Karen Koehler's Werewolf Run

Please welcome guest blogger Karen.  We are on a werewolf roll here, and Karen is a wonderful writer with, as you can see, wonderful timing.

*****

This review is part of The Werewolf Run to help promote the release of my own werewolf novel, A Werewolf in Time (Mrs. McGillicuddy #2). Please visit Amazon and Barnes & Noble online for information on ordering a copy of the book for your Kindle or Nook. To see where I’ll be in the next month, visit: http://www.khkoehler.com/the-werewolf-run/

THE BEAST MUST DIE! (1974)

 A millionaire by the name of Tom Newcliffe invites a small group of diverse individuals to spend time with him and his wife in their mansion. Among the people are a professional pianist and his student-turned-lover, an archeologist (played charmingly by Peter Cushing), an ex-con, a diplomat, and various members of Newcliffe’s staff. One among them is a werewolf, and Newcliffe is determined to discover who it is through various “tests” he has developed. The events that follow are a twisty-turny series of mysterious events that eventually segue into a 30-second intermission called “The Werewolf Break,” wherein the audience is asked to determine who the werewolf is based on the events of the story.

Yes, it’s an interactive werewolf film, made it 1974.

The Beast Must Die! plays out more like an Agatha Christie story with horror elements than a real werewolf film, and therein lies the delight in it. The werewolf is treated more like a secret assassin than a monster, a creature fully aware of what it’s doing and yet shrewd enough to cover its tracks…at least until the big reveal at the end. And despite the film being made in 1974, it has more in common with the films of William Castle made in the 1950’s, infamously embellished with their gimmicks and gags, than anything released at the time. 

I have fond memories of watching The Beast Must Die! in the early 1980’s when it experienced something of a small film renaissance due to the sudden popularity of the (then) new Howling movies. Other than the mystery elements, there is nothing especially standoutish about the movie. It isn’t scary. It breaks no new ground in its handling of the werewolf legend. The full moon is soon to rise and the night is full of new-blooming wolfsbane. The protagonist means to shoot the werewolf with a silver bullet, end of story. The actors, other than Peter Cushing, and to lesser degrees Charles Gray (of the James Bond films) and Michael Gamdon (of the more recent Harry Potter movies) weren’t exactly A-list actors at the time. In fact, Mr. Cushing looks like he might be slumming it a bit.

The sets and special effects are only a few notches above poverty row. The production budget was so miserly that the “werewolf” was played by a painted, all-black German Shepherd, and the whole movie looks like it was filmed at the weekend estate of one of the actors. There’s a definite air of “made for 1970’s TV” about this little movie—even though it was, technically, a theatrical release.

And yet the movie does the best it can with what little it has going for it, and manages to be both interesting and charming despite its rough exterior. The fact that its protagonist is black, and the movie isn’t, in fact, either grindhouse or blaxploitation, and the black character doesn’t die in the first act, elevates it ever so slightly above some other examples of film schlock of the 1970’s.

I like The Beast Must Die! A lot. I like its enthusiasm and fearlessness in the face of a near-nothing budget, and I like the fact that it’s based on a favorite short story of mine, “There Shall Be No Darkness,” by James Blish. I like the fact that it soldiers on doing what it does in the face of crappy special effects and 1970’s kitsch. In some ways, it reminds me of Frogs (1972) another impoverished and almost claustrophobically filmed little gem of a film full of washed-up, tired looking actors and B-movie talent giving it all they have and looking like they’re having the time of their lives. The Beast Must Die!, like Frogs, is a fun, shallow, entertaining romp that looks, and feels, like it ought to have existed about twenty years earlier. Personally, I’m glad it existed at all. It’s a good drunk film, and a great film if you want to see a bunch of spoiled 1970’s people entertaining themselves as they’re slowly picked off one by one.

And it has an aging Peter Cushing in it. Really, do you need any other excuse to watch it?

3 pentacles out of 5.

Agree or disagree? Share your opinion below. 

The Werewolf Principle- Man or Beast?, Part Three of Five

The guy in the middle is the writer.

His name is Elmo.

He wants to write an action adventure novel, or a paranormal romance, or... maybe eve a western.  Possibly a suspense/ thriller.

The problem is, Elmo's kind of geeky.  His life is average.  He plays online games a lot and hangs out on Facebook because in-person crowds make him nervous.  Girls don't think he's cute, but he'd like a hot date.

His dog likes him, and he saved the neighbor's cat from being run over by heroically dashing out into the street, grabbing it up and diving for the grass but landing on the pavement instead.

The cat freaked, and scratched Elmo's arms and back.  Elmo broke his right big toe trying to run away.

Do you think Elmo, as Elmo, will make a strong narrator?

Does he need to change his personality to be a strong narrator?

Is anyone going to want to read what Elmo writes if he's writing using his real identity?  He can't make life work in his favor.  Do you really think that makes him qualified to be a strong writer?

You and I can be supportive and tell him it's the power of his desires and his imagination that will make his fiction both dramatic and compelling.

But Elmo wouldn't believe us.

Elmo's praying for that full-blown full-moon transformation to become someone people will want to listen to.

So he's thinking- nice guy or evil wild man?

Which way to go?  Who would be the better writer?

We really and truly are someone different when we write successfully, but the question is the same as every werewolf has faced throughout the centuries- can we control who or what we become when the full moon of writing illuminates the inner recesses of our minds and hearts?

The Werewolf Principle- Part One of Five

Writers rarely listen to werewolves, and it's our loss.

While it's true that this may be in some degree be blamed on the rather limited range of sounds they are capable of producing (they howl well and are not bad snarlers), it's also a fact that when the full moon rises resplendent above the dark clouds to grace the the evening sky like the queen of the night that she is, writers hide behind their computers.

Embarrassing, isn't it? 

Granted no one wants to step out on a night where their neighbors may or may not be transformed into hideous were-beasts, but no one ever did or ever should assume that being a writer is safe.

In fact, being a writer is dangerous work.

And, like the werewolf, writers live out their lives under a gypsy curse.

But if it doesn't show up on Google, you probably never heard about it.  I'll explain later in this short series why we were cursed, which gypsy cursed us and all the details of how the general public can protect themselves from were-writers.

We all know how to break a were-writer.  It's not silver bullets.  You know better than that.

You want to know how to stop a were-writer?  Just don't respond to any their requests for you to "like" their newest release.  Nothing weakens a writer more than no one responding to their latest effort.  It's like pounding a stake through their heart while they're in a garlic sauna.

It's the in between magical strictures that we need to pay attention to.  Like this one:

Writers look like everyone else.  Sometimes not as good.

How were you supposed to know that the 73 year old woman with hair in her ears has been writing the lusty, bawdy, rowdy adventure-fantasy you've been loving your whole life?  Gag, as the late Janice Joplin said, is just another word for nothing left to puke.

See that scrawny little guy walking down the aisle at work, the one who looks like he's been beaten like a rented mule.  Bench presses less than the average two liter diet drink.  Sounds like a cricket on coke when he talks.  Yep he's the one.  He writes science fiction that can bend your mind.  He has dreams more muscular than an Olympic wrestler.

What happens to the old lady and and the scrawny little guy to make them write like that?

Metaphorical full moon, that's what.

When the conditions are right, they let their inner animal free and then.... look out!!


They're beyond human.  They're were-writers.  They turn into writing animals.

It's an ugly scene, as though all their pent-up sexuality, their need to dominate and every creative ambition they've ever repressed gets covered with wild hair and they literally snarl their way through their manuscript.

But not every night.  Only the nights when the conditions are right.

And wouldn't you like to know how to tell when the conditions are right?

Garden of Eden Found and "Tainted Blood" is Now Available in Print

My werewolf novel "Tainted Blood" is finally available in paperback.  The cover image hasn't loaded yet, but it takes a week or two to show.  Price for the print version is $15.99.

Wait- I sound like an infomercial.  I should throw in some Ginsu knives so I could say, "But wait, there's more."  Then I could throw in a free juicing machine.

If you can't tell I wanted very badly to either write for the world's greatest magazine, "The Weekly World News," or be the lead guy in info-mercials.  I watch re-runs of Orgreenic frying pan presentations, Orek vacuum cleaning commercials, Intensity Workout infomercials and Dance Away the Pounds.

So I'm tempted, really tempted to do a "Tainted Blood" info-mercial.

That way I could do my first "Buy Now!"

I could say "Tainted Blood" is yours right now in three easy payments if you act right now.

Or I could say that if you don't buy, I'll give your number to both political parties and say you love phone calls. Now that's what I call gangsta sales.

Or, I could go back to writing the second in the series, called "The White Death."

First I have to go back and read the classic Weekly World News Classic story "Garden of Eden Found!"  by the brilliant reporter Frank Lake.  Here's an excerpt demonstrating why he should replace Walter Cronkite as America's reporting icon:

“The RMS  (radioactive mass spectrometer) was showing an extremely small dense object 30 feet underground” Colonel Pentine said, “We called in the hazmat team to dig it up.”

Dressed in radiation-proof uniforms, soldiers began excavating the area. What they discovered seemed harmless enough: The withered remains of an ancient tree.

“The bark looked as if it ha been blasted by lightning. Pentine said. “We dug carefully around the trunk and soon unearthed the skeletal remains of a large snake beside the mass we had been reading.

“The object was red and looked like an apple,” she said.

You can see why my childhood dream was to work for the Weekly World News.  Matter of fact, if they called me today, I'd still take the job.

Free "Tainted Blood" Promotion!

Starting today and lasting through April 6th, "Tainted Blood," will be Free through Amazon Kindle.  Click here to download it for free.  We're already at #19 in the number of Kindle Horror downloads in the US and #20 in the UK, so keep downloading!  Help us get to number one!!


It's hard to find a better price.


Just scheduled this at 11:00 a.m. Monday, April 2, and it may take a few hours or maybe even til tomorrow morning to show up as free, plus or minus an electron.

Disputin' Rasputin

(He's Pretty Serious)

*****

“Evgeny, side of the house. Something from the window.”


“Tracking.”


It was big, bigger than a man and on the ground with a crouching movement, like a big cat hitting the ground. Even though they were several blocks away, Hauck had to fight the urge to draw his gun. It was up and moving so fast toward the back of the house that it left one screen and shot onto the other as quick as Hauck could turn his head.


“Shestapolov,” shouted Hauck. “To your right.”


Shestapolov and Rodin turned simultaneously, pivoting on their heels and bringing their pistols around. A fury of bright movement was on them before they could fire and Hauck heard a vicious, triumphant snarl that flooded him with fear. Light swirls smeared with something dark spiraled across the screens. A cry from Rodin that sounded like “mother,” but must have been something else.


“Evgeny?” called Hauck.


Above the snarls and snapping and howls, he thought he heard the slap of bullets and Shestapolov's terrified cursing. Either Shestapolov or Rodin was down and the other tried to sprint across the yard, but it was on him and dragging him toward the fence line faster than Hauck could believe.


“Evgeny,” he called again.


"On the move."

A fat finger jutted into view before the monitor. One of the back windows of the house was glowing. Smears of furious light bled into the night. A quick, sharp blast rocked the speakers and Hauck stepped back against the immovable figure of his watcher. The man snorted and pushed him away, but bent over suddenly as he did so as though in pain. Hauck ignored him and stared at the monitor. Flames and sparks shot out the windows as though the house were a fireworks display. excerpted from "Tainted Blood," by Ferrel D. Moore

*****

There are some people who make you a little uneasy. You're not sure if you should add them to your guest list without doubling up on your home owner's insurance policy. Rasputin falls into that category. A charismatic wild man steeped in scandal and secret plots- yep, a perfect character for the novel I'm writing.

Born January 22, 1869 in Siberia, he rose from a simple peasant upbringing to the level of advisor to Tsar Nicolas II and his Tsarista Alexandra. He was such a bad influence on them, that many historians consider him a major contributing factor to the fall of the Romanov empire.

He was sexually promiscuous, mesmeric and charismatic and lived for plots and counterplots. His influence of the Tsarista Alexandra was so complete that many suspected them of being lovers enslaved by passion.

Yet, he was a great comfort to the family, as only he seemed to have the power to dismiss the incredible pain suffered by their hemophiliac son. Physicians seemed to do nothing much at all compared to this mysterious man.

The church fathers considered him steeped in sin because of his alleged involvement in the khylsty sect, whose services reportedly resulted in physical exhaustion and orgies. The ritual known to the khylsties as "rejoicing" involved group sex which, the khylsty leaders felt encouraged members to turn towards God after yielding to temptation. If people did not first sin, they thought, why would they ever turn their eyes heavenward for forgiveness?

And, he was reputed to be the hardest man ever to kill. He enemies (notably Prince Yusupov), fed him enough cyanide to kill several men, then shot him in the back, came back and stabbed him and shot him again when he was still up and getting really upset, then reportedly castrated him and threw into an ice cold river. An autopsy report showed that he took water into his lungs before finally dying- which meant that he was still alive when thrown into the water!

Later, his body was stolen and burned, but observers were horrified that while burning, Rasputin's body sat bolt upright in the flames. I started my werewolf novel over from scratch when I started thinking that the reason Rasputin was so hard to kill was that he was actually a werewolf. So I began researching the topic, started from scratch again, and, 10,000 words later, I'm hard at it again. Sometimes you just have to find the antagonist.