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Introducing Hanyu. Hanyu is a 20-year-old Cantonese graphic novelist who loves facial piercings, fashion, and J-Pop.

She has had 15 cavities filled!!! She plays bass and piano “not good at it.” Follow her as she attends the language class of SCAD from Sept last year to December this year. This is her cat.

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Jisoo!

Stuff happens/happened

Ingredients:

Two slices of fresh, crusty bread.

Butter

Peanut butter

Chili oil

Local desert honey

Leftover chicken katsu

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder

Directions:

Melt butter on low in pan.

Thickly slice bread into two slices.

Let the bread slowly pan fry (15-20 minutes), flipping over halfway through.

Spread PB over top side of each slice while still in the pan.

While PB heats, throw katsu into the same pan on the side to reheat.

Drizzle over the top of PB hot chili oil.

Season to taste.

Serve with the katsu single-layered on the toast and with choice of side, pasta salad pictured.

Serves 1.

Come and join our official office End of Year End of Days Dance Party.

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Conclusion

by Amy M. Vaughn

31 October 2020

What can we say here at the end of this series of reviews about the sideshow in horror cinema? Well, we know that movies have had a long and complicated relationship with people who have unusual bodies, but that’s nothing new. And, while uniquely shaped people were a central aspect of our investigation, the other part, the sideshow part, complicates our subject matter, adding not least the idea of a staged performance within a film, a play within a play.

But if those were the only criteria, why not include films like The Elephant Man (1980) or The Dark Backward (1991)? If we were only concerned with performances of the uniquely bodied, we could have. But those films were about John Merrick and Marty Malt, whereas the sideshow is always a group and usually one portrayed as a family.

Maybe that’s the key—the sideshow is a family of Others, a group with their own laws and culture, and their own requirements for membership; and one of those requirements is to have been shunned by the world at large. Is this why the sideshow is such fertile ground for horror? It’s shorthand for different and weird and transient and unpredictable, which are the very things that make it attractive to people who don’t fit in with the mainstream and frightening to those who do.

For nearly a century, moviemakers have used the shorthand of the sideshow and the shock of unusual bodies, more often than not, to teach the audience (if they’re listening) to be more compassionate and less judgmental—or else! Freaks, House of the Damned, The Freakmaker, and Freakshow—the movies in this series most focused on life in the sideshow—all encourage an empathic understanding of the Other, who really isn’t an Other at all.

There haven’t been many movies about sideshows made in the 21st century. And because of state laws against displaying anomalous bodies for profit, today’s in-person sideshows are, for the most part, made up of working acts: fire eaters, human pincushions, that kind of neat stuff. While people are fighting to change those laws, to give the differently bodied the choice to go on the road again if they want to, in the meantime, television has stepped in as a venue for presenting unusual bodies. Not only are there series like Carnivàle and American Horror Story: Freak Show but there are docudramas about little people and very fat people; shows about strong men and women; and gut-wrenching mini-series on the separation of conjoined twins.

There are three things that, to my mind, make these nonfiction accounts more heartrending and perhaps exploitative than seeing an unusually bodied person in a sideshow. One is that their issues have been medicalized and labeled as problems where they used to be celebrated. Another is that these people are not performers taking joy in what they do.  And thirdly, very often they seem (or are edited to seem) desperately lonely, which we are meant to interpret as the terrible price of their disorder or deformity, but which could as easily be seen as a lack of the type of supportive group and extended family a sideshow could provide.  

Maybe some of us romanticize what was for many a necessary evil. And certainly, we should be glad that anti-discrimination laws are in place to protect the uniquely bodied from fates suffered in the past. But there’s still a long way to go before the stereotypes that lead to rash judgments and unfair treatment are completely broken down and replaced with equality and acceptance. And while they might not have much sway, the vast majority of horror movies set in the sideshow have tried their best to make things at least a little better for those who lived there.

Amy M. Vaughn is the author of Skull Nuggets and the editor of Dog Doors to Outer Space. She is also a contributing editor at Babou 691. Her newest novella, Freak Night at the Slee-Z Motel, from Thicke & Vaney Books, can be ordered from Amazon.

Review #10: Skins (Pieles) (2017)

Directed by Eduardo Casanova

By Amy M. Vaughn

29 October 2020

Skins is not a horror movie. Not really. The Spanish film is about people who are radically differently bodied, although not always in the ways we’ve been talking about in this series of reviews. Some do possess more traditional types of uniqueness; for instance, there are a couple of little people. (Has every movie in this series had a little person?) Then there are examples of other real-life disorders and deformities, like the man who is covered with burn scars and the woman with a large tumor pulling down one side of her face. There is a young man with Body Integrity Identity Disorder, who does not recognize his legs as his own and wants them removed so he can become a merman. And the cast goes even further afield with a woman who has no eyes or eye sockets, just skin grown over where they “ought” to be, and finally a woman whose ass is on her face; because her digestive system is inverted, her cheeks are plump like a butt and her mouth is an anus.

So, no, Skins isn’t a horror movie, but it may “freak” some people out.

The stories of all of these characters illustrate themes like self-hatred and -acceptance, being misunderstood and alone, and being the object of adoration and fetishes. Their storylines cross and interweave, and even the heaviest is told with a light hand, provoking empathy rather than sympathy. (Even for buttface girl. Maybe especially for buttface girl.) This is an important distinction. Skins is a weird movie. It starts out weird and runs with it, but still manages to present every character as human first and unique second, driving home that what we have in common far outweighs what makes us different. Hence we are provoked to empathy—feeling with them—rather than to sympathy—the outsider’s response of feeling for them, giving them pity.

Why include buttface girl at all? Why not a differently bodied person who does exists, who could have been cast, who wouldn’t be so simultaneously silly and hard to look at? I can’t speak for Casanova, who both wrote and directed this as his debut feature length film, but for me, buttface girl takes the act of physical transgression to another level. The other disabilities and deformities seem much less severe next to her. It’s all relative. And then there’s the opportunity she affords for John Waters-esque humor and an ending that was conceivably far more shocking in predominantly Catholic Spain and before “eating ass” had become at least somewhat culturally accepted.

I loved Skins. After my first viewing I had no doubt that I would watch it again. It’s fascinating, weird, garish, and heartfelt. There’s enough symbolism to be meaningful but not so much as to be esoteric. Skins is a movie about freak-love—the lack of it, the pathology of it, the victims of it, and the recipients of it. For most of the film, the normal people are either exploiting the differently bodied or failing miserably at trying to love them.

The weirdest thing about Skins might be that, for all of the sadness and alienation and heartbreak, almost everyone gets a happy ending. In fact, the ending is so upbeat, it’s kind of cheesy, but it would take a hard heart indeed to begrudge these freaks their happiness.

Skins has its faults. The large cast and multitude of storylines already limits the depth to which any one plotline can go, and the happy endings, for those who get them, come on too quickly to feel genuine. So, while this may not be the perfect ensemble “freak” movie with which to bookend this series (not least because it has nothing to do with sideshows), I believe it belongs in the discussion as a commentary on how the differently bodied still struggle for acceptance in a world that may be post-freakshow but is still simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by their extraordinary forms.

4 out of 5 Eye Diamonds

Available on Netflix.

Amy M. Vaughn is the author of Skull Nuggets and the editor of Dog Doors to Outer Space. She is also a contributing editor at Babou 691. Her newest novella, Freak Night at the Slee-Z Motel, from Thicke & Vaney Books, can be ordered from Amazon.

Review #9: Crustacean (2009)

Director: L. J. Dopp

By Amy M. Vaughn

27 October 2020

If you have a soft spot for no-budget, make-do horror, there are things about Crustacean you’d appreciate. Professor Nightwind’s Freak Show is made up of Wolf Boy, who wears a plastic snout; a bearded woman, who is neither bearded nor a woman; twin “pinheads” who are conjoined because their shirts are tied together; the skeleton of the world’s tallest midget; a pirate; and the middle aged Lobster Baby, who we are led to believe is the only true anomaly of the bunch. And of course it is Lobster Baby who takes a fancy to a local, breaks out of his cage somehow, and goes on a killing spree until he gets hit on the head and remembers his life before the sideshow. Then he and the local girl live happily ever after.

There’s a lot more to it, and most of it has to do with rednecks, twins, and inbreeding. What makes any of this worthwhile, and I use that term loosely, are the occasional bits of self-referential movie-making humor that really are funny. There’s ridiculousness plastered all over this movie; it’s literally flashed on the screen as well as being snuck in from the side.

Overall, it’s far more offensive to rednecks than to freaks. L. J. Dopp knew his sideshow history, even if he didn’t have the funds to really display it.

At times, this movie is smart. At times, it’s so dumb you have to laugh. But after the first half hour or so, the jokes wane, the plot drags, and even the contrived appearances of boobs disappear. What this movie needs is a fan edit to pare it down to just the good stuff. Until that happens, which is likely never, I cannot in good conscience recommend Crustacean. To do otherwise would just be shellfish.

2 out of 5 Sets of Implausible Twins

Available at well-stocked video stores.

Amy M. Vaughn is the author of Skull Nuggets and the editor of Dog Doors to Outer Space. She is also a contributing editor at Babou 691. Her newest novella, Freak Night at the Slee-Z Motel, from Thicke & Vaney Books, can be ordered from Amazon.

Review #8: Freakshow (2007)

Directed by Drew Bell

By Amy M. Vaughn

24 October 2020

This movie isn’t good, but it might have some redeeming qualities.

Freakshow bills itself as an unofficial remake of Freaks (1932). The setup is that a group of murderous thieves is hiding out in a carnival as rousties. They’re waiting for opening night so they can steal the nut (aka earnings). One of the criminals is a busty, pout-lipped female who overhears the boil-covered carnival owner say he wants to sell some of his properties and settle down. She decides to seduce him, marry him, and kill him in order to inherit everything he owns.

So, yeah, there are a few ways the film is like Freaks. The setting is a carnival and a beautiful woman is trying to take advantage of someone who is biologically unique. Oh, and it’s supposed to be set in the 30s, but for that to be true we need to ignore the modern cars in the background and the guys with huge metal gauges in their ears who swing around from hooks through more gauges in the flesh of their shoulder blades. I’m not saying that being suspended by hooks wouldn’t have been an act in the old days, but the shiny steel gauges didn’t exist. Plus, it would have been more likely to happen at a Wild West show since the tradition comes from a native tribe called the Mandan.

Another way Freakshow is like Freaks is that there are real physically anomalous people. There’s an armless knife thrower, a man with no legs, a little person, a young man with hypertrichosis (a Dog Faced Boy), and a bearded lady. There are also gaffs (or fakes): a woman with a flipper hand, a girl with facial deformities billed in the credits as a mongoloid, and a person with bulbous protrusions on their head reminiscent of Joseph Merrick, better known as The Elephant Man.

They also have a half-n-half, a person billed as half man and half woman. The problem with half-n-halfs has always been that they are split down the center, which isn’t really how it biologically works. There were real hermaphrodites on the circuit back in the day, but as rare as they were, and as taboo as it was to show genitalia (even in the name of “science” or “education”), people of both sexes were almost always saved for the blow-off.

The movie is, as I mentioned, not good. It’s both the writing and the acting that kill it. But then a person goes by on a unicycle juggling fire sticks and all is forgiven for another ten minutes. So the pouty-lipped criminal, Lucy, seduces the ugly, boil-covered show runner. He asks her to marry him and they recreate the iconic dinner party. But instead of saying, “One of us,” perhaps out of fear of copyright infringement, they say, “Welcome Lucy.” Lucy freaks out, says mean things, and runs away.

Then there’s this weird subplot about two of the accomplices scalping and decapitating a developmentally disabled “freak” child. My guess is it’s there because they couldn’t justify killing five people just because one of them said mean things. Anyway, the carnies cremate their dead and mutilated family member in a burn barrel, and then, in ways best suited to their unique biologies and abilities, the freaks kill the four male criminals. While they lack the suspense and menace of the same scenes in the original Freaks, the kills are still kind of fun.

Finally, the sideshow family tortures and mutilates Lucy in a scene that goes on way too long, and that’s me saying that. I’m usually all the way on board for old school prosthetics and special effects. What could be going on here is an attempted recreation of the 30 minutes of footage Tod Browning was forced to edit out of his original film. Thirty minutes, so the story goes, that mostly consisted of the freaks mutilating the “bride” into the birdwoman and castrating the Strong Man.

Whether or not that was Bell’s intention, Lucy really gets it. They cut out her tongue, sew her mouth closed, cut off her eyelids, remove her toes, open one of her boobs and dig around in it, and on and on. And because of movie magic, she lives (!) to become Winnie the Worm, the newest attraction in the “Gallery of Strange People,” even though she looks more like something out of Hellraiser—being just a skinless torso and head—than anything you’d see on a sideshow banner.

Freakshow loves its freaks. In the story, the normal people are all evil or weak (which makes this different from Freaks,in which the knife thrower’s assistant and the clown were at least sympathetic). In filming Freakshow, the freaks get center stage. It’s as if the normal bodied people are only there so the unique people can be in frame. The freaks are even better actors than the non-freaks.

Freakshow isn’t scary, it isn’t well written or acted, the indoor sets are questionable at best, and it isn’t a very good remake. But it is quite plainly a labor of love.

3 out of 5 Josephine Josephs

Available on Tubi.

Amy M. Vaughn is the author of Skull Nuggets and the editor of Dog Doors to Outer Space. She is also a contributing editor at Babou 691. Her newest novella, Freak Night at the Slee-Z Motel, from Thicke & Vaney Books, can be ordered from Amazon.