James Combs, “Nice Dream If You Can Get It” (Disingenuous Records, 2004)

Chances are you’ve never heard of James Combs, but you have heard his music. His tracks have appeared in TV shows such as “Six Feet Under,” “ Entourage,” “Dexter,” “Gossip Girls,” and “True Blood,” as well as the documentary "American Teen.” Combs has a solid reputation among fellow musicians and in the industry because of his diverse appeal. Fans of The New Pornographers will discover, in Combs, a hidden gem in the folk-pop arena. Likewise, devotees of 4AD artists like Lush and Throwing Muses will find themselves musically satiated. His 2004 release, “Nice Dream If You Can Get It” is the perfect example of what Combs does best.

The opening track, “Okay, It’s Sunday,” begins with a riff that is highly suggestive of Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” and, indeed, Combs’ characters bear an equally strong resemblance to the Velvet’s broken Bohemians. Despite the train-wreck “Sex, drugs and rock-and-roll” lifestyle, or even because of it, these characters possess a shambling, haggard beauty that Combs clearly has a soft spot for. There is a gentle lassitude in these musical portraits of lost souls. “Low Go Getter” paints this picture even more clearly, a psychedelia-dusted song about two people so entrenched in just being cool, that all they can do is look at the stars.

Combs turns his laser-like powers of observation on himself in “Lazy Son.” A repetitive, needling guitar sounds like a nagging voice of self-deprecation, while the refrain “I still love you now” provides the counter-point in a battle for self-acceptance. Combs’ facility for taking the ugly or awkward and wrapping it in beauty is preternatural. With lyrics such as “ She’s got you on the chair/And her hair falls around your legs/She’s got you on the chair/What a shy, shy boy you make,” “Soft As Vapor” would seem to be the most ethereal song about fellatio ever written.

While the themes in “Nice Dreams” are dark and adult, the lush arrangements create an arresting dissonance. Combs takes a variety of musical approaches in his depiction of the quest for the hipster impossible dream. There are ebullient cabaret-like dance numbers, acoustic folk numbers, as well as psychedelic-synth melodies. Combs rough falsetto, which has earned him numerous comparisons to Elliott Smith, gives even the most caustic story a dreamy quality. His voice is like a raw nerve wrapped in angora. Combs is also very adept at choosing collaborators, like Bryony Atkinson of Merrick, who complement his distinctive vocals flawlessly.

In addition to his solo work Combs has three side projects, including the Honneycombs with his sister April Combs Mann. The Honneycombs music recently appeared on an episode of the TV show “Men of a Certain Age.” James Combs is possibly the hardest working, most successful rocker you’ve never heard of. If you like to be in on the best kept secrets, check him out..

Spider Baby (Directed by Jack Hill, 1964, released 1968)

“Spider Baby” is difficult to classify. You really have to see to believe it. It is a lovable horror film. It is a horrifying comedy. It is macabre and grotesque, but in a way that gives you the warm fuzzies.

This 1964 B-movie, written and directed by Jack Hill (Foxy Brown, The Switchblade Sisters) tells the story of the Merrye family who suffer from a genetic disorder called “Merrye’s Syndrome”, as it only afflicts members of their family. This disorder causes its victims to regress mentally, beginning at the age of ten, to a pre-human cannibalistic state. In other words, they become monsters.

As the film opens there are only three surviving members of the clan, the teenage children of Titus Merrye: Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn) who wears little-girl party dresses and hates everything, Virginia (Jill Banner) who likes to play “Spider” and eats insects, and Ralph (Sid Haig) who is the oldest and most regressed - a 6-foot, thumb sucking toddler. They are savage innocents who murder and play jump rope with equal enthusiasm. These three are cared for by Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.), the family chauffer, who tries to keep both the “children” and the neighbors safe from harm.

Virginia plays “Spider” with the mailman, wrapping him in her “web” and stinging him with her “stingers”, two butcher knives, while Bruno is away. The letter the “juicy bug” carried brings dire news. Enter the outside world in the form of two distant cousins, Peter (Quinn Redeker) and Emily Carol Ohmart) Howe. They arrive at the Merrye mansion with their lawyer and his secretary, intending to claim the Merrye fortune, including the mansion, for themselves. Inevitably, carnage and wackiness ensues. The interlopers are no match for the madmen.

The violence in “Spider Baby” is always off-screen. The film relies on the weird characters and their bizarre behaviors to hold the viewer’s attention. It succeeds wonderfully. It is shot in black and white, giving it the look of film noir, with deep shadows and melodramatic lighting. The mansion itself is a testament to insanity. It looks abandoned and dusty. Cobwebs hang from the furniture and the curtains hang in tatters. Dolls are impaled on the walls and in one room a bloody handprint can be glimpsed on the wall.

The acting is surprisingly good for a B-movie. Chaney gives one of the finest performances of his career. He is completely sincere in his portrayal of Bruno, a man who is compassionate of the plight of his wards, and desperate to keep them from becoming laboratory freaks. Jill Banner as the “Spider Baby” is a perfect blend of naiveté, seduction, and menace. Veteran B-movie actor Sid Haig utters not one word of dialogue, but communicates volumes with a combination of grunts and over-sized facial expressions. He is a cuddly pinhead, reminiscent of Tod Browning’s “Freaks.”

It is clear from the beginning that things will not end well for our monster children; monsters must always die in the end. But death, when it comes, has no sting. The children meet it with innocent anticipation, a new game to play, and Bruno has only a shrug for the life he is sacrificing to keep the family together.

The logic of this film belongs wholly to itself. With such catchphrases as, “Ralph is allowed to eat anything he catches,” although the family is vegetarian, the audience knows that anything goes in the Merrye world. Chaney sings the title song, which is an oddball spoken-word ditty that warns, "Frankenstein, Dracula, and even the Mummy are sure to wind up in somebody's tummy." It’s a ghoulish, good time.

Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindquist (St Martins Griffin, 2008)

John Lindquist’s Let The Right One In is a breath of fresh vampire air in an oversaturated mythos. Set in a Swedish suburb in 1982, Blackeberg is “not a place that developed organically…everything was carefully planned from the outset.” Peopled with alcoholics, absentee parents, and schoolyard bullies, Blackeberg is a town where hope goes to die. The relentless cold grayness of winter in Sweden heightens the isolation of the characters. These are Thoreau’s people, living lives of quiet desperation. Let The Right One In rises above the horror genre in its sympathetic, yet unflinching, exploration of victimization in all its aspects.

Twelve year-old Oskar is a victim. School is a daily gauntlet Oskar runs to avoid Jonny, the bully who calls him “Piggy” and forces him to squeal and grunt before shoving his head in the toilet. At home, Oskar enjoys a vivid and violent fantasy life, stabbing trees that stand in for his schoolyard torturers. In the middle of the night, a girl and her guardian move into Oskar’s building. Twelve year-old Eli doesn’t go to school. In fact, she only comes out of her apartment at night. She smells like death, and she is completely unaffected by the winter cold. The two outsiders begin a friendship that turns into a love story.

Lindquist’s vampire is a far cry from Murnau’s repugnant Nosferatu, or the brooding beauties of the Twilight series. Twelve year-old Eli is not a blasphemy like Nosferatu, crosses and holy water do not burn her. She is a victim who survives. Her humanity is stolen in rituals that are only revealed in fragments of dream. Like the town of Blackeberg, she did not develop organically. She has been taken out of the natural order, recreated as a predator of those who were her own kind. But unlike most modern vampire tales, Lindquist does not force his creation, or his readers, to suffer through page after page of self-loathing. Eli is simply what she was made to be. Eli’s guardian, Hakan, is a pedophile who murders for Eli in the hopes that Eli will return his love. But Hakan also uses his position as procurer as a weapon, sometimes starving Eli to force her into physical acts of the love she denies him.

In the end, Hakan’s devotion to Eli prompts him to disfigure himself, when a murder goes wrong, so that the police are not led to Eli’s door. Lindquist does not take the easy way out in his portrait of Hakan. He is not a one-dimensional monster. He is a man filled with self-loathing, both for his role as murderer and as pedophile. He grieves for his life before Eli. Lindquist’s sympathetic handling of even this vilest of human monsters characterizes what takes this book out of genre and places it squarely in the category of damn good fiction.

Human monsters abound in Blackeberg. Hakan, Jonny the bully, and Tommy the fence are just some of the worst. The aimless alcoholics who hang out at a local Chinese restaurant, the teachers who offer Oskar no respite from his tormenters, and his alcoholic and helpless father make it easy to see why Oskar and Eli turn to each other for comfort. They have no one else. Their love brings them a certain dark salvation and freedom from isolation and victimization. The ending is as happy as vengeance and vampires can make it.