REVOLUTIONARY GHOSTS…The Headless Horseman rides again!
In the Bicentennial summer of 1976, the Headless Horseman returns from history (and the grave!) to terrorize modern-day America. Can one Ohio teenager stop the carnage?
Author: Edward Trimnell
Halloween half-price sale! ‘The Rockland Horror: Books 1 through 5: the complete historical arc’
- Get the Kindle boxset for half-price, now through the morning of October 31st!
- Horror in the American heartland!
- Here’s an excerpt from Book 2 (Chapter 1)
August 1882
Ellen Briggs, née Ellen Sanders, was in her own house, and she was absolutely terrified.
Of course, this was not really her house, was it? It was her marital residence, where she now effectively lived in a state of captivity.
Not to mention…absolute terror.
She had married Theodore Briggs—railroad tycoon, necromancer, and murderer—only a few months ago.
In the early days of the marriage, Briggs had warned her: Stay out of unfamiliar rooms. Although the house was not old, it was home to many old secrets, Briggs had explained.
But she had forgotten his warning, in light of all that had happened since then…
Today Ellen had been wandering through the first floor of the massive house. Since her escape attempt earlier in the summer, Briggs seldom allowed her leave. But she could not sit still within these walls. If she remained in one place, she would go completely mad.
So today she had gone wandering, even though she had known better.
That was how she came across the undead child…
The door to the room containing the undead child was located adjacent to the first-floor ballroom. Ellen had opened the door, not realizing that the room connected to the basement via one of the home’s labyrinthine internal tunnels.
She reckoned that only later—after it was too late.
It was in the basement that her husband kept his worst secrets. Bodies were buried in the basement—and they didn’t always stay buried. Sometimes, they found their way to other parts of the house…
Nevertheless, this miscellaneous room had seemed harmless enough when she had first entered it. Heavy draperies were drawn on both of the room’s high windows, but some late afternoon sunlight filtered through.
The room seemed made for casual exploration. Various works of art had been stored within it. Paintings bound in frames, but not yet hung, stood stacked against all four walls.
Throughout the floor, in a random arrangement, were various statues: of nymphs, cherubs, and Greek deities. There was one life-size replica of the Venus de Milo. There were waist-high vases, and teak dividers carved in what looked like Turkish patterns.
The fortunes of Ellen’s husband were vast. He had no doubt purchased most of these items in bulk from a broker, with the intention of placing them around the house at a later date.
That work might have been left to Juba, the maidservant whom her husband had ordered killed, for her part in Ellen’s escape attempt. That same escape attempt had also resulted in her husband murdering Wilbur Craine, her former beau and would-be rescuer.
As she made her way through the cluttered room, Ellen endeavored to push those thoughts from her mind. She couldn’t think about Juba now. And certainly not about Wilbur.
She was kneeling down on the hardwood floor, admiring one of the paintings leant against the wall, when she heard something shift from a corner of the room.
Ellen immediately looked away from the landscape painting, toward the movement. She stood up. Something had stirred behind the teak screen in the room’s far corner, near one of the windows.
The teak screen was suspended above the floor on a set of wooden legs. In the gap between the screen and the floor, Ellen could see two small feet, clad in simple leather shoes. The shoes were caked with dried mud.
The feet moved toward the edge of the screen, but not in proper steps. One foot dragged behind the other.
A small figure stepped out from behind the screen. It was short, between four and five feet tall. The very sight of it was absolutely terrifying.
***End of excerpt****
**View the complete boxset on Amazon***
1980s tech was expensive, and it didn’t do much
I vaguely remember the TRS-80 Pocket Computer. Introduced in 1980, this little device was manufactured and marketed by the Tandy Corporation/Radio Shack. (Every shopping mall in the 1980s had a Radio Shack.) Science fiction author Isaac Asimov appeared in a series of marketing spots for the gadget.
I didn’t own a TRS-80 Pocket Computer, however. The MSRP was $169.95. In present-day money, that’s about $670—the cost of a base-model iPhone.
And of course, the TRS-80 Pocket Computer had a minimal functionality when compared to an iPhone. It couldn’t make phone calls, play music, or take photos. It couldn’t surf the Internet—which didn’t yet exist, anyway.
The TRS-80 Pocket Computer was programmable in BASIC (which couldn’t do much for the average consumer). Other than that, it was basically a glorified pocket calculator.
Herein lies an important realization about 1980s tech: it was very expensive, and it didn’t do much. Even if you could afford it, you usually concluded that you could do without it.
-ET
The Headless Horseman returns
How I wrote a horror novel called Revolutionary Ghosts
Or…
Can an ordinary teenager defeat the Headless Horseman, and a host of other vengeful spirits from America’s revolutionary past?
The big idea
I love history, and I love supernatural horror tales. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was therefore always one of my favorite short stories. This classic tale by Washington Irving describes how a Hessian artillery officer terrorized the young American republic several decades after his death.
The Hessian was decapitated by a Continental Army cannonball at the Battle of White Plains, New York, on October 28, 1776. According to some historical accounts, a Hessian artillery officer really did meet such an end at the Battle of White Plains. I’ve read several books about warfare in the 1700s and through the Age of Napoleon. Armies in those days obviously did not have access to machine guns, flamethrowers, and the like. But those 18th-century cannons could inflict some horrific forms of death, decapitation among them.
I was first exposed to the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” via the 1949 Disney film of the same name. The Disney adaptation was already close to 30 years old, but still popular, when I saw it as a kid sometime during the 1970s.
Headless Horsemen from around the world
While doing a bit of research for Revolutionary Ghosts, I discovered that the Headless Horseman is a folklore motif that reappears in various cultures throughout the world.
In Irish folklore, the dullahan or dulachán (“dark man”) is a headless, demonic fairy that rides a horse through the countryside at night. The dullahan carries his head under his arm. When the dullahan stops riding, someone dies.
Scottish folklore includes a tale about a headless horseman named Ewen. Ewen was beheaded when he lost a clan battle at Glen Cainnir on the Isle of Mull. His death prevented him from becoming a chieftain. He roams the hills at night, seeking to reclaim his right to rule.
Finally, in English folklore, there is the 14th century epic poem, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. After Gawain kills the green knight in living form (by beheading him) the knight lifts his head, rides off, and challenges Gawain to a rematch the following year.
But Revolutionary Ghosts is focused on the Headless Horseman of American lore: the headless horseman who chased Ichabod Crane through the New York countryside in the mid-1790s.
The Headless Horseman isn’t the only historical spirit to stir up trouble in the novel. John André, the executed British spy, makes an appearance, too. (John André was a real historical figure.)
I also created the character of Marie Trumbull, a Loyalist whom the Continental Army sentenced to death for betraying her country’s secrets to the British. But Marie managed to slit her own throat while still in her cell, thereby cheating the hangman. Marie Trumbull was a dark-haired beauty in life. In death, she appears as a desiccated, reanimated corpse. She carries the blade that she used to take her own life, all those years ago.
Oh, and Revolutionary Ghosts also has an army of spectral Hessian soldiers. I had a lot of fun with them!
The Spirit of ’76
Most of the novel is set in the summer of 1976. An Ohio teenager, Steve Wagner, begins to sense that something strange is going on near his home. There are slime-covered hoofprints in the grass. There are unusual sounds on the road at night. People are disappearing.
Steve gradually comes to an awareness of what is going on….But can he convince anyone else, and stop the Headless Horseman, before it’s too late?
I decided to set the novel in 1976 for a number of reasons. First of all, this was the year of the American Bicentennial. The “Spirit of ’76 was everywhere in 1976. That created an obvious tie-in with the American Revolution.
Nineteen seventy-six was also a year in which Vietnam, Watergate, and the turmoil of the 1960s were all recent memories. The mid-1970s were a time of national anxiety and pessimism (kind of like now). The economy was not good. This was the era of energy crises and stagflation.
Reading the reader reviews of Revolutionary Ghosts, I am flattered to get appreciative remarks from people who were themselves about the same age as the main character in 1976:
“…I am 62 years old now and 1976 being the year I graduated high school, I remember it pretty well. Everything the main character mentions (except the ghostly stuff), I lived through and remember. So that was an added bonus for me.”
“I’m 2 years younger than the main character so I could really relate to almost every thing about him.”
I’m actually a bit younger than the main character. In 1976 I was eight years old. But as regular readers of this blog will know, I’m nostalgic by nature. I haven’t forgotten the 1970s or the 1980s, because I still spend a lot of time in those decades.
If you like the 1970s, you’ll find plenty of nostalgic nuggets in Revolutionary Ghosts, like Bicentennial Quarters, and the McDonald’s Arctic Orange Shakes of 1976.
***
Also, there’s something spooky about the past, just because it is the past. As L.P. Hartley said, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
For me, 1976 is a year I can clearly remember. And yet—it is shrouded in a certain haziness. There wasn’t nearly as much technology. Many aspects of daily life were more “primitive” then.
It isn’t at all difficult to believe that during that long-ago summer, the Headless Horseman might have come back from the dead to terrorize the American heartland…
View REVOLUTIONARY GHOSTS on Amazon
Horror from the 1980s
Or…why I chose to set 12 Hours of Halloween in the year 1980.
A reader recently asked me via email why I chose to set 12 Hours of Halloween, my coming-of-age horror novel about three friends who battle supernatural forces on Halloween Night, in 1980 instead of the present day.
Good question.
There are two reasons behind this choice.
First of all: there’s the generational factor.
What I mean by this is: I know my limits.
Although 12 Hours of Halloween is a supernatural tale, it is also a coming-of-age story. This means that it involves getting into the “head space” of the story’s adolescent protagonists.
Some aspects of adolescence are universal. But others are heavily dependent on changing generational factors.
I’m a member of Generation X (born in 1968). This generation reached the early teen years of adolescence around 1980—the year in which 12 Hours of Halloween is set.
I figured that I could depict the adolescent experience in 1980 most accurately, because I actually lived it. (I turned 12 in 1980.) I’ve written before about the perils of middle-age adults writing about the present-day teen experience: During the 1980s, most of the teen films were written by Baby Boomers; and certain aspects of these movies seemed anachronistic, because the scriptwriters were actually writing about the teen experience of the 1950s and 1960s—even though they thought they were writing about the 1980s.
Another reason I chose to set 12 Hours of Halloween in 1980 is: The past is haunted.
The year 1980 is now 45 years in the past. (1980 was 35 years in the past when I published 12 Hours of Halloween in 2015.)
That is recent enough to be accessible to most readers, but distant enough to be surrounded by a certain haziness.
That year is not quite like our own. After all, in 1980, there was no Internet, and no cell phones. We had television, but cable TV was still a “new” thing.
It isn’t difficult to believe that in 1980, wayward spirits and vengeful supernatural creatures walked the earth in one Ohio suburb—just like in the book.
***
Want to read 12 Hours of Halloween? You can preview the book here on this site, or get it on Amazon (available in multiple formats.)
On my Japanese TBR list
Whenever I go to Japan, a book haul is always near the top of my to-do list. Japanese-language books are not impossible to acquire in the United States; but it’s seldom as convenient as placing an order on Amazon.
This title would loosely translate as History of the Showa Era that Citizens Don’t Know.
As the cover image suggests, there are numerous chapters about the Japanese Imperial Navy and World War II.
One of the many rewards of learning a foreign language well is that your potential reading list will be vastly expanded. Some of my favorite books are Japanese-language titles.
-ET
Why I love Halloween
It’s that season of the year again!
Last night I went out for a walk in my neighborhood around 7 pm. (We’ve had an unseasonably warm spell here in the Cincinnati area.) I didn’t take into account how quickly the dusk settles in this late in the year. I was only halfway out when it suddenly became very…well, dark.
I therefore walked back to my house in the dark. The houses around me were festooned with various Halloween decorations: skulls, black cats, and even some cool Halloween projector lights.
I love Halloween. For me, Halloween is the time when we mortals come to terms with two constants of human existence: a.) the unknown, and b.) the inevitability of death.
The celebration of Halloween is an act of acceptance. Our lives will always contain tragedy, dissatisfactions, and uncertainty. But we cannot allow ourselves to paralyzed by fear…or by sadness.
Halloween is a time when we laugh at death, and embrace our mortality.
A few years ago, I wrote a Halloween novel called 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN. This nostalgic, coming-of-age horror tale is set on Halloween night, 1980. Check it out here.
My last Halloween (the true story)
How egg-throwing teenage boys ruined my last trick-or-treat
My novel 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN is a supernatural coming-of-age tale about three young friends who endure the trials of a 12-hour curse on Halloween night, 1980. To survive the night, they must battle vampires, animated trees, and the horrific creature known as the “head collector”.
12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN is one of the most autobiographical novels I’ve ever written. Like the characters in the novel, I was 12 years old in October 1980. The suburban Cincinnati, Ohio setting is very similar to the one in which I spent my formative years.
That said, the main character of the story, Jeff Schaeffer, doesn’t have much in common with me, or with the boy I was more than 40 years ago. And while I had a group of friends, neither Leah nor Bobby is an exact representation of anyone I knew back then.
Oh, and I never did battle with any of the supernatural creatures that appear in the book.
Here is another point of fabrication: I went on my last trick-or-treat in 1979, not in 1980.
I set 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN in 1980 because some of the themes I wanted to explore required an adolescent perspective; and I was twelve in 1980, not in 1979.
But like the characters in the novel, I was somewhat torn (as were the adults around me) about the appropriate age for giving up the trick-or-treat ritual.
In the culture of those times, you were generally okay for trick-or-treating up to age ten or eleven. But once you reached junior high, well, people would give you funny looks if you showed up at their door on October 31st, asking for candy. And once you reached high school, you were definitely too old.
***
In 1979, therefore, my friend Ken and I decided to go out for “one last Halloween”, kind of like the characters in the novel. (Ken, being a year older than me, actually did turn twelve that year.)
I wore a prefabbed costume from Kmart. I don’t even remember what it was. (I seem to recall a green skeleton, but I can’t be sure.) Ken, however, had one of the coolest Halloween costumes I’ve ever seen—before or since.
This was the early Star Wars era, and every kid was a fan. Ken was no exception. His mother made for him a very elaborate imperial stormtrooper costume. This was not something store-bought. She made the whole thing from scratch. It was amazing.
Halloween 1979 in the Cincinnati area provided a clear, pleasantly cool autumn night. We set out a little after 6 p.m., and everything went fine…at first. Then we crossed paths with a group of teenage boys, a hot rod, and some eggs.
***
One thing I’ve noticed about the 21st-century: suburban teenagers are less mischievous than they used to be.
This could be because of helicopter parenting. How much trouble can you get into when your parents are tracking your movements on a smart phone app? Kids today are also very absorbed in virtual worlds of different kinds.
In the late 1970s, however, adolescent entertainment consisted of whatever was on network television (cable TV didn’t become common until about 1982), books, and other young people.
And since there were no parental tracking apps, your parents typically had only a vague sense of your whereabouts at any given moment.
In this atmosphere of fewer ready-made distractions and much less supervision, there were more motives and opportunities for getting into trouble. And plenty of teenage boys jumped at the chance.
***
This particular group of teenage boys, riding around on Halloween night 1979, had decided that it would be fun to throw eggs at the kids who were still young enough to go trick-or-treating.
They were obviously selecting their victims at random. I will retroactively blame Ken for our being singled out. His solid white stormtrooper outfit really did make him a target.
The car—it must have been a Dodge Charger or a Trans Am—slowed down as it approached. Ken and I had no time to assess the situation, let alone take evasive action. Then someone in the passenger seat threw some white objects at us via their rolled-down window.
The car roared away before we realized what had happened: they had pelted us with eggs.
Ken had been walking closest to the road, and he was a mess. The stormtrooper outfit his mother had so painstakingly crafted was now smeared with dripping yellow egg yolk.
Some of the eggs had splattered on me, too…though not very much.
After that, we decided to call it an early night. Neither one of us wanted to walk around dressed like an omelette.
At least the boys didn’t throw rotten eggs at us, I would think later.
***
My guess is that the egg-throwing foray was a spur-of-the-moment thing for the boys.
Speaking of the teenage boys: I never learned their identities. Whoever they were, though, they would all be pushing sixty in 2021.
***
So that was how my last Halloween went, in 1979 and not in 1980. By Halloween 1980, I decided for myself that I had had enough of Halloween and trick-or-treat. It was time to let that childhood ritual go.
Halloween, nevertheless, retains a strong grip on my imagination. 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN was therefore a very fun book to write as an adult.
***View 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN on Amazon***
‘Red Storm Rising’ by Tom Clancy (reading notes)
Some quick reading notes…
I’ve been reading Tom Clancy’s 1986 novel, Red Storm Rising.
The book posits a war between NATO and the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
Here’s the odd thing:
Clancy decided to more or less ignore nuclear weapons, making this hypothetical war a solely conventional one. Not a very realistic story choice, but Red Storm Rising would have quickly become a post-apocalyptic novel otherwise.
It’s interesting reading, if you like long battle scenes and the other books in Tom Clancy’s oeuvre.
-ET
Pet Sematary in Spanish
If you want to maintain your abilities in a foreign language, you have to use the language regularly. And one of the best ways to practice a foreign language is by reading.
Forget the “apps”—read an old-fashioned book.
(Note: Yes, certain apps can be helpful when you are first learning a language. I’m not anti-app. But once you’re proficient, real-world materials will help you make the most progress. If you’ve been studying a language for years, you should be well beyond the Duolingo stage.)
I first read Pet Sematary—in English—in 1984. Back then, the book was new to all readers, and widely billed as, “the novel that scared Stephen King while he was writing it.”
Like The Dead Zone, which I recently discussed, I remembered the basic plot line and main characters of Pet Sematary. But I have forgotten enough to make the book entertaining the second time around. Also, when I first read this novel, I was a teenager. I’m now in my mid-50s. That makes a big difference.
What about the Spanish?
I sometimes get tongue-tied when chatting in Spanish, but my reading and aural comprehension abilities are quite high. I can read just about any modern text in Spanish, with only an occasional reference to a dictionary.
Lest this strike you as braggadocio, I will also point out that I had my first exposure to Spanish as a high school student more than 40 years ago. I took one year of intermediate Spanish in college. I used Spanish on the job during frequent trips to Mexico in the 1990s and 2000s.
My Spanish is good, by the standard gringo yardstick, and it should be, after all this time. I’m not a language-learning virtuoso, by any means. But I am a dedicated language learner, and one who has been at it for a number of years now.
-ET
P.S.: If you would like to try reading Pet Sematary in Spanish, you can get the book on Amazon. Pet Sematary is also available in English, of course.
October 31, 1980: ’12 Hours of Halloween’
A new piece of artwork for 12 Hours of Halloween. (This was made for the “A + content” section of the Amazon listing, so the book cover is deliberately excluded from the graphic.)
As suggested in the graphic, most of the action in 12 Hours of Halloween takes place on October 31, 1980.
This is a coming-of-age supernatural horror story, about three young friends who endure a 12-hour, supernatural curse on the first Halloween night of the 1980s.
What kind of horror?
I don’t do graphic violence, for the most part. (There is no explicit sex in my books, either.) Think: a spooky version of a Ray Bradbury story, with a few nods to some of the classic horror films from the 1980s.
12 Hours of Halloween is available in Amazon Kindle Unlimited, too.
-ET
A story that scared me in 1977
I can recall the first time that I was actually scared by something that I read.
It was the summer of 1977. Somehow a book of short horror stories had come into my possession: Stories of Ghosts, Witches, and Demons. This slender 80-page volume, edited by Freya Littledale, was published by Scholastic in 1971.
Although I read the book cover-to-cover, I have forgotten all of the stories—except one: an especially creepy tale called, “The Demon of Detroit”.
This is the story of a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Adams, who move into a house in the Motor City. They soon discover that they aren’t alone. Something horrible inhabits their back bedroom.
After a series of disturbing events, the couple decides to move out of the house. The last lines of the story are particularly haunting: They indicate that the Adamses “admit defeat”. Whatever lurks in the back bedroom will now have the rest of the home to itself, too.
The full text of the story (along with a clip of the artwork appearing in the original Scholastic publication) is available online. I do recognize the artwork. I can’t say for certain if the transcription of the 1971 text is one hundred percent faithful. (I was nine years old in 1977, after all.)
“The Demon of Detroit” seems to be based on an urban legend from the 1960s, which has enjoyed a modest contemporary revival. Urban legends, I’ve found, often make good source material for horror films and short stories, because urban legends are instantly relatable and easy to grasp. They aren’t overly complex. That’s important in horror film and fiction.
“The Demon of Detroit” also demonstrates the effectiveness of the short form in horror. This short story is perhaps a thousand words long. Obviously, they won’t all be that short. But as a rule of thumb with horror: the longer the story, the harder it is to maintain the suspension of disbelief. (Notice that Poe, Lovecraft, and even Stephen King are at their best when writing in the short form.)
“The Demon of Detroit” is a story that begins with a subtle atmosphere of darkness, and builds, over about a thousand words, to something truly malevolent.
“The Demon of Detroit” scared the bejesus out of me in 1977. I reread it today (the online version). It still brings a chill to my spine, forty-eight years later.
What kind of horror do I write?
This is a question I received the other day on Twitter. It isn’t a frivolous question, I suppose. About a third of my titles are classified as horror, after all.
Perhaps I should begin by clarifying what kind of horror I don’t write.
I don’t do excessive gore/violence.
I have never been interested in horror fiction that fetishizes violence and cruelty for the mere sake of wallowing in such things. (If that’s your goal, then why not just watch one of those ISIS beheading videos?)
This means that graphic depictions of torture (for example) don’t appear in my books. Cannibalism is pretty much out, too. (Gross.)
I’m old enough to remember the capture of Jeffrey Dahmer in 1991. Suffice it to say that I am not interested in exploring the most extreme possibilities of human depravity in fiction. Again, what’s the point?
Are you into “splatterpunk”? You probably won’t like my books. Do us both a favor, and read something else.
I don’t like horror tales with unlikable characters.
Likewise, I don’t care for horror stories that simply involve horrible things happening to horrible people.
You’ve certainly seen horror movies that involve the following scenario (or something like it): A group of obnoxious, unlikable people enter a house, and they’re killed off one by one.
But the thing is…you don’t care! The protagonists were all awful people, anyway. (Maybe you were even rooting for the monster.)
I don’t do comedy-horror.
Do you like the Zombieland movies? My horror fiction probably isn’t for you.
I love comedy films—Airplane, Blazing Saddles, etc. Cheers from the 1980s can still make me laugh.
But horror is serious business. There can be moments of levity amid the darkness. There are many of these in some of Stephen King’s novels. (Cujo and The Stand stand out in this regard.) But when the monsters come out, it’s all business. Monsters are serious.
***
So what kind of horror do I write, then?
My influences are Stephen King, Peter Straub, and the campfire ghost stories of my youth.
I have always been fascinated by urban legends. I am endlessly interested in the dark house at the end of the lane, the one that all the kids say is haunted.
A good horror story should involve characters that you care about. If you don’t care about the characters, then you won’t care if the monster gets them.
A good horror story should involve redemption. The evil is defeated in the end. Or some crucial lesson is learned. Or the human condition is in some way illuminated.
Redemption is a key element of most of the horror stories that we love best. The salvation of Mina Harker at the end of Dracula. The closing scene of The Stand, in which Frannie Goldsmith and Stu Redman wonder aloud if people ever really learn from their mistakes. The last scene in The Dead Zone, in which the shade of Johnny Smith assures Sarah that nothing is ever really lost, nothing that can’t be found.
Note that redemption doesn’t necessarily mean a happy ending. But there has to have been a point to it all.
***
I like ghosts, monsters, things that go bump in the dark. My sainted grandmother was a direct descendant of immigrants from County Cork, Ireland. And every Irishman (even a diluted, generations-removed Irishman like me) loves a good ghost tale.
Let me give you some examples. Here are a few of my horror novels, to date:
Eleven Miles of Night
A college filmmaker takes a walk down a notoriously haunted road, in order earn a $2,000 fee for documenting the phenomena he sees.
This novel contains ghosts, demonic beings, and a long-dead witch who inhabits a covered bridge. Oh, yeah—and hellhounds!
View Eleven Miles of Night on Amazon
12 Hours of Halloween
On Halloween night, 1980, three adolescent friends go out for “one last Halloween”. But they have been cursed by an entity known as “the ghost boy”. As a result, their familiar neighborhood is transformed into a supernatural landscape filled with vampires, wayward spirits, and trees with minds of their own.
View 12 Hours of Halloween on Amazon.
Revolutionary Ghosts
In the summer of 1976, an Ohio teenager named Steve Wagner discovers that the Headless Horseman has returned to terrorize twentieth-century America. The Horseman has brought other ghosts back with him, including the once beautiful (but now hideous) Marie Trumbull, an executed Loyalist.
View Revolutionary Ghosts on Amazon
I have others; but these are the three you might check out first. They are usually enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, which means you can read them for free if you subscribe to that service.
‘Risky Business’: an entertaining film that would never get made today
I was just turning 15 when Risky Business—the movie that launched Tom Cruise’s acting career—hit the theaters in August 1983. I was too young to get into an R-rated movie without an adult; and this wasn’t a film that either of my parents would have been interested in seeing with me.
I neglected to see Risky Business for more than 40 years, partly because I was put off by the much-played clip of Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear. Call me homophobic if you’d like; but that isn’t the way to get me to see a movie. And there were just so many other movies to see.
I finally got around to watching Risky Business a few days ago. (Better late than never!) The movie was quite well done for a film that was originally conceived as a throwaway flick for Reagan-era young adults. (Moreover, despite the ubiquity of that clip with Tom Cruise in his underwear, that scene is a minuscule portion of the 95-minute movie.) Continue reading “‘Risky Business’: an entertaining film that would never get made today”
The comparative joys of old (1980s) movies
I have been watching some old movies from the 1980s recently. Some have been movies that I saw, but have long since forgotten. Others are iconic films of that era that I never got around to seeing when they were current.
For example, I recently wrote a post about Mystic Pizza (1988). Last night I watched Risky Business (1983). I will have a post about Risky Business soon.
One thing I’ve noticed is that many films created in 1980-something as disposable teen comedies were actually pretty good. In 1985, did anyone imagine that people in 2025 would still be talking about The Breakfast Club? Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) has been recognized by the American Film Institute for its merits.
Another thing I’ve noticed is the diversity in movies from that bygone era. In 1985, an original movie, properly executed, could make a lot of people rich. But the economics of the 21st-century box office encourage conservatism and a tiresome emphasis on franchise films. Continue reading “The comparative joys of old (1980s) movies”