The Big Goosebumps Re-read #4: The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (R.L. Stine, 1993)

In a previous post entitled “My Reading Journey“, I mentioned my complete set of the original Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine. Well, when taking them all out for a quick photograph for that post, I decided it might be fun to re-visit them all with adult eyes. There’s only 62 to get through…

With The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, Goosebumps moved into 1993. It was business as usual though with more false scares, more oblivious adults and more far-fetched plot conclusions. But remember: these are childrens books! For the fourth book in the series, Stine set his sights on a more cliched horror movie theme involving Egyptian tombs and mummies which may or may not be as dormant as they seem.

The Blurb

Gabe and his know-it-all cousin Sari can’t wait to explore the pyramids of Egypt with his favourite uncle – an archaeologist – as their personal guide. It’ll be really cool!

But Gabe never realised how big pyramids are, or how many hundreds of tunnels they have. It’s too easy to get lost, and end up face to face with an ancient mummy!

But Gabe isn’t THAT scared. After all, there isn’t really any such thing as the curse of the mummy’s tomb…is there?

Mummies and ancient Egyptian chambers are right up there with aliens as the things that creep me out on an irrational level and it seems that I can’t be the only one if this book exists to scare younger readers.

There isn’t really much to say about The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb because it’s a pretty straightforward book that relies on the stupidity of the characters to progress the story. The way that Gabe and Sari ignore Uncle Ben’s advice and wander off alone in an unmapped tomb for example. Or how they ignore him yet again and leave the hotel room…that’s a pair of twelve year-olds wandering around Cairo on their own! Then there’s Gabe’s shoelace always coming untied at the worst moments.

Speaking of Gabe, I found him to be a really irritating ass of a character, especially at the book’s opening where he is whining about needing a drink for at least three pages.

Not now?

What does “not now” mean? I was thirsty. NOW!

Jeez, give it a rest!

And I can’t ignore the section where they are inside the pyramid and Gabe’s shoelace comes undone for the gajillionth time, leaving him separated from Uncle Ben and Sari. He ends up wandering around alone when the floor breaks apart under his feet and he plunges into a chamber full of mummies and ancient embalming equipment. After several pages of panic, his cousin, Sari, finally finds him. Except Gabe is now more interested in showing Uncle Ben what he “discovered”.

“Yeah. Wow,” I said, starting to feel a bit more like normal. “The chamber is filled with mummies. And there are all kinds of tools and cloth and everything you need to make a mummy. It’s all in perfect shape, as if it hasn’t been touched for thousands of years.” I couldn’t hide my excitement. “And I discovered it all,” I added.

The end is pretty ridiculous too but this IS a Goosebumps book so I have to let it off…a little bit. Long story short, Gabe carries a creepy mummified hand around in his pocket as a good luck charm (as all kids do – obviously!). He acquired this hand from a random garage sale back in America but it conveniently turns out to be the hand of the ancient Egyptian priestess, Khala. Trapped at the edge of a bubbling tar pit by the evil Ahmed, Gabe pulls the hand from his pocket and instinctively raises it up. The mummies in the chamber come to life and attack Ahmed and even though one of them grabs the villain by the throat and raises him off the ground, the mummy simply lets him go and Ahmed gets to run away screaming. It’s almost as if Stine started to write Ahmed’s grisly comeuppance then remembered the age of his target audience and chickened out.

Overall, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb isn’t one of my favourite Goosebumps books and it never was, even when I was a child. I think it’s more down to the fact that the plot isn’t as creative or original as many of the other entries in this series.

The Cover

Well, there’s a mummy. It doesn’t look very scary either, truth be told. It looks comical and a bit campy. It also looks like it’s doing the jazz hands.

The incredibly dated bit

She thought she was really hot stuff because she could get to the last level of Super Mario Land. But it wasn’t fair because I don’t have Super Nintendo, only standard Nintendo. So I never get to practice.

Need I say much more? Also, I have to pause for a moment and be a big nerd here, pointing out that Stine didn’t do his his research very well. Super Mario Land is a Gameboy game – not a Super Nintendo game!

The nostalgia rating

Honestly, not very high with The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb. I have more nostalgia for its sequel (which we will get to eventually) since it was one of the first Goosebumps books I was given for a birthday, kick-starting my collection.

Up Next: Monster Blood

The Big Goosebumps Re-read #3: Stay Out of the Basement (R.L.Stine, 1992)

Stay out of the Basement was a very interesting re-read. My younger self never considered it to be one of his favourites in the Goosebumps series and so the 2019 edition of Me had little enthusiasm for reading it again as part of this epic revisit. However, I really enjoyed it this time around and found new appreciation for the general premise. That’s what this series is all about really: looking at these books through adult eyes and seeing if I have a different response to what I’m reading. Onto the blurb:

The Blurb

Dr Brewer is spending a LOT of time down in the basement, and Margaret and Casey Brewer think their dad has been acting pretty strangely lately.

Maybe it’s just a little harmless plant-testing. After all, he IS a botanist, and he needs something to do now that he’s lost his job.

But now he’s developing distinctly plant-like tendencies and Margaret and Casey are worried. What’s going on down there? It’s getting harder and harder to stay out of the basement!

The main reason I enjoyed Stay out of the Basement so much more this time around was because I appreciated the creepy, sinister sci-fi horror vibe of the plot. Nothing in the Goosebumps universe is what we’d call “realistic” but this is one of the more believable horror tales from the series. There is no supernatural monster or aliens involved. This is science run amok. The majority of the book is about the mystery of Margaret and Casey’s botanist father and his suspicious activity in the basement. Being twelve and eleven year-olds respectively, the temptation to disobey their father’s strict instructions to not enter the basement proves to be overwhelming. Their dad hasn’t been speaking to them too much of late and he spends most of his time down in the basement with his plant experiments, rarely coming up for air.

His fury at their intrusion scares the living bejeezus out of the Margaret and Casey but only fuels their curiosity. Why is he so secretive about the basement and so vague about what he is up to? Thus begins the mystery. Margaret and Casey find some strange plants in the basement that sound alive, as if they are breathing but that is far from the worst of it. Their dad is changing, becoming almost plant-like. It’s this creepy transformation and the tension within the house that I really enjoyed.

When she was sure that he had gone downstairs, Margaret walked eagerly into the kitchen. She had to know what her father had been eating so greedily, so hungrily.

She pulled open the door under the sink, reached into the rubbish bin, and pulled out the crinkled-up bag.

Then she gasped aloud as her eyes ran over the label.

Her father, she saw, had been devouring plant food.

There is also a really sinister scene that takes place at night. Margaret decides that she is going to confront her shifty father over the freaky anomalies that she and her brother have noticed and straight-up ask him what is going on. However, she witnesses him bleeding bright green fluid into the bathroom sink (as opposed to human blood) and sneaks away before he notices her behind him.

Margaret pulled the covers up to her chin. She realised she was trembling, her whole body shaking and chilled.

She held her breath and listened.

She could still hear water splashing into the bathroom sink..

But no footsteps.

He isn’t coming after me, she told herself, letting out a long, silent sigh.

How could I have thought that? How could I have been so terrified – of my own father?

Terrified.

It was the first time the word had crossed her mind.

But sitting there in bed, trembling so violently, holding onto the covers so hard, listening for his approaching footsteps, Margaret realised that she WAS terrified.

Of her own father.

And yes, I am very aware that the above quote could be taken way out of context and linked to much darker, horrible scenarios. The thought crossed my mind when I was reading the above passage so I guess that’s one downside to trying to read a children’s book with an adult mindset.

The endgame of the book and the explanations for everything were also pretty creepy and though the execution is typically rushed and a little ridiculous, it doesn’t spoil the tone that the preceeding three-quarters of Stay out of the Basement establishes. Dr Brewer had accidentally discovered the ability to fuse plant DNA with human DNA hence the bizarre vegetation that seemed a little TOO lifelike. In a twist of events, the kids’ father also accidentally created a plant-based clone of himself that was so life-like, it was able to take his place while the real Dr Brewer was kept captive. The kids come face-to-face with both versions of their father and have to choose which one to believe and which one to kill with an axe.

As with Say Cheese and Die!, I finished Stay out of the Basement and thought that it would be another perfect candidate for a more grown-up, eery suspense-filled horror movie. More importantly, I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed the book as much as I did considering my preconception of it being one of the weaker Goosebumps releases.

The Cover

It’s a face surrounded by leaves and the bubbling slime is an appropriate green colour this time. Not one of my favourite Goosebumps covers but it does at least accurately represent the plot.

The incredibly dated bit

There were actually two amusingly dated bits that leapt out at me so I’m not going to choose between them.

Margaret moved closer. She felt sorry for Casey. He and their dad were really close, always ball or frisbee or Nintendo together.

This is SO 1980’s/early 90’s. It harks back to a more primitive time in the world of videogames when Nintendo’s NES and SNES systems were so popular and all-conquering in the US that you weren’t just playing computer games; you were playing Nintendo. The power of the household name that Nintendo had acquired would soon be dramatically eroded when Sony’s Playstation hit the scene in 1994/95.

They looked through some old magazines in Margaret’s room, listening to some tapes that Margaret had recently bought.

“Tapes” and “recently bought”…need I say any more?

The nostalgia rating

Reasonably high. The book – largely helped by the outdated aspects quoted above – feels totally early-nineties. Obviously, I don’t have massive nostalgia for Stay out of the Basement as a Goosebumps book though because, as already stated, I kind of didn’t really like it as a kid.

Up Next: The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb

I don’t feel guilty (and neither should you)

Guilt: it’s a powerful emotion.

Guilt gives us the heads-up that we’ve potentially done wrong, hurt somebody else or need to apologise for something we did. As humans, we are flawed beings and so we frequently speak or act before thinking and our decisions may cause us to put somebody else out or harm them in some way. That’s where guilt steps in and gives us the hint that we might need to make amends. Obviously, there will be times when we feel guilty needlessly (perhaps your mind is geared towards feeling guilty too easily) but if we don’t feel any guilt at all then that too is unhealthy.

But on the flipside, guilt is a powerful weapon in the wrong hands.

There are people out there who will seek to make a person feel guilty in order to manipulate them and get them to think/act in a way that suits them. Worse still, society, government, action groups, charities and companies are all aiming to make us feel guilty so that we buy into the bullshit that they are selling. This is what I want to talk about today.

I want to say to you, “stop feeling guilty”. After all, we have enough to feel guilty about in our personal lives – enough crosses to bear without taking on any additional guilt born of problems we cannot control. The examples of guilt I’m about to run through to illustrate my point are all things that we can categorically dismiss with the parting words of “get fucked”. This isn’t about being an arsehole or hampering progression to spite others. It’s about putting our collective feet down and saying “no more” to the people and organisations that want us to feel so guilty about something that we will dance to their tune.

Recycling and the Environment

Both of these are big subjects right now and have been for some time. Should we care about the environment and our planet? Absolutely. Should we be recycling our waste rather than burning through our resources in an incredibly ignorant fashion? One hundred percent. I don’t dispute either directive and only the selfish, closed-minded people living in their own personal bubbles would argue that recycling and looking after the Earth are stupid ideas. After all, the biggest danger to us is…us. We will likely be the authors of our own exctinction.

But with that said, it enrages me when the media or action groups try to make us feel guilty over wastage. We all have to do our bit so that all the small steps form one giant step forward in the right direction. However, the majority of us are only capable of contributing those small steps but even when we do, it’s still not good enough. Here in the UK, we are set up to recycle at home. All recyclable materials are dumped into a separate wheelie bin and taken away to be sorted and (presumably) re-used. That’s us, the little people doing our bit and recycling.

Recycling

Unfortunately, I then switch on the news and see that recycling has been sent abroad and dumped in another country’s ocean. In short, we do as we are encouraged and yet those recyclable materials aren’t re-used. They don’t even get put to good use in our own country. They just get dumped in some other segment of the globe by our government and the companies running this shitshow. I see this and think, “what is the point?”. We are told that we need to recycle so we recycle. But it turns out that it’s all for nothing and rather than genuinely being green, it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind…until somebody shines a light on the dirty secret of first-world recycling.

So when people try to play the guilt card and say that we are killing the planet by using plastic straws at McDonalds or throwing millions of take-out coffee cups in landfills, I get angry. We are recycling. We are doing as we are asked but once that recycling has been taken away, it is out of our control. If it were up to me, the UK would be investing in recycling centres so that we make use of ALL our plastic, paper and glass rather than selling it off or tossing it in the sea somewhere. But it isn’t up to me. I’m just a working-class joe who actually bothers to wash tins and jars out before “recycling” them. So don’t try and make me feel guilty for thinking that a plastic drinking straw is a good idea as opposed to the nasty paper replacements that turn to mush between your lips. Maybe go after the government and their piss-poor handling of recycling. Just don’t try to send me on a guilt trip because if you do then you can fuck right off.

Diesel Vehicles

If the devil drives a car then he is probably driving a diesel-powered vehicle and cackling his way back to No.666 Hell Drive, Helltown, Hell County, chortling about all the kiddies he has passively gassed with his diesel fumes. I’m not sure what it’s like outside of Europe but here, diesel is the enemy right now. Research has apparently proven that diesel emissions are causing lung cancer and are generally a whole lot nastier for our health and the air quality in cities, than petrol. Again, I’m not disputing this research.

What I AM disputing is the guilt that environmental types want to lay on us motorists. Watch any news report on the situation and they will, without fail, show a close-up of a vehicle exhaust exhaling killer fumes into the atmosphere. This is so twisted, it’s unbelievable. First up, when they are showing white exhaust emissions, they are showing vapour not fumes. Secondly, they intentionally focus on an ancient vehicle which is, of course, going to look worse. You’ll never see a camera zoomed-in on a modern diesel vehicle’s exhaust for example. That’s strike one for the biased, agenda-driven bullshit machine.

Secondly, please don’t forget that we were TOLD to purchase diesel over petrol; told that it was better for the environment because diesel gave greater MPG for one. The government here in the UK even sponsored big discounts on diesel vehicles to get people to choose them. Now it is all the other way around. Yes, you can point out that new research and ‘facts’ should naturally override old ways of thinking. BUT, like recycling, the sale of diesel vehicles was once again the man in the street doing as he was advised. How can the regular bloke be blamed for buying diesel? More to the point, why should he invest hard-earned money into a diesel vehicle for business or home and then be made to feel guilty for being The Problem? Most people don’t buy specific types of vehicle to spite specific groups. They buy them based on price and long-term ownership prospects. They don’t buy them to kill kids with fumes or purposely piss off Greenpeace types so don’t demonise the owners of diesel and make them feel guilty. Likewise, don’t expect them to get shot of their automotive investment at a loss in order to please others.

Charity

Charity is a fantastic thing but it’s only “charity” when somebody donates time or money through free will. When they only donate to get rid of some pushy moron in the street demanding that they give a shit about cause X and set up a direct debit to charity Y, it isn’t charity. It’s feeling guilty and handing over cash for that reason alone. More to the point, it’s emotional blackmail. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to fall foul of this form of guilt because the causes are often genuinely distressing.

But you must try to not feel guilty.

A while ago, I was just trying to exit a store when a guy stopped me and began reeling off his spiel about a charity. I tried to say “no thanks” but got suckered in anyway. He then handed me a leaflet and I thought that if I took it, then maybe he’d let me go. But the fucker held onto the leaflet and stopped me walking away with it. By this point, I was getting a bit irate. This was one of the last times that I’d fall for the guilt trick and it was where I learnt the value in not feeling guilty. I just wanted to walk out of a shop in peace for fuck’s sake.

So I tell this guy, “Look, I’m not interested” to which he replied, “Oh…you’re not interested in blind children?”. Making me out to be the baddie. Making me out to be some sort of stone-hearted, uncaring scumbag. It isn’t that I don’t think it’s awful. It isn’t that I would dismiss another human being’s suffering off-hand like that without a second thought. What it came down to was that this particular guy was blackmailing me with guilt and being an utter arse. If I’d have relented and signed up? It would have simply been to get this guy out of my face and I don’t think that charities should be getting results in that way.

The fact is, I already donate to the British Red Cross. Additionally, if I was loaded with excessive money then yes, I probably wouldn’t mind donating a few pounds a month to various charities. But I’m just a normal guy doing a normal, crappy job with extremely average pay that doesn’t really go far enough. In my mind, I cannot be blamed for balancing my own books and prioritising that over committing to lots of charities or responding to every begging letter than lands on my doormat.

Perhaps you think that I am heartless but I am just being honest. It is more the way that charities weaponise guilt that gets my back up and puts me off engaging with them in the first place. I consider myself incredibly lucky to be the person I am and living the kind of life I do in a first-world country. But that doesn’t mean that I should feel guilty for being born where I was born. Furthermore, it is the principle of not yielding to the guilt-laden tactics that some charities employ.

Charity must come from the heart and from the genuine feeling to do something positive for somebody else – not from guilt or shame.

Conclusions

The bottom line in all of this is that we have enough to feel guilty about and we should reserve our capacity to feel guilty for the times that truly matter. The vast majority of guilt being beamed at us by governments, society and pressure groups is designed to manipulate our actions for somebody else’s purposes. It is born of hypocrisy (see my points on recycling) and thus requires none of our attention. If we do as we are advised or directed then we should not be made to feel guilty if higher-ups fail to follow-through on their end. We should not be made to feel guilty for being ordinary people and liking ordinary things. Guilt-peddlers: can you gladly do one please because I’m not interested and it won’t work.

Movie Talk: The Expendables 2 (2012)

Release Year: 2012 | Directed By: Sylvester Stallone | Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Dolph Lundgren, Jean Claude Van Damme, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, Scott Adkins, Yu Nan, Charisma Carpenter

The Expendables is one of my favourite movie action series’, partly because of what it is and partly because it represents that magic moment when OTT 1980’s-style action movies briefly made an explosive return to the big screen, spearheaded by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Several highly entertaining movies came about as a result of this very welcome resurgence including The Last Stand, Escape Plan, Bullet to the Head and, of course, The Expendables.

I’m only going to be reviewing The Expendables 2 however because this is the best of the trilogy in my opinion. The original is still a fantastic action movie but was unfortunately placed in the shade when the sequel turned everything up to eleven. The third film, meanwhile, is also an exciting thrill ride but the high points come from two fantastic action sequences which are – unfortunately – placed at either end of the picture. There’s a bit of a flat spot in the middle where Barney Ross’ (Stallone) team is replaced by a younger generation of Expendables who proceed to make Stallone’s character look like the 80’s dinosaur he is…before being so intelligent and high-tech that they get captured by Mel Gibson and require rescuing by the old guard.

The Expendables 2 hits a sweet spot somewhere in between and that’s why I’m only going to bother talking about this one.

E2-2 — **Ross: “I heard you were bitten by a King Cobra.” Booker: “Yeah I was…but after five days of excrutiating pain…the cobra died” [Source]**

Sophisticated it ain’t but if you go in expecting otherwise then you’re a fool. Hulking, mens-men sit around in a bar smoking, drinking beers and shooting the shit before being given a suicide mission of a job. Said jobs in this series always take place in a fictional third-world country that riffs on somewhere real. The first film opted for South America while Expendables 2 surprised nobody by featuring Eastern Bloc countries such as Albania and Bulgaria. International arms dealer Jean Vilain (Van Damme) and his scumbag mercenary group are trying to steal five tons of refined plutonium, something that CIA agent, Church (Willis), doesn’t want to happen so he orders the Expendables team to stop them.

Having every action movie trope thrown into The Expendables 2 doesn’t hurt it though because the details exist purely as a vehicle for what this series is all about: an all-star group of big-screen action heroes blasting their way through a never-ending supply of enemy goons, none of which can shoot accurately to save their lives (literally) but all of which deserve to be iced.

Name another movie where you can watch Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Chuck Norris sharing the same screen and gunning their way through a room of enemies. It hadn’t happened before The Expendables 2 and unless there is a fourth installment in the series, we likely won’t see such a spectacle again. The Expendables 2 does sometimes get a bit too tongue-in-cheek to be taken seriously but that’s hard to consider a detraction when the stars are playing off of one another’s classic catch-phrases and one-liners. As far as I am concerned, the shootout scene in the airport at the movie’s climax is simply one of THE most entertaining sequences in any action film ever and never fails to raise a smile on this cynical face, no matter how many times I watch this movie.

[Trench (Schwarzenegger) and Church (Willis) are taking cover during the firefight]

Trench: I’m almost out; I’ll be back!

Church: You’ve been back enough. I’ll be back

Trench: Yippe-ki-yay…

[Trench (Schwarzenegger) is joined by Booker (Chuck Norris)]

Trench: Who is next? Rambo?

It’s absolutely brilliant and a love letter to old-school action movies like Commando. It’s big, loud and brash. You get mahoosive explosions and so much firepower that it’s almost like gun porn at times. It’s also nice to see a legend like Van Damme back in action in a decent, big-budget movie. His battle with Stallone at the end is a treat. You get Stallone dishing out some machinegun jabs, Rocky-style (I’d like to think that that was an intentional nod to Stallone’s boxing films), and Van Damme pulls off his famous helicopter kick.

There are only two things that I don’t like about The Expendables 2. The first is how the film almost becomes a parody of the genre it is attempting to pay homage to but as I’ve already said, I think they just managed to not go too far and maintain that balance between fun and bloody comic-book action. The second is the introduction of a female member to Ross’s team, Maggie Chan (played by Yu Nan). My issue with this is how they implemented her. Ross is initially resistant to having a woman shoe-horned into his team by Church and there are all of these small scenes throughout the movie where Chan gradually impresses the rest of the crew and gains acceptance. It’s clear from the outset that Maggie is both badass and capable so why go through the bullshit of trying to make some sort of statement about a woman being able to hold her own with the guys? Don’t get me wrong, it’s not intrusive or in-your-face but I’m not sure it was really necessary. Thankfully, The Expendables 3 redresses this with the seamless inclusion of Ronda Rousey’s character.

If I have to sum up The Expendables 2 with a single word then I’d have to use “fun”. These films are the ideal antidote to pictures that focus on social commentary or promoting some kind of politically-correct agenda. They aren’t clever or dynamic but sometimes, that’s not what you want. The Expendables 2 is simply a great time and benefits from having the most stacked cast of action movie greats (past and present) that we are likely to ever witness. If you love your old-school action movies then you owe it to yourself to watch this.

The Big Goosebumps Re-read #2: Say Cheese and Die! (R.L.Stine, 1992)

I’ve always considered Say Cheese and Die! to be one of the more iconic Goosebumps books. It has a cool name and a pretty original premise for starters. Also, I’m guessing that Stine liked this one as well because this is one of only a handful of Goosebumps books to receive a sequel (though we would have to wait some time for it).

The Blurb

Greg and his friends think it’s pretty cool when they find an old camera in a derelict house, and it works. But the camera takes weird photos – like the one of Greg’s dad’s new car – totally wrecked? Then his dad is in a bad car accident – what’s going on?

And when Greg takes a picture of his friend Shari, she’s not in the photo when it develops – then Shari disappears altogether. Now Greg knows for sure that the camera is creepy – more than that, it’s evil.

Greg and his friends – Shari, Michael and Bird – are bored. Obviously, when kids are bored, the solution is to break into an abandoned house in the neighbourhood. A derelict house that just happens to sit in the darkness of enormous oak trees and have a reputation for ghastly goings-on. Of course. No wonder youth crime is often linked to being at a loose end. Perhaps kids were actually inspired by Say Cheese and Die! back in the day?

Anyway, Greg finds the polaroid camera hidden in a secret compartment and decides to take it which turns out to be a very bad idea in the long run. The first sign of the camera’s powers comes when Greg takes a picture of Michael and the polaroid develops to show Michael plunging through crumbling staircase railings…an accident which occurs moments later. The reader immediately knows the score but nobody else believes Greg’s suspicions, even when the camera continues to predict nasty accidents. Shari shows up as invisible then disappears inexplicably. Bird is pictured having a horrible baseball accident and this too comes to pass.

One thing that struck me was how stupid the characters are in this book. Naturally, it would be a stretch to believe that a camera could prophesise and even cause sinister things to happen but even so, the evidence is there for everybody to see. Yet, even after woe befalls Michael, Bird and Greg’s father, Shari demands that Greg bring the camera to her birthday party because the weird photos it prints are fun. Greg initially refuses but Shari hounds him relentlessly until her friend caves and agrees to bring it, despite knowing that something bad is bound to happen…

With a loud sigh, he pulled the camera from its hiding place in his headboard. “It’s Shari’s birthday, after all” he said aloud to himself.

I can’t speak for anybody else but if I had a magical, evil camera that I had solid reason to believe could cause accidents, I certainly wouldn’t relent and agree to take it to a party for such a silly reason! We’ll let Greg off here because he IS a kid but that habit of giving in to the demands of bossy girls is going to land him in trouble one day.

That said, bad decisions and naivete are a staple of the Goosebumps books as we will continue to see going forward with this review series. That along with misleading chapter cliffhanger “scares” and the dismissal of kids’ fears by the adults are what get the likes of Say Cheese and Die! past the hundred-page count in the first place.

The big question in this book of course is that of the camera’s origins. It turns out that an evil scientist who enjoyed dabbling in black magic placed a curse on the camera when his partner tried to steal it from him. Somehow, this imbued the camera with the power to steal the souls’ of those it captures on film. It’s all a bit vague and convenient really. Furthermore, you have to wonder how nobody’s souls were actually eaten in all of this. The only person who disappeared completely was Shari but Greg (accidentally) manages to restore her by tearing up her photo. Overall, not a lot is explained but to expect much more from a children’s horror book would be ambitious anyway. Say Cheese and Die! is a fun story with an idea that could be expanded on for – say – a more grown-up horror movie. Perhaps it has and I’ve missed it?

Anyway, bonus stuff:

The Cover

This time, we have the camera itself and various photos of the accidents from the story sinking into the orange Goosebumps sludge. The camera looks fantastic and creepy as fuck with a grinning face incorporated into the design. One thing I want to point out is the bottom-right photograph of a skeleton woman – a random photograph that doesn’t actually relate to anything in the book.

The incredibly dated bit

Honestly, nothing stood out to me as “dated” in Say Cheese and Die! so Stine inadvertedly succeeded in future-proofing this one. That said, the car that Greg’s dad proudly brings home is a brand-new Ford Taurus. Ford axed the Taurus earlier this year so perhaps the book will feel a little bit more dated in a few years time…

The nostalgia rating

Pretty high. As I said at the start of this review, I’ve always felt that this is one of the more iconic Goosebumps books and it reads pretty well, even as an adult.

Up Next: Stay Out of the Basement

The Big Goosebumps Re-read #1: Welcome to Dead House (R.L.Stine, 1992)

Here we are at the start of our big re-read of the Goosebumps series with the first book, Welcome to Dead House. This is where it all began and I was forced to feel both shocked and old when seeing the 1992 publication date on the copyright page. Holy shit; where has that time evaporated to? Anyway, this book established the formula that Stine would use for the rest of the series – a format that would grow pretty predictable before long but hey, these are meant to be books for kids, not grown adults like me.

The Blurb

Amanda and Josh aren’t too sure about the old house they’ve just moved into. It’s spooky, and probably haunted, and their new neighbourhood, Dark Falls, is pretty creepy too.

Their parents don’t understand them – You’ll get used to it, they say. Go out, make some new friends.

But the kids Amanda and Josh meet are twice as weird as the house. Not exactly what their parents had in mind. They’re friendly, all right, maybe a little too friendly. In fact, they want to be friends…forever.

It’s a straightforward book and you can see what is happening from a mile off. The family dog, Petey, is NOT happy about this new house that the family mysteriously inherit for free from the previously-unknown Great Uncle Charles. And you know what dogs can apparently sniff out, don’t you? Then there’s the town itself, the ominously-named Dark Falls where the streets are desolate, the sky a perma-grey tone and trees cast huge shadows over every lawn.

I would say, “Spoiler Alert!” but this is a twenty-seven year-old children’s book. The entire town is dead and the weird kids that Amanda and Josh meet are some sort of walking undead. Near the end of the book, it is revealed that most of the adults in town used to work at an outlying plastics factory when a terrible accident occured that transformed Dark Falls into an undead town. This explanation is so vague and daft that it deserves quoting here.

“Then there was an accident. Something escaped from the factory. A yellow gas. It floated over the town. So fast we didn’t see it…didn’t realise. And then, it was too late, and Dark Falls wasn’t a normal town anymore. We were all dead, Amanda”

Every so often, the undead population of Dark Falls need “new blood” (because requirements) and so families are lured to the “Dead House” before being forced to join the residents in their undead gloom. There’s no explanation as to why the “new blood” is needed or how the victims being brought to Dark Falls sustain the existing inhabitants. But this is Goosebumps so you don’t question stuff like that. Just like you don’t question why the only undead residents seem to be children with the exception of property agent, Compton Dawes. Or how Dark Falls exists on the map after a major chemical disaster that would have seen it sealed off in the real world. Or why nobody else passes through.

In typical Goosebumps fashion however, it takes a while to get to all of this. The first third or so of the book consists of chapters ending on false scares. Then there is the staple element of kids being victims of supernatural events while their parents roll their eyes, tell them to stop pranking around and simply don’t believe them.

For a book aimed at pre-adolescent children, there’s some pretty gruesome and semi-graphic stuff too. Obviously, I don’t read kids books these days so I have no idea if the gore flows freely in the ‘Young Horror’ genre but my cynical instincts would have me suspect that violence and bloody visuals might be toned down a bit for this overly-PC generation. Not so in Welcome to Dead House.

Ray’s skin seemed to be melting. His whole face sagged, then fell, dropping off his skull. I stared into the circle of white light, unable to look away, as Ray’s skin folded and drooped and melted away. As the bone underneath was revealed, his eyeballs rolled out of their sockets and fell silently to the ground.

Clearly though, the ten, eleven or twelve year-olds in the world of Goosebumps aren’t scarred for life or destined for a future of therapy after witnessing such fucked-up stuff. Unless it hits later? Maybe R.L. Stine should write gritty adult follow-ups to his books that follow the same characters as adults so that we can see how their lives turned out.

Welcome to Dead House is a simple and predictable ghosts ‘n ghouls horror story for kids. As an adult, you have the the unfortunate ability to see straight through the smoke, mirrors and false scares but this re-read brought with it a different kind of entertainment as I couldn’t help smiling at how dumb some of it was. Now, onto some bonus review-y bits…

The Cover

I absolutely loved the UK covers for the Goosebumps books as a kid and that admiration hasn’t changed as I’ve grown older. For starters, you just don’t get these sorts of hand-drawn covers anymore. Then there is the uniform style of the series with the bubbling slime and objects relevant to the story swirling about in this brightly-coloured sludge. Here we have a realistic grinning skull surrounded by gravestones. It’s eye-catching and simple yet the art is detailed and probably more adult than the story itself.

The incredibly dated bit

I’m going to put my bed against that wall opposite the window, I thought happily. And my desk can go over there. I’ll have room for a computer now!

Amanda’s joy at having space in her bedroom for a (no-doubt) big bulky early 90’s desktop computer with no internet is amusing in 2019. But it’s also nostalgic to go back to a time before tablets, mobile phones and social media. A more innocent, straightforward time some might say…

The nostalgia rating

Obviously high with the aforementioned lack of technology in society and the fact that I’m reading a book that I haven’t touched in around twenty years. Then there is that lovely, musty used book smell permeating the yellowed pages. And a listing in the very back for another line of books also from Hippo: The Babysitters Club. Remember those?

Up Next: Say Cheese and Die!

Movie Talk: Hobo With a Shotgun (2011)

hobo-1 Release Year: 2011 | Directed By: Jason Eisener | Starring: Rutger Hauer, Gregory Smith, Molly Dunsworth, Brian Downey, Nick Bateman

[to a group of newborn babies] “A long time ago I was one of you. You’re all brand-new and perfect. No mistakes, no regrets. People look at you and think of how wonderful your future will be. They want you to be something special like a doctor or a lawyer. I hate to tell you this, but if you grow up here, you’re more likely to wind up selling your bodies on the streets, or shooting dope from dirty needles in a bus stop. And if you’re successful, you’ll make money selling junk to crackheads. And you won’t think twice about killing somebody’s wife, because you won’t even know what was wrong in the first place. Or maybe you’ll end up like me – a hobo with a shotgun! I hope you can do better. You are the future.”

There’s nothing thought-provoking or “big” about a film like Hobo With a Shotgun but then, we don’t all want to coo over arthouse drivel or social commentary masquerading as entertainment. Sometimes we just want unrestrained fun, audacious violence and black humour without all that thinking man’s crap. This film certainly delivers on all those counts. The Hobo (Hauer) is a drifter travelling by rail who rides into Hope Town, a town with irony dripping from its name because there couldn’t BE a town with any less hope on display. Oppressive urban decay is everywhere as is flagrant, violent crime. Worse still, a psychotic crime lord self-styling as ‘The Drake’ (Brian Downey) rules the town with fear, routinely carrying out live executions in highly gruesome fashions. These killings take place in the streets for all to bear witness to and are dubbed “The Drake Show”. The Drake has his equally sadistic sons, Slick (Gregory Smith) and Ivan (Nick Bateman) on hand to help keep Hope Town dancing to his tune. Mess with The Drake or his business and you could well be The Drake Show’s next special guest.

All the Hobo wants is to keep himself to himself and scrape together enough money to realise his dream of purchasing a beat-up lawnmower from the town’s pawn shop. He quickly finds it difficult to turn a blind eye to the brutal, bloodthirsty acts taking place all over town however and his curiosity lands him on Slick’s radar when he intervenes in a struggle between The Drake’s favourite son and prostitute, Abby (Molly Dunsworth). The Hobo bucks the status quo by laying the smackdown on Slick and hauling him to the police station to make a citizen’s arrest. Unfortunately, Hope Town’s police force is in The Drake’s pocket and the Hobo finds himself on the end of a vicious retribution attack which he is lucky to survive, largely thanks to help from Abby.

The Hobo manages to obtain enough money for his lawnmower but upon visiting the pawn shop to make his purchase, he finds himself caught up in an armed robbery and despite the price paid for his previous intervention, steps in once more by seizing a shotgun and blowing away the criminal scum. He forfits his garden appliance to pay for said shogun instead and thus begins his vigilante quest to clean up the streets, delivering justice one shell at a time.

I said that this movie isn’t about the commentary but what I will say is that the Hobo’s desire to act and his subsequent killing spree speaks to that part of us that secretly wants somebody like the Hobo around; that person who can cleanse the streets of deviants and the very worst criminals when the justice system(s) has proved too soft and law ineffective. We want to see the monsters of society reap what they sow and not get off lightly. Of course, I wouldn’t go as far as to promote vigilantism but thankfully we have movies like this and I found immense satisfaction in seeing the utterly evil scourge of Hope Town first introduced through the Hobo’s eyes then blown away by his shottie.

The other reason I really dig Hobo With a Shotgun is because it just doesn’t give a fuck. They went wild with the free-flowing gore, sadistic violence and generally fucked-up stuff here, firmly placing the movie in the Exploitation sub-genre with that crazy Grindhouse feel that you’ve seen in the likes of Planet Terror and Machete. There’s heads being crushed to a bloody pulp between two fairground bumper cars. There are heads being ripped off by barbed-wire nooses tied to cars. There are topless girls giggling as they beat the shit out of a human pinata with baseball bats and then squealing with delight when his blood sprays like a burst water main and soaks their naked bodies.

It’s disgusting, gratutious and extremely OTT but at the same time, it’s all so silly and comical that you can’t take it seriously and so all this highly creative violence is likely to coax out a smile from the viewer rather than a grimace.

Hobo With a Shotgun doesn’t just stop at the ultra-violence however. This is a no holds-barred movie that frequently shocks with the daring makeup of some of the scenes that fly in the face of our overly-sensitive society that wants everything banned. The paedophile santa for example who parks outside a children’s playground and spies on kids through binoculars, touching himself before speeding off with an unfortunate captive hammering on the back window of his car. Then there’s a scene where a school bus full of kids gets torched with a flamethrower to the tune of The Trammps’ Disco Inferno.

Nothing is held back and I got the sense that the director and writer of this film let their imaginations run riot without even considering putting their ideas through an acceptability filter in order to appease the “won’t somebody think of the children?” brigade. And I love them for it, I really do. It’s a fat dosage of mental, unpretentious FUN that absolutely rocks hence why I’ve watched this movie about four or five times since 2011.

I must also quickly mention the lovely Molly Dunsworth who plays Abby. All horror and bizarre exploitation films need a hot female lead who can kick ass as well as look sexy and Dunsworth more than succeeds here.

If I had to level any kind of criticism at Hobo With a Shotgun then I suppose I would have to wheel out the traditional “style over substance” trope and I can’t completely refute that observation. However, it’s also worth pointing out that you know exactly what you are getting into with a film like this just by looking at the poster, DVD cover or synopsis so I imagine it unlikely that you could expect anything other than what I’ve described in this review.

Book Talk: My Reading Journey

The other day, I found myself reflecting on my reading ‘journey’, how I’ve been reading books my whole life and how my reading tastes have evolved. We are taught to read by our schools and force-fed a certain amount of written words in this way but many kids don’t read outside of their English lessons or are unfortunate (I consider it unfortunate anyway…) to have parents who don’t read or promote literature to their children. These days, it’s easier to distract kids with tablets (the electronic kind of course!), computer games or smartphones. These are all okay in moderation but none can provide the same mental stimulation as the written word and – dare I say it – can result in more braindead children, addicted to screens and with less grasp of that beautiful thing called The English Language.

I class myself as fortunate on two counts. The first is to have had parents who enjoyed books and promoted reading to me from a young age. My father was all about factual books covering the likes of science and astronomy while my mother enjoyed fiction. Their takes on reading might have differed but it did mean that there was always a full bookshelf in our living room. Books were bought for me too and so while I read at school, I was also reading at home and always ahead of most of my classmates when it came to reading ability. When we were given a book to take home and read over the course of a week for instance, I’d have it finished in a single evening. I was taking books out of the library on the weekends too and then the mobile library which used to visit every fortnight. I’d take out five or six books at a time and finish the lot well in advance of their return date.

The second reason I class myself as fortunate is that I was one of the last generations to come up through school with computers and technology only just beginning to go mainstream. They weren’t integrated into everyday life until I was in the latter years of secondary school and sixth form (college). Mobile phones didn’t start to become commonplace amongst kids my age until my early teens either. Why is this a positive thing? It meant that I could enjoy the emergence of technology without it dominating everything. It left room for books and the paper-based word to remain a staple of my education and downtime outside of school.

If you couldn’t tell, I really like books and reading hence why I’ve been enjoying talking about them so much on this blog. Books are fucking brilliant.

So I thought I’d go on a quick trip through my past to look at how reading evolved for me at the various stages of my life up until this point.

Early Years

The primary school I attended used the Oxford Reading Tree series of books to educate pupils on reading. The books began as large, mostly picture-based books featuring a recurring cast of characters and an increasing word count as you progressed through the ‘Stage’ system attached to the books. Stage 1 was entirely pictures for example and the school skipped over them (I didn’t even know they existed until spotting them in one of the store rooms). Stage 10 was the final batch of books in this format featuring Biff, Chip, Kipper, Wilf, Wilma and Floppy the dog.

I skipped Stages 9 and 10 based on reading ability and went on to Stages 11-14 which were thicker books with self-contained stories branded as the ‘Treetops’ series, presumably to indicate that you’d reached the top of the reading tree. It was around this time that I also borrowed lots of ‘Jets‘ books from the classroom bookshelf; more stories with great front covers and often humorous, recurring characters (I wonder if anybody else remembers these?).

Outside of school, my main vice when it came to books were R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series of books. It was always exciting to find a new one in the library or add books to my personal collection whenever I had some pocket money or received books for birthday or Christmas. I know a lot of kids would have been pissed at receiving “boring” books instead of videogames, mountain bikes or the latest trainers but I enjoyed it immensely and I can probably thank R.L. Stine and his series for an interest in horror that endures to this day. I can certainly thank the books for nurturing my interest in reading and the springboard to the next level that they would provide.

On a side note, I did eventually complete my collection of the original sixty-two Goosebumps books, all in original, matching covers/first prints. I still have this collection as I had to be an adult in order to track down the missing books and finish the set but it’s a collection that fills me with nostalgia and takes me on a trip to the past whenever I take them out. The collection is a mixture of books purchased when new, books procured from charity shops or second-hand bookshops and a few that I had to use ebay for (mostly the later ones which are harder to pick up).

**What a complete Goosebumps collection looks like.**

I also inherited my mother’s collection of Famous Five books at some point and enjoyed these too in my younger years. The more innocent and simplistic lifestyle of the children in Enid Blyton’s adventure stories is difficult to relate to these days (and was when I was a child I suppose) but they were great escapism and I thoroughly enjoyed plowing through the collection. I even went on to check out some other Blyton adventure books that involved different characters.

Teenage Years

Goosebumps was a springboard into more grown-up reading because I became aware of R.L. Stine’s other series’ – the Fear Street books. These are tame books by adult standards but coming off the back of the false scares and childish fears in the pages of Goosebumps, they were a step up for sure. Of course, the trademark false scares and ridiculous plots of Stine’s were still present but now we were dealing with murders and more sinister supernatural menaces. I didn’t actually ever own the Fear Street books – I only borrowed them from libraries. They were sold under the ‘Point Horror‘ banner and I don’t really recall seeing them for sale in shops. Then again, perhaps I wasn’t looking when I was able to take out stacks of them at a time from libraries.

Point Horror also published lots of other horror stories for teenagers and young adults and I read these too. What I absolutely loved about the likes of Goosebumps, Point Horror and most books of this kind were the covers. The covers for these books were fantastic, largely because they were hand-drawn. The art was sometimes a bit shonky but for some reason, it usually added a creepy abstract element to the books rather than detracting from them.

Then there was ‘Point Fantasy‘ which was – as you’d expect – fantasy fiction from various different authors. I didn’t read many of these but of the few I did take out from a library, Elfgift and Foiling the Dragon stand out in my memory as ones I enjoyed.

Obviously, I wasn’t immune to Harry Potter either. My mother borrowed the first three books from one of her work colleagues and that’s how I was introduced to the wizarding world. I enjoyed it immensely and I can say that the Harry Potter books were the first books that I felt genuinely sad to finish, the conclusion of each one leaving me longing for the characters and their world. Suffice to say, I was well and truly hooked after Prisoner of Azkaban and bought each sequel on the day of release thereafter. Unfortunately, I got rid of those monolithic hardbacks a long time ago due to space constraints but I’ll never forget the impact that Harry Potter had on me.

The last notable books that came along before I got into adult fiction were Christopher Pike’s horror stories. These are STILL some of my absolute favourites. The beautiful hand-drawn covers caught my attention in libraries and I made a point of picking up used Pike books whenever I could.

**You don’t get cover art like this on books anymore. The lens crack in Die Softly is an actual hole! I also have a full set of the Last Vampire books packed away elsewhere.**

I consider these the bridge between the silly teenage Point Horror/Fear Street style of horror and true adult fiction. Here we have murders and supernatural events but also, darker storylines and mild sexy stuff. These were probably the first books I read that featured sex and it certainly captured my attention as a teenage boy! Yes, I lived a sheltered, nerdy life…

Adult Years

As you have no doubt picked up on, my mother has been responsible for introducing me to a lot of the fiction I have read and it’s something I am grateful for when I know other parents didn’t push reading with their children. So it was only fitting that she gave me my first real “grown up” horror book – a battered paperback of Stephen King’s The Shining. If you have read any of my book reviews here on Unfiltered Opinion then you will already be aware that I am a big Stephen King fan. That used charity shop copy of The Shining was where it all began. I was enthralled and demolished the book, hungry for more.

As it stands, I have read almost all of Stephen King’s books by this point, many of them several times. The only ones I have missed (off the top of my head) are The Running Man, Thinner, The Bachman Books and the Dark Tower series (I know, I know…). I will track these down in due course but I am currently taking a bit of break from Stephen King and getting into thrillers, a genre I have only recently found an appetite for thanks to a few Peter Swanson books I was very impressed with.

James Herbert is another author I really enjoy. His books are pretty dark and disturbing with gruesome horror and gratuitous sex descriptions. The various deaths in The Rats are a good example of the former and the latter? Let’s just say that I’ve never fully forgotten the pages of description in Once where the wicked Nell seduces Katy in an entirely unnecessary lesbian sex scene that added nothing to the story.

I’ve also dabbled with Michael Crichton and Dan Brown as well as various autobiographies of my favourite Formula 1 drivers.

And I can’t not mention Robert E. Howard’s incredible Conan stories. I have “The Complete Chronicles” and it is an addictive blend of sword-and-sorcery, barbarian themes and totally non-PC content that I really admire and enjoy escaping to in this, the era of the easily-offended *shudders*

I’m hoping to continue broadening my literary horizons going forward and to review more books here.

Feel free to comment below if you had a similar literary upbringing to me, remember any of the books/series’ that I’ve talked about or just want to tell me what YOUR reading journey was like. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The UK MEP Elections are a waste of time

We seem to be pretty adept at squandering money here in the United Kingdom which is ironic given the relentless savaging of national and local funding that often makes me question if we ever actually escaped the 2008 recession. If the austerity measures were truly necessary then surely the government would be doing their utmost to preserve funds and not waste them?

You would think anyway.

Let me briefly travel backwards to 2nd May of this year (2019). The local council elections were taking place and temporary polling stations were rolled out to wards that didn’t have somewhere permanent i.e. a school to commandeer for the day. The polling station I am instructed to go to should I wish to cast my vote is one such temporary facility – a large container-like portable cabin that is set up on a field behind my house. Usually it is removed fairly quickly once the voting is done and dusted and the experts are busy chewing over the results but this time, it hung around for over a week. “Makes sense” I thought. “The European Parliament elections are being held later this month so perhaps they will do the efficient thing and just leave it there”.

But no; it stayed there for over a week and was then suddenly loaded onto a lorry and removed…only for it to be brought back today on the 23rd May for the MEP elections. Now imagine this happening all over the country and think of all the transport costs incurred for moving something that need only ever have been removed once after BOTH of these elections had concluded. What a waste of time. More importantly, what a waste of money. Yes, it’s a relatively minor thing to gripe about but that wasted money comes to mind when you’re driving along on roads that look and feel as if they’ve been the target of several airstrikes.

EU-P-1

While I’m on the subject of the European Parliament elections though, they are a monumental waste of time and money the UK. That’s right folks, here we are going to the polls to select who we want to represent us in a parliament we should no longer be part of, in a union we should also no longer be part of. We should have left the EU a long time ago but thanks to the staggering incompetence of our politicians, here we still are. Rather than banding together to put a good deal together for the people of Britain, the government and opposing political parties are more interested in taking shots at one another and scoring points, Brexit being the vehicle for their war of words and embarassing slanging matches in the Commons.

We will be exiting the EU in October with or without a deal so whoever we elect will be swiftly ejected from the EU parliament, making the voting process and all the costs involved even more of a joke. Nobody’s laughing though.

I didn’t bother to cast a vote in the MEP elections because of this. As far as I could make out, voting meant making one of two non-productive choices:

Choosing candidates representing the current warring parties who have already failed to sort this mess out over the course of several years.
Choosing candidates from the likes of the Brexit Party or UKIP – MEP elects who would aim to cause maximum disruption in the EU parliament and would be unlikely to help anything. Voting this way is essentially blowing a raspberry in the face of the EU.

I’m pretty sure we’re all fed up of this shitshow now. I voted “remain” in the original refurendum (based on the Leave campaign’s complete lack of substance or concrete facts about the aftermath of a Leave result) but I also have no love for the EU.

But I have even less love for our own politicians and this crap that they can’t seem to solve much to the country’s frustration.

And on top of that? We now face a leadership change in the wake of Prime Minister Theresa May’s resignation this week…

Head in Hands

Shaving your wallet as well as your face

I’ve always gone for the clean-shaven look on my face but recently, I decided to give it up. The main motivator for change was the fact that I also decided to cut my hair down real short and keep it that way. I can blame premature baldness/hair loss for that one – something that isn’t exactly welcome at the age of twenty-eight. I’d been stuck in a routine of allowing what was left to grow wildly out-of-control before getting it tamed at the local barbers but as one of the ladies there sagely put it, you just have to accept that the grass sometimes just won’t grow anymore. A basic cut there was costing me £7.50 a visit so just chopping it all off myself at home would already save me money on top of having a more honest, no bullshit number two all over .

But I didn’t want to have a smooth baby-face with such a hair “style” so keeping my facial hair as rough (tamed) stubble was the next decision I made. Awaken my inner Jason Statham, I thought, and get the ladies feeling a little moist around my newfound badass image (don’t worry: I did wake up and have a laugh at myself afterwards).

Back in the land of reality, there was a secondary motivation for rejecting the clean-shaven look that was of greater import than provoking a damp gusset: escaping the ritual of buying replacement razor blades. As both men AND women know, razor blade refills are an unwelcome feature on any shopping list. Scandalously expensive, rarely on promotion and roughly the same price everywhere (no matter how savvy you are with shopping around), they are one of the marketing men’s most diabolical creations. Like inkjet printers and water filter jugs, razors are one of those disgusting false economies where the base hardware (in this case, the razor itself) is yours for a reasonable price but once you’re suckered in, the refills will savage your wallet. It doesn’t feel good to be trapped in this commercial machine and a slave to the scalping tactics of these businesses.

For years I have used Gillette’s Fusion Proglide series of razors and I have always been happy with their performance but the blade refills are NOT cheap. A quick check on trusty Amazon yields a pack of six for £15.94, an apparent markdown on an RRP of £21.00…for SIX blades.

CaptureGillette

Ah, our old friend, Gillette…the company who caused a major stink by telling us that we have failed as men and must change our ways. Regardless of whether you believe that controversial ad campaign to be legit or a devilish marketing ploy to thrust the brand into the public eye, there’s no denying that Gillette are hypocrites with no moral superiority to anybody else. Frankly, I’ve been an utter mug and given them my money for far too long, dancing to the beat of their drum.

This is the company that tells us to quit objectifying women even while they are encasing attractive females in latex and plastering the Gillette brand across their shiny bottoms:

Gillette-meme-1

They encourage these false consumer economies that result in untold levels of waste when you look at razor blade packaging and all of these refills being sent to a hole in the ground where they will probably outlive the men who dutifully replaced them at Gillette’s recommended intervals.

They are a company that continually add new lubricant strips or gimmicks to their razors complete with attention-grabbing names such as “Turbo”, “Champion” or even “nitro” in order to turn us into braindead consumer-shaped sheep. If the previous iteration of the Mach 3 razor was all you needed for the “perfect shave” then why do we need a Mach 3 Turbo Champion Nitro Elite Proshield+ upgrade? Because new COLOURS and gimmicks such as the flexball “technology”.

I can’t justify the amount of money I have invested into blades and updated razors. All I can do is apologise to myself and admit that it was down to pure laziness and an unwillingness to try something new. As you can probably deduce from the preceeding rant, I was thrilled to give Gillette and disposable blades the middle finger and escape to freedom. I did what I should have done a long time ago and bought an electric razor.

So I opted for the Phillips One Blade, a compact electric razor with interchangeable combs for maintaining one’s facial hair at the desired length. Sure, you are supposed to replace the heads on these razors every six months but I’m not going to buy into that bullshit. I know from others that they last a lot longer than that. One problem that I can’t avoid however is that the razor only came with 1mm, 3mm and 5mm attachments. After a bit of experimentation, I arrived at a conclusion: 3mm was too long while 1mm was too short. No biggie though – you can after all purchase the ‘missing’ comb sizes individually. A piece of featherweight plastic likely manufactured overseas at a cost of a few pence…

OB-1

OB-2

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