TRASH CASKET

Greetings, scumbags. I welcome you once again to the world of TRASH CASKET, your host the Corpse Monger's personal playground. We've gathered here this foggy February night to discuss something very special. Something near and dear to your beloved old Reverend Corpse. A passion project truly worthy of a crucifixion, and one that will be a MAJOR happening in the eyes of a select few. But to understand where we're going, we must look to where we've been...in this case, the far-flung year of 1988.

Like the Sistine Chapel of gore

As these things so very often happen, an arcade smash from the storied kingdom of Japan wound up on American shores. This time, it just so happened to be the 80s gore-era ne plus ultra... SPLATTERHOUSE. 
SH was nothing short of a sacrificial alter to the post-modern cinematic slaughter espoused in the pages of DEEP RED and within the halls of mainstream multiplexes alike, the ultimate horror simulator erupting at the peak of an insanely fertile era that was nevertheless on its way out. Like Pompeii before it, the Splatter Era was marked for divine destruction, and Splatterhouse was like that ultimate party guest that partied the hardest, but stayed just a little too late. It was the Saturday morning after a GREAT sleepover. Few knew of its wonders, and those who dared speak of it, were disbelieved.

Manna in the desert

Which is where I come in. A full two years later. This is of great import, because by then, we were dick-tip into the burgeoning 90s, a decade that, for all its sudden nostalgic value, was a notorious drag when it came to horror, and every good thing associated there-with. It was the dawn of a neutered decade, and the time of wet thrills we simply took for granted a mere couple years before, was looked down upon, sneered at, derided, and outright banned, virtually overnight. The sea change was blatant. but there was hope. And, fittingly enough, that hope was wrapped up baby-Moses-style within the back of a comic book.

In 1990, I had the good sense to be reading a lot of NOW Comics. You know the ones. RALPH SNART ADVENTURES. The continuation of FRIGHT NIGHT. Bloody LITTLE fucking MONSTERS. The best of the best of the semi-mainstream. And a specific ad kept popping up, alongside the ads for the NES pot of Double Dragon II, and the Tiger handheld Castlevania. This was something I had never seen before, never heard of...this, was, SPLATTERHOUSE. Coming to YOUR house courtesy of the Turbografx 16. A system I would NEVER come to own. Naturally. But the advertisement told me all too clearly, that this was something I flat-out needed to live. This was the last bastion of the kind of horror experience I had grown up with, that had gone rapidly, horribly extinct. I had to have it...but I simply couldn't. And so...I merely stared at the advertisement, obsessed over it, fetishized it, until that ad became as familiar to me as something I HAD played, DID possess.

Rubber redemption

The giant, melty head in the lower right corner of the ad particularly fascinated me so (fitting, then, that it would turn out to be be the game's ultimate endboss), and one day, after returning from a family trip up north, a jaunt into the nearby Walgreens (remember those? They seeded the land before CVS) would put me face to face with a cheapo pack of MADBALLS-knockoff pencil erasers called "Odballs"...and one of them looked almost EXACTLY like that melty head. I revered that tiny chunk of rubber as if it were my personal Christ, until I lost it...as children always do. It would be ANOTHER two years before I would ever get to PLAY Splatterhouse at a friends' house...and while that's a story for another time, it did NOT disappoint. 

We jump ahead to the unthinkable year 2009. Your humble chaperone, now deep into his 20s, was enthralled by the news that Splatterhouse was on its way back, to assault the current generation of video game consoles. 

A patron saint returns - or tries to

I had joined the storied ranks of the forum-dwellers at WEST MANSION, without question THE shepherd of the Splatterhouse zeitgeist in the digital age, writing and illustrating countless fanworks in fevered celebration of the return of my idol. So fervent was I, that I created an entire MYTHOLOGY based around the classic games in a sort of fugue state, and those who've been misfortunate enough to have been following me since the early days claim that it remains some of my finest work. Pure tribute to something vitally important to my own -and countless others' - evolution as horror fans in often dry times. 

Strangman (far left) making alliances and fighting for the cause

Teaming up with the site's lord ROB STRANGMAN, easily one of the greatest champions of the SH cause on the scorched and beleaguered planet Earth, we rode a high tide of fan involvement, and did everything we possibly could to try and steer the new installment toward glory. He even got my work shown within the halls of the new game's developers. It was an INSANE time. At the height of it, I'd even begun to develop a comic book adaptation out of my voluminous output, wrangling insane Australian newcomer AUSTEN MENGLER (soon to be witnessed slinging colors for Eibon Press' adaptation of the Fulci ultra-classic ZOMBIE) to illustrate the madness. As glorious as it all was...it was not to be. 

What might have been

The behind-the-scenes machinations of the Splatterhouse reboot are legendary at this point. It was nothing short of the Red Wedding of video game development, a slaughter that started with the wrong people getting involved, taking advantage of the true believers, and getting slaughtered themselves on the way out, leaving a defiled and wounded animal to be nursed to something akin to health by the loyal few who tried to clean up in the massacre's wake. Alas, it simply wasn't enough. The damage was done, and so, too, was Splatterhouse '10. My proposed SH comic, while by NO MEANS a sure thing by anyone's judgement, was nevertheless being screened by people within Namco for legitimate consideration...before higher-ups within the corporate cathedral pulled the plug, and dropped everyone without a net. Splatterhouse '10 was deemed a failure before release, the game was dumped, and my contact within Namco itself, and indeed my go-to for the comic book pitch, was flat-out ousted in the final days of the culling before the game's doomed release. And like (Kid) Icarus, my time in the sun was over.

There were heroes in that story. And villains. I am honor-bound to this day not to name names or speak to specifics, but one day, the story will surely be told. This is not that day. However, the fact remains that nestled within the fallout, I had produced a novella's worth of original Splatterhouse material, with a cabal of friends and fans praising it to be some of my finest, or at least most impassioned work. Now gathering radioactive dust in the crater of a certified bomb. There was a time when I seriously considered pursuing the SH license from Namco after the nightmare had finally quietly, subsided, but calling it an "uphill struggle" would have been a kindness. I consigned my epic to a cold and rueful vault, and moved on. 

But I DIDN'T move on. How could I? Every now and again, for YEARS, I would get pangs that said to me "it isn't over. It can NEVER be over". Eventually, I asked close friend AND fan (going ALL the way back to those earliest West Mansion days) SURGERYHEAD if I should resurrect the old tales. 

SurgeryHead, offering council

But this time courting a more forbidden idea, a notion far more taboo...if I should twist that library of work into ALL-ORIGINAL material, divorced entirely of the ties that bound it? Could I DARE reshape that lost trove of material into something that retained the spirit of that life-long Splatterhouse obsession, but twisted it, reflected it, knowingly deviated from it...gathered it close with one hand, and violently batted at it with the other? The answer, was a resounding "yes". 

And so, SLAUGHTERED KINGDOM was born.

Thy Kingdom come...

I've gone back under the hood, and folded, spindled, and mutilated the original narratives, character designs, and core ideas until what crawled forth was almost an affront to the initial material...but an affront that celebrated as much as it profaned. What is emerging now, is as much of a statement on what it was to BE that fan, as it is a simple love letter to the material that created him. And "what it was to be that fan" must also depict the world that harbored him. Truly, that world was - and is - an ugly one indeed. 

The original character and creature designs have been...perverted to serve a new and greater purpose. Outside artists have been hired to help weave the tapestry of the world they rage in. What is now shrieking forth is nothing short of a hateful, violent manifesto. And you will see it amongst you. 2017 is the year in which my untamed hate-baby will escape into the physical world, to be held in the hands of the faithful and the newcomer alike. What shape will it take? Where will it be waiting? Ah, but that WOULD be telling, wouldn't it? I can only tell you to keep watching this unhallowed ground. Because this quiet and poisonous place will be host to the opening salvo, however it gestates before your helpless eyes. I hope you feel special. You're party to the birth of a true Anti-Christ, trapped in a cage of corrupted pop-culture art.

I anoint you...and offer you asylum within the walls of the SLAUGHTERED KINGDOM. 

The next sermon will be coming sooner than you think. Be ready with your tithe.

...thy will be DONE.