Tom Baker

Joined June 2018

860 stories

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Author of Haunted Indianapolis, Indiana Ghost Folklore, Midwest Maniacs, Midwest UFOs and Beyond, Scary Urban Legends, 50 Famous Fables and Folk Tales, and Notorious Crimes of the Upper Midwest.: http://tombakerbooks.weebly.com

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19 Observations
Since most of my writing focuses on cinema, which is a triviality, although vastly inspiring and engrossing, I thought I might share a few observations, and aphorisms, in the manner of my collections of Nietzsche and Stirner.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in The Swamp
The Caretaker (1963)
I could turn this place into a penthouse. For instance this room. This room could have been the kitchen. Right size, nice window, sun comes in. I'd have I'd have teal-blue, copper and parchment linoleum squares. I'd have those colours re-echoed in the walls. I'd offset the kitchen units with charcoal-grey worktops. Plenty of room for cupboards for the crockery. We'd have a small wall cupboard, a large wall cupboard, a corner wall cupboard with revolving shelves. You shouldn't be short of cupboards. You could put the dining-room across the landing, see? Yes. Venetian blinds on the window, cork floor, cork tiles. You could have an off-white pile linen rug, a table in... in afromosia teak veneer, sideboard with matte black drawers, armchairs in oatmeal tweed, a beech frame settee with a woven sea-grass seat... (sits up) it wouldn't be a flat it'd be a palace. --The Caretaker
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Journal
Naked Like Godiva
Walking through the tall grasses of the old neighborhood as cracked sidewalk chomps below my clod-hopper shoes, dark faces peer out from the thick foliage, watching me warily, eyes turned about white as moons in the slanting sunshine.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Poets
The Murder of Harold Shaw
(Note: The following account was sourced from the excellent, rare book Play the Yellow Tape by Bobbie Lee, self-published in 2007.)
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Criminal
Die, Monster, Die!
Die, Monster, Die! begins, 1965-style, with swirling psychedelic colors with the credits projected over them, and ends with Boris Karloff becoming a weird radioactive fallout boy. In between, Nick Adams arrives from America, and, just as in every other horror story dating back to at least 1897 and Dracula, is warned off of going to "that cursed place" by local villagers who drink imitation German beer out of imitation German beer steins.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Horror
A Bucket of Blood (1959)
One thing about the movie A Bucket of Blood is that there's no blood in it. At least, maybe not more than a trickle. Oh, there's a cat stabbing, a head severing, a strangulation, and some narcotics cop gets killed but I can't remember how, exactly. Anyway, all of these get turned into "statues" or sculptures by Walter Paisley (Dick Miller), a semi-mentally impaired nebbish that must be the OTHER Seymour Krelboin.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Horror
The Wasp Woman (1959)
What does one say about a picture such as The Wasp Woman, which was another in a seemingly endless spate of horror, monster, drive-in monsterpieces by Roger "King of the B Pictures" Corman, who is now an amazing 96? (Hopefully, one says enough to meet the six-hundred-word minimum count.)
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Horror
The Brain That Wouldn't Die!
The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962) is an old mad scientist shlock-fest, but it has enough subtle, subversive subtext (how do you like that for alliteration?) for even the most jaded and cynical bad movie buff to chew on, like a piece of cheap steak from an all-night greasy spoon circa 1964.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Horror
The Evil Dead (1981)
The Evil Dead is a low-budget Sam Raimi film (his first I think) that has become a cult classic due to the excessive bloodletting, mutilation, gore, and other demonic effects, all centered around a "story" of a few college grad students, or frat brothers and sorority sisters (there are five of them--two guys and three girls), who drive for a "holiday" up into rural Michigan for a night at a log cabin. The cabin turns out to be possessed by legions of demons. It stars relative unknowns, except for the redoubtable and handsome Bruce Campbell as "Ash," who has become a sort of low-budget horror and B-Movie genre icon, starring in the Evil Dead sequels such as Army of Darkness, as well as the short-lived cult TV "Wild, Wild West" homage "The Adventures of Brisco County Junior." He's a handsome dude with a square-jawed visage and is always perfect for these parts.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Horror
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
The Cabinet of D. Caligari (German: Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari) is Robert Wiene's Expressionist nightmare brought to cinematic life by the amazing performance of Conrad Veidt as Cesare the Somnambulist, Werner Krauss as the Doctor himself, and the amazing visual look, borrowed from surrealism and Expressionism until the actors are simply living foreground against a warped painting of things in an in-between world between consciousness and subconscious madness. It is a dark, grainy, and ancient vision brought forth from the bowels of a mind haunted by turmoil, by a sense of the mechanisms of psychic control that can possess and shape us all.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Horror
Chasin'Jason
The film is as simple and brutal and bloody and beautiful as an old campfire tale: in 1964 a couple of camp counselors are killed at a summer camp, Camp Crystal Lake. Flash forward to 1980, and some hitchhiking hippie chick fresh out of 1978 catches a ride with a local guy at a diner, after being warned by an Ancient Mariner (i.e. a crazy old coot) about staying away from Camp Crystal Lake, that it has an honest-to-badness curse on it, and people...die. Later, she hitches a ride up there, going to her new position as a camp counselor cum slasher movie cannon fodder with an unseen driver in a jeep. The driver stalks and slashes, but the POV is the audience, which makes THEM, or rather, US, the killer, drawing us into the ritual of blood.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Horror
Werewolf (1987)
When I was a kid we lived in a puke-green trailer on a road by the college, which cut into the bypass or went out into the country, I can't remember which, but there was a sort of meridian with weeds and I often walked through it, by the oldest building near the college, before returning home to MTV and the latest R.E.M. video (which was that "buy the sky, sell the sky thing").
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Horror

Tom Baker

Bio

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19 Observations

The Caretaker (1963)

Naked Like Godiva

The Murder of Harold Shaw

Die, Monster, Die!

A Bucket of Blood (1959)

The Wasp Woman (1959)

The Brain That Wouldn't Die!

The Evil Dead (1981)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Chasin'Jason

Werewolf (1987)

Stories (860)