle Love. Why?
• Jell-O Salad is Actually a Shoggoth
• Isabelle Adjani’s Got That Not So Fresh Feeling™

The second single off of February’s release Odd Blood from Brooklyn-based band Yeasayer, “Madder Red” is — according to lyricist Amand Wilder — “about being a weak man, a gambler.” The video, on the other hand, seems to be about Kristen Bell caring for a sentient tumor. There is no indication as to whether or not it is a gambler. It is most definitely creepy, however. Also, oozy.

Below is an unforgettable and somewhat controversial piece of U.S. history. Commissioned in 1951 by the US government, Duck and Cover was distributed as a children’s safety education film that taught atom bomb preparedness.

This film is chock-full of alarming statements like, “There are two kinds of attack: with warning and with no warning”  and “Tony knows that the bomb can explode any time of the year, day or night, and he’s ready for it!”, over striking footage of schoolchildren dropping to the ground in the middle of play, “enemy planes” dimming the skies, and the U.S. military at the ready. Made during the height of the red scare, Duck and Cover feels more like a Pinko-paranoia-induction tactic than a safety film, especially when we consider that all of the methods shown would be absolutely useless at ground zero. From the film’s Wikipedia page:

For those not at ground zero, there would be a delay between the flash (indicating the need to duck and cover) and the arrival of the blast wave, which could shatter windows and cause other blast or impact injuries (although electromagnetic radiation, such as infra-red and gamma rays, would arrive at the observer’s position at the same time as the light flash, leaving the observer no time to find cover from these particular aspects of a nuclear detonation). A newspaper would, at least in theory, block alpha radiation although skin does this anyway, provide some shielding from the heat (IR, visible and UV) radiation and small debris, though it would have no effect on the beta and gamma radiation or on the shockwave that would accompany an atomic detonation.

Watch Duck and Cover below and pay close attention. After all, you never know when the bright flash may come.