Museum of Terror 3: The Long Hair in the Attic

Please allow me to once again lament the loss of this series. This time around, it’s a special tragedy because this seems to start in on chronological short stories, and the stories in this volume are OLD. They look extremely primitive, and sort of hilarious in some cases. You can see how much better Ito’s art has gotten over the years when you compare these stories… well, to the ones in the last volume (which was mostly Tomie stories drawn post-2000). The art in this volume may put some people off, but the stories are certainly still A-list.

The only repeat from the previously published “Horror Comics Collection” is the story from which the volume gets its title. I remember being sort of surprised by this initially, because I thought it would contain all the stories from “Flesh-Colored Horror.” I’m all about new material, but I didn’t think think this volume would have a lot of it, and I wonder if others thought the same thing and gave it a pass. All ten of us that bought “Flesh-Colored Horror,” anyway. “Long Hair in the Attic” is worth re-reading, I’ve got insanely long hair myself and I’m always worried I’m going to wake up and find one of my cats tangled and suffocated in it, similar to the girl waking up with the rat in her hair in this story.

The best story in this collection was probably “Village of the Sirens,” about the two people who go back to their hometown and find it full of eccentric elderly people. Turns out a wizard has summoned demons who hypnotize the townspeople to do his bidding with the sirens mounted on the new factory that scream all night long. Baby stealing and sacrifice is involved, along with European-style devils that look pretty awesome compared to everything else in the volume. It’s a little longer than most of the stories in the volume, and I think it’s sort of a precursor to Uzumaki in a very indirect way. It’s got a lot of twists and turns, and is really well-developed for a short story. The man can write.

“Heart of a Father” is actually much longer than all the other stories in the volume about a family whose children all seem to mysteriously die at a certain age. The children also all suffer from migraines, and then apparently don’t act like themselves. The plot picks up with the one surviving daughter and the boy who watches out for her, a friend of one of her older deceased brothers. The reason behind the madness in this one is especially bizarre, and I have to say the ending was a little disappointing for not making sense. It was certainly very involved, though.

What else… “Love as Scripted” was kind of good only because it was sort of bizarre and about a weird obsession. A girl is jilted and takes action, but then she falls more in love with a video tape. It had a touch of dark humor to it, but it wasn’t quite that funny. “Sword of the Reanimator” was memorable for being really… very lame. It had some good ideas mixed in though, and it was still pretty good for being the weakest story in the volume. Oh! The first story, “Bio-House,” was the most primitive story art-wise but was also one of the best in the volume. It was about a girl who went to the home of her employer and was prepared a meal based on the fact she expressed a preference for “extreme food.” A really long, beautiful, awkward scene plays out where the girl sweats her way through some of the most disgusting edibles you can imagine, and of course things don’t end well for her, but the ending is kind of random compared to the beautiful meal scene. I almost forgot about that one, it really sets the tone for the rest of the volume.

In total, there are about a dozen stories, almost all of which are quite notable. I could go on and on about them, but I’ll stop. “Village of the Sirens” alone was worth the price of admission. I would recommend this volume over the other two, but if you’re turned off by the artwork, start with the second Tomie volume. But please, please, do yourself the favor and read these if you enjoy horror manga at all. This was a gift to us from Dark Horse, and I am still deeply saddened by the loss of the rest of the series.