Last night I watched Basketcase (1982) courtesy of a friend’s video collection, and was reminded of both Jan Švankmajer’s Little Otik (2000) - which has higher production values but is just as strange a story, and Jeffrey Sconce’s article “Trashing the Academy: Taste, Excess, and an Emerging Politics of Cinematic Style”. I highly recommend all three.

The “monster” in the basket is not very scary, although he’s terribly violent, and his stop motion rampage is pretty wonderful. Check out the terrible lighting - including telephone wire shadows cast across faces, the bad hair pieces, and the non-stellar acting.

Now that spring has sprung, my mind has turned to new tricks and slasher films: there are new signs of life (such as pollen) bursting out everywhere and most slashers strike in warm weather. For these reasons I don’t plan to set foot outdoors until late fall, so I’ve plenty of time to teach myself new skillz including drawing! Though not exactly new, drawing is a skill I’ve forgotten to exercise for approximately 15 years. It’s probably like riding a bicycle, but the last time I tried that I fell flat on my face, scared the crap out of myself, and left the bike equipment where it lay.

Here is a sneak peek of details from the first of my drawings, in progress, titled Body Count, Friday the 13th.

For those who are curious there are 11 deaths (athough 3 took place in the past and it is revealed that 1 of the “dead” may in fact be “undead”).

Apparently it’s Easter and I am sitting in my temporary studio which is really a parlour in a possibly creepy old white mansion on a very run down street. There is moss between the stone steps leading up from the street and an electric yellow forsythia just outside one window. Through another window is a tulip tree, the kind I used to call magnolia, with half-opened magenta buds. I hear fire trucks in the distance and the older gentleman owner of the house, whom I haven’t met, is singing Candle in the Wind with radio accompaniment and working in the yard which is filled with antiques - his worn t-shirt says rocket in my pocket, in red.

I’m watching slasher films from the 70s and 80s for a series of drawings I am working on.

Its all very lovely, like spring…