HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Here’s one final treat to finish off the 2016 season.
THE GALLOWS MAN – This is another neglected American horror legend which has been presented in many different versions over the years. Ralph Sutherland was born in 1702 in either New York City or a town near the Catskills, depending on the version.
Sutherland was born into the New York gentry but in his adult years his drinking and gambling eventually embarrassed the family enough that they stopped associating with him. After boozing, whoring and gambling away a large part of his money Ralph was left with just one reasonably-sized home surrounded by a stone wall. He had enough funds left to maintain that house and took in an indentured servant – a beautiful teen girl from Scotland.
Sutherland’s foul and obnoxious nature soon led the girl to flee. In a rage Ralph mounted a horse and tracked her down before she got far. The black-hearted man tied the terrified girl to his horse and rode back to his home, but was either so furious or so drunk that he inadvertently dragged the poor female to her death. Continue reading
Halloween Month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog! Marvel Comics’ Doctor Strange movie is coming out soon. 
Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween continues … 
THE SPECTRE LEAGUERS – In 1792 the Gloucester Leaguers returned from the dead to plague Massachusetts 100 years after their horrors had first been unleashed.
Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween continues with this look at some of the films from one of the most envelope-pushing horror directors of all time: Germany’s “auteur of the transgressive,” Jorg Buttgereit. 
A THOUSAND DEATHS (1899) – This story was the first published work by Jack London and it definitely shows, but it still has certain merits. The protagonist – who is never named – is the scion of a wealthy British family. Feeling stifled by his rigid upbringing he ran off in his teens to roam the world. He’s fallen into various shady professions over the years and now at age 30 he’s begun having regrets. 
He seems to feel himself going under but then wakes up after an indeterminate time on board a luxurious yacht. The man has various tubes and wires connected to his body and soon learns that he has been saved from drowning by the crew of … his estranged father. That father (who also goes unnamed – it’s early Jack London all right) fails to recognize his son because of the changes the younger man’s rough life has inflicted on him. 
He tries to liven up his boring gig on local radio by suggesting some unorthodox public behavior to his listeners and is as surprised as his female producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) when people around the area begin taking him up on the suggestion. As reports continue to come into the tiny radio station it soon becomes apparent that the population isn’t just extremely receptive to suggestion, many of them have become living zombies with a desire to kill anyone not similarly stricken. 
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