Welcome to the first article by Cyclopean Orm. Within these upcoming columns, you'll find a bizarre range of topics. Some may resonate with you, some may seem a waste of valuable computer memory. I wanted to warn you in advance. The quantity of Cyclopean Orm articles will be limited to the eight stages of the moon. Imagine a giant eye ball in the sky going through the moon phases. Why am I doing this? Just being creative. If that bothers you, then this column might not be for you.

As I sit here looking at a playing card from a pinup deck from the 1940's, I think of one thing.

Sometimes, you can not improve upon the original.

It's the seven of hearts. I have her placed near my monitor along with several other different kinds of memorabilia. These artifacts help me when I write by lending an atmosphere to an ordinary room.

It's a nude pose. Artistic, not full frontal, but enough to shuffle my deck if you know what I mean.

A red-headed, shapely, beautiful young woman.

I wonder if a lonely soldier owned this deck? If so, did he pick her out as being especially alluring? I've been told that in the beginning this was the purpose of nude playing cards. A soldier could play games with his buddies or, while the rest of the men were busy cleaning their guns, could count the pips in private.

If you compare a deck like this with a more explicit deck, say from the 1970's, you may notice that something is lost in the translation.

Which brings me to a video I watched.

The Relic.

How many times will Hollywood remake Alien? I thought it was dying down, but I was wrong. Because what you have here is basically The Serpent and the Rainbow meets Alien. And out of those two, I only liked Alien.

Instead of a ship, you have a Chicago museum. Instead of a necromantic nightmare creature designed by H. R. Giger, you have something which resembles a boar on steroids. The creature looks like a combination of the Predator creature, The Fly creature, the Rawhead Rex creature...

You get the point.

Extremely derivative, to the nth degree.

It has its moments, its good points. But then again, so does communism.

Sappy scenes, like when the detective is reminiscing about his lucky bullet, take away from the suspense that has so laboriously been built up.

Amusing one-liners are here and there, but do not rescue the movie from the prevalent inane dialogue.

I haven't read the book, but I do know the Horror Writers of America voted it as being one of the best one hundred horror novels.

Of all time.

If the novel is anything like the movie, then I have to strongly disagree with their selection and with their voting criteria. Perhaps they are trying to kiss up to authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child? Come on, I'm joking. But this leads me to an important point.

I believe movies like The Relic discourage many people from reading not only the book that the movie is based on, but other horror novels as well. Be honest. If you had never read Stephen King's Pet Sematary, would you have any desire to do so after seeing the suckola movie version? Pet Sematary may be King's most frightening novel. He frankly confesses that the book disturbs even him.

The King Himself disturbed.

Now, that's what I call a good scary read. But the movie was laughable as a whole.

When I finished the book, it felt as if some long dead thing was standing behind me, gently placing its decayed hand on my shoulder.

Okay. I'm done.

For those of you interested in obtaining an old pinup deck, check here: www.hgimages.dircon.co.uk

And the Blue Rubber Rabbit says: "Phase One Complete." (whiskers twitching)

Copyright 1998, Cyclopean Orm