If you're creepy and you know it, clap your hands!
It's A Small, Scary World After All
Nearly every country in the world puts out scary stories, whether it's an author who specializes in creepy tales or a spectacular director creating a catalog of scary movies. Let's take a terrifying trip around the world and see if we all come back.
South Korea- It's easy to find great Korean horror as the genre, in both books and movies, has exploded in the last two decades. As far as movies go, 2016'sTrain to Busan was the one to kick open the doors to international audiences, making it the highest grossing Korean horror movie ever. As good as it is though, Netflix's Squid Game series from 2021 had 142 million viewers in just its first month.
The streaming service has been teasing the upcoming second season.
Norway-Another Netflix series, Bloodride, is an anthology of horror stories that take place in a writing class, an upscale dinner party, or an elementary school. Like a story that twists and becomes dark, dark, dark? Check it out.
Japan- Ring by Koji Suzuki is the basis of both the Japanese and American horror movies. The book is twenty years old now but still delivers the scares. If you've read it, try another classic, Battle Royale by Koushun Takami, or 2014's The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco, a ghost story that's been described as “Stephen King-esque”.
Thailand- School Tales: The Series is a Netflix original that focuses on all the horrible things that can happen in a school building. There's the stuff you'd expect, like bullying, popularity contests, failing a test, but with School Tales it's almost a guarantee that some poor kid is going to die in each episode. This school is dangerous.
Sweden- The Swedes are truly adept at seeing the dark side of life, and their entries in gritty and violent crime novels is so vast that it's known as “Scandinavian Noir”, but they also have some great horror movies. If you haven't seen Let the Right One In, the original Swedish child vampire movie, this is a big one of the genre. Then follow the dark, snowy atmosphere of that one to the lush and sunny Midsommer, which contains a very different sort of horror.
Nigeria- My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite has been the runaway international hit in Nigerian literature, though Braithwaite lives in the U.K. now. Read this story for the chills, (the title tells you what to expect), but also to experience the more formal style of language.
France- Have you read The Phantom of the Opera? The book, written by Gaston Leroux and published in 1909, may be thought of as old-fashioned to an audience that has heard the title for over 100 years, but the story of a guy bent on revenge and creeping around a theater attacking people is still quite tense.
If you want a modern French entry, try Marianne, an eight episode Netflix series about a woman who has become wildly successful by writing a series of horror books featuring the evil entity from her childhood nightmares called Marianne.
Italy- Dario Argento is the big name in Italian horror movies and while he's made lots of them, going back decades, his reputation with international audiences still hinges on 1977's Suspiria. It's the story of an American who arrives at a famous dance school and quickly finds herself weirded out and growing more frightened by the day. The movie builds and builds to a bizarre ending. As strange as the story is, the cinematography by Luciano Tovoli is remarkable. This is a richly colored film, the rooms lit like glowing gems, making it the only beautiful horror movie I can think of.
Mexico- I've mention The Similars before and I'm going to suggest it to you again. Black and white, with the characters huddled in a bus station during a rain storm, it begins like a noir and becomes surreal and freaky.
For a great read, go with Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. The story is set in the 1950's, with a young woman being sent far into rural Mexico to check on the health of her newly married cousin, who has been sending the family strange letters.
Canada- Assuming that you've read or watched Station Eleven, which is scary in a “the pandemic will kill us all” way, now try The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht, about a city along a polluted sea, already on its knees from a past plague. What little remains includes bars and coffee shops, the last member of a local aristocracy, and Johann, who is happy to think of himself as a monster. And he is.
Have an international horror you'd recommend?
SPOOKY BOOKY
Perfection by Walter Satterthwait
Thomas Dunne Books, 2006
A Florida island has a new killer, one who targets heavy-set women, kills them and slices the flesh from the bones. Detectives Fallon and Tregaskis are in pursuit of a murderer who fastidiously cleans up after himself, even vacuuming, while staging scenes for the police.
The reader knows who the killer is, a snotty gourmand who shops for his victims, yet, dammit, he's entertaining.
Scare Scale: 2. The murder scenes are graphic.
Meet “Bricktop” Jackson. Nice Knowing You.
New Orleans has always had the reputation for having more than its share of rough locals, people drawn to hard drinking and a partying lifestyle. When you think of historical New Orleans killers, it's usually a male that comes to mind, someone like The Axeman. Scary, for sure. But I would direct your attention to this woman for both murder and the slap-on-the-wrist punishments she received.
There are no photos of Bricktop, so let's just say this creepy red-head is somewhat accurate. She's showing where she stabbed the man.
Born in New Orleans in 1836, Mary Jane Jackson's early life is a mystery, but we can surmise that she didn't come from money or what would be called a “good” family, especially as she was working as a prostitute by age fourteen. From a young age her fiery temper and thick head of bright red hair brought the nickname “Bricktop”, and by the time she was twenty years old she had grown to what was described as a “husky, full-bodied strumpet” by a local newspaper. That's something to keep in mind as you read on, that Bricktop was a large, young and angry woman, because between 1856-1861, she killed four men and injured countless others as she worked the French Quarter.
The first, a nameless man, came across Bricktop in 1856, and we have to assume they had words that escalated because the man called Bricktop a “whore”. She was a working prostitute, but his slur still made her angry enough that she beat him to death. She doesn't seem to have been punished, but she's the source of this murder admission.
Her next victim was a fellow bar patron called “Long” Charley who stood nearly seven feet tall. Again, we have to assume there had been some conversation beforehand that had Bricktop fuming, because witnesses said that at one point she leaned towards Charley and said, “I bet you would fall over if I stabbed you.” Charley laughed at this, and Bricktop stabbed him to death. She served an insignificant prison term for this murder, not more than a few months, and went right back to the French Quarter upon release.
Bricktop's knife was infamous by now. She didn't need to maneuver her hand to stab as it had a grip in the middle with a blade coming out of both ends. Bricktop claimed it was German and that she had designed it herself.
By 1857, Bricktop had been barred from working all the dance halls and brothels in the French Quarter, even Archy Murphy's, and he was considered one of the most violent brothel owners himself. Bricktop was called “too rough” with the patrons, which could mean anything from soliciting too aggressively to assaulting the customers. She went into business with three other women she knew, including fellow murderer Bridget Fury, purchasing a Dauphine Street brothel. At the same time, Bricktop was in a three year relationship with a local saloon owner who made a very bad decision when he ended their friendship and told her to leave his saloon. In a foul-mouthed fury, she ripped his ear off. Actually, he made two bad decisions, starting with being in a relationship with Bricktop in the first place.
On November 7th, 1859, Bricktop and two of her friends were enjoying themselves in a beer garden, drinking and being loud and crude. A man at a nearby table, Laurent Fleury, didn't like their conversation and told them to stop. The women carried on and Fleury told them to shut up. Bricktop gave him her attention now, telling him to mind his own business or she'd cut his heart out. Fleury got up, went to Bricktop and slapped her face. All three women leapt up, pulled knives and pounced. Fleury was stabbed to death and his trouser pocket cut out in the robbery of the corpse. An onlooker who tried to intervene was sliced badly and the bar employee who shot at the women was pelted with bricks. Bricktop was arrested and found to have Fleury's pocket hidden in her skirt.
She stood trial for the murder, and while in custody she met John Miller, a temporary guard and full-time criminal who had lost an arm in a bar fight some time before. He substituted it with a prosthetic mace, an iron ball on a chain. Bricktop and Miller fell in love.
Proving just how lucky one horrible person could be, Bricktop had an amazing lawyer whose argument that Fleury might have died from a heart attack instead of the multiple knife wounds actually worked. She was free.
Now she and Miller were a couple, living together and making money by one of the oldest tricks in the prostitute's arsenal: Bricktop would lure a man out of a bar and into an alley, presumably for sex, but Miller would be waiting there to beat and rob the customer.
Their romance didn't last long. In 1861, Miller came home and began beating Bricktop with a cow whip. Miller had spent some time as a boxer, and the choice of an iron mace prosthetic proved him to be a man always ready for violence, but he underestimated his sweetheart. When he was whipping her Bricktop was able to get the whip from Miller and beat him with it. He then attempted to swing his mace at her, but Bricktop was so strong that she caught the iron ball in mid-swing and dragged Miller around the room by it. When he pulled a knife, she bit his hand until he released it, then stabbed him to death with it.
This was the fourth man she had killed and her third murder trial. It had some local attention, with The Times-Picayune writing of Miller and Bricktop, “Both were degraded beings, regular penitentiary birds, habitual drunkards, and unworthy of any further notice from honest people.”
Bricktop was found guilty of murdering Miller and sentenced to 10 years, however, after just nine months in prison, her incredible luck returned. The Governor issued blanket pardons to masses of incarcerated felons, releasing them immediately, and Bricktop was one of them. She was freed in 1862 and disappeared, likely changing her name and finally leaving the city where she'd be recognized.
Dance like nobody's watching!
Next week: warm weather calls for hot horror, and I've got it. We'll also learn how to make a cool maple latte icebox cake, and visit the Villisca Axe Murder House. Looks like Summer vacation is starting early!