The Horrific, Undiscovered Gem that is Breaking Bad, and Why We Should Watch It

Stephen King likes Breaking Bad, and we've been ignoring it.  That stops now. 

In his regularly irregular column for Entertainment Weekly, the King of Horror (and so much more) recently talked about just how much he liked this odd little drama about a dying high school chemistry teacher who decides to turn to meth-making as a way to secure his family's financial future.  It's one of AMC's few original series (along with the much ballyhoo'd and truly overrated Mad Men), buried someplace between the networks and the pay-per-view cable shows, and folks, it is just play odd.  Good odd.

King calls it, "the best scripted show on TV ... The only thing that comes close is Twin Peaks, but Peaks lost its focus once it moved beyond the death of Laura Palmer.”  (A sentiment with which he totally agree, for what that's worth.)  But there are elements of the surreal, outrageous, and just plain mad in this piece that make it well worth finding.  "It's like watching No Country for Old Men crossbred with the malevolent spirit of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre," King says, and that alone should be attracting Rush fans in droves.  (And this shouldn't come entirely as a surprise.  The series creator is Vince Gilligan, who was also a producer on X-Files and its much-mourned short-lived offspring The Lone Gunman.)

The biggest revelation, of course, is Bryan Cranston, who plays Walter White.  Sure, the man had a distinguished career as a character actor for years before he became Malcom’s Dad on Malcolm in the Middle, but no one actually expected him to get out from under that shadow, any more than popular TV Dads With Great Careers like Dan Lauria (Wonder Years) or Ed O’Neil (Married with Children) have been able to.  But there isn't a trace of Hal in Walter.  This isn't acting, it's transformation, and creepy, too.
 
Time for us all to give it a look.  First year is available on DVD, and the new episodes are on Sundays at 10 pm on AMC, though they rebroadcast them throughout the week.  Check in, check it out, go nuts.

Best Horror Comic You Never Heard Of: Joe Hill's Locke & Key from IDW

Horror comics have had a hard time finding a foothold in America, especially since the fall of EC some 25 years ago. DC had a short-lived revival of interest with Alan Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing; Marvel made a small splash with Marv Wolfman's Tomb of Dracula, which actually begat Blade, but both of those were a long time ago.

And though the majors have made many attempts since then, from Ghost Rider to The Creeper to Simon Dark to Shadowpact, nothing has really taken hold for the big boys.

The format in general seemed doomed to the "C" list, until Steve Niles and IDW (now the fourth largest comics publisher, after Dark  Horse) came out of nowhere with the remarkable, bloody and mesmerizing 30 Days of Night.  (Yes, the one that was made into that underwhelming film a couple of years ago.)  Since then, the smaller independents, with original material and apatations, have had much success with the spooky stuff. 

One of the best of the "new horror" comics by far is an original series written by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez: Locke and Key.  It's a complex and enthralling story of the surviving members of a young family stalked by a high-school-age killer, who flee across country to the mysterious family manse Back East -- a funky old house that has nightmares -- and magic -- all its own. 

Giving many details wouldn't be fair; it’s much more interesting to discover them as you go.  Suffice to say that Hill is turning some very rich earth here, a kind of eerie daylight horror that can get violent and bloody in the blink of an eye, and then return to an almost whimsical character-level just as quickly.  Just as interesting, Rodriguez' artwork owes nothing to the old look-and-feel of the EC Comics / Bill Gaines traditions, nor to the more recent and popular splotch-and-splatter look of the Bill Siencewicz-inspired 30 Days tradition.  There is a clarity of line, an attention to detail, and almost sunny aspect to his line that makes the whole thing that much more realistic and chilling when the weird stuff starts to happen. 

Hill, a Bram Stoker Award winner who wrote the well-received novel Heart-Shaped Box and is author of a number of really strong short stories collected in 20th Century Ghosts, is at his best here, both charming and creepy at the same time.  Even top-drawer thriller author Robert Crais thinks so; he likes this stuff so much he supplied a forward for the collection of the first story arc, Welcome to Lovecraft.  It's available in hardcover now.  Meanwhile the second arc, Head Games, is currently into its third monthly issue, and it just keeps getting better and better. 

Buyer Beware: Skip Stephen King Goes to the Movies

The Rush loves Stephen King.  You have to; he's the, ah, king of modern horror and then some -- a complex writer who can make real, human stories that can still terrify and fascinate, and still occasionally gross you out just for fun.

So we won’t blame Steve for this; we can't. But the fact is: you shouldn’t buy Stephen King Goes to the Movies. It’s a total rip-off. 

Way back in the distant, spider-webbed past, Steve wrote a truly wonderful book about horror in film, in print, and on line (hmmm ... familiar ...) 

Danse Macabre  is, thankfully still in print, like damn near everything the man ever wrote.  It remains a classic in the field, and well worth a reading or re-reading.  And at first glance, it's easy to think that this new original paperback might be some kind of sequel to that wonderful book of essays; after all, it’s been 33 years. 

But it ain’t.  At all.  It's really just PUBLISHER's excuse to put out a book of often-reprinted King short stories and novellas that served as the basis for some of his best and worst of his cinematic adaptations, each preceded by the teensiest, tiniest little commentaries from King.  And not even very insightful commentaries, for that matter (for instance, we still don't get to find out what he thought of Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining, dammit.)

If you're a King fan, do yourself a favor: take five minutes, stand in your local bookstore, and read the measly few original words right then and there.  You won't even have to find a place to sit. Then put it back and save your money, 'cause you have almost certainly read every single other word in this collection at least a couple of times before.  There is very little to be gained here.