Myths & Monsters

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He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

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Daciana Viorica Brezeanu was a Romanian ballet dancer and gymnast who died from self inflicted wounds to the stomach and chest. She was said to have suffered from delusions that were religious in nature.

"She was always quoting scripture to ward off evil spirits – sometimes screaming at the top of her lungs. Soon after she quit the sports she so dearly loved, it all happened, " said her mother the night after her death. The police discovered several hundred animal bones beneath her bed in cardboard boxes. In one of the boxes was a letter written by Daciana and adressed to God, that stated "The demon has entered me. there is nothing to do now but give in to death." She was 19 years old.

The photo was taken Halloween day,1996 – about one year before her death.

On the afternoon of 6 May 1993, West Memphis was rocked by the news of the discovery of the mutilated bodies of three eight-year-old boys. They were naked; each had had both left and right hands tied to their corresponding feet with black and white shoe laces. One child, had multiple wounds apparently made by a serrated knife, and injuries of a type often seen as a result of forced oral sex. A second boy had multiple stab wounds and indications of forced oral sex. The police believe that these two boys died by drowning. The third child appeared also to have been forced into oral sex. The skin of his penis was removed and he had been castrated. He had many cuts from a knife with a serrated blade. He had bled to death. Christopher Byers had welts on his back from the buckle of a belt. These were initially interpreted by the police to have resulted from ritual abuse by Satanists. However, Christopher’s step-father John Byers testified at the trial that he had beaten his step-son with a belt at 5:30 PM on the day of the murder.

By 12.00 p.m. the next day, police were questioning their first suspect, Damien Echols. Several weeks later Jessie Misskelley, an associate of Echols, confessed to the murders, implicating Damien Echols and another friend, Jason Baldwin. Soon after, following a confession by Misskelley, the three teenagers were arrested and charged with the murders of James M. Moore, Steven E. Branch and Christopher M. Byers.

The citizens of West Memphis were relieved that the monsters that had committed these heinous crimes had been apprehended and justice would be served. There was a great deal of anger in the community directed towards these three adolescents, supposedly involved in Satanic cults, who were accused of killing three innocent boys as part of a Satanic ritual. Rumors of Satanic groups had abounded in this dominantly Baptist community for decades. Details of their exploits were well known although there was never any proof of any murders actually having been performed in the past. From the time the arrests were made until they were tried, local papers fed the community’s blood-lust, with stories of Satanic abominations appearing on a regular basis.

On Wednesday 19 January 1994, Jessie Misskelley was sent to trial after an attempt to have his confession suppressed was denied. Two weeks later, he was found guilty on one count of first degree capital murder and two counts of second degree capital murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole. He was seventeen years old. The trial of Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols began on Tuesday 4 February 1994. On Monday 18 April 1994, they were both found guilty on three counts of capital murder. The next day Jason, just sixteen, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of forty years. Eighteen-year-old Damien Echols was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

DNA evidence presented in 2007 has conclusively proved that all three are innocent. However, the DNA of a step father of one of the boy’s was allegedly detected at the crime scene. The legal process is still ongoing. An extensive but partly outdated article can be found here.

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills is a 1996 documentary film directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky about the trials of the three teenage boys in West Memphis, Arkansas for the murder and sexual mutilation of three prepubescent boys. The boys on trial for the crime are: Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin, also known as the West Memphis 3.

Omen remake aside, there haven’t been any big studio "killer kid" movies in ages, and the few that there were have been pretty weak. The Good Son, for example -- it was rated R, but for what? He kills a pet and says "fuck". Ooooh. So I wasn’t expecting much from Warner Bros.’ Orphan; maybe she’d cause a car accident or something, but I didn’t think she’d actually kill anyone.

So imagine my surprise when, not even an hour into the (2 hour) movie, she takes a hammer to a woman and kills the ever-loving shit out of her. Yes! A "killer" kid movie with actual kills! And while the body count doesn’t get much higher (one more kill, though a fairly surprising one), Esther is a vicious little bitch. She attempts to kill both of her siblings on several occasions, threatens to castrate the brother ("I’ll cut your hairless little dick off before you even know what it’s for"), brains a bird, stabs a guy to death… it’s pretty goddamn brutal. There’s also a taut scene where a girl who bullied Esther at school is inside of a giant playground castle/house thing. Because it has corridors and doorways and such, it actually feels like a typical stalking scene that would occur in a real house, only now with children. It’s an interesting visual, and ends with the little girl getting tossed down the slide and breaking her leg. Again -- Esther’s not all talk and no action like some of her killer kid brethren.

But even without Esther the film packs a punch. The opening nightmare scene is more horrifying and disturbing than anything in the Nightmare on Elm St. films ever presented for a nightmare (the fact that it actually RESEMBLES a dream, with unexplained character/location changes and such, doesn’t hurt). And then later there is a terrific bit that plays on our understanding of cinema. Our hero mom (Vera Farmiga) pulls up to a red light and begins daydreaming as she spies a pregnant woman walking across the street. She keeps watching for a while, and then we hear a car honk. We all know this means that she’s daydreamed past the light turning to green again, so she starts driving toward. And then BAM! she narrowly misses getting side-swiped. It is then that we see the light, which is still red -- the honking was unrelated. Great misdirection.

Read the full Review…

Salad Fingers is a surreal psychological horror cartoon series originally created by British cartoonist David "Foyf" Firth in July 2004 which gained rapid internet popularity in 2005. The San Francisco Chronicle ranked it in the "top 10" pop culture phenomena for that year.

Watch all episodes here.

Mom found Long-lost Son online, raped him

The 35-year-old Detroit woman, pictured, tracked down her teenage son (age withheld) using the Internet, after giving him up for adoption and not seeing him for 10 years. Once she tracked him down, she is alleged to have seduced him; whether the boy knew the woman he had sex with was his mother is not clear.

Police got wind of incident and charged her with criminal sexual conduct, as the boy was underage; it seems likely the “rape” she is charged with is statutory rather than forceful. The woman denies the charges, and was released on bail after surrendering to police. A local psychiatrist clearly has not read any hot incest ero-manga, or at least is not a fan of such:

“Our first reaction to hearing about something like this is that this is every man’s nightmare. It’s an abomination. I’m at a loss for words because it’s something that we consider to be so out of the normal, so prohibited in every culture that it unnerves every man just to think about it. This could be his first sexual experience, and his first sexual experience could be something so conflicted, so unusual, so prohibited that it will stay with him for life.”

The loving mother herself has spoken since she first was arrested, writing on her MySpace page that she was inspired by rapper and former jailbird Lil’ Kim because "she rises during the worst of obstacles."

[via Sankaku Complex]

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I couldn’t help but think of Polanski and a little of Kubrick’s The Shining with today’s first glimpse into Antichrist. It comes across as distinctly "Von Trier", due to the technical style he employs with the use of handheld shots and natural lighting, but there are some complicated shots involved, and special effects work (no Donkeys were killed on set) that I suspect came from sources that go beyond literature and includes paintings, and perhaps ideas from the cited filmmakers above.

 

Written by Anders Thomas Jensen and von Trier, based on the theory that it was Satan, not God, who created the world, the trailer features a Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg who take the route that Jack and Wendy Torrance took – isolation from society bringis out the worst in people. The official short synopsis tells us that the marriage has reached the breaking point but doesn’t detail the key story element: the death of a child.

or, Gay Zombies with Eating Disorders.

Since unleashing his outrageous debut No Skin Off My Ass in ‘91 and with successive art-porn assaults such as Hustler White and The Raspberry Reich in his filmography, Bruce LaBruce has gained international notoriety as the enfant terrible of Canadian gay cinema -- a reputation that now encompasses horror, with his latest:

The initial glimpse of upcoming gothic lolita vampire anime Dance in the Vampire Bund has finally been revealed, with Media Factory releasing a promotional teaser of the upcoming anime. The supernatural thriller is an adaptation of the loli vampire manga by Nozomu Tamaki; the anime version will be by Shaft, with direction by eccentric director Akiyuki Shinbo.

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Yes, the blood is real and yes, the model  was 18 when these photos were taken.

Gilles de Rais is a fascinating historical figure. He is described as proud, rich, handsome, devoutly Christian, brave, skillful in battle, patron of the arts, and having a fine ear for music. As the Marshal of France, he was the celebrated wartime companion of Joan d’Arc. He was a scholar, soldier, courtier, and fashion plate. He was also accused of being a serial killer. On September 13, 1440, Jean Bishop of Nantes signed a legal citation which brought Gilles de Rais to trial. Baron de Rais was brought up on charges that he had: “killed, strangled and massacred many innocent children in inhuman fashion and committed with them the abominable and execrable sin against nature sodomy in various fashions and unheard of perversities which may not be enlarged upon here by reason of their horror but which will be declared in Latin in an appropriate place and time… He has frequently practiced the horrible evocation of demons  and that he has sacrificed and made offerings to these demons and concluded pacts with them and wickedly perpetrated other crimes and sins.”

Over a ten-year period, with the aid of his servants, de Rais purportedly lured as many as two hundred children to his bedroom which may be more precisely described as a torture chamber. These children ranged between six and eighteen years of age. De Rais was fascinated with the beauty of children and the pain they were capable of experiencing. Although de Rais did not hesitate in making girls his victims, he was partial to boys. If a boy was blessed with an excellent singing voice, he might be lucky enough to escape with his life.

Rather than be put to the Question, de Rais chose to confess everything. Only a full confession would spare him the torture he was so familiar with. His tearful confessions were so repugnant that one of the judges was moved to pull a curtain over a nearby painting of Jesus. In court, de Rais proved his obsession with the serial killing of children by describing their agonies in great detail. "He confessed to having wallowed in the elastic warmth of their intestines. He confessed that he had ripped out their hearts through wounds enlarged and opening like ripe fruit. And with the eyes of a somnambulist he looked down at his fingers and shook them as if blood were dripping from them." It was said that he had once dismembered a pregnant woman to make sport with the foetus.

An extensive article about the life, the crimes and the process of Gilles de Rais can be found here.