riversofgrueSlasher, Splatter, Tribute
Okay then Grueheads, listen up and listen good. There’s a new kid in class and his name is Marcus Miller. Anyone who has read my appraisal for Matt Farnsworth’s delirious viral splatter masterpiece, The Orphan Killer, will already be aware that it did a bit of a number on Keeper. There are so many reasons why this movie stirred me deeply ; not just the magnificently unwarranted grue on exhibit. You see, I have witnessed more carnage in my immortality than most, been made privy to sights that would twist many a solar plexus, bring up the bile in more delicate tracheae, and cause involuntary bladder-vacating in the most lion-hearted of men (instant prolapse for the ladies). Has it sickened me? Fuck yes, it has! It’s the reason crimson coulis courses through my conduits, that shit keeps my heart pumping fluids.
Clearly The Orphan Killer excels in the splatter department, if it had emerged in the eighties, Matt Farnsworth would’ve been hung, drawn and quartered for his depictions of corporeal suffering. But we exist in an exciting new age whereby censorship is becoming more implausible with each dusk that passes. Efforts to police the worldwide web would be fruitless; it’s just too sweeping.
My case in point is this: if I enter Nightmares in a Damaged Brain into any search engine it will present me with a repast of debauchery, goblets of grue and an adolescent brandishing a woodsman’s axe as he prepares to relocate said chopper into his duplicitous father’s skull. Thirty odd years ago, the late David Hamilton Grant of Oppidan was incarcerated and spent twelve months (initially eighteen) sitting in a dank chamber for merely distributing an uncensored print of the movie. He would feel bitter now, tapping into the same search engine and speculating as to where a precious year of his life went. It went to the best of causes; this martyr took one in the kidneys for the sake of our darling horror. To make a cake, we all know some eggs must perish, it’s a simple science. Without these eggs it would lack the correct consistency, and without video nasties we wouldn’t be in the place we find ourselves now. Folk are terror-stricken by change, it makes them anxious and ultimately there’s a knee jerk reaction.
But there’s no such thing as negative press, you know at this moment O.J. Simpson is sitting in his sun lounger, sipping bourbon from a slipper, and getting blown by some brass named Candi, whilst he fingers his own asshole. Maybe that’s what David Grant would be doing too if he didn’t die in inexplicable circumstances in 1991, but one thing’s for damned sure. As cohorts pass, we learn from our sacrificial sufferers, films like The Orphan Killer filter out with new intent and the wisdom to market themselves to a fresh set of addressees, motherfucking virally.
In Keeper’s opinion nobody, and I do mean nobody, has single-handedly had the impact that Marcus Miller has on the technological world we dwell in. A product of society? Nah, I’m not buying it. This seed was rotten before it was even planted. There is purpose and not a whisker of repentance to this cruel and despicable being. His surroundings just primed him, they helped his inner rage to swell, and I have no reservation that he got kicks from the handling he was subjected to by those fallen angels at the “reformatory”.
What really makes him stand out though? Myers was pure evil, right? That may be but, as already stated, we live in a new age. For perpetuity, we have been clamoring for a maskhead to cling to and in Marcus Miller we have found our wicked redeemer. His posture speaks volumes about the courage in his convictions, every inch of his fiber leans towards us, invitingly like a succubus. He is the true boogeyman; the one emblematic anti-hero we cheer for with the darkest element of our twisted souls. We are behind him as he plunges that machete blade into the face of society, on his shoulder pressing down as he stomps that cranium into pate, but all the while we’ve identified our available exits as we are fully aware that we may be next on the platter. That offers salacious delights to the truest Gruehead the likes of which don’t come easy.
It’s not just Marcus though; he is only one cog in the apparatus. He’d rip off my fucking throat blanket if he could hear me now and I’d love it. That’s what I desire, Keeper’s member throbs sternly at the prospect of a cortex chow down, such an irresistible gorge of the senses. Audrey is the prime-rib, raw and hemorrhaging on the plate before us. What a rib! Not only is she tender and easy as fuck on the eye, but she too has the courage in her own convictions. The crimson which surges through her ventricles is akin to Marcus’, without her the wheel doesn’t turn. He is her nemesis and in turn, she is the thorn that lodges itself into his midriff.
You don’t learn the survival skills she exhibits or the detachment in how she too can swing a weapon. She is every bit the Miller Killer as her estranged sibling. The Orphan Killer pluralized; now it should be sinking in. Not since Michael and Laurie has there existed a match-up so exquisitely poised but unlike Carpenter and Hill’s conception there will be no sell-out here.
Matt Farnsworth; lodge that name into your hippocampus. This brother of grue is a slave to our innermost desires, a servant of our subconscious and the genius to herald a new dark dawn for the genre. Brother Matt, please quote Keeper on that as I state it with vehemence. No other director on the indie circuit aside from Fred Vogel holds the blueprint to our terror. Fuck selling their souls to the man, these minds are astute enough to know that the money just ends up in some suit’s receptacle.
I implore every one of you to seek this out, if you wonder why it scored only eight out of ten then begin to read between the lines. As a scribe, my scores are merely guidelines, my oath as Keeper is to usher you, fine people, to the pinnacle of horror endowment old and new. I write about Ti West’s The House of the Devil, Franck Khalfoun’s Maniac (in particular Megan Duffy who procrastinates not in making a cosmic impact), and the new voice of horror literature C. William Giles’ …of Tortured Faustian Slumbers, with clear intent, that being to share fine art with whoever entrusts me with their safekeeping. The above, Matt Farnsworth, and in no small part Marcus Miller have justified my decision to scribe in the first place. And there is no finer honor Keeper can bestow than that.
Truly, Really, Clearly, Sincerely,
Keeper of the Crimson Quill
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