Stream to Scream: Blood Quantum to Zombie Bake-Off

Zombies keep coming after being knocked down, refusing to truly die, and the same could be said of their popularity. From their early beginnings in George A. Romero and Lucio Fulci movies to their cultural dominance in series like The Walking Dead, they’re still growing strong. One big appeal of this kind of undead is the variety of horror stories they fit into, whether it’s blood-gushing free-for-alls where any and all kind of tools and weapons are used to dispatch them or even quieter affairs where the audience watches characters deal with the fact that the dead no longer stay dead. Good stories are able to straddle this line of gory mayhem and emotional moments. Two such examples are the movie Blood Quantum and Stephen Graham Jones’s zombie grudge match novella Zombie Bake-Off.

Blood Quantum, written and directed by Jeff Barnaby, begins in the Red Crow Indian Reservation at the edge of the world’s end. There are many people living, working, and trying to survive here, including Sheriff Traylor (Michael Greyeyes) as well as his two sons Joseph (Forrest Goodluck) and Lysol (Kiowa Gordon). Then the world is overrun with the living dead, and somehow the people of the reservation are immune. This leads to a flipped script, with everyone else in the world now cast as refugees, breaking down the doors to get into the reservation along with the zombies. Prejudices and resentments soon fester, and everything falls apart. This movie is both gratuitous as well as a social experiment of how a few can ruin it for the many.

Zombie Bake-Off doesn’t have quite the deep social commentary of Blood Quantum, but Jones’s tale of zombies, pro wrestlers, and soccer moms, does show people gathering together for survival. There’s a scheduling mishap at the Coliseum in Lubbock, TX, where soccer moms are showing off their greatest recipes and pro wrestlers like Jersey Devil Jill and Tiny Giant are showing off their penchant for violence, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part is a zombie virus infecting the wrestlers. Then again, there’s also the doors to the coliseum being chained up, and infected wrestlers are stalking the living. There are many examples of violence and mayhem (the grudge match foreshadowed in the book eventually happens) but there are also many instances where the survivors find an inner strength they didn’t know they had. And in both Blood Quantum and Zombie Bake-Off show how good horror is made not through tidal waves of viscera but also quiet moments of pathos.

 

 

Graphic Content: Stray Dogs by Tony Fleecs and Trish Fortner

 Horror is not just a category; it’s also a spectrum, moving from silly to serious, haunting to gritty.

There are so many subgenres in horror that anyone who likes a good scare is sure to find something to like. Horror also isn’t afraid to go beyond its comfort zone to tell a good story, borrowing from different genres to create something both creepy and original. Praise should go to any work that’s brave enough to incorporate Don Bluth-style animation and anthropomorphic animals. This is the formula for the graphic novel Stray Dogs, and somehow it works.

The story is told mainly through the adorable eyes of Sophie, a small dog who is dealing with a lot of new things, a new owner and several other new dogs that she doesn’t recognize. Sophie is also having trouble remembering her past owner, but as the story progresses, she becomes convinced that something terrible has happened to her previous owner, known as “her Lady,” and she is convinced that the man who has taken her into his home has done something to her. All dogs might go to heaven, but Sophie will do whatever it takes to avoid that fate, especially since the man who now has her may have done terrible things.

One of the big appeals of this book is its seemingly incongruous elements that somehow come together. Tony Fleecs’s story, told through the dogs the man has collected, not only generates actual suspense and stakes with the standard he’s-coming-back-early approach, it also takes advantage of a fallacy of dog memory, which is explained in the book’s prologue. Dogs are more focused on the now, meaning that Sophie doesn’t remember her Lady clearly, and even Sophie’s new four-legged roommates tell her to forget about who she was with. The reader will practically beg Sophie to remember even as she and her new friends try to escape. The story is solid, but Trish Forstner’s artwork makes this work stand out, making it look like a Disney film with a villain very much like Hannibal Lecter. Story and art don’t take away from one another; rather, they combine to create a tale tailor-made for fans of adult animation and true crime. I know that I’m a fan of both as well as of odd combinations.

New Arrival: Mestiza Blood by V. Castro

 

V. Castro is quickly becoming a name to watch in horror. Works such as Goddess of Filth and The Queen of the Cicadas have proved that she not only understands horror but also the importance of creating a brand as an author by using her own experiences. She draws upon her own background to create three-dimensional Chicana women who might feel marginalized by society but who also find ways, through supernatural powers or simple determination, to strike back. In her recent short story collection Mestiza Blood, she introduces the reader to several of these women and their own unique struggles.

Like many great collections, Mestiza Blood has a sampling of several of Castro’s stories. Some are dark fantasy with shades of urban folklore like “The Demon in My Eye,” but they also display Castro’s own unique worldview. Her story “Night of the Living Dead Chola” is a take on the zombie trope that shows both heart and darkness. “Street Fighter” starts with a woman who tries to be a good samaritan but ends up offering help to something more inclined to harm. “Mal de Oja” explores the horrors of prejudice and the ability to get revenge through supernatural means. The book also features two longer works, the paranormal romance body horror thriller “Truck Stop” and “The Final Porn Star,” a delightful take on the Final Girl trope that mixes Hispanic folklore with Evil Dead hi-jinks.

Horror fans, and even those who might not necessarily read horror, might recognize names like Stephen King and Joe Lansdale because they have built up a brand by offering up their own unique visions of horror. V. Castro has the ability to become a brand because she offers up spine-tingling stories seen through the lens of what the book’s subtitle directly calls “the Chicana experience.” She is adept at drawing on her own experiences and, through exploring folklore as well as exploring some more contemporary horrors, create something that is not only something that is truly hers, but something that reflects the horrors of women in a world that needs no supernatural entities to be threatening. Indeed, the supernatural here is an equalizer, even a method of getting vengeance. If these women are conspiring with evil supernatural forces, Castro might argue, they might just be choosing the lesser evil.

 

Coming January 25th, 2022