Wayne C Rogers Reviews Don't Stand So Close by Eric Red

Don’t Stand So Close by Eric Red

Short, Scary Tales Publications

Trade Paperback, 2012, $14.95, 277pp

Review by Wayne C. Rogers

Have you ever had a crush on your junior high school teacher, or a high school teacher, or even a professor in college?  This question is directed as much to the ladies as to the men.  I know I did when growing up.  My first crush goes as far back as the sixth grade when I had a total crush on the teacher in the next room.  I couldn’t get my mind off of her.  I even used to ride my little bicycle past her house on occasion.  Today, that would be called stalking.   

Well, Don’t Stand So Close by Eric Red raises it up a notch and increases the stakes as this dark novel delves into obsession, perverted sex, and murder in the first degree. 

The story centers on seventeen-year-old Matt Poe, who has just moved from California to a small town in Iowa, and it’s not near Field of Dreams, either.  Matt’s mother is a teacher, and this is where her new job has taken her.  I come from a southern town where everybody knows you and your business.  I therefore understood the culture shock Matt goes through at being the new kid on the block in a small mid-western community.  Since Matt is a good-looking California teenager, it isn’t long before he makes friends with Rusty and Grace.  Rusty is a strange kid, who stays by himself, but is smart with a high IQ.  Grace is also smart, a cheerleader, the girlfriend of the football captain, and the daughter of the local sheriff.  Matt, however, only eyes for his teacher, Linda Hayden.  Naturally, she’s older, great looking, sexual in every sense of the word, and seems to have an eye for the new kid in school. 

It isn’t long before Ms. Hayden offers to tutor Matt after school, and it isn’t long before one thing leads to another and the two are doing the hanky-panky.  In fact, Matt quickly becomes obsessed with the teacher and the hot sex they have.  Things, however, aren’t what they seem.  Within a short span of time, other kids start dying in ways which seem like an accident but isn’t.  Matt soon grows leery of Ms. Hayden, especially when he finds himself developing feelings for Grace in an unexpected way.  The teacher is certainly steadfast in what she wants.  She refuses to let Matt go.  You see Ms. Hayden has plans for Matt…plans that will destroy his life in ways he could never dream or suspect.  Ms. Hayden is a sexual predator of the worse kind and Matt isn’t her first victim.  What started out as a fantasy fulfilled quickly turns into a nightmare that simply won’t go away.

As the old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for.  You might get it.” 

Eric Red, the author, is generally known for his screenplay writing and directing.  He wrote the great cult films The Hitcher (1986) and Near Dark (1987) and Blue Steel (1989), plus the revised version of The Hitcher (2007) with two other screenwriters.  Though he’s also written a number of short stories in the suspense genre, Don’t Stand So Close is his first novel.  My only question is what took him so long to finally write a book? 

Mr. Red is clearly a very talented author who sees descriptive imagery with the eyes of a screenwriter and director.  He captures everything perfectly in his novel from the personalities of the characters, the hunger a student has for his teacher, the atmosphere of small-town life, and the edge-of-your-seat suspense that keeps you wondering what will happen next.  I not only hope Don’t Stand So Close won’t be Eric Red’s only novel, but that it will be turned into a feature film in the near future.  Though this actress is older than I imagined Linda Hayden to be, I kept seeing her face in the role of the teacher—Lena Olin.  She would be the perfect Linda Hayden.

All in all, Don’t Stand So Close was a pleasant surprise I greatly enjoyed.  This novel does for high school students what the movie, Fatal Attraction, did for married men back during the late eighties.  Keep the fantasy in your mind and your zipper pulled up no matter how strong the allure. 

That’s how you stay sane and alive.   

    

 Wayne C. Rogers is a Las Vegas casino employee who has been writing professionally (with the intent to sell) for twenty-five years. It's only been within the past three years that Mr. Rogers (no, not the famous TV host of programs for children) made the decision to work towards being a full-time writer of horror, suspense, psychological, and erotic horror fiction.

He has written several novellas (three of which are posted on Amazon's Kindle), dozens of short stories (some of which are also on Amazon), an erotic/horror novel--The House of Blood--for the wild crowd that lives on the kinky side of reality, and five completed screenplays based on his stories The Encounter, The Tunnels, A Step in the Shadows, Trick or Treat, and The Garbage Disposal (the last three are short screenplays). He is currently at work on a sixth screenplay, The Code of Honor, as well as a seventh, Dolan. During the year of 2012, Mr. Rogers sold over twenty short stories with some of them appearing in the paperback anthologies: I'll Never Go Away, Grindhouse and Peep Show, Volume 2.

Being somewhat of a couch potato at his old age of sixty-two, Mr. Rogers enjoys the pastime of writing, reading (he has over a few hundred books stored in boxes a few feet from his writing table), great movies from any time period, and well-made television programs such as Justified, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Game of Thrones, Justified, and American Horror Story. Finally, Mr. Rogers is rather unusual in that he doesn't own a house or a car, A friend just recently bought him a cellphone, but he hasn't turned it on as of yet. He spends his free time at the computer writing his stories, and usually doesn't leave his apartment till it's time to head to work. Thank God for ham & cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup!!!

The Wake #4 Reviewed by Simon Frost

Click to cover to get the latest review of The Wake a new horror series by Scott Snyder

Free on Amazon The Bad Death

Click to jump over to Amazon for a free copy 

Passion rules the heart and terror rules the night…

South Carolina, 1788. The African beauty emerging from his family crypt is a stranger to Julian Mouret, the refined owner of Lion’s Court plantation. A dancer and a mystery, she spins a strange, dark, and impossible tale of peril and flight. Though he fears she must surely be mad, the handsome slave owner is soon himself a slave, lost to the seductions of this enchantress called Anika and determined to lead her North to safety. 

But there can be no safe haven for Julian or the exquisite Gullah girl who has bewitched him, not while monsters roam the night. A series of horrifying mutilation murders screams of the presence of “plat-eyes”—shape-shifting blood-sucking supernatural creatures feeding at will on the plantation workers—and only Anika can end the rampage. But to face the vampire horde she will have to master the darkness within. And the price of victory in the battle ahead may well be the eternal soul of the man she is coming to love.

The Lords of Salem written and directed by Rob Zombie came and went from select theatres in the blink of an eye, never coming close to a major release.  I caught up with it after being dumped to DVD/Blu-Ray with little marketing and the sole feature being an audio commentary by Zombie.  I follow horror stuff pretty closely and even I missed it for a month.  Click either image for the Full Review at Ravenous Monster...

Wayne C. Rogers Reviews Bag of Bones

Bag of Bones

Sony Pictures

Based on the novel by Stephen King

Directed by Mick Garris

Starring Pierce Brosnan, Annabeth Gish and Melissa George

Review by Wayne C. Rogers

The mini-series, Bag of Bones, is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name.  Surprisingly, it took the director, Mick Garris, five long years to get the financial backing needed to make this adaptation.  The project first started out with the intent of being a feature film, and then over time, the script was rewritten for the small screen.  Thank goodness A&E was willing to fund this project, or it wouldn’t have happened. 

Now, I’ve been a big fan of Pierce Brosnan since his Remington Steele days on television.  There’s no doubt in my mind he was the perfect choice for the role of Mike Noonan in Bag of Bones.  I’ve seen the strong, dramatic acting that this man is capable of doing in other films and knew he could handle the performance without any question.  The fact is Mr. Brosnan has simply gotten better with age. 

Was Mick Garris able to pull off the adaptation from novel to television?

Yes, he was.

Unlike the previous television networks, A&E gave the director pretty much all the freedom he needed to make this mini-series a success.  True he had a small budget and a tight shooting schedule, but he got the absolute most out of every dollar spent and each day on the set.  The quality of the cinematography and production design is certainly much better than in Desperation.  There’s also a touch of class with this production that clearly shines through.  Like Pierce with acting, Mr. Garris is simply getting better as a director with age.

Now, what viewers need to understand is that Bag of Bones is not a horror novel, though there are elements of the supernatural in the story.  Stephen King wanted to write one great book before he turned fifty and Bag of Bones was what he created.  It’s the same with the television movie.  Though there are strong elements of the supernatural in the mini-series, it’s not really a horror movie. 

The TV movie centers around successful Maine author, Mike Noonan (played by Pierce Brosnan), who experiences a mind-numbing tragedy when his wife, Jo, is unexpectedly struck by a bus while he’s autographing novels across the street in a bookstore.  Annabeth Gish (I remember her in the television series, Flash Forward) plays his lovely wife.  The movie has to establish rather quickly just how much the two of them are in love with each other, and I think it succeeds.  You could see these two people together, enjoying their lives with each other.  That makes the death of Jo more shocking and disturbing for those who haven’t read the novel.

 Pierce Brosnan performed a magnificent scene when he found his wife lying in the street dead.  Anyone who has ever lost a loved one will see the grief etched on his face as clearly as day.  I don’t think he was acting here, but rather displaying the actual grief he’d felt when losing his first wife to cancer.  I mean the scene made me cry.  I knew what he was going through, and I believe that’s when I truly bonded with the character.    

The plot point that propels the story forward, however, is when Mike Noonan discovers his dead wife was pregnant.  Since Mike couldn’t have children because of a low sperm count, he begins to suspect Jo of having had an affair with someone.  Jo had also been spending a lot of time at their summer house on Dark Score Lake.  Over a period of time, Mike begins to wonder if that’s where her lover lives and decides to visit the place for an extended period.  The time frame was much longer in the novel.  I think it was a couple of years.  It’s also important to note that since Mike was a fast writer, he had several novels stashed away in a safety deposit box in the novel version.  In the movie, however, he only had one old trunk novel that he gives to his agent and publisher to keep them happy while he’s unable to write.

Once Mike arrives at his house on a lake, he soon finds himself involved with a young lady and her daughter (Mattie & Kyra Devore played respectively by Melissa George and Caitlin Carmichael).  Mike manages to save Kyra’s life by pulling her out of the highway before she can be hit by a car.  After he does this, he quickly finds out that Kyra’s grandfather is Max Devore, the most powerful man in the region.  Max is attempting to get custody of Kyra by claiming Mattie is an unfit mother. 

Since Mike Noonan has problems of his own to deal with, he really doesn’t want to get involved in Mattie’s situation.  Things, unfortunately, don’t work out as he desires.  When old-man, Max Devore (played by William Schallert—no, not Captain Kirk) pressures him to testify in front of a paid-off court official about the traffic incident, Mike takes Mattie’s side to piss the man off.  Of course that makes an enemy of Mr. Devore and his female assistant, Rogette Whitmore (played by Deborah Grover).  The assistant seems to be even more evil than the old man.

While all of this outside stuff is going on, Mike is experiencing supernatural events at his house on the lake.  He knows his wife is there with him, but there’s also another spirit, Sarah Tidwell, who wants him to seek revenge for her death.

In time, Mike discovers that Tidwell (played by the lovely and talented Anika Noni Rose) was murdered in 1939.  That’s when all hell begins to break loose and Noonan finds out things about his own family’s past and how it ties into the singer’s death and Max Devore’s unusual family tree.

As I said earlier, Bag of Bones isn’t a scary novel and neither is the movie.  Director Mick Garris throws in some supernatural aspects regarding Mike Noonan’s dreams about his wife and Sarah Tidwell, the spirits in his summer house and how they often communicate with him by ringing a bell that’s hanging from a moose’s head over the fireplace.  There’s also a very strange looking tree near the lake that’s shaped like a woman’s body and offers a jolt or two in the show.  In many ways, the novel and mini-series are actually about Mike Noonan coming to grips with his own grief over the death of his wife, the past that catches up to him by the end of the movie, and how his family inadvertently brought on some of the tragedy he experiences.  In the book, he falls in love with Mattie Devore, but not so in the movie.  She’s simply a piece of the bizarre puzzle that deals with Sarah Tidwell.

I feel that Mick Garris did a fantastic job on condensing a long novel into a two part mini-series, not to mention the great cinematography and set decoration in Nova Scotia that makes it look like Maine.  I thought most of acting was top notch, especially with regards to Pierce Brosnan, who had to carry most of the film on his shoulders.  I have to admit that Deborah Grover as Rogette Whitman gets the trophy for the creepiest performance.  Whenever she was in a scene, she pretty much stole it from the rest of the actors with her strangeness.  She needs to play in more horror movies.

One last thing I enjoyed was Matt Frewer performing as Mike Noonan’s brother.  I kept thinking I knew Matt from somewhere.  It turns out he played the Trashcan Man in The Stand mini-series.  During that series, he shot a scene in the old Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas, where I was working at the time.  This is a very talented actor who needs more roles offered to him. 

There isn’t much in the way of extras, other than some deleted scenes.  Still, the DVD is perfect for the Stephen King collector who wants to have all of the author’s movies on disc.   

Wayne C. Rogers is a Las Vegas casino employee who has been writing professionally (with the intent to sell) for twenty-five years. It's only been within the past three years that Mr. Rogers (no, not the famous TV host of programs for children) made the decision to work towards being a full-time writer of horror, suspense, psychological, and erotic horror fiction.

He has written several novellas (three of which are posted on Amazon's Kindle), dozens of short stories (some of which are also on Amazon), an erotic/horror novel--The House of Blood--for the wild crowd that lives on the kinky side of reality, and five completed screenplays based on his stories The Encounter, The Tunnels, A Step in the Shadows, Trick or Treat, and The Garbage Disposal (the last three are short screenplays). He is currently at work on a sixth screenplay, The Code of Honor, as well as a seventh, Dolan. During the year of 2012, Mr. Rogers sold over twenty short stories with some of them appearing in the paperback anthologies: I'll Never Go Away, Grindhouse and Peep Show, Volume 2.

Being somewhat of a couch potato at his old age of sixty-two, Mr. Rogers enjoys the pastime of writing, reading (he has over a few hundred books stored in boxes a few feet from his writing table), great movies from any time period, and well-made television programs such as Justified, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Game of Thrones, Justified, and American Horror Story. Finally, Mr. Rogers is rather unusual in that he doesn't own a house or a car, A friend just recently bought him a cellphone, but he hasn't turned it on as of yet. He spends his free time at the computer writing his stories, and usually doesn't leave his apartment till it's time to head to work. Thank God for ham & cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup!!!

Embrace of the Vampire 2013 remake

Back in High School or Junior High I remember seeing Embrace of the Vampire.  It was beyond abysmal even to a young audience, though I did not feel totally slighted as the main reason for the rental was to see Alyssa Millano without a shirt on.  That did happen a great deal and I remember little else about it.

Trailers for the new one showed up everywhere to me, and looked like it had some potential so  relenting to the seemingly supernatural forces I added it to my netflix list.  I am very interested in finding a supernatural horror flick that is legitimately scary and sexy.  Alas this film is not the one and Animals the poorly cast and budged Skipp and Spector adaptation is still in the lead.  

The film follows Charlotte Hawthorne(Sharon Hinnendael), a naive college freshmen on a fencing scholarship and a dark secret relating to an unspecified medical condition.  Her team mates haze her and fuck with her head, her classmates tease her and her professors either creepily support her or are mean to her.  Her only support comes from her roommate Nicole (Kaniehtiio Horn), though Nicole's best friend is a vile un-redeemable character.

Charlotte begins to have nightmares and lustful dreams that soon begin while she is awake making it nearly impossible for her to tell reality from the illusions.  

Embrace the Vampire is a disappointing movie because it shows some real promise with the nightmare sequences.  There is even a very well shot vampire stalk and kill scene that has a few great moments of misdirection.  The plot however is cliched and horribly predictable.  Even the effort at a red herring is just wasted.  The dialogue emphasizes that it was male writers with probably few female friends behind the words, forcing me to wonder if Sharon Hinnendael is a poor actress or if nothing could save the shit she was instructed to say.

The attempts at eroticism fail worse than the horror elements.  With nearly no developed relationships between the couples it is just random nudity thrown in for no other reason.

The film's greatest accomplishment though was it's ability to offend me.  Equating virginity to a magical pureness (for women of course) is just wrong.  Also from a script/plot perspective getting laid will mean you are no longer in danger.  Oh yeah and sex with a woman doesn't count.  This shit is just offensive.  

I can't remember where I heard it but I will leave you with another's thoughts on this idea.

PARAPHRASED "If you believe touching a woman makes her un-pure, you probably shouldn't touch one"

Full Movie here