RESIDENT EVIL

In real estate the key is location, location, location.

There’s almost nothing not to love about this Thai poster, with its rich colors, baroque text, and gory overload of evil. It’s for an Italian horror flick called …E tu viviaine terrore! L’aldilà. If your Italian is rusty, that translates to something like And You Will Live in Terror—The Beyond, which was changed for the German release to Die Geisterstadt der Zombies, which means Spirit City of the Zombies. It hit the Netherlands next and the title was changed again, this time to Hotel der Verdoemden. When the film reached American shores, it was edited down a bit and called Seven Doors of Death.

So an evil which once encompassed the entire beyond saw its grip reduced to one measly spirit city, then to just a lowly hotel, and finally to a suite of rooms, where it watched a lot of pay-per-view porn and rarely showered. But evil always bounces back—it earned a release in Thailand, where it was re-titled The Beyond, and it rejoiced mightily at regaining its former stature. There’s a clear lesson about perseverance in this saga, and we suggest you follow evil’s example.

On a factual note, we have no idea exactly what date the film premiered in Thailand, but even without that info we were going to post something Thai today, mainly because someone mentioned lemongrass soup earlier. So there you go—a little glimpse inside the editorial process here. Oh, and we actually did watch the movie. Look here.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1933—Eugenics Becomes Official German Policy

Adolf Hitler signs the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, and Germany begins sterilizing those they believe carry hereditary illnesses, and those they consider impure. By the end of WWII more than 400,000 are sterilized, including criminals, alcoholics, the mentally ill, Jews, and people of mixed German-African heritage.

1955—Ruth Ellis Executed

Former model Ruth Ellis is hanged at Holloway Prison in London for the murder of her lover, British race car driver David Blakely. She is the last woman executed in the United Kingdom.

1966—Richard Speck Rampage

Richard Speck breaks into a Chicago townhouse where he systematically rapes and kills eight student nurses. The only survivor hides under a bed the entire night.

1971—Corona Sent to Prison

Mexican-born serial killer Juan Vallejo Corona is convicted of the murders of 25 itinerant laborers. He had stabbed each of them, chopped a cross in the backs of their heads with a machete, and buried them in shallow graves in fruit orchards in Sutter County, California. At the time the crimes were the worst mass murders in U.S. history.

1960—To Kill a Mockingbird Appears

Harper Lee’s racially charged novel To Kill a Mockingbird is published by J.B. Lippincott & Co. The book is hailed as a classic, becomes an international bestseller, and spawns a movie starring Gregory Peck, but is the only novel Lee would ever publish.

1962—Nuke Test on Xmas Island

As part of the nuclear tests codenamed Operation Dominic, the United States detonates a one megaton bomb on Australian controlled Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean. The island was a location for a series of American and British nuclear tests, and years later lawsuits claiming radiation damage to military personnel were filed, but none were settled in favor in the soldiers.

1940—The Battle of Britain Begins

The German Air Force, aka the Luftwaffe, attacks shipping convoys off the coast of England, touching off what Prime Minister Winston Churchill describes as The Battle of Britain.

Rafael DeSoto painted this excellent cover for David Hulburd's 1954 drug scare novel H Is for Heroin. We also have the original art without text.
Argentine publishers Malinca Debora reprinted numerous English language crime thrillers in Spanish. This example uses George Gross art borrowed from U.S. imprint Rainbow Books.
Uncredited cover art for Orrie Hitt's 1954 novel Tawny. Hitt was a master of sleazy literature and published more than one hundred fifty novels.
George Gross art for Joan Sherman’s, aka Peggy Gaddis Dern’s 1950 novel Suzy Needs a Man.

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