Valley of the Zombies - 1946 - Republic

I watched the 1946 Republic movie Valley of the Zombies on Netflix. It was actually quite good, despite the fact that there really is no valley or any zombies to speak of. The valley of the title was only mentioned by the villain of the movie, Ormond Murks, played wonderfully by Ian Keith. He is a zombie, but only in title. He claims to have discovered a potion in the aforementioned valley that made him virtually dead, but he needs blood transfusions to continue to survive.

Murks isn’t a post Night of the Living Dead zombie, of course, since this was made over twenty years prior. But he’s not the Voodoo zombie of films like The Zombie King or White Zombie, either. In fact, there is really nothing zombie-ish about him at all. Despite that, he steals the movie with his almost, but not-quite over-the-top escaped mental patient role (an escaped mental patient “zombie”).

Clocking in at only fifty-six minutes long, his is a B-movie in the classic sense, and has all the elements that make B-movies great. The use of shadow and light is wonderful, and one of my favorite line deliveries is in the beginning when Murks tells one of his former doctors, “My wants are simple, Dr. Maynard. Very simple…blood.” There are also some nice details. For example, when the male and female leads, played by Robert Livingston and Lorna Gray respectively, enter a supposedly abandoned house, one of them lights a candelabra and there are only two candles intact, one worn down more than the other – instead of three fresh candles just waiting for the intruders.

Yes, there’s the typical scene of a hand emerging from the shadows, flexing menacingly about to grab the unaware heroine by the neck, but no! The male lead turns to face her just in time, and the hand retreats, unseen by either of the leads. Then, when the male lead turns his back to the female again, out comes the hand…but no! Male lead turns just in time, hand retreats, and the two leads are still none-the-wiser.

Of course, given the time the movie was made, the female lead has typical lines like, “You might need help, and I’m good at screaming.” And even though she plays a nurse, she gets squeamish at the sight of a dead body.

But if you want a good, classic B-movie to watch late at night, try this one out. I bet you won’t be disappointed.

The Sucking Suckathon of Suckiness

Whenever I sit down to write something, I'm always overwhelmed by doubts. Will this be any good? Has my best stuff already been written? Will I even remember how to write? Do these jeans make me look fat?

And then, as I work on the first draft, the doubts stay with me. This sucks. When are people going to realize I'm a hack? Have I lost my mojo? Look at all of this drivel - it'll take actual power tools to mold this prose shit-storm into some kind of shape resembling a story. And no, it's not the jeans, it's the shirt. This shirt makes me look fat.

I'll go through a 2nd, 3rd and 4th draft, and maybe finally the story starts turning into something decent, and I'll send it to some markets, or put it out on my own, and then wonder, wonder, wonder is it really any good? I shouldn't have put it out there. People will realize I'm a fraud. And why bother? Even if it is any good, it will get lost in the miasma of hundreds of thousands of other stories and articles and blogs out there, and even if someone runs across it, they probably won't actually read it, and no, it's not the jeans or the shirt, but it's the fat that makes me look fat. Goddamn fat. 

But then maybe the piece gets bought by a publication, or someone sends a nice email about it, and then I start to think, yeah, maybe it's not so bad after all. This part is okay. And I really do like this paragraph, and this sentence here. And yeah, it is the shirt that makes me look fat after all! Goddamn shirt.

22nd Annual Midwest Book Awards

I'm happy to announce that my novel Ox Cart Angel won a Midwest Book Award for Best Young Adult Novel of 2011! If you'd like to see some pictures from the event, head on over to my Ox Cart Angel blog.

The Owatonna Orphanage Museum - or a little about my dad

My dad, who's still alive and kicking at age 75, was adopted when he was 19 months old by Walter and Laura Arnold, who turned out to be wonderful parents. Before being adopted, however, he spent that first bit of his life at the Minnesota State Public School in Owatonna, Minnesota, also known as the Owatonna Orphanage.

Now, with much thanks to a man named Harvey Ronglien, the place is a museum dedicated to preserving the memory of those children. Harvey spent his childhood there, along with his brother. Although he has fond memories of the place, he says that his brother hated it. Harvey has written a memoir called Boy From C-11 Case #9164, which I highly recommend.
Here's the entrance of the main building - a beautiful piece of architecture now used as city offices and an art center, along with part of the museum.

Inside are some nice displays, deailing the daily life of a typcal 'state schooler'. Two displays in particular caught my attention. The first was this:

(Don't mess with us!)

- since my dad would've been an infant at the time, and was probably in a crib just like this. Also the plaque of mother and child originally hung above the nursery entrance. So he must have seen that whenever he came in from the outside.

The other display that caught my attention was this:

My grandfather Walt - Dad's adoptive father - worked at Mother Hubbard Flour in Mankato where these bags are from. So there's a decent chance that he was indirectly helping feed my dad before they even met each other!

Another interesting part of the museum is Cottage 11, pictured here:

It's been restored to how it was when it housed a portion of the children. The white section now serves as a gift shop, and Harvey, whom I mentioned earlier, can often be found there, willing to give his insight about the place. He lived in this building for a good chunk of his time as a ward of the state.

Here's a picture I took of Harvey Ronglien - and it just happened to be on his 85th birthday!

I can't emphasize enough how important Harvey has been to this museum. One of the most touching things he has done was in regards to the orphanage cemetery. For a long time, the graves of those who died there only had numbers on them (each child received their own unique number when arriving at the State School) and Harvey and Gerald 'Bud' Blekeberg spearheaded the effort to track down the names that belonged to those numbers, replacing the old grave markers with new headstones bearing the actual children's names.

The orphanage/state school was mostly self-sustaining, and the kids farmed, cooked, cleaned or did other jobs around the place. One of the signs in Cottage 11 tells how the kids thought it was quite funny to throw apples at the hobos who rode the trains passing by the orphanage's orchard.

Anyway, if you're ever in or near Owatonna, I highly recommend a visit to this place. If at all possible, go see one of Harvey's talks, or chat him up in the gift shop. And at the very least buy his book. It's one of those memoirs written from deep within the heart.

I wanted to take more photos of the grounds, especially the cemetery, but shorly after I took the above photos, it started raining to beat the band. So maybe some other time...