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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.)

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.

View 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN on Amazon

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

‘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.

A scene from Mystic Pizza (1988)

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”

‘Texas’ by James Michener (mini-review)

I have just finished reading Texas (1985) by James Michener.

James Michener (1907-1997) specialized in vast historical novels, usually centered upon the history of a particular place.

For example, Hawaii (1959) covered the history of Hawaii. Alaska (1988) covered the history of our 49th state.

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His books are long and vast in scope. A thousand pages is a typical length. Michener wrote novels that today’s short attention-spanned, Internet-addled American finds daunting. But he was quite popular during his heyday, the 1950s through the 1980s.

Because of the historical scopes involved, Michener’s novels span many generations, with wide casts of characters. His books are less novels, in the conventional sense, than collections of interconnected novellas. If James Michener were alive today, and publishing on Amazon Kindle, he would almost certainly be publishing his long books as series of novellas. But that wasn’t what the brick-and-mortar-centric book retailing industry of the 20th century wanted. And so James Michener’s long tales were delivered as doorstop-sized novels.

Texas follows the usual Michener formula. There are storylines from the Spanish colonial period, the obligatory story about the Alamo (of course), and characters from more recent times.

I have sometimes found James Michener to be a bit too didactic. (In the historical fiction blockbuster space, I much prefer Edward Rutherfurd and John Jakes.) A novel based in historical events is fine; but if I want to read an actual history, I’ll turn to nonfiction. But in Texas, Michener emphasizes story and mostly avoids the dreaded info-dump.

I am not even going to attempt a plot summary of Texas. There is simply too much to describe. Any plot summary I might write would run on for five thousand words, the length of a long essay or a middling short story.

Suffice it to say: Texas contains many plots and characters related to the history of Texas. It’s also a very entertaining book, if you aren’t daunted by the 1096-page length.

-ET

The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners (quick review)

I’ve been reading more short stories of late. I find that I often enjoy them more than novels. A good short story contains no fluff, no filler. Short stories, moreover, are well-suited to this era of cell phones and short attention spans.

Short stories used to be almost as popular as novels, back when Americans read middlebrow, general interest magazines. (F. Scott Fitzgerald earned most of his income from short story sales.)

But that was in the distant past. For as long as anyone can remember, every fiction writer has dreamed of being a bestselling novelist. Publishers have been wary of short fiction collections, unless every story in the collection was authored by Stephen King.

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I recently picked up The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners, edited by Amor Towles and Jenny Minton Quigley. I bought the audiobook edition, so I listened to these stories as I mowed my lawn and did my bench press sets in the gym.

This collection contains a strong mix of stories. This isn’t to say that every story is a gem. As is always the case with multi-author anthologies, the reader’s mileage may vary. There were a few stories in this collection that left me cold. But most of them are good, and a handful of the stories are very good.

My favorites were:

“Hiding Spot” by Caroline Kim

“The Paper Artist” by E. K. Ota

“The Dark” by Jess Walter

Recommended reading…especially if you’ve been waiting for the right time to jump back into short-story reading.

-ET

View on Amazon: The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners

Fast Times at Ridgemont High + 43 years

Fast Times at Ridgemont High, that quintessential teen movie of the first half of the 1980s, hit the theaters 43 years ago today, on August 13, 1982.

On that date I had just turned fourteen. I did not see Fast Times in the cinema. (I could not even drive yet.) I did catch the movie a few months later, on cable. By that time, it had become a must-see movie for anyone among the teenage set.

I liked the movie then, and not just because of the iconic scene in which Phoebe Cates emerges from the pool. Even at that age, I could tell that Fast Times at Ridgemont High was a thoughtful teen movie, as oxymoronic as that sounds.

The movie does contain explicit sex scenes, especially by today’s less tolerant cinematic standards. Fast Times originally received an X rating. The film was reedited to receive an R rating. Primarily because of the sex, all of the “teens” in this film were already adult actors by the time production began. (Jennifer Jason Leigh was almost twenty years old when she portrayed the 15-year-old Stacy Hamilton.)

And yes, that Phoebe Cates pool scene was unnecessary and tawdry, much as it delighted the 14-year-old version of me.

But underneath all the raunch and bawdy comedy, there is a message about hubris-driven teenage risk-taking, and the consequences that result. I would go so far as to call Fast Times at Ridgemont High a teensploitation film with a conservative message.

I watched this movie for a second time a few years ago. I was an adult in my fifties. The 1980s and high school were long behind me.

I thought the movie was even better the second time around.

I’m not the only one who believes that Fast Times at Ridgemont High stands the test of time. In 2005, the National Film Preservation Board recognized the movie as “culturally and historically significant”. This is one time when I agree with the consensus view.

-ET

**View Fast Times at Ridgemont High on Amazon

Southern Ohio’s Dead Man’s Curve

Not far from where I live, there is a stretch of Ohio State Route 125 that has been dubbed Dead Man’s Curve. 

The spot is just a few miles from my house, in fact. I’ve been by there many times.

According to the urban legend, if you drive this section of rural highway a little after 1 a.m., you might see the faceless hitchhiker. From a distance, this male figure may look relatively normal. Once you get close, though, you’ll see that he has no face.

Sometimes the hitchhiker isn’t content to stand there by the side of the road and watch you. There have been reports of the phantom actually attacking cars.

Creepy, right?

Yeah, I think so, too….

Dead Man’s Curve on Ohio State Route 125 has a long and macabre history. Route 125 is the main road that connects the suburbs and small towns east of Cincinnati with the city. But much of the road (including Dead Man’s Curve) was originally part of the Ohio Turnpike, which was built in 1831. (Andrew Jackson was president in 1831, just to put that date in perspective.)

That section of the Ohio Turnpike was the scene of many accidents (some of them fatal), even in the horse-and-buggy days. The downward sloping curve became particularly treacherous when rain turned the road to mud. Horses and carriages would sometimes lose their footing, sending them over the adjacent hillside.

In the twentieth century, the Ohio Turnpike was paved and reconfigured into State Route 125. In 1968 the road was expanded into four lanes. 

As part of the expansion, the spot known as Dead Man’s Curve was leveled and straightened. (As a result, the curve doesn’t look so daunting today…unless you know its history.) This was supposed to be the end of “Dead Man’s Curve”.

But it wasn’t.

In 1969, there was a horrible accident at the spot. The driver of a green Roadrunner—traveling at a speed of 100 mph—slammed into an Impala carrying five teenagers. There was only one survivor of the tragic accident.

Shortly after that, witnesses began to report sightings of the faceless hitchhiker during the wee hours. (The hitchhiker is said to be most active during the twenty-minutes between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m.) There have also been reports of a ghostly green Roadrunner that will chase drivers late at night. 

Oh, and Dead Man’s Curve remains deadly, despite the leveling and straightening done in 1968. In the five decades since the accident involving the Roadrunner and the Impala, around seventy people have been killed there.

Is there any truth to the legend of Dead Man’s Curve?

I can’t say for sure. What I can tell you is that I’ve heard many eyewitness accounts from local residents who claim to have seen the hitchhiker. (Keep in mind, I live very close to Dead Man’s Curve, and it’s a local topic of discussion and speculation.) Almost none of these eyewitnesses have struck me as mentally imbalanced or deceitful.

I know what your last question is going to be: Have I ever driven Dead Man’s Curve between 1:20 and 1:40 a.m. myself?

Uh, no. But perhaps I’ll get around to it someday, and I’ll let you know in a subsequent blog post!

***

Hey!…While you’re here: I wrote a novel about a haunted road in Ohio. It’s called Eleven Miles of Night. You can start reading the book for FREE here on my website, or check out the reviews on Amazon.

You can also start reading my other two novels of the supernatural in Southern Ohio: Revolutionary Ghosts and 12 Hours of Halloween. 

Check out my FREE short stories, too….many of them have macabre elements.

 

‘Commando’: the ultimate 80s action movie?

I’m not sure how 40 years went by without me seeing Commando (1985). But I finally caught it last night with my YouTube Premium subscription.

Commando stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a retired military operative, who is called into action when a group of international bad guys take his daughter hostage.

It’s a very basic plot, with a lot left to assumption, or the viewer’s imagination. This is pure 80s escapism, and the film suffers somewhat from the production values of that era.

On the plus side, there are no boring moments in the 90 minutes that it will take you to watch Commando. The movie is a lot of fun, in the same way that the A-Team and Magnum P.I. were fun in the 1980s.

There is no romantic subplot in Commando. Rae Dawn Chong, however, provides a solid performance as Schwarzenegger’s sidekick (and, at one point in the movie, his pilot). The 12-year-old Alyssa Milano, who was decades away from becoming annoying and political, appears as Schwarzenegger’s daughter.

-ET

**Save on Amazon: Commando (Director’s Cut) DVD

‘Back to the Future’ +40, and why Disney rejected the film

This past week marked the 40-year anniversary of the release of Back to the Future on July 3, 1985.

I saw the movie when it was new. I enjoyed it; but I never thought that this was a film that would be remembered four decades later.

But hey, I was 17 years old in the summer of 1985. What did I know?

1985 theatrical release poster

One of the forgotten facts about the movie is that Disney originally rejected it. The dealbreaker was the subplot in which Marty McFly’s mother becomes infatuated with him during his time in 1955. Disney execs didn’t like the incestuous plot twist.

And it struck me as a little strange at the time. Never mind that this is not the sort of scenario that anyone is likely to encounter in real life.

Whether Disney was right to reject the film or not in the 1980s, herein lies a measure of how much Disney—and the movie business—has changed since then. As we all know, Disney is more than happy to let its freak flag fly nowadays.

-ET

View Back to the Future on Amazon

Should AC/DC retire?

Now let’s turn our attention to something really important: the future of the rock band AC/DC.

I’ve been a fan of AC/DC since the early 1980s, when Back in Black was the latest thing. AC/DC isn’t my favorite band. (That honor goes to Rush.) But AC/DC is definitely among my top ten.

The members of AC/DC, just like the rest of us, are getting older. Angus Young, the group’s iconic guitarist, is now 70. Lead vocalist Brian Johnson is now 77.

I’ve seen several articles in the press of late, claiming that AC/DC has been giving lackluster live shows, and that the band is overdue for retirement.

Perhaps. But I’ve also seen several video clips of recent AC/DC concerts.

No, it isn’t 1981 anymore. (And oh, how I wish that it were, for any number of reasons.) But AC/DC still gives a pretty solid live performance, by my estimation.

-ET

A crime novel that came from a casino visit

One day in the early spring of 2018 I traveled to a rural part of southern Indiana to attend to some family matters. (I live in Ohio, but I’m half Hoosier. My dad grew up in nearby Lawrenceburg.)

I spent most of that day in Switzerland County. You’ve probably never been there. Switzerland County, Indiana looks nothing like Switzerland. In early spring, that part of Indiana, along the Ohio River, can look a little bleak. 

(Portions of the 1988 Molly Ringwald/Andrew McCarthy movie, Fresh Horses, were filmed in Switzerland County. McCarthy said of the area, “There’s the whole starkness up there; it helped the mood of the movie.” )

Southern, rural Indiana is home to several large casinos. I ordinarily have no interest in gambling venues. I ate lunch at the nearby Belterra Casino that day, though, because…there weren’t many other dining options in the vicinity.

My visit to the casino got me thinking: What if a young couple in debt visited the casino in a make-or-break effort to get ahead financially? What if they were lured there by a special offer? $300 worth of ‘free’ gaming chips?

What if their beginner’s foray into gambling went horribly wrong, and they fell further in the hole? Then suppose that a narcotics kingpin offers them an alternative plan…another way to get ahead. 

All they have to do is run an errand for him. What could possibly go wrong?

Get it on Amazon!

That’s the premise behind my 2020 casino novel, Venetian Springs. Set in a fictional version of Belterra Casino, Venetian Springs is a story of two down-on-their-luck high school teachers who succumb to the lure of easy money. They soon discover that easy money doesn’t exist. But this is a lesson that may cost them both their lives.

Watch the Venetian Springs trailer below.

View Venetian Springs on Amazon.

Read the first 8 chapters of Venetian Springs here on Edward Trimnell Books.

Rediscovering F. Scott Fitzgerald

In the fall of 1984, I was a junior in high school. I had a passion for the novels and short stories of Stephen King.

My high school English teacher, not so much. He was a devotee of two twentieth-century writers: Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. So I read a lot of Hemingway and a lot of Fitzgerald that year.

I was 16 years old, and really two young for either writer. Hemingway and Fitzgerald wrote about adult concerns, and concerns of what was already a long-ago, bygone era. As a teenager of the Reagan-era American suburbs, I had little interest in the social conventions of the Jazz Age, or the moody ramblings of World War I veterans.

As an adult, I’ve developed a new appreciation for both writers.

I’ve recently begun digging into The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection. This collection, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, contains all the Fitzgerald short stories I remember as a junior in high school: “Winter Dreams”,  “A Diamond As Big As the Ritz”, “Babylon Revisited,” etc.—as well as many that my high school English teacher never assigned.

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Fitzgerald wrote his short stories long. Not all of them can be read in a single sitting. Many of his short stories resemble compressed novels more than typical short stories, as they deal with events stretching out over many years, even decades.

Fitzgerald’s writing style is accessible to modern readers, but his subject matter is a hundred years removed from our time. It takes some effort to put oneself in the mindset of an adult living in 1925. (I am soon to turn 57 years old, and that is the era of my great-grandparents. The one great-grandparent I knew was born in 1895, one year before Fitzgerald.)

Still, there are some universal themes in Fitzgerald’s fiction. One of my favorite stories is the aforementioned “Winter Dreams”. This is the tale of a man who, between adolescence and early middle age, mistakenly projects all of his ideals onto a woman with whom he has a fleeting romantic relationship.

1922 magazine illustration for “Winter Dreams”

“Winter Dreams” is basically a story about the pedastalization of femininity. The theme is as relevant in 2025 as it was in 1922, when Fitzgerald wrote the story.

(Note: When I first read “Winter Dreams” in 1984, I “got” what Fitzgerald was trying to say. Some years would pass before I learned the real-life lesson.)

You might be hesitant to dive into a book of century-old stories. I would encourage you, though, to give Fitzgerald a try. Many of his tales, like The Great Gatsby and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, have been adapted for film in the modern era.

There is a reason why Fitzgerald endures, when so many other writers have fallen by the wayside. Fitzgerald was a skilled and insightful storyteller.

-ET

April’s woes

This was the scene in my part of the world last night. (The photos below were taken about 5 miles from my house.) Storms moved through the area, with high wind and hail.

My electricity remains on for the time being (fingers crossed). This morning, however, I did drive by a utility pole that had been snapped in half, presumably from last night’s wind. That was less than a mile from my house. Hopefully the electricity stays on.

Never a dull moment in the badlands of Clermont County, Ohio.

-ET

The 1974 Super Outbreak and me

In early April of 1974, I was but a wee lad in kindergarten. My dad worked in sales. My mother and I sometimes accompanied him on business trips.

And so it was that on April 3, 1974, my father, my mother, and I traveled to Louisville, Kentucky—just in time for that city’s historic 1974 F4 tornado, which was part of the equally historic “super outbreak” of that year.

Why was it called a “super outbreak”? Between April 3 and 4, at least 149 tornados were documented across 13 states. Over three hundred people lost their lives. It was a big news story, for anyone alive and sentient then.

My parents and I were staying in a one-story motel not far from the Louisville F4 tornado when it hit. I was not yet six years old, and so I had only the vaguest idea that something bad was happening. But I realized that all was not well.

For one thing, my parents were visibly alarmed. When you’re a young kid and your parents are nervous, that probably means that you should be concerned, too.

I remember the high winds and the freight train sound of the tornado. I did not see the tornado itself, but I certainly saw its aftermath. Louisville looked like a war zone. On our drive home to Cincinnati the next morning, I recall seeing a swing set thrown into the middle of the highway by the tornado. I particularly remember that.

So far as lasting traumas go, there were some minor ones. For a number of months, I had recurring dreams about a giant lifting off the roof of our house. And to this day, I don’t like violent spring and summer storms. I learned at an early age how quickly such storms can turn deadly.

-ET