Tom Baker

Joined June 2018

855 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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Compulsion (1959)
Compulsion is a 1959 noir thriller based very faithfully on the infamous murders perpetrated by Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, two sons of vast privilege living in Chicago in 1924, who were as obsessed with Nietzsche as they were each other; both of them were prodigies and Nathan Leopold was in grad school before the age of 21. They gleaned their sense of superiority from reading Nietzsche's idea of the "Ubermensch" or "Superman," who was "beyond good and evil," and who doesn't have to play by the conventional dictates of a morally-ordered world. The Superman, being far advanced over the "brainless, vociferating herd" (as Ragnar Redbeard called them). This is the Darwinian inversion of traditional Christian ideals, so that instead of "turning the other cheek," Superman becomes unfeeling, coldly calculating exploiter of "lower beings," who can use and cast aside whoever and whatever he wishes, to cross the abyss of Nothingness, and realize, on the other side of that, his True Destiny. Even if that end is destruction in the name of the "transvaluation of all values." Amor fati, Nietzsche would say. Or, "Love your fate."
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Criminal
Edison's Frankenstein
Charles Ogle was, I think, my first true glimpse of cinematic horror and absurdity. Even if that is not quite true, it still has the ring of truth buried somewhere deep, deep down in its brackish, still-beating heart. His agonized, idiot visage, his long, pointed nails, his hunched and hairy frame; these things all wore the aspect of a medieval peasant, a village idiot from some lost, forgotten fairy tale. His hair, which was a frizzy, wild coif atop his suffering skull-wherein dull, ignorant eyes rested above the misshapen mouth, a mouth from which no one could guess capable articulation could emerge--all added the mien of hideousness, of a legendary ogre to the grotesque embodiment of long-suffering abandonment; abandoned, because--born of death.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Horror
Dead We Are Not!
The moon it is falling, behind the trees, The first chill of dawn blows like breath in the breeze; The tomb awaits you, your sepulchral sleep,
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Poets
Moll Flanders (1996)
The incredible Alex Kingston stars in the BBC adaptation of Moll Flanders, the seminal, early novel by Defoe of a woman and her turbulent existence in 1693 England; being born at Newgate Prison, reared by the Mayor of Colchester, a wife, unknowingly to her brother, and just escaping the gallows to travel to the slave-shackled shores of colonial Virginia, wherein the story returns full circle. In the interim, Moll proves herself a fighter, a survivor of the class struggle as much as an adventuress and hopeful upwardly-mobile swimmer in it, and reveals both the hypocrisy of the male-dominated world of sex and money, as well as the flatulent outpourings of the Church-dominated society that will hang a child for stealing a handkerchief but allow gentlemen to carouse and womanize to their pleasure.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Criminal
Etty
"I see no other solution than to turn inwards and root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we first change ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned."--Etty Hillesum
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Journal
The 500 Scars
The late, great French director (and star of Stephen Spielberg's 1978 UFO magnum opus Close Encounters of the Third Kind) Francois Truffaut once made a film called The 400 Blows. We propose to call this article, very appropriately as you will see, "The 500 Scars." These, however, are not wounds that were inflicted on the Body of Christ, a Christian martyr, or a heretic in a medieval dungeon. They were, in point of fact, committed against the tragic person of one orphan named Charlie Coats.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Criminal
Eating Raoul
Eating Raoul is a film that stars the stunning Mary Woronov and the late Paul Bartel as "Paul and Mary Bland," a couple living in the degenerate, psychotic hell's belly of the beast known as mid-1980s Los Angeles, a place infused with drunks, bums, hoodlums, con artists, pimps, hold-up men, swingers, swingers, and more swingers. And a lot of people casually kill, such as Paul's boss, who fires him from his job at a liquor store for selling too-expensive wine.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Horror
Harold and Maude
Harold and Maude, directed by Hal Ashby, is a grim yet mildly humorous black comedy about a suicidal young man, Harold (Bud Cort) who seems to suffer the ill effects of a schizoid personality disorder. Harold's flat, lifeless, emotionless demeanor is offset by his dark obsession with death, his bizarre, faked "suicides" (it is never quite explained how he manages to do this, but we must assume since he continually "kills himself" in front of his mother, who maintains a blase attitude about it, that he is either daydreaming or using some special effects props), and the fact that he attends funerals for pleasure. Outwardly, he's an attractive cyborg.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Journal
A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica (1991)
I once, around the Good Year 1989, played the opening riffs off of "Blackened" by Metallica, from an audio cassette (i.e. music recorded on magnetic tape unspooled between two plastic spinners, in a machine specifically designed to do so, called a "tape deck") of their fourth album ....And Justice for All. An aunt of mine, who was into the average arena-rock bands of the era, the Poisons, and Motley Crues, recoiled in horror. "That band SUCKS!" she exclaimed. "They'll never amount to anything!" That was her prediction. Of course, they went on to mega-stardom, success beyond their wildest dreams, becoming one of the top bestselling hard rock/heavy metal bands in recording industry history.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Beat
50 Famous Horror Legends (Part 3)
Night Hag She huddled in bed, remembering the bad horror movie she had watched earlier tonight. The strange, burned killer with the knives for fingers would haunt her dreams, she was certain. He was horrible and comical at the same time. But he was really scary, and she knew she probably should have just skipped that particular flick. After all, the killer had haunted the dreams of the doomed young teenagers, and she, herself, often had disturbing dreams.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Horror
The Headless Corpse
Once, in Wukiang, there was a young student of literature. He was an aspiring teacher, in charge of students from the Tsiang family (who must, we assume have had some prominence), and so had many duties, and worked long days. It was during a particular season that he took a holiday to "sweep out the ancestral tombs."He told his wife one morning, "Prepare my lunch for me as I have much to do today and will be famished by the time I should get in! " Then he left for the day, and his wife went about doing the thing he had commanded.
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Horror
20 Million Miles to Earth
***20 Million Miles to Earth is a science fiction monster movie from the Fifties, made more charming and more exciting by the fact that it dispenses with the typical "guy in a rubber monster suit" in favor of really impressive stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen, the pioneer, and legend in this field. (To slightly misquote Stephen King's seminal nonfiction study of horror, Danse Macabre, Harryhausen use to "pal around with a guy named Ray Bradbury" when he was a kid.")
By Tom Baker3 years ago in Futurism

Tom Baker

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Compulsion (1959)

Edison's Frankenstein

Dead We Are Not!

Moll Flanders (1996)

Etty

The 500 Scars

Eating Raoul

Harold and Maude

A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica (1991)

50 Famous Horror Legends (Part 3)

The Headless Corpse

20 Million Miles to Earth

Stories (855)