The Juxe: Autumnal Music

Here’s a short mix of some songs with a mix of acoustic-y, echo-y, folk-y, nostalgic, slightly dark sound that I associate with the music that seems to fit just right for this season.

Bonfires on the Heath by The Clientele (London, England)

Furr by Blitzen Trapper (Portland, Oregon)

Yer Fall by Hey Rosetta! (Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada)

Willy O Winsbury by Pentangle (UK)

Before You Go by Tony Molina (California)

And, of course, the most lovely autumnal song there is… the original version of The Monster Mash (not the one you’re familiar with).

Dealing With the Low-Bubblers

It took me a couple read-thrus but your posts earlier this year about the “bubble” [Feb 26, 27, 28} really changed my approach to performing magic and led to a whole different level of reactions.

One thing I’d like to hear you talk about is how you deal with people who have a “low bubble set point” (if that’s the right phrasing). How do you deal with people who naturally have a low appreciation for magic if showing them stronger magic isn’t the key to getting them to like it more? —WL

This is a good question. Here’s what I recommend.

First, if you have someone who doesn’t enjoy magic, then don’t show them magic. There is nothing that brings down a performance than trying to rope someone in who doesn’t appreciate it. I have enough experience now that if I show someone a trick on an occasion or two and they’re not enthusiastic about it, then I just don’t bother showing them anything in the future. Magic is an interest of mine, it’s not my identity. If someone doesn’t dig it, then that’s fine with me.

I will sometimes try to get them to feel like they’re missing out by performing for friends we have in common, or something like that. But I’m not going to force anything on them. Occasionally they’ll ask why I don’t show them anything and I’ll say, “Oh, I didn’t get the sense that you were into it.” I don’t get weird about it. I’m not like, “Well, I DID show you something once and you barely said anything about it, so why would I show you anything again if you’re not going to appreciate it? I’ve got better things to do with my time.” My attitude is—and this is my actual attitude, not an act I’m putting on for them— “Oh, I just didn’t think you were interested in it. I’m happy to show you something anytime you want to see. Just ask.” This puts the onus on them.

These days, almost all my performing is done on an opt-in basis. I’m performing for people who want to see stuff. I don’t have to chase anyone.

But here’s a technique you can use if you meet someone who expresses a disinterest in magic.

Them: So I heard you do magic?

You: Yeah, a little bit.

Them: God, I hate magic tricks.

You: Oh, I know what you mean. I couldn’t stand them for a long time. Like card tricks and stuff? What’s the point? But a few years ago I met this woman who showed me some stuff that’s on a whole different level. It completely changed my opinion on what magic could be.

See? You meet them where they are: “Oh yeah, magic sucks.” Then you imply that the stuff you’re doing is not what they’re used to.

The best way to get people to be open to changing their opinion is not by arguing against that opinion but by identifying with it.

If you say, “I hate jazz.” And I say, “No! You have to listen to this album. It’s so good. I promise. You’ll like it.” That’s likely just going to make you more entrenched in your anti-jazz position.

But if you say, “I hate jazz.” And I say, “Oh god. I totally get that feeling. Some jackass honking tunelessly on a saxophone? Squee-doodley-doo-dottin-doo. No thanks. Give me lyrics and a chorus. That was always my opinion too. Then about 18 months ago I heard this jazz album that completely blew me away.” Now, I will have at least piqued your curiosity and planted the seed that this is the sort of album that is capable of changing your mind about the subject.

You can do the same thing with magic, so long as you have something to show them that doesn’t just feel like the same thing they already decided they didn’t like.

Canned Responses

Your favorite magician, Joshua Jay, wrote an article on how to respond to common questions magicians get over on the Vanishing Inc. blog. Do you have your own go-to answers for those common questions mentioned in that article, i.e., “Will you tell me how you did that?” “Can you saw me in half right now?” “Can you make my wife disappear?” —CM

Hmm… “Can you saw me in half right now?” Is that really a question magicians get asked a lot? I mean, sure, maybe after watching a Joshua Jay performance you say it. In the way that you’d say, “Can you please kill me now?”

Magicians are funny. They all perform tricks in a similar manner, and then they get similar responses from their audiences, and then they ask, “What’s a good response we can all give to these common questions we’re getting based on our indistinguishable performances?”

A canned performance leads to canned responses requiring canned answers.

You can avoid a lot of this sort of thing based on the way you interact with your audience when you perform. If you’re a professional doing tablehopping or walkaround magic, you might have no choice but to deal with these questions. It’s the nature of the business. And I think Josh’s article was geared towards people performing in more formal/professional circumstances, because the vast majority of these are professional-only questions.

“Can you make my wife disappear?” “Can you make the check disappear?” If you’re getting those types of questions in a social situation, you’re fucked. Because these are the questions people ask when they feel absolutely no connection with the performer and with what they just saw. That’s somewhat understandable if you’re their table-side restaurant magician and they just feel the need to say something at the end of your performance. But if you invited a friend to meet up for coffee and you’ve crafted some cool trick to show her and when you’re done she says, “Can you make the check disappear?” you just have to leave and keep walking until you hit the ocean and then continue walking until you drown yourself.

So, no, I don’t have answers to most of those questions, because they never come up.

The only one that really does come up is this:

“How did you do that?”

Here’s the important thing to understand: Usually, this question does not require a response. It is just a standard exclamation, like saying, “Wow,” or, “No way.” If you respond with an answer—”Very well, indeed!” or “If I told you, I’d have to kill”—then you are suggesting you have canned responses to questions in casual situations and that you’re incapable of differentiating between an off-the-cuff remark and a genuine request for information.

Of course, occasionally, a spectator really does ask “Can you tell me how you did that?” And they really want to know. If your magic is performed in a manner which is meant to highlight you as the magician, and you accomplish it with the snap of your fingers or the wave of a wand, then you are kind of stuck.

When you set it up as, “I’m the magician, and I have these powers,” there’s almost no other way that it can go other than the ping-pong back-and-forth of…

Magician: Ta-daa!

Spectator: How did you do that?

Magician: Very well, indeed!

Spectator: No, seriously. How did you know what I was thinking of?

Magician: Can you keep a secret? So can I!

Spectator: Can I look at the wallet?

Magician: Why don’t I show you something even more interesting.

The traditional magician/spectator dynamic is one where the spectator really only has a couple options when the trick is over:

1 - Praise you.

2 - Question you.

As a social magician, performing for the same people or groups of people over time, I can teach them that neither of these options are satisfying. I’ve found that shifting from a magician-centric approach to a story-centric approach tends to make both these choices lead to dead-ends for the spectator.

Let’s say I’m using a Haunted Deck. If I use a magician-centric approach and say I can cut the deck with my mind, then they can really only respond with, “Wow, you’re amazing!” or “Tell me how it’s done.”

But, if I use a story-centric approach and say this deck belonged to my grandma and it’s a very special deck to me because we used to play cribbage together. She passed away almost 20 years ago now, but every year on this date (the day she died) she sends me a sign that she’s still looking out for me. I ask grandma for a sign and then she cuts the deck to her favorite card.

Now, if the spectator says, “Wow, you’re amazing!” I reply with, “Huh? Amazing because I have a dead grandmother? What does that mean? Lots of people have dead grandmothers.”

If they say, “Tell me how it’s done.” I act as if I misunderstand the question. “I don’t know. I guess on the anniversary of your death your spectral energy is more powerful, allowing you to move physical objects. As long as they’re not too heavy, of course. That’s what the ghost experts say, at least.”

I simply just maintain the premise after the trick itself is completed. You can do this if your premise/story is strong. You can’t do this with a weak story like, “I have magical powers.”

Soon spectators learn that I don’t want praise, and questioning the “how” of the trick will get them nowhere. This forces them to either A) just sit with the mystery for longer—which is what my analytical-minded friends tend to do. Or B) engage with the fiction as if it were real—which is what my creative friends tend to do. Both of those are good options, as far as I’m concerned.

So that’s how I recommend answering the “How did you do that” question in social situations. Lean into the premise you established. The reason I do this is not to get them to believe the premise. I just want to get them to focus on the idea that it’s not the trick alone—and if it fooled them and how it works—that’s important. What’s important is how that trick fits into the story and the experience that they just had. The way you get people to understand that is by bringing it back to the premise, rather than with a clever comeback or by moving on to something else.

Long-Shots

Do you have any stories of tremendous luck or synchronicity during a performance? Given that you perform a lot, I would suspect you do —BP

Hmm… I think you’d suspect wrong. I probably do have some stories in that vein, but they haven’t stuck with me.

The craziest thing that ever happened to me in the “statistically unlikely” category actually happened to me when I was alone. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it on the site before. This was five or six years ago. I was reading a lot about the Open Prediction. And I was reading something like, “After they’ve dealt the face down card, they don’t need to deal the rest face-up. It’s boring and takes too long. Instead just have them turn the rest of the cards face up and spread them.”

That didn’t make sense to me, because with an open prediction, each turn of a card is meaningful, even after they’ve set aside their selection.

So I wanted to test what it felt like from the spectator’s perspective. I grabbed a deck of cards, shuffled it up, and thought, “Okay, my open prediction is the 4 of Diamonds.” I dealt cards face up, one at a time, then dealt one to the side face-down, and continued dealing the rest of the deck face-up, one-by-one. At some point I knew I was probably going to turn over the 4 of Diamonds, but I wanted to experience what it felt like up to that point. Did every card feel meaningful or was it something you’d just want to get over with as quick as possible? The more I dealt, the more excited I got because the 4 of Diamonds didn’t show up. I was literally having the experience a spectator would, where every card had weight to it. And more and more weight the longer it went on. It felt like watching a no-hitter in baseball, where every pitch could be the end of it.

But as it so happened, I did flip through the rest of the cards face-up without finding the 4 of Diamonds. I turned over the card I’d set aside face-down, and there it was. The universe had successfully performed the Open Prediction on me.

If that happened today, I might have stopped right there. These days I’m more into the idea of fully accepting and going along with low-level mystery and seeing meaning in coincidence. Now I would say, “Well, I decided to see what the Open Prediction felt like and the universe gave me that exact experience.” And I wouldn’t have messed with that perfect moment.

But five years ago I was a little different and I needed to try it again. So I did… and it worked again! Twice in a row I performed the Open Prediction on myself and it worked. A 1 in 2500+ plus chance of that happening.

And so I tried it again.

But that time it didn’t work. I’m not sure what I would have done if it had. I sometimes think about that. What if it had just kept on working? But only when I was alone and doing it for myself. I probably would have gone crazy.

When actually performing for people, most of the stuff I do is 100%. So I don’t really try and take advantage of lucky breaks or coincidences or things like that. But I do have one story in that area and it happened just a few weeks ago.

I collect enamel pins and I buy every one that my friend Stasia produces.

She had this one with a cat in a mug of tea on a book.

I ordered one, but then forgot I owned it and ended up buying another one later on.

No big deal. It was $10 or something and I would definitely have no trouble finding someone else who’d like it.

Then I had an idea to incorporate it into a potential trick. I’d give someone 12 blank cards with different hobbies/interests written on them. I’d ask them to choose their three favorites. Three of those cards in play would be: reading, cats, and tea.

I would use this on someone I had just met. I’d ask them to remove three of the cards that spoke to them and their interests most directly. Then I would just look at the cards they decided on and act as if this told me a little something about their personality that I could then use for this thing I was about to show them. So it would just feel like a little introductory game/experiment that would lead into something else. But I figured that someday someone is going to choose those exact three cards and I would be able to immediately manifest a pin for them that included the three things that resonated with them most clearly. It just seemed like that would be so strong.

And the very first time I tried it on someone, she took out: books, tea, and cats. I didn’t even need her to turn the cards over before I knew, because I had marked those three.

I sat still at the table, with the pin held between my hands. (I assumed I wouldn’t need it, but I wanted to be prepared on the off-chance I did and then just get rid of it afterwards, rather than have to steal it out of my bag if I did end up needing it.)

I couldn’t believe my luck. Here I was with this person I barely knew. She had chosen three things completely freely from a group of 12 subjects. She didn’t even know that I knew what they were yet. And I had a cute, perfect reveal waiting in my hands to give her. It was a real fight to play it cool

My hands were casually clasped together in front of me. I asked her to grab my wrists. I asked her to tell me which cards she removed. She said, “Cats, reading, and tea.”

I said, “Uh… okay. I wouldn’t have guessed that. But I’ll see if I can make that work.” I focused on my hands and started squeezing them together slightly in rhythm. “I’m going to create a tiny gift based on your interests. A memento of this encounter that is just for you.”

I stopped the squeezing, told her to cup her hands together, and dumped the pin out into her hands. She, understandably, lost her mind.

For completeness sake, here is the list of subjects/interests I gave her to choose from.

• Tea

• Cats

• Reading

• Yoga

• Wine

• Dogs

• Knitting

• Beer

• Video Games

• Television

• Comics

• Chocolate

I tried to subtly nudge the choices in my direction. I knew I’d be performing for a woman, so there are a couple options that are more traditionally male interests. Knitting is more of a female interest, but it’s not super common. Then I put a few more options that are innocent sounding, but you might not choose them as interests that define you because you might think, “Does this make me sound [lazy] [fat] [like a drunk]?”

Again, I wanted the narrowing of options to be subtle. I wanted someone to be able to look at the options after and think, “There’s no way he could have known I’d pick these three. I could have easily gone with [x, y, and z.]” I didn’t want to pick nine obscure subjects like “banjo playing” or “1930s Universal monster movies” because then it would be obvious I was steering them towards certain choices.

So I figured I had it narrowed down to about 6 options that were more likely than the others, and I guessed it wouldn’t take me that long to find someone who would pick the three from those 6 that I wanted. Ultimately, I have no idea if the psychology behind the objects I chose worked, or if I just got lucky. But that was my thought-process going into it.

I love the effect, and I love the giveaway, and I’m working on some ways of doing something similar, but that don’t require luck. (Of course it won’t feel quite so free, but that’s the necessary trade-off.) I’ll let you know if something pans out.

The Child - A Halloween Horror Trick Idea

The idea was inspired by this email from MC.

[Y]our return to the polaroid printer (which I loved at the original time you posted it and still love) reminded me of something which occurred to me after you suggested getting a photo of a child in a timeless outfit, creepy stare and prediction laid out. I don't recall that you've wrote about this before but there's a slight extra option which would also be available for some people who are in a similar position as me - I have a nephew who looks uncannily like I did at that young age so with some expired film or a smartphone filter, I can have a bespoke childhood photograph of me and 'this weird picture I just kept drawing over and over until we moved house' (or whatever). 

As a potentially much bigger project, I've also been looking at my own actual childhood photos and thinking about whether there is room to start photoshopping something into the background at select points at different years - "so you'll see in the photo there's a framed picture above my brother with an abstract design, almost like a pentagram right? Well my parents keep saying that they don't know what must have happened to it and can't remember who even gave it to them, but I've spotted it here on that library book cover in this school shot as well as on this guy's t-shirt when we were on holiday". With some planning, it could be begun to be included in real photos over a period of time so that those photos find their way onto the spectator's own camera roll. It'd be overkill to try and force it into countless photos but a sense of "isn't that weird, such a unique design which keeps cropping up?" could be an interesting positioning. —MC

Those ideas (which I think are great) got me thinking about photos and predictions and led to the idea for this performance piece that I’ll simply call…

The Child

You need something like Promystic’s Color Match or the Picasso Pro app. (That’s this trick, if you’re unaware.)

You’d offer to show your friend a trick. Have her color in the picture. When she’s done she has a kid wearing a blue hat, a red-striped shirt, green shorts, yellow sneakers, orange socks. You haven’t seen her picture yet. You pull out your prediction… and it couldn’t be more wrong. You didn’t get anything right. You ask, “How’d I do?” and she’s like, “Eh, not great.”

She turns the picture around and you’re like, “Damn, what the hell was I thinking. Wait that’s—” And you pull away, with fear in your eyes.

She’s uncertain what’s going on. You’re speechless for a moment. “Sorry,” you say. “It’s nothing. Uhm… never mind. Do you want to watch that movie or…?”

Maybe you try to move past whatever just happened. But after a few minutes you realize you can’t.

“Okay… I guess I should just show you.”

You bring your friend over to a picture of you with your family on the boardwalk in New Jersey when you were 8. Maybe the photo is hanging on the wall, or framed on an end-table. In the photograph, off to the side, there is a kid. He’s wearing a blue hat, a red-striped shirt, green shorts, yellow sneakers, orange socks.

“Okay, weird, right? But who cares? It’s probably just a coincidence, right? But check this out….”

You grab a photo album from your bookshelf and open it and flip a few pages, until you get to a photo of your graduation party. There, in the back… it’s a bit of a blur…is a kid running. It’s hard to make out any details but the blue hat, red-striped shirt, green shorts and yellow shoes are fairly clear. “This was 10 years after the last photograph. You’re probably thinking it’s a different kid in a similar outfit. I would have thought that too.”

You flip to another picture. It’s a group photo from your company picnic, taken last year. There’s the kid, same outfit, hand raised as if waving hello, a creepy smile on his face.

“This is the most recent one. But it was actually the first picture where I really noticed the kid. He felt familiar to me but I didn’t know why. I asked around the office and no one knew whose kid it was. Then, a few months ago, I noticed the kid in the boardwalk photo. I didn’t think too much of it originally. I just thought it was similar kids in similar outfits. But then I found that graduation party picture. And flipping through other photos at my parent’s place, I saw other pictures with that kid in it. Not as clear as these pictures, but maybe a flash of a red-striped shirt or the yellow sneakers. And then you color in the exact same kid here? It’s really starting to freak me out. When I showed my mom the photographs she said there was a neighbor boy who died in weird circumstances on the day I was born and that-”

<BAM BAM BAM>

A violent rattling shakes the sliding-glass door leading to the backyard. You and your friend look over… and there’s the kid pounding on the glass!

How dope would that be? And it doesn’t matter if your spectator knows immediately that you’re setting them up for something. In fact, I’d prefer they did. I’m not trying to pull a practical joke, I’m trying to create an immersive fiction. That’s what I go for in most of my “big” effects. The spectator knows it’s not real, but the story of the effect itself still captures them.

Ultimately, it’s just a prediction trick with the prediction removed. It’s wouldn’t be that complicated to set up. You would need to have access to a younger kid who would play along with this. And you’d need someone who’s good a photoshop and can put the kid into a few old pictures of yours. (If you don’t know anyone, you could probably find someone online who would do it for $20.)

If I had Promystic’s Color Match, I would definitely do this. (As I said, you could do it with Picasso Pro as well, which is much more cost effective. But I’d prefer to do it with physical markers and paper.)

If you end up doing any creepy photo stuff this Halloween season, send along the pics and let me know.

Monday Mailbag #30

I have a big backlog of mail to get through, so you’ll probably see some reader submitted questions leading off most of the posts this week.

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Do you think you would be able to write a post on your blog about how to perform for people and dealing with nerves?

Not a lot of people know I perform magic and I only show tricks to my family every now and again. I can think a few reasons why I don’t perform a lot but I feel like it is a waste of time of me practicing magic when I end up not even showing them to people.

It will be interesting to read of how you would approach this challenge and it may help others on your blog that are in the same situation as me. —CE

First, I don’t really get nervous when I perform, so my insight there is limited, but I’ll give you some basic thoughts in a moment.

Second, you’re absolutely right that it’s a waste of your time to practice magic if you’re not going to show it to people. A lot of people do go this direction, however. “I’m just a scholar of methods.” Blah, blah, blah. I don’t buy that. I think they probably had a couple bad performances where they flopped and it scared them off from showing tricks to regular people. Look, no one has to perform if they don’t want to. But as someone who went from performing rarely to performing almost daily, I can say that you’re denying yourself the best part of magic if you’re not showing it to other people.

So let’s talk about nerves.

In magic you could be nervous about two things, primarily.

1. You’re nervous about your ability to skillfully execute the sleights/moves.

2. You’re just generally nervous about speaking/performing in front of others, regardless of the difficulty of the effect.

#1 should never be an issue. There is so much good magic that doesn’t require much technical skill that there’s no reason to ever go out and do something that you’re not sure you can pull off. There is nothing crueler to do to an audience then to perform a trick without confidence in your handling. Making people feel sorry for you when they think that you think you’re doing something that should impress them is a nauseating feeling for people.

#2 is something altogether different. But the good thing about those types of nerves is that you can just choose to ignore them. That’s how I think the world works. Everyone gets the same amount of nerves about things at first. If you take action despite those nerves, then they lessen the next time you’re in that situation. If you indulge the nerves and allow them to prevent you from doing something, then you strengthen the nerves the next time you’re in a similar situation. Nerves, anxiety, stress—these things are all just habits that you either give in to, or you fight. The more you fight, the less powerful they are over time.

My philosophy is to treat everything like a habit (whether it’s true or not). So I don’t say, “I’m lazy,” or, “I’m weak,” or, “I’m a crackhead.” I say, “I’ve gotten in the habit of being lazy,” “I’ve gotten in the habit of being weak,” “I’ve gotten in the habit of being a crackhead.” When you think this way, you never have to get discouraged over what you are. Because you don’t have to see yourself as fundamentally anything. You are just a series of habits. And habits can be broken.

So if you get nervous before performing (and it has nothing to do with your technical ability to pull off the trick) then just choose to fight through it. Same as if you get nervous talking to a girl or asking for a raise. Just ignore the nerves for a few minutes while you do your thing. Now, I’m sure there are techniques you can use to calm your nerves, but I don’t know any of those. The only “technique” I know is that you can feel nervous and still choose to act despite that feeling. You don’t need to get in the habit of deep breathing or positive visualization. The only habit you need is the one of ignoring your nerves.

Eventually you will just become a person who isn’t affected by nerves in these situations. You won’t even think of them. That’s not to say they won’t still be there, they just won’t affect you. It’s like if you had to walk a narrow path with a sheer 1000 foot drop-off on one side along a mountain. The first time, you would be scared. But if you forced yourself to do it, you’d be a little less scared the next time, and then less and less, until one day you wouldn’t think about it at all. That’s not to say the steep drop-off isn’t still there. It just doesn’t affect you anymore because you have a history of staying on the path.

Now, to be completely fair, some of the presentational ideas I’ve talked about in this blog are kind of advanced. And you shouldn’t necessarily try those unless you have a foundation of performing simpler concepts with confidence. That’s just a natural progression that goes with trying anything new. But there’s nothing that should prevent you from asking a friend or family member, “Hey, I’ve got this thing I’ve been working on, but I sort of need an outsider’s perspective to see if it works like it should. Can I try it with you?”

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If I’m referencing you in a video or a book release, how do you prefer to be credited? Andy? The Jerx? —SU

I’m not overly particular about it. You can just say, “Andy at The Jerx.” Or you can give more detail if you want to do so for the sake of your audience, e.g., “Andy, the anonymous author of The Jerx magic blog, the greatest writer in the history of magic,” etc. etc., that’s fine too. But my preferred way would probably just be to say, “Andy Jerxmann.” That way people who know the site will realize you’re referring to me, but people who don’t won’t be directed to the site. It’s not that I’m against people spreading the word about this site to other people who they think might like it. I just don’t need general, un-targeted, mentions of this site.

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I'm in the process of creating my wonder room and as I was looking at the various things I have round my house it occurred to me that a game I have called "Dropmix" had all sorts of magic possibilities. I don't know if you've heard of Dropmix before? It's made by the people behind guitar hero and is kind of like a DJ/card game where you lay down cards that have part of a songs riff on them (drums, vocals, bass etc) and the game mixes them together. It's really clever and a lot of fun with friends. The fact the little loops of music are on cards made me think there are some magic applications for it. Predicting the weird random song someone creates in an unusual way? A bit like the connect 4 trick. The cards all have the same backs, each type of loop is colour coded as well and I have over 100 of them now. My first thought was using something like R.Paul Wilsons C3 to force the required cards. I figured as you have an interest in music this might be up your street. Here's a brief overview in case you wanted a look (it's only a few minutes long):

DropMix Review

This looks very cool. I don’t have the game myself, so I can’t say for certain if/how I’d use it, but it definitely seems like something that has potential.

My advice to anyone incorporating a game into a trick is to find people who actually want to play the game. Then after you play it, you can transition into “trying something else” with it. That’s especially true with this game where you’d want someone to have a good understanding of what the game is and what it does and doesn’t do. The mistake is to just say, “Hey, here’s a cool game. Watch as I show you a magic trick with it.” That’s no good.

Related to that, here’s a post about my friend’s “Board Room” which is the Wonder Room concept in a display of games that can all be used to transition into effects after.

Here is Dropmix on Amazon for anyone who is interested. It looks like the price has come down considerably since its release.

Sunday Spookiness

We’re now a few days into October. I love this time of year. Well, I love most times of year, to be honest. (Except February 13th. I loathe February 13th. Eat my ass, National Tortellini Day.) But as a fan of horror and cooler weather, this is a particularly fun time. I usually watch a horror movie every night in October. I just got done watching Blood Rage (aka Slasher aka Nightmare at Shadow Woods) from the 80s (shot in ‘83, but released in ‘87). It was… not good. But not abysmal either. Unless you’re a hardcore 80s b-movie fan, you can steer clear of it. This recap of the kills in the movie might still be a fun watch and will give you a feel for what you’re missing.

In a future post I’ll let you know my favorites from this year’s horror movie month.

But today I’ll post some other recent horror finds that I’ve enjoyed.

Host

This is a short film that was written, shot, and released all during quarantine. You can find it on Shudder.com. It’s got a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (if that means anything to you). It’s a horror movie that takes place over a zoom call. I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest horror movie of all time, by any means. But it’s a very enjoyable way to pass an hour, especially given the limitations within which they were working. And there’s really no better thing to watch at this time of year in this particular year when it is (hopefully) more relevant than it will ever be.

This Vintage Halloween Music Video on Youtube

If you’re into that mid-century sound, this is a great playlist of seasonal tunes.

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

This book won the Bram Stoker award for best horror novel in 2019, so it’s hardly a hidden gem. It’s not exactly a “Halloween-ish” type of horror novel either. But the tension in the story is really pretty incredible. In the opening “scene” a stranger walks up to this girl playing outside of a remote cabin and it quickly establishes an unsettling tone that carries on through the rest of the book. It’s a very different kind of horror story.

I think whether you end up liking the book or not, it’s one that will stay with you.

This Picture of An Old Halloween Party

There is an urban legend that the guy in the black mask killed seven of the party-goers. It’s not true. But it doesn’t have to be true for this photo to make you shit your pants.