Nazi monster Adolf Hitler butchered millions in World War II.
By C. Michael Forsyth
A Minneapolis couple is appealing a judge’s decision that bars them from naming their newborn baby Adolf Hitler.
Judge Anthony J. Karwaski imposed the injunction on October 2, ruling that it would be “cruel and irresponsible” to burden a child with the name of the Nazi madman, because the youngster is likely to be mercilessly teased.
Since the story came to light, the parents have been bombarded with hate mail, branding them as antisemites, Nazi scum and skinheads. But the tot’s father, a tax attorney, insists that the government shouldn’t stick its nose into private family business and that strangers should “mind their own beeswax.”
“This stuff about antisemitism is just plain crazy,” declares Noah Hitler, 38. “We’re Jewish ourselves, for Heaven’s sake. When your last name is Hitler, you’re going to take some ribbing. We figure you might as well go whole hog and be Adolf, so you can at least have some fun with it.
“Sure, we could name our son ‘Felix,’ like my mother-in-law wants us to do. But does anyone really think a kid named Felix Hitler won’t get teased in school?”
Noah’s family hails from the Corinthian province of Austria, where Hitler is a fairly common name. His grandfather Kurt, who barely escaped from Auschwitz with his life, refused to change his last name when he emigrated to America, because they’d been a prominent family in the town for many generations.
“When I got my law degree and was sending out resumes, I thought about changing my name,” admits Noah. “But Grandpa sat me down and said, ‘Hitler is a proud name — no matter how much a certain idiot tried to ruin it.’ ”
The family believes that the teasing risk is being blown out of proportion.
Silent film legend Charlie Chaplin, seen here in “The Great Dictator,” is often confused with Adolf Hitler by high schoolers, educators say.
“Little kids don’t know who Hitler is, and most American teens today don’t either,” points out mom Rachel Hitler, 29, a high-school English teacher.
“I recently showed five of my seniors a picture of Hitler and asked them who it was. One had no idea, three identified him as Charlie Chaplin and another said Buster Keaton!”
A higher court is not expected to rule in the case until June. Until then, the baby is officially listed as Child 268 in documents. The father is confident that in the end, parental rights will trump other concerns and the boy will grow up Adolf Hitler.
“Yeah, he’ll probably get some good-natured kidding from buddies at the workplace. He’ll definitely have to develop a thick skin,” says Noah. “But the name will be a great conversation starter at house parties.
“And I wouldn’t be surprised if it helps him pick up girls when he’s a young man. Imagine introducing yourself to a couple of cuties at a bar. They say, ‘Naw, I don’t believe it.’ You show them your driver’s license and they’re totally blown away and call over all their pretty friends.”
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
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If you only read ONE werewolf novel this month, make it Hour of the Beast by C. Michael Forsyth.
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Amanda Seyfried as Red Riding Hood takes an ill-advised stroll in the woods.
By C. Michael Forsyth
Red Riding Hood is exactly what it should be: a grownup retelling of one of our most memorable fairytales, with a horror spin. It has interpersonal conflict, a complex storyline, romance — but it also stays true to the elements that made the tale so compelling to us as children. There is the underlying theme of sexual awakening, the symbolism of the red cape, the opposition of good and evil. Even the talking wolf, the walk through the woods to grandmother’s house and the line, “What big eyes you have,” are worked in.
The high production values — sumptuous period costumes and sets — completely immerse us in a medieval world, and yet the swooping, swerving camera lends the film modern-day immediacy — as well as a perpetual feeling of unease.
In its creation of an olden-days town surrounded by menace, the atmospheric film is reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village.” But here, the story is NOT torpedoed by awful plot turns.
Red Riding Hood is Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), a pretty young woman in love with a poor woodcutter. Her parents disapprove of him and the lovebirds are about to run off together when the body of her sister is discovered, killed by a werewolf. The village men vow to track down the beast and they quickly do — they think.
Then arrives Reverend Solomon, a werewolf-hunter extraordinaire who is a mixture of Cotton Mather and Robert E. Howard’s witch-hunting Puritan man of action, Solomon Kane. Rev. Solomon (Gary Oldman) warns the townsfolk that the creature they’ve just killed is an ordinary wolf, and that the real werewolf does not dwell in a mountain cave, as they believe — but is instead one of them. A paranoiac “Who Goes There?” type nightmare ensues, as Valerie struggles to figure out which of those around her is the murderous monster — while avoiding a horrible fate as its prime target.
Is the Big Bad Wolf her dark, brooding, black-clad boyfriend? The strangely feral village idiot? The handsome young blacksmith who seems so gentle and fearful? Or even her own extremely creepy grandmother (played with magnificently, and gleefully, by Julie Christie)?
To make matters worse, the town’s “savior” Rev. Solomon emerges as an Ahab-like lunatic who doesn’t care who he has to imprison, torture, put to the sword or use as human bait to take down the lycanthrope.
The mystery angle in this kind of story is always hard to pull off. After all, the screenwriter has to come up with a solution today’s savvy movie audience wouldn’t easily guess and yet at the same time, makes perfect sense. The very satisfying ending of this film fulfills both goals.
I appreciate the filmmaker’s choice to eschew blood and guts for genuine suspense and chills. I’m not one of those horror geeks who gets off on seeing people’s bodies being destroyed in steadily more sickening and bloody ways. (Apologies if that’s you — don’t mean to alienate half my readers.) However, I think director Catherine Hardwicke went a bit too far in keeping gore out of the picture. When the first couple of corpses are discovered, they are so bloodless and undamaged that it looks like footage from a dress rehearsal. I mean, they’re supposed to have been killed by a wolf — pardon me, a giant, rampaging werewolf — and it was hard to believe they were even in a bar fight!
My other minor quibble is that the villagers initially ignore Rev. Solomon’s warning that the werewolf is one of them — and instead hold a big victory party celebrating the slaying of the wolf . This provides the movie-makers with a great opportunity to show a chaotic and unnerving medieval festival, complete with weird masks and Bacchanalian dancing. But come on. First of all, shouldn’t it be OBVIOUS that the human who turns into a wolf lives in the isolated village? And don’t these ignorant peasants respect the opinion of this famed champion werewolf-hunter? In most period movies — and, I believe, actual history too — medieval folk have a low threshold for turning on their neighbors and accusing them of supernatural evil.
After writing this review, I checked Rotten Tomatoes and I was surprised that critics gave it a ranking of only 11 percent. Well, I’m sticking to my guns. You’ll have fun watching this movie, as did most audience members, who gave it a ranking six times higher.
Curiously enough, a few hours after I saw “Red Riding Hood,” I watched on DVD “The Brothers Grimm,” which also incorporateselements of fairytales. Not as effective a film, with its anything-can-happen approach to the supernatural. But it certainly made for an interesting double bill. Kind of like last weekend when I saw “Con Air” and “The Expendables” back to back — and my testosterone level shot through the roof!
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
"Who, me a wolf?" In classic fairytale, Little Red Riding Hood is a bit slow to realize her "grandmother" is not what she seems.
Like to be scared? Read C. Michael Forsyth's Hour of the Beast.
By C. Michael Forsyth
To hear Chapter One of the acclaimed Hour of the Beast FREE click HERE.
"Hey, what are you kids doing out here in the woods?" is a question best not asked of these undead urchins.
By C. Michael Forsyth
“Wicked Little Things,” now out on DVD, is a scary movie with a wickedly clever premise.
In 1913, the heartless owner of the Carlton Mine in Addytown, Pa. uses poor children for exploration, until the exploited kids are buried alive in an explosion. Now, nearly a century later, the restless undead tykes roam the woods, taking their bloody vengeance upon the living.
The main character is recently widowed Karen Tunny (Lori Heuring), who moves with her daughters Sarah and Emma into her late husband’s boyhood home near the mine. It isn’t long before 16-year-old Sarah (Scout Taylor-Compton) returns home with tales of pick axe-wielding zombie children who kill anyone foolish enough to venture into the woods at night. And 9-year-old Emma begins to hang out with a mysterious “imaginary friend” who just wants to play.
The movie has enough thrills to justify a respectable three pick axes up rating. In one highly memorable sequence, in which little Emma is led by children’s laughter to the mouth of the abandoned mine, the suspense is almost unbearable.
Excellent performances. Chloe Moretz, who more recently dazzled us as a vampire nymphet in “Let Me in,” is compelling as sweet, angelic Emma. A pleasant surprise is the great English actor Ben Cross of “Chariots of Fire” fame as creepy neighbor Aaron Hanks — the most convincing portrayal of a hillbilly by a British Islander since Liam Neeson’s impressive turn as Patrick Swayze’s shotgun-toting cousin in “Next of Kin” (1989).
The movie has two big problems, however, and they’re related. Horror films work best when the filmmakers create characters we care about and then put them in jeopardy.
We care about innocent, vulnerable Emma, which is why the scene mentioned above works so well. However, it soon turns out that both Hanks and the Tunny family are relatives of the zombie children, who recognize the blood of their kin and leave them unharmed. The zombie kids really DO just want to play with Emma and she’s actually off screen for the most critical scenes of the movie!
It is also revealed that the curse will be lifted when the ghostly children kill the last remaining descendent of the mine owner. That happens to be William Carlton (Martin McDowell), an arrogant, greedy, ruthless tycoon who is kicking people off their land to build a ski resort near the mine. The trouble is that you WANT this selfish, cowardly weasel to be killed. If he were sympathetic, the film’s climax — with the pick axe pixies closing in on him, Hanks and the Tunnys — would be truly terrifying.
Check out a movie with this cursed-bloodline theme that worked really well: “The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake.” In that 1959 oldie-but-goodie, the hero’s ancestor led a massacre of South American villagers. Vengeful supernatural headhunters have claimed the noggins of the male heirs in each generation ever since. And our hero is next in line for the head-shrinking treatment!
My other beef with the film is that the undead tots don’t only kill people, they eat them! Given their origins, one would expect these revenants to be more of the wraith-like variety, rather than flesh and blood monsters that require sustenance. (Especially since, presumably, the youngsters’ physical bodies were trapped under tons of rock.)
Just because they’re zombies do they HAVE to eat human flesh? Someday, I’d like a filmmaker to REALLY reinvent the zombie genre. (Sorry, “28 Days Later” fans, but making ’em run fast instead of shuffle isn’t reinventing). I mean create a new mythology, the way George Romero did with “Night of the Living Dead” in 1968.
Hey, if no one else steps up to the plate, I might just have to do it myself, by jiminy, as my old Weekly World News colleague Ed Anger would say.
GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN! Rev. Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) tries to expell a demon from Nell (Ashley Bell) in "The Last Exorcism."
By C. Michael Forsyth
I was gearing up to see the recent DVD release “The Last Exorcism” when “The Rite” arrived in theaters. So I decided to review them together. But I had never seen the “Exorcist,” I’m embarassed to admit, having been too young when the R-rated film debuted in 1973. Obviously one couldn’t adequately judge the two newer movies without comparing them to the granddaddy of demon-busting flicks. So I ended up seeing THREE exorcism movies back-to-back in a week. It was enough to, well, make your head spin.
“The Last Exorcism” is one of the best horror movies I’ve seen in months. It borrows from “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity” the conceit that the nightmarish events of the film are accidentally caught on camera, in this case, the camera of a pair of documentary filmmakers. The device explains away corner-cutting tactics such as shaky hand-held camera movements, minimal coverage and an absence of recognizable actors. (The movie was made for $1.8 million, a paltry sum by Hollywood standards). This “found footage” sub-genre is certainly at high risk for becoming an annoying cliché, and I doubt filmmakers are going to be able to return to the well many more times. But here the gimmick seems perfectly suited to the subject matter.
The focus of the documentary is Reverend Cotton Marcus, a slick, smooth-talking evangelical preacher who comes from a long line of clergymen — and exorcists. Now convinced that exorcisms are a bunch of hokum, he invites the filmmakers to accompany him on a final exorcism, planning to debunk the practice on camera. When he and the crew reach the remote farm where a distraught man is convinced his teenage daughter Nell is possessed, they get far more than they bargained for.
The documentary style works especially well in establishing Cotton’s character without the typical Hollywood exposition. The first 10 minutes of the film, in which the Baton Rouge preacher’s home life, philosophy and ministry are explored, could easily be mistaken for a real documentary. Traditional elements of priest and hero stories — the loss of belief, even the “one last mission” theme — are slipped in smoothly without us even noticing. An interesting choice of the screenwriter was to make Cotton a protestant, rather than the familiar Catholic priest. Evangelicals have indeed jumped on the exorcism bandwagon in recent years, so this adds an element of realism.
The naturalism helps to root the story and the characters firmly in the real world, before the supernatural element is introduced — something I always like in horror flicks. The naturalistic style also distinguishes the movie from “The Exorcist” and other predecessors, lending it a surprisingly fresh feel.
Key to the film’s success is Patrick Fabian’s performance as Cotton. His believability is what makes the film believable. And the believability is what makes it horrifying. I like that Cotton is portrayed as a brave, decent and intelligent man. It’s rare that an evangelical preacher is depicted as anything but a bigoted, hypocritical buffoon. Frankly, I appreciate it anytime a minister gets to be the hero. My own father was an Episcopal priest (the ones who can marry) and one of my happiest movie memories was when he took me to see the “Poseidon Adventure,” starring Gene Hackman as a virile, two-fisted preacher.
My only minor beef: the producer/soundwoman and cameraman are off screen for most of the movie, so that when they become endangered, we’re not invested enough to worry about their fates. The movie’s ending is far more satisfying than either “Blair Witch Project” or “Paranormal Events,” which were both rather anticlimactic.
Don't worry, Father Lecter is here to protect you.
“The Rite” is a very different movie, a big-budget star vehicle shot on location in Rome. It’s about a young Catholic seminarian who is sent to Vatican City to learn the ancient rite of exorcism at a special new Papal academy. Initially skeptical, he’s soon singing a different tune when he assists veteran exorcist Father Lucas, played by Anthony Hopkins, in a knock-down, drag-out battle with a demon who’s possessed a pregnant teen. The events are “inspired by a true story,” which is a Hollywood producer’s way of saying “total bullshit.”
MAJOR SPOILER ALERT, MAJOR SPOILER ALERT, MAJOR SPOILER ALERT
The big twist here is that Anthony Hopkins’ character himself becomes possessed, and the young priest-in-training then must battle an implacable demonic foe to save his mentor’s soul. The movie would be more interesting if we didn’t know this turn of events was coming. But the plot twist has been revealed in many reviews and news articles, so the cat is kind of out of the bag.
In an interview, Hopkins described this as his greatest movie role and I can see why. Imagine the acting challenge: He has to be first good, then the embodiment of evil, then evil with the good part of him trying to get out. Knowing Hopkins’ work, this performance would either be Oscar-worthy or an embarrassing slab of hammy overacting. As it turns out, Hopkins knocks it out of the ball park. In a sense, this is a role he was born to play. Some reviewers have charged him with chewing the scenery, but they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s just an easy thing to say, I suppose. Yes, at points he’s rather animated but the guy is POSSESSED for Pete’s sake! More often, his performance is eerily understated. I’d just about lost faith in Hopkins, after his phoned-in performance in “The Wolfman.” Now he’s back in fine form.
The weak link of the film is the young seminarian Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue). Hollywood formula demands that our hero be as poorly armed as possible when facing the enemy. So, it’s not surprising that, as with Father Karras in “The Exorcist,” the priest-in-training is experiencing a crisis of faith. To have an exorcist movie where the hero priest has the full power of God on his side would be like equipping Bruce Willis with a nuclear bomb in the next “Die Hard” movie. However, “The Rite” goes way overboard in this department. Not only is Michael not a priest yet (unlike in the “true“ story), he’s a borderline atheist — so much so, it takes a real leap of faith, so to speak, to believe that he went to seminary to begin with.
Yes, the movie’s structure demands that the protagonist be spiritually outgunned when he goes toe-to-toe with the demon — and that he does it alone. But this is engineered in a very clumsy manner. My friend Sean sometimes complains about what he calls the “why don’t theys” in films. You know, like “Why don’t they just go to the police?” This movie is marred by a fairly egregious why don’t they. Michael, who is not even an ordained priest, mind you — goes up against a demon powerful enough to possess the Vatican’s top exorcist alone, because he can’t get in touch with the exorcism school’s main lecturer. He’s not only in Vatican City, but actually at the Vatican’s special exorcism academy! Couldn’t he round up some lesser exorcists or at least priests (hey, even a couple of nuns or altar boys) before confronting Satan?
Well, maybe I’m just being silly. That’s like asking why movie cops never wait for backup before taking on an army of hoodlums.
ASS BACKWARD? I saw two newer possession movies before watching "The Exorcist," made in 1973.
So, seeing the exorcism movies in reverse chronological order, I saved “The Exorcist” for last. There’s not much call for me to “review” this 1973 classic, which garnered 10 Academy Award nominations, and is widely judged one of the scariest movies of all time. And that’s lucky for me, because its impossible for me to fairly evaluate it.
So many of the critical scenes I was already familiar with through pop culture: the spinning head, the projectile vomiting, the horrific makeup. So much of it I’ve already seen imitated or even parodied. (A possessed Laraine Newman leading an aerobics-style “exorcising” class, complete with 180-degree head turns, on Saturday Night Live; the late, great Leslie Nielson trying to save Linda Blair from a second round of demonic invasion as a bumbling exorcist in “Repossessed.”)
I can only imagine how audiences back in the ’70s must have responded when Linda Blair as the possessed girl Regan masturbates with a crucifix until she bleeds, shoves her mother’s face in her bloody crotch, then just seconds later spins her head fully around. Bear in mind, at the time this movie came out, most people (like the mom in the film) had never heard of exorcism; it was the dirty little secret of the Catholic Church.
Of course the pea-soup puke looks a bit silly now. But still very shocking to me today are those streams of vile obscenities, spewing from a 12-year-old girl’s mouth.
Some aspects of the film don’t hold up very well. The pacing seems slow by today’s standards. The special effects, surprisingly, are still quite effective. And what holds up best of all is the acting. The performance by Linda Blair is really quite extraordinary and must have been difficult for such a young person. Jason Miller, making his film debut as the tormented, conflicted Father Karras, was intense and believable. Most impressive of all is Max von Sydow as the elder exorcist Father Merrin. He has such presence that although he is absent until nearly the end of the movie, he instantly takes command of the screen when he appears for the final confrontation. Considering how aged and worn he appears in the film, I was surprised to see him alive and well as a creepy old psychiatrist in last year’s “Shutter Island.” Now he’s 82 but he was only 44 when he starred as the “old” priest in “The Exorcist,” making his performance even more remarkable.
Three exorcism flicks. Each very different, each entertaining in its own right. I must say, however, that as scary as the demon-possessed folks in these movies were, none could hold a candle to my own daughter this afternoon. Just try to take a splinter out of the finger of a thrashing, screaming, panicked 8 year old girl and you’ll see what I mean!
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DULL AS DISHWATER: Reading Twilight Saga is like watching blood dry.
By C. Michael Forsyth
I put off reading the Twilight books for a long time. That “young adult” label wasn’t a big plus for me, sounding just a notch above “tween.” But if I’m going to bill myself as a horror expert, I figured I need to familiarize myself with what’s popular, so I picked up a paperback copy of Twilight: Eclipse.
I wasn’t expecting The Naked and the Dead, but I’m pretty disappointed — and, frankly, bewildered as to why this series is so phenomenally successful. At 629 pages it’s the slowest moving novel I’ve read in any genre, and I’m including Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. My God, reading it is like watching paint dry. At 95 pages in, essentially nothing has happened. At that point, we’re treated to a page-long description of the main character rearranging her refrigerator magnets. A sample:
“The last two magnets — round, black utilitarian pieces that were my favorite because they could hold ten sheets of paper to the fridge without breaking a sweat — did not want to cooperate with my fixation. Their polarities were reversed; every time I tried to line the last one up, the other jumped out of place.
“For some reason — impending mania, perhaps — that really irritated me. Why couldn’t they just play nice? Stupid with stubbornness, I kept shoving them together as if I was expecting them to suddenly give up. I could have flipped one over, but that felt like losing. Finally, exasperated at myself, more than the magnets, I pulled them from the fridge and held them together with two hands. It took a little effort — they were strong enough to put up a fight, but I forced them to coexist side-by-side…”
The magnet dissertation drags on for four more paragraphs. One more word and I would have put a stake in my OWN chest!
What ever happened to young people today having short attention spans? I’m no spring chicken. I don’t want to date myself, but let’s just put it this way: When I was born, “Howdy Doody” was the hottest show on TV, Ike was President, Uncle Sam was hailing a young, charismatic Fidel Castro as the liberator of Cuba, the U.S. was welcoming Alaska as the 48th state, and NASA was introducing Americans to a new type of hero called an “astronaut.”
And this book was too slow for ME!
The heart of the problem could be the protagonist, Bella. She’s one of the dullest literary characters I’ve ever encountered — as colorless a narrator as Sookie Stackhouse of the “True Blood” books is colorful. Since the story is told in first person, we spend the entire book in her head, and it’s like being inside a vacuum. In fact, she’s so vacuous that when she’s faced with the prospect of marrying a vampire and spending the rest of eternity with him, her only concern is that her friends might think she’s marrying too young, in a trailer-trash kind of way.
On top of the elephantine pacing, there’s a lack of drama. Potential conflict is set up, then quickly defused. Bella must choose whether or not to become a vampire herself and sacrifice her humanity — but she has no inner debate whatsoever. Her vampire beau Edward and hunky werewolf Jacob are both in love with her — but she‘s not torn between them. A large band of enemy vampires is mounting a surprise attack on the stronghold of Edward’s coven — but he and his clan learn this way ahead of time, and have a chance not only to plan an ambush, but to hold multiple training sessions before the bad guys arrive!
I suppose Bella’s appeal is intended to lie precisely in the fact that she is an ordinary teen, with whom female high schoolers can identify. But that was done so much more effectively in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” When the Edward and his family learn that the massive vampire army is coming to kill Bella, they swing into action — planning her graduation party. This is not intentionally funny. Contrast that to the wicked irony of “Buffy.” (I’ll never forget a scene in which Buffy’s mentor quizzes her on SAT words as they wait in a cemetery for the undead to rise from their graves.) Hey, the last dance step I mastered was the Lambada, but the Twilight Saga just isn’t hip enough for me.
Even stiff, priggish Edward is surprisingly lackluster as bloodsuckers go. If you interviewed this vampire, you’d probably fall asleep halfway through! I guess that the idea of a having a vampire boyfriend must sound oh-so-romantic to some inexperienced young women. But it’s not exactly a fresh concept — again, Buffy got there first (way back in 1997). And unlike Bella and Edward, she and Angel actually have sex.
Yeah, yeah, we preach to teenage girls today that “abstinence is sexy” (and I sure plan to tell my two daughters that) but let’s be real. It’s kind of boring.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate the book; there are some good parts. I actually found the writer’s setting of the werewolf origin mythology within the context of Native American culture quite creative and believable. It’s just that reading it was rather frustrating — as if somewhere in this lumbering 629 page book there was a really great 325 page book trying to get out.
Obviously, author Stephanie Meyer has legions of fans, so she must be doing something right. I invite any of them out there to tell me what’s so special about these books.
Copyright, C. Michael Forsyth
Howdy Doody entertained millions during the Golden Age of TV
Now HERE's a hip horror book! Set on a college campus, C. Michael Forsyth's novel is scary as hell!
Is God, depicted here by Michelangelo Bunarroti, no different from Allah?
By C. Michael Forsyth
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A centuries-old controversy has finally been settled. Contrary to what your preacher may have told you, God and Allah are one and the same, according to a top FBI expert who has confirmed that they share the same fingerprints!
“We examined a fingerprint found in the ruins of the King Belshazzar’s palace, where the Bible tells us God’s hand wrote on the wall,” explained Roger Temworthy, who analyzed more than 40,000 sets of fingerprints as a consultant to the FBI over his 30-year career.
“We compared that to a latent print recovered from the famous Black Stone of Mecca, which, according to Islam, Allah placed in the Garden of Eden at the time of Adam.
“The fingerprints match precisely — every loop, whorl and arch is the same. I would put the odds of these prints not belonging to the same individual at approximately one in 75 trillion.”
The question of whether the two deities are the same has been hotly debated by theologians for more than a thousand years. Some Bible experts say it’s “obvious” that they are. Others vehemently insist that they’re not.
“To say that Christians and Muslims worship the same God is beyond naïve — it’s blasphemous,” railed a prominent Texas biblical scholar recently.
So many preachers have argued that case from the pulpit that a recent poll showed 79 percent of evangelical Christians believe that God and Allah are not the same. But the new evidence proves that they’re dead wrong.
“Fingerprints don’t lie,” declared the Reverend Herbert J. Furmane, one of 26 ministers from four denominations who recruited Temworthy for the investigation. “We wanted this question resolved once and for all, and now it has been — beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
Temworthy, who retired six years ago, admits he was a skeptical when the ministers first approached him.
“When they phoned me up and told me what they had in mind, at first I thought it was a prank call,” he recalls. “But after two hours on the phone they had me hooked. I was intrigued by the technical challenges. And as a devout Catholic who hasn’t miss Mass since 1984, I was eager to learn the truth myself.”
The “writing on the wall” Bible story is a familiar one. According to the Book of Daniel, one night the arrogant Babylonian king was holding a drunken feast, using sacred gold and silver vessels looted from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. Much to the revelers’ dismay, a giant hand suddenly materialized and wrote a cryptic message on the wall.
King Belshazzar was so petrified that “his knees knocked together.” (Dan. 5:1-6)
King Belshazzar freaks out when God’s finger writes on his palace wall, in familiar Bible tale.
The prophet Daniel warned King Belshazzar that the words meant that God had judged him and his days as a ruler were numbered. Sure enough, that very night the tyrant was slain.
The discovery of remnants of the wall in what is now Iraq’s Babil Province, made by a team of French archaeologists in 1973, made the fingerprint study possible.
“The key was the final period at the end of the sentence,” revealed Temworthy. “It formed a perfect print of the right index finger. And the fact that it was the size of my head made it very easy to examine.”
The Black Stone, also known as the Kaaba Stone, is housed in the center of the Grand Mosque of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. The shrine is visited by millions of Muslim pilgrims every year, and believers often stop to kiss the mysterious stone, as the Prophet Mohammed is said to have done.
MYSTERIOUS Black Stone, believed to have been placed on Earth by Allah Himself, is housed in sacred shrine in Mecca.
“The Saudis are, understandably, very protective of the stone,” said Temworthy. “But after two years of begging, pleading and writing, we received permission from the Saudi government to take a look at the stone, discreetly.”
Initially, the jet-black stone showed no evidence of bearing any prints. But when the expert applied a chemical similar to ninhydrid to its surface, the relic began to give up its secrets.
“The friction ridge impressions of an index and middle finger slowly began to appear,” recalled Temworthy. “It was like watching a miracle unfold. The prints were remarkably distinct. It was awe-inspiring to think they had been left countless thousands of years ago at the dawn of time.”
Temworthy displayed a slide of the look-alike prints for a side by side comparison.
Each person’s fingerprints are unique, experts say
“On God’s print, to the left, you see a peacock’s eye whorl next to this tented arch — and on Allah’s print to the right you see exactly the same pattern,” explained the expert, whose field is known as dactyloscopy.
For the most part, religious leaders from around the world are greeting the results joyfully.
“This is wondrous news,” declared the Reverend Jonathan Blavelock, an Anglican clergyman in London. “It means that all the conflicts between Christians, Moslems and Jews over the centuries have all been one big misunderstanding.”
A few ministers have refused to embrace the discovery, citing the .0000000000075 percent chance of a false positive.
And one adamantly rejected the possibility that the Supreme Being of the Bible and of the Koran could be identical.
“I don’t care what the facts say,” exclaimed a leading Baptist preacher in Mobile, Alabama. “Faith is stronger than any fact.”
But so far, the vast majority of Christian and Jewish ministers appear to be accepting the truth — and even hardcore Islamo-facist fanatics are keeping an open mind.
An Al Qaeda spokesman said, “If our experts confirm these findings — and I’m not saying they will, mind you — we may have to reconsider this whole Jihad.”
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
If you enjoyed this mind-bending story by C. Michael Forsyth, check out his collection of bizarre news, available on Kindle and in other eBook formats.
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UNRELENTING HORROR: The opening of C. Michael Forsyth’s novel has been called “the scariest 10 pages ever written.” To hear Chapter One FREE click below.
Click HERE to hear Chapter One of the riveting Hour of the Beast.
WE'RE THE GOVERNMENT AND WE'RE HERE TO HELP: Judy (Radha Mitchell) is taken under wing by Uncle Sam
By C. Michael Forsyth
Generally, I’m not enthusiastic about remakes. Unlike many horror and sci-fi fans, I don’t thrill to news that a “re-imagining” is in the works of gems that were perfectly executed the first go-around, like “Nightmare on Elm Street” or “Total Recall.” Self-cannibalization is sickening to behold, so when I observe my own culture indulging in the act, I take a dim view of it. Did we really need “Halloween 2,” the sequel to the remake of a film that inspired nine sequels and spawned 147 knock-offs. (Okay, I confess I made that last number up, but you get the idea.) Did we really need to revisit “Friday the 13th,” a franchise that had already generated TWELVE films? Even that term “franchise,” when applied to an art form, betrays a grotesquely cynical and philistine attitude. But what really gets my goat is that this is an industry which prizes youth — a 40-year-old trying to launch a career as a TV writer is considered over the hill. No, executives are looking for “fresh” talent and ideas. Ha! I read that one of these young lions pitched the fresh idea of “ ‘Die Hard’ in an office building” — being so young and fresh that he’d never seen the original! You just know that somewhere a Hollywood bigwig is asking, “Is it too soon to remake the 1993 ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ movie?”
That having been said, I loved “The Crazies“!
There are cases where there has been an amazing leap forward in technology (as with “King Kong“) or where the original was deeply flawed, or where society has changed so much that a remake can be justified. “The Crazies,” a remake of George Romero’s low-budget, Nixon-versus-hippie-era picture of 1973, falls into the last two categories. That little-known film featured stilted dialogue, poor pacing, and was made at a time when the thought that the federal government might not always be a force for good was a relatively new and alarming idea.
The updated “Crazies,” now on DVD, is a scary, crisply directed, action-packed thriller, that — divorced from the now-antiquated political discussion — consistently delivers the goods.
The plot in a nutshell: A military plane carrying a genetically engineered virus crashes in a swamp near a small Iowa town. Designed to throw enemy cities into chaos, the “Trixie virus” slowly drives the townsfolk mad, transforming them one by one into crazed killing machines. To contain the epidemic, the government cordons off the town and sends in droves of gas-masked storm troopers to round up both the sick and uninfected citizens, whisking them away to an unknown fate. The intrepid Sheriff David Dutten (ably played by Timothy Olyphant) leads a small band of survivors, including his pregnant wife Judy, as they try against all odds to escape the town without falling victim to the zombie-like plague victims or the marauding army goons.
Director Breck Eisner creates a creepy atmosphere, starting with an early scene in which the town drunk interrupts a friendly community baseball game by marching onto the field toting a rifle. The film boasts some thrilling set-pieces, such as the Sheriff’s encounter with a runaway bone-cutting saw. In one of most nail-biting scenes in my recent memory, a character lies helpless, strapped to a gurney, while a madman lurches toward her, plunging a pitchfork into the chest of one fellow patient after another.
I like that, unlike many such flicks where the law enforcement officials are fatally slow on the uptake, the Sheriff quickly figures out what’s up. He makes all the right moves, beginning with shutting off the water that’s the source of the contamination (to no avail, needless to say).
I’ve always favored horror films that feature multiple menaces, as is the case here. The heroes must contend with not only the crazies and the trigger-happy soldiers, but also the threat from within. They must constantly ask whether their fellow survivors are becoming unglued due to the extreme situation — or because the disease has made its way into their brains. In some instances, all three threats are operating simultaneously, most memorably when a car wash is transformed into a hellhole of panic and mayhem.
Some will argue that “28 Days Later” trod the same ground, because those monsters, too, were not technically zombies but victims of a “rage virus.” But, apart from their accelerated speed, they behaved exactly like the shambling revenants of “Night of the Living Dead.” Here, interestingly, the infected talk and retain a good deal of their personalities, albeit dangerously altered — such as a trio of good ol’ boy hunters who take to hunting humans with guns after they lose their minds. The director’s choice in opting for makeup inspired by real diseases like rabies as opposed to the traditional rotting-corpse look also sets “The Crazies” apart from an ordinary zombie movie and lends the film realism.
Sure, we’ve been down this road before. So often, indeed, that it’s now a given that in the event of a plague, the government will round people up and put them in concentration camps. (Hey, some in the Sarah Palin crowd think Uncle Sam won’t even wait for a plague!) The 2008 movie “Quarantine,” in which the quasi-zombie outbreak takes place in an tenement, amped up the terror-level by introducing a more claustrophobic setting.
But “The Crazies” is a genuinely frightening, well-made movie any horror fan would be out of their mind to miss.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth. All rights reserved
GROOVY, MAN: Original 1973 version of "The Crazies" might really have been in need of an update.
George Romero would definitely approve of C. Michael Forsyth's novel.
FREEZE, BLOODSUCKER! Freedom fighter Elvis (Willem Dafoe) gets the drop on vampire scientist Edward (Ethan Hawke).
By C. Michael Forsyth
The strangest nightmare I ever had was an astonishingly vivid dream at age 13 in which vampires were taking over my native Manhattan. I woke up screaming and returned to sleep with difficulty. But here’s the weird part: when I awoke again, I was in the New Jersey woods and a trio of strangers were hovering over me. When I asked who they were, they reminded me that they were with “the Resistance.” In short order, we were heading across the George Washington Bridge, armed with crossbows, on a “reconnaissance mission” into New York. After some misadventures, I woke again in my bed, to the pleasing face of my mother (without fangs).
Since that time, I’ve always awakened in the non-vampire reality, knock wood. But I was intrigued by the notion of writing a novel in which vampires had taken over the world. I was a bit disappointed to soon learn that I’d been beaten to the punch by the original “Last Man on Earth.” Yet I remain fascinated by the idea.
“Daybreakers,” now on DVD, adopts that very premise. Set in the year 2019, it depicts a future in which vampires have finally achieved world domination. The bad news, for them, is they’ve succeeded only too well – there are almost no humans left to prey upon and the blood supply is rapidly running out. The movie has only a few scary moments. Most memorably, the vampire protagonist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) and his brother are set upon by one of the “subsiders,” C.H.U.D.-like wretches that have transformed into bat-winged, pointy-eared monstrosities as a result of blood-starvation.
But the film works best as social satire, presenting a cleverly thought-out dystopia, a kind of 1984 or Brave New World with vampires. Everything follows logically from the idea that our society is the essentially the same, but populated by vampires. There are nifty inventions such as shuttered, high-tech cars that employ cameras and computer technology to allow vamps to drive in daylight. A bloodsucking pharmaceutical giant is now literally a bloodsucking pharmaceutical giant, warehousing unconscious humans in vast bays, hooked up to tubes that drain their blood for sale.
The reliable Sam Neill, a terrific movie hero in “Jurassic Park,” is equally effective as the loathsome head honcho of the pharmaceutical company. Former child actor Hawke, who seems gaunter and more intense with every role, is compelling as a reluctant vampire who pines for his lost humanity. A drug-company hematologist, he is racing to develop synthetic blood before the entire population is converted to subsiders, then wiped out by famine.
Yes, there is a Resistance. And yes, as with just about every such saga from “Red Dawn” to “V,” there’s an element of World-War II nostalgia to it. But there’s a twist. It turns out that one of the leaders, played by William Dafoe, has a remarkable trait that may offer a solution to the vampire dilemma before society collapses.
WATCH the trailer for the terrifying novel Hour of the Beast by clicking on the link below
"DON'T HURT ME" Osama Bin Laden has lost his nerve, a Pakistani reporter claims.
Once dreaded as the two-fisted titan of terror, Osama Bin Laden has reportedly turned into a whimpering coward who’s literally afraid of his own shadow!
“All these years on the run, hunted in every corner of the world, have taken their toll. Osama has become a nervous wreck,” confirms respected Pakistani journalist Ahshan Dareshuk, who was granted a rare interview with Al Qaeda’s head honcho.
“Just as I was sitting down with him, there came a loud bang and Osama dove for cover behind the skirts of an old woman who was serving us hummus.
“He crouched there trembling like a leaf until someone came in and told him it was just a car backfiring.
“Later, when Osama was giving me a tour of his new cave complex, he saw something slinking along the wall. He started pointing frantically at it, hopping up and down and shrieking like a little girl with spiders in her hair.
“I told him it was just his shadow. He swore it was a cat. Either way, It’s evidence that Osama Bin Laden has lost his famous nerves of steel.”
Dareshuk conducted the eye-opening interview in late November and his article ran in the December 15 edition of the Islamabad Journal-Courier.
“I don’t agree with Osama’s politics, but it was a sad spectacle,” says the journalist. “Here was this 6-foot-5 giant of a man who once faced down Russian tanks with an AK-47, laughed in the face of danger and even thumbed his nose at the United States – the most powerful military force the world has ever known — taunting ‘Come and get me.’
“Now he’s in such constant terror, his hand trembles when he tries to pour a cup of tea.”
An Al Qaeda spokesman angrily denounced the use of the word “coward” to describe their leader, revealing that Bin Laden was recently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“To call someone who has become a little jittery due to PTSD cowardly is an insult to all the brave fighting men and women on both sides of the war on terror who’ve been afflicted by this disabling condition,” declared the spokesman.
But retired Marine Colonel Larry “Bull” Garworth, who spent five years tracking the elusive Al Qaeda bigwig, insists the coward label fits Osama to a T.
“Bullies and tyrants come off as tough guys, but sooner or later they show their true colors – and that color is always yellow,” he said.
“Think of Adolf Hitler, hiding out in his bunker as the Allies closed in and then taking the chicken’s way out.
“I bet Osama’s going to go out the same way – on his knees, crying and begging for his life before some gutsy American G.I. pumps six bullets into his chest.”
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth. All rights reserved.
Th-th-th that’s all, folks? Brooks (Tina Huang) faces the business end of a tusk in this oddly familiar scene.
By C. Michael Forsyth
“Jaws” with a giant pig might not sound like a promising premise for a horror movie. Yes, I know that wild boars can be highly dangerous, but I’ve just never found pigs scary. Sooey me.
Indeed, when I heard about the cult horror flick “Pig Hunt” (2008), I thought that it had a lot of “Night of the Lepus” potential. (That’s the ’70s bomb about giant rabbits, for you young’uns).
But “Pig Hunt” turns out to be so much more than a mere Man versus Nature movie. It’s “Jaws” meets “Deliverance” meets “Road Warrior” meets “Helter Skelter.”
The fun begins when ex-soldier John Hickman (Travis Aaron Wade), his three buddies and his girlfriend embark on a pig-hunting trip on John’s uncle’s property in the remote Northern California woods. They are not dissuaded by rumors of a rampaging 3,000-plus pound boar dubbed The Ripper – and even their discovery of a pair of human hands in the belly of one of its PIGLETS is not enough to send them packing.
It’s not long before things go awry and the party must battle John’s creepy cousins, an army of crazed hillbillies from Hell and a band of Manson Family-like hippies…all BEFORE they face the man-eating Ripper.
Sure, there are elements of this picture we’ve seen before. Even “Aliens” is sampled, when John’s girlfriend Brooks is face to face with the monster. But what I love about this movie – and why I give it a four oink rating – is that it combines the elements of the flicks it rips off in an engaging way. And most of the borrowings have the feel of loving tributes by filmmakers that really know their horror movies.
Even minor characters are given personality. When the vengeful rednecks come after our heroes they transform into a “Road Warrior” type armada. Each of the unnamed backwoods bad boys sports a unique look, including one I’ll call The Preacher, who wears a collar and spouts prayers before offing his enemies.
The dialogue is crisp and sometimes hilarious. When one of the hillbillies does battle with a black hippie sporting a huge gurkha knife, he taunts him, “Come on, O.J.”
You could quibble about Wade’s performance as our hero. Yeah, he’s supposed to be the strong, silent type, but he shows absolutely no emotion throughout the film until he finally goes toe to toe with the Ripper.
And there are a few stereotypes. It’s not really a spoiler to tell you that one member of the hunting party – weak, panicky, flabby, over-citified Quincy – isn’t on hand when the closing credits roll. The only question is whether he’ll receive the full “Deliverance” treatment before he bites the dust.
But most of the characters are well drawn. One treat is that Asian-American Brooks (Tina Huang), who initially comes off as the annoying Yoko Ono of the band, emerges as a spunky, resourceful heroine.
All in all, “Pig Hunt” is an entertaining, testosterone-fueled rollercoaster ride. It offers yet another reason not to ever set foot in the woods. On the other hand, we should bear in mind that white water canoeing actually became MORE popular after “Deliverance” came out. Maybe “Pig Hunt” will do the same thing for the fine art of boar hunting.
If you enjoyed this review by C. Michael Forsyth, check out his new graphic novel Night Cage,in which vampires take over a women’s prison. Think ‘Salem’s Lot meets Orange is the New Black.
CLICK HERE, then pick VIDEO to see the HOUR OF THE BEAST book trailer.
C. Michael Forsyth is the author of "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Harry Houdini in The Adventure of the Spook House,""The Blood of Titans," "Hour of the Beast" and "The Identity Thief." He is a Yale graduate and former senior writer for The Weekly World News
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