"Butcher's Block": Creepypasta Cannibals and a Naked Killer

Channel Zero spins a tv series out of a creepypasta (an online story that pretends to recount an urban legend, but has actually been invented by the author.  If it works, people will "remember" other examples, and a real urban legend will be born,).

For Butcher's Block, they took a very intriguing creepypasta about staircases in the woods.  Regular staircases, like someone grabbed one from your house and plopped it down in the wilderness.  A park ranger seems them so frequently that they seem ordinary, although he's afraid to approach or touch them.

From that intriguing opening, they spun off a crazy story about cannibalism.

Two girls in their twenties, Zoe and Alice, move to the city, both to get away from their crazy mother (who did something horrible one night) and to hide from their creditors (Dave from Collections keeps calling).



They rent a room in a creepy old house from Louise, a retired journalist whose hobby is taxidermy (because it's creepy, I guess). Alice gets a job as a social worker, Zoe sits around semi-lucid from schizophrenia medication. And the weirdness begins:

1. The Crazy Scissors Lady ("Do you have any scissors?  I need to cut off my bandages.") warns them to stay away from the run-down Butcher's Block neighborhood, where people always disappear.
2. Alice has to go to Butcher's Block for her job.  The first family she is assigned to help, a mother and daughter, disappear in the middle of the interview.  Alice tracks the Missing Girl to an overgrown park, where:
3. She sees a gigantic, ornate staircase.   A dwarfish creature climbs down and chases her with a knife.

Louise reveals more details about the park.  It used to be the private residence of the Peach Family, whose meat-packing business was the sole employer of Butcher's Block (get it?).  One night in the 1950s, the whole family vanished.  Rescue workers found something in the basement so horrifying that they burned the house to the ground.

Louise helpfully shows Alice a photo of the family on the eve of their disappearance: Patriarch Joseph; his elderly mother; the oldest son Robert (Andreas Apergis, left), whose wife is about to give birth; Aldous ("the bachelor," Louise says with disapproval -- hey, lady, you're not married, either); and some miscellaneous kids.

The photo comes in handy, as Peach Patriarch Joseph starts hanging around, asking Alice (or Zoe -- I can't tell them apart) if she believes in a higher power (turns out he was quite the fundamentalist in life).  He offers to cure them both of their schizophrenia with homemade lobotomies.

Meanwhile Robert, dancing around like the Riddler, tazes the Crazy Scissors Lady, so Officer Luke (Brandon Scott, left) arrests him.  While in lockup, he kills and eats his cellmate.

But the police chief, who happens to be Officer Luke's father, lets him go!  (Robert doesn't actually have any mind-control powers; Dad just made a deal with the Peaches).

When Robert kills someone else, Officer Luke has had enough, and shoots him.

Wait -- the Peaches aren't ghosts?  No, but they're not living in ordinary time, either.  They made a deal with their god (spoiler alert: not exactly a benign god) to allow them to live on in their summer house at the top of the staircase., whence they send the dwarfish creatures or Robert down to kidnap people to eat.

The two teenage daughters of the family were murdered before they moved to Summerland, so the Peaches are very interested in having Zoe and Alice join them as substitutes.  All they have to do is climb the staircase and eat some people.

All that from a staircase in the woods?

There are a lot of disgusting scenes involving bloody this or that, and a lot of boring scenes of heart-to-hearts between Alice and Zoe, made even more boring by the fact that you can't tell them apart.  They could be identical twins (after Zoe is "cured," she dresses in bright colors, which help a little.)  I fast-forwarded, looking for gay characters or beefcake.
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Homophobia:  Officer Luke checks up on Robert in the lock-up and recoils in disgust.  Robert is reclining naked on the floor, giving his cellmate a blow job!  Wait -- no, he's pulling out his cellmate's intestines.  But for a moment you think Officer Luke is recoiling in disgust over a same-sex act.

Gay Characters:  Dad tells Officer Luke "You were always a sensitive boy."  And he never expresses any heterosexual interest, never mentions a wife or girlfriend.  The last scene shows a creepy family at dinner:  Officer Luke, Louise (the retired journalist), Izzy (the girl who disappeared), and Zoe or Alice (I can't tell them apart), but there's no indication that any of them are romantic partners.

Aldous Peach ("The Bachelor).  At least, Louise seems to think so.

Actually, no one expresses any heterosexual interest except for Alice's comic-relief coworker (Aaron Merke), who admits to being sweet on her.

Beefcake: Naked Joseph, if you don't mind the pool of blood.  A couple of cute guys, such as Dave from Collections (Adam Hurtig, top photo).

My grade: D.

See also: No-End House; Candle Cove

"No-End House": No-End Heterosexism from the Sci-Fi Channel

"No-End House," Season 2 of Channel Zero, is based on a creepypasta about a guy whose buddy talks him into going to the titular haunted house: 8 rooms, each more terrifying, and if you make it through them all, you win $500.  There's substantial buddy bonding, and no women are mentioned.  You can easily read the narrator as gay.

Then comes Channel Zero.  

According to the IMDB, it's a woman, Margot (Amy Forsyth) -- media always loves scaring women a lot more than scaring men -- and she goes in with her friends.

1.Jules (Aisha Dee)
2.J.D.
3.Dylan
4. Seth (Jeff Ward, left).

Three guys?  Some potential for same-sex bonding? I looked them up online...some beefcake, anyway.  So I purchased the second season of Channel Zero.

We begin with about 10 minutes of creepy grabbing-in-a-swimming-pool and I'll-love-you-forever scenes between a young Margot and Daddy John Carroll Lynch.  Way too incestuous!

Followed by another 10 minutes of a college-age Margot mourning the death of her boyfriend...um, I mean father, until her old friend Jules shows up and practically drags her out of the house to a bar. Maybe, for a change of pace, she could meet a guy her own age, who isn't a close relative?

Margot picks up the charismatic Seth, and Jules hangs out with just-friend-but-wanting more J.D.

The guys are so taken by the girls that they completely ignore each other. So much for male bonding.

They all decide to go to the No End House, which is quite a popular attraction, with cars lined up for a block.  If you go through all six rooms, you win.

Groups are let in 8 at a time, but members of Margot's group drop out during the first three rooms, leaving only the two couples and the morose Dylan

The remaining rooms lead to various creepy alternate worlds.

J.D. (Seamus Patterson, left) goes to what he thinks is his house, where he sees an alternative version of himself kissing a hot girl.  The two versions get into a fight over the girl's affection...um...

Dylan (Sebastian Piggot, left) is in the house searching for his wife, who was lost there earlier.  But he meets an alternative version, who doesn't recognize him.

Jules just sees a demonic orb floating around.

Margot finds a reality where an alternative of her father is still alive.  She decides to stay, demonic counterfeit or not, because she's still in love with him.

Fortunately, Seth talks her out of it.  He wants Margot to stay with him in the House forever.  Or rather, in a reality where they're the perfect husband and wife.

Torn between two lovers.  What's a girl to do?







Leave with Jules?

There's a lesbian subtext between the two friends, but it's totally drowned out by the creepy incest subtext.  Besides,  I was looking for male bonding.

Well, at least the guys are cute.

See also: Butcher's Block

"Candle Cove": Another "Channel Zero" Zero

Well, I got conned again, with another season of the Sci-Fi series Channel Zero.  But this time wasn't my fault.

 It was based on a very cool creepypasta, written in the form of posts to a message board, in which people vaguely recall a local children's show that aired for a few months in the 1970s: Candle Cove: a poorly produced puppet show about a little girl who finds herself living with pirates.  As they continue to remember, disturbing details arise.

Creepy calliope music. Pirate Percy, a puppet created from parts of old dolls. A villain called the Skin-taker.

A grinning boat who says "You have...to...go... INSIDE!"

An episode with nothing but the characters screaming: "No plot or anything, literally the characters just standing in place and screaming."  Who would produce such a scary program, and why?

It doesn't sound much different from real psychedelic "lost boy" series of the early 1970s, or the horrible children's shows of the 1950s.  Kukla, Fran, and Ollie still gives me nightmares.  And for that matter, what about the horror-fest, The Wizard of Oz? It could happen.

Fans are up to the task.  They've produced clips and full episodes of Candle Cove, a nearly complete episode guide, fan art (does it count as fan art if the original never existed?), and interviews with the producers and actors (who thought they were doing a good job).

Enter the Sci-Fi network's Channel Zero:

In this case, the show began airing in the fall of 1988, when 12-year old Mike and his twin brother Eddie (Luca Villacis) are being horribly bullied by Dane Yolen (Liam Marchand) and his cronies.

During the next few weeks, five kids are murdered, including the bullies and the nice but slow Alex (Keenan Lehmann).  Eddie vanishes.

Thirty years later, Mike (Paul Schneider) returns to investigate the mystery, and reunites with his mother and the relatives of the dead kids: the bully's ugly brother Gary (Shawn Benson), now the sheriff; the mega-ugly doofus Tim (David Lawrence Brown); and his old girlfriend.

They don't want old wounds dredged up....but, then the show starts to air again, kids start disappearing, and Mike is the prime suspect.

Then his daughter shows up, and becomes one of the imperiled kids.  Uh-oh.

Spoiler alert: Eddie killed the kids, and now has returned for Mike.

Eddie is a quintessential gay villain. He can't stand the fact that Mike has a girlfriend.  He says "We're supposed to be together always," and "Tell me that you love me more than her." He has returned for Mike, so they can be together forever.

Add to it the fact that boys and men in this world are uniformly suspicious, belligerent, angry, and violent, while women are nurturing, caring, understanding, and compassionate, and you get heterosexist garbage.

Add to it the fact that the adult male actors are some of the ugliest I've ever seen, so there's no beefcake potential, and you come up with something decidedly unpleasant.

Candle Cove has only two redeeming features:

1. This actor with the great name Greyden Bohutchuk

2. The puppet show itself.   "You have to...go...inside!" may become this generation"s "Down here, everything floats."

See also: Butcher's Block