Wide Atlantic Weird

From the vaults, we bring you a VERY special episode of Wide Atlantic Weird (before it was WAW). Back in 2017, Cian was reunited with his brother Donal in snowy Montreal to talk about the history of the band KISS. Donal has long been a card-carrying member of the KISS army, and Cian has had to live with the results of this obsession, so there's a lot to talk about! And the guys came up with a special concept just for the occasion: instead of reviewing a book or movie, they each read two of the four KISS biographies (along with a few other books for good measure, as they just couldn't stop themselves) and they discussed the story of the band's career through the often-conflicting lenses of the four members.

Even for those with no interest in the music, it's a fascinating trip into the world of four conflicting personalities who decided to dress in leather, paint their faces white, tour the world and fight bitterly with one another for over 30 years. These guys wrote awful things about one another on a regular basis, remember events differently and big themselves up in their books to a hilarious degree. Rock 'n roll excess, spectacle, terrible business and artistic decisions: there's something for everyone here, and as KISS would say themselves, you wanted the best, you got the best!

Digging up an old script at the Cabin In The Woods, Cian addresses an old topic, a suitably spooky and Gothic one for an unseasonably cold summer’s evening: the Uberwald, the mythical imaginary version of Central and Eastern Europe where Gothic tales of the macabre traditionally take place. On this journey we take on the Fighting Fantasy books, The White Wolf Of The Harz Mountains, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and of course Dracula. Grab your torch, pitchfork, and a can of Nightcrawler milk stout and meet me at the castle as we explore the history of this influential idea.

The White Wolf Of The Harz Mountains Etext

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606061h.html

Carmilla Etext

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10007

Dracula Etext

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345

Dracula 1992 Theme

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dracula+1992+theme

Sabrewulf Theme (Killer Instinct)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCAK3bwOGx0

When you get down to brass tacks, the evil New World Order of conspiracy lore have one ultimate goal: population reduction. As such, believers cast environmentalists as being agents of this shadowy one-world government. As we acknowledge the trade-off in environmental degredation caused by human activity, the logic goes, we must wish death upon untold numbers of people.

So in this episode we investigate the reality of the global extinction event, whether population reduction is really a goal of environmentalism, and which actual groups in history have proposed this policy for real. You're going to need a stiff drink: it ain't pretty.

Some months ago we did an episode solely about the first Blair Witch movie from 1999.

We're doing everything else in the franchise (two movies and a bunch of video games) in one episode.

While this might give you an idea of the level of quality we're dealing with, there are interesting things to notice within these films and games. Perhaps the take-home lesson is simply that not everything needs a franchise. But grab a beer and join us at the Cabin In The Woods to see whether there's anything salvageable within the FRANCHISE NOBODY WANTED. Big thanks to our guest Ian Stokes!

Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World is the proverbial ‘not-terrible’ dinosaur story. Let’s face it, besides Jurassic Park, there aren’t many. And Conan Doyle knocked it out of the (ahem) park back in 1912 when he brought prehistoric creatures of literary age in this tale of daring Englishmen, led by the infuriating Professor Challenger, finding dinosaurs alive and well on a flat-topped mountain in the jungles of South America.

The book is a seminal text in the colonial-era adventure genre. In this episode of WIDE ATLANTIC WEIRD, Cian sups on a Bud on the porch of the cabin in the woods and covers the myriad influences on old ACD when he wrote The Lost World. Explore the Victorian and Edwardian obsession with archaeology and exotic places. Percy Fawcett disappearing into the Amazon in 1925. The discovery of Troy. The colonial adventurer who later became an anti-imperial Irish revolutionary. The birth of what we now call cryptozoology – the hunt for mystery animals in both fact and fiction. And exactly why might readers in 1912 have been primed to believe that living dinosaurs might just exist? Down a quick brandy to steady your nerve, pack your elephant gun, and follow a crumbling map to EDWARDIANS AND DINOSAURS: THE PREHISTORY OF ‘THE LOST WORLD.’

Ladybird Pickwick Cassette Edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvNLbyuqsLU

Lost And Found In Maple White Land by Sherri S. Malch

https://michaeldelahoyde.org/dinosaurs/lost-world-tude/

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3398625-the-lost-city-of-z

Frank Reade and Romaina – from Science Fiction Studies

https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/reviews_pages/r70.htm

Darren Naish on Piltdown Man and Conan Doyle (Tetrapod Zoology)

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/piltdown-man-came-from-the-lost-world-well-no-it-didn-t/

Discovery of Mountain Gorillas from Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund

https://www.saveagorilla.org/discovery.html

Beasts And Men by Carl Hagenbeck, 1909

https://archive.org/details/beastsmenbeingca00hage

Hunting Monsters by Darren Naish, 2016

https://www.amazon.com/Hunting-Monsters-Cryptozoology-Reality-Behind-ebook/dp/B01B867JTO

In 1993, the world of gaming was changed forever by Doom, a fast-paced game with action and horror elements that was hugely controversial for its violent and Satanic plot. Joining Cian for a beer and a chat about the history of the game is Ian Stokes, the Wide Atlantic Weird resident IT guy. Grab yourself a brew for a conversation about the wild and woolly days of cowboy game developers, space marines and imps from Hell, connections to moral panics and school shootings, a film so bad even the Rock couldn’t save it, and a tie-in book series that turned out to be covert Mormon propaganda. Don’t put it off any longer – there are weird growling sounds coming from the interior of this episode, so charge your BFG and head inside to take on the forces of the underworld in THE SHORES OF HELL: HISTORY AND MEMORIES OF DOOM. (major thanks to Mr Stokes for the extremely thorough notes this episode!)

Videos

John Romero Dooms Development: A year of madness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBU34NZhW7I

Doom Cover Art Collection (Includes PC, playstation art etc)

https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Cover_art

Doom Music

PC

Robert Prince

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cixW6rogZ48

Notable Songs (PC)

At dooms Gate (Master Of Puppets): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cixW6rogZ48&t=0s

Adrians Asleep (Alice In Chains Angry Chair): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cixW6rogZ48&t=6861s

PlayStation

Aubrey Hudges (Playstation)

https://aubreyhodges.bandcamp.com/album/doom-playstation-official-soundtrack

Notable Songs (Play Station)

Main Theme https://aubreyhodges.bandcamp.com/track/doom-playstation-main-theme

Breath of Horror:  https://aubreyhodges.bandcamp.com/track/breath-of-horror-level-deimos-anomaly

Books/Comics

RIP & Tear Comic: https://www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/comic.php

PC Gamer Crapshoot Doom Novels: https://www.pcgamer.com/crap-shoot-doom-the-novels/

Another strange tale from the world of music here as Cian and Donal delve into Metallica’s infamously difficult phase during the recording of their much-maligned St Anger album. Metallica stand head and shoulders above most other groups in the metal world, and at the time they were making this record their star was still shooting up. But personal problems left them wracked with insecurity and an identity crisis that played out onscreen in the documentary Some Kind Of Monster. The film is full of unintentionally hilarious moments as these monster egos tiptoe around one another on eggshells, using nonsense therapy-language, and making ludicrous musical decisions.

It was an incredibly strange time for one of the biggest bands on Earth, and the guys have a lot to say about it. So grab yourself a coffee, get FRANTIC, and fall madly in anger with IT NEVER GETS RESPECT: METALLICA AND THE MAKING OF ST ANGER.

Donal's Facebook for Obscure Kiss Riff Of The Day

https://www.facebook.com/Donal.S.Gill

A proper, enjoyable 'bad movie' needs to have been made with by someone who truly believes in what they're doing, without irony.

Cian and Ali enjoy a beer and return to the subject of their very first episode: the so-bad-they’re-good films of visionary ‘auteur’ Neil Breen. This time they finally discuss his divisive 2018 movie Twisted Pair, an effort that had them wondering whether Breen had finally become self-aware and if the game was finally up. Would Breen now become another Tommy Wiseau, incapable of delivering the unselfconscious gold of his early career? Well, the guys have been thinking about it for some time but they’ve finally decided. So take a listen to TWISTED PAIR: IS NEIL BREEN SELF-AWARE and decide for yourself.

Quote about Breen from Bad Movie Bible

https://www.badmoviebible.com/single-post/2017/11/22/WORDS-The-Selfish-Breen-Why-Neils-Movies-are-the-Most-Inward-Looking-and-Why-Hes-a-Creepy-Psychopath

Escape Bar Gig on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=escape%20escape%20bar%20none%203&epa=SEARCH_BOX

The Scuts on Bandcamp

https://thescuts.bandcamp.com/

As something of a follow-up to our last episode about the birth of the ‘Spooky New Orleans’ archetype, join Cian for a lockdown bottle of ale on the porch at the Cabin in the Woods for a reading from the book ‘The Magic Island’ by William Seabrook. In 1929, Seabrook’s book was a massive success, telling dark tales about Haiti and its voodoo secrets, and in particular popularising the word ‘zombie’ among Western audiences. Having always been haunted by a story about zombified sugar-cane plantation workers, Cian has tracked the story down to the chapter ‘Dead Men Working In The Cane Fields’ from this book. So pour yourself some rum and settle down for a story from the very dawn of the zombie genre – the Dawn of the Dead, if you will.

The popular image of New Orleans as a spooky, mysterious city full of witchcraft and voodoo needs no introduction. But few know that the city owes this image largely to the work of an Irishman named Lafcadio Hearn – a Victorian-era writer and traveller who sought out magic and mystery wherever he went, a collector of folklore and stories of everyday life. During his ten years writing about life in the Crescent City, he emphasised its sensuality and difference from the rest of America.

Today, the ripples he created still affect how we think about New Orleans and Louisiana. So join Cian for a bourbon at the cabin in the woods as we explore the backstreets of the French Quarter and the bayous beyond, searching for the reality behind the myths of voodoo queens and superstitions.

Sources:

A Fantastic Journey by Paul Murray

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fantastic-Journey-Literature-Lafcadio-Hearn/dp/1873410239

Inventing New Orleans by Frederick Starr

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inventing-New-Orleans-Writings-Lafcadio/dp/1578063523/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=inventing+new+orleans&qid=1587906188&s=books&sr=1-1

Book Of The Dead by Jamie Russell

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Dead-Complete-History-Zombie/dp/1903254337/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=book+of+the+dead+jamie+russell&qid=1587906222&s=books&sr=1-1

Ghosthunter theme (PS2) The Swamp Cemetary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY6c4nkB4x4&t=119s

Marie Laveau by Papa Celestin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLRfDLJLjxc&t=29s

Tellers Of Weird Tales

https://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2017/03/weird-tales-books-stories-of-walking_18.html

Lafcadio Hearn Japanese Gardens

http://www.lafcadiohearngardens.com/