There are a couple of movies that come to mind that are worth watching, even though they are older and might not be as well known and lack the shock/gore factor. IMO, they are definitely worth looking at.

The two that come to mind are "Carnival of Souls" and "Don't Look Now"

How about suggestions for some more, possibly obscure, horror films that are worth seeing to get a good scare....You know, possibly a movie you've seen, thought was good, but can't find too many other people who have seen it.

So...

 

As I have mentioned before, I am a countrified redneck from the sticks. I have a big garden this year and (when I'm not battling the evil beavers) I spend a lot of time tending the garden and making sure that the fruits of my labor are "put up" appropriately in mason jars for the long winter ahead. Tonight I'm making salsa and spaghetti sauce from the million tomatoes that came from the garden and I can't help but think...

 

Has there been a horror movie about folks that harvest bodies and can them in mason jars (using either the pressure-canning method or a hot water boil) for use later? I have this vision of someone happening upon the country cottage and peering into thier cubbord only to find recognizeable hands, feet and eyeballs peering back from the neatly-stacked mason jars on the shelves.

 

Maybe I'm just a freak at heart, but I think I'm onto something here... what would I call it?  Hmmm... something over the top like "Redneck Barbeque" comes to mind, or something simple like "Canning". The trouble with that last one is most city people wouldn't know what that means I think... but I would know.

 

Anyway, this is just a random thought.  I have to get back to the eyeball sauce.....

 

Don

Hello all

 

After adjusting that previous entry (that was a good idea, Horror Czar), I realized something.  The way I listed my credentials before might make it seem like I'm a member of the Horror Intelligencia.  I want to make something very clear.

 

I'm not.

 

There were many things that drew me to this site.  One of the biggest, though, was that this is the only site I know of that has the balls to admit that the House of Wax remake was actually decent.  I saw that in theater and was literally floored with how much it exceeded my expectations.  Sure, it's true that Paris just stretches so far as an actress...playing a stupid spoiled whore who tends to generally serve no purpose other than to die horribly...such a jump for her.(BA-ZING!)  But the rest of the movie....if I had never seen it, all the reviews I had heard were so horrible I probably never would have.  I'm thankful I did, and thankful that someone else recognized it.

 

Same thing with another Honorable Mention on this site, Shocker.  Sure it's an attempt to create another franchise for Wes Craven.  Sure it's no Nightmare on Elm Street.  It doesnt mean the movie's not good.  The idea is a different style for a slasher movie, it has a nice sense of humor and doesn't take itself too seriously.  What more can you want?  There are definitely way way worse/more mediocre movies to spend your time with.

 

I think the problem is that some horror critics have fallen in with most regular film critics.  A film doesn't need to make some massive statement or be a BOLD NEW VISION in the genre to be good or recommendable.  If and when I become a pro critic, I'm hoping to change that perception.  Just because you get paid to watch movies and talk about them doesnt mean you have to act like a movie has to make some deep philosophical statement to be good.  What we need are more joe q. citizen film critics.  And I'm happy to do my small part to provide that service.  If the film has some psychological undertone, sure i'll mention it, but it doesnt have to to be good or memorable. 

Gather round children, for I've got a nice quaint little holiday story to tell. a violent little twisted take on a holiday classic.  If I missed anyone, my apologies (I tried to limit myself to the number of lines in the original), but I hope you have a good holiday season too.  And if you have meter complaints...you try rhyming Cthulhu (for example).  And now, boils and ghouls.....*clears throat*

'Twas a few weeks 'til Christmas, and 'round the Ossuary,

Not a creature was stirring...seems kinda solitary.

The stockings were stabbed to the chimney, you'll find,

They're a little bit bloody...their owners won't mind.

Attrage provided them, straight from the Outback.

We didn't ask questions...though there were feet in the sack.

And Horrorqueen and Horrorczar sat on their thrones,

Atop a growing pile of tiny elven bones.

When suddenly, a noise! Straight from the snow!

MadMolly thought it was Moseley! Look at her go!

Lucy, Lestat, and bloodlust smelled blood,

See how their fangs glisten at the sound of the thud.

Kittylicks thought she'd work on being a surgeon,

What better to carve up than a poor, hapless virgin.

Petalbo was hoping that it was Cthulhu,

It's tentacles all dripping with slime and goo.

But nope...it's just me. See the suit and the axe?

Zombie reindeer draw the sleigh, they don't leave tracks.

And ZombieMaster, I know you, you want to hear names...

"Now, Carpenter! now, Fulci! now, Bava and Argento!

On, Hooper! on Gordon! on, Kaufman and Romero!"

Quick stop over here, watch out for the monkey!

Pumboy'd be pissed if we landed so clunky!"

Creepiechic was there, always fast to greet.

The horrormom's important, her presence a treat.

BorednViolent, as well. Kaufman eats out her hand.

Timbodi's found Argento, she's always been a big fan.

I've got plenty of gifts...for Serpentine, a snake.

For Unscareable, a movie unable to take.

DoctorLoomis got a tracker to put onto Myers.

Here's hoping he stops him before he retires.

Type O for Lucy, Lestat and Bloodlust,

I get my supplies from a source you can trust;

Kittylicks gets a brand new chainsaw,

Cuts right through bone...it's like POOF! VOILA!

BorednViolent gets tickets to a horror convention,

with guests too numerous and sundry to mention.

Timbodi gets a big-screen tv,

The better to help with the film study;

ZombieMaster gets an assortment of weapons,

Lots of blunt objects and guns by the tons;

MadMolly gets another trip to see ruins,

Sorry, can't kidnap Moseley. Nuh uh. Nothin Doin.

To Attrage, I present fresh victims for play,

I hope there's enough airholes that they get there okay;

Pumpboy gets a new video cam,

One hopes his next movie will really jam;

Tways gets himself a boomstick and cricket bat,

Petalbo, the Necronomicon...careful with that.

And lastly, for the Czar and the Queen, I grant,

This twisted poem, this rhyming rant.

And now, everyone, it's time to go, thanks a bunch,

For you see good dear folks...I'm having someone for lunch.

But before I run off, here's one last line,

"Merry Christmas to all, and a new year bloody fine!"

 

The Strangers - read my review at www.best-horror-movies.com/the-strangers.html.  A Bloody Thumbs Up!  - Horror Queen

Are there any decent horror novels out there? I'm Clive Barker and Stephen King-ed out, I need something with a good scare that makes me sleep with the lights on at night. Any recommendations out there?? Has anyone seen 'The Orphanage' yet..... spanish movie....... have heard it's not bad

Last year I did this for the first time on livejournal, but I kinda did it by memory so I kept it to 10 and 3 honorable mentions. This year, I've been keeping track all year. Thus: 24 and 6 honorable mentions. I'll try to keep it quick. Number doesn't matter too much as half this order could change depending on the day. Mostly its just that they're on the list that's important.  I've also cut a bunch of movies that were on this list out to focus on horror, so you wont find these other movies on the list:  Iron Man, Hancock, Juno, The Dark Knight (which was originally no. 12).

 

Honorable Mentions:

Disturbia- I like this movie a lot, I really do. Good tension...but I gotta say...I can suspend disbelief a lot. But not enough that I'll buy that Shia Labeouf's next door neighbor will make out with him after he admits to spying on her, no matter how he words it.
This Film is Not Yet Rated- A great documentary that ALL movie fans need to see.
ZA: Zombies Anonymous (aka: Last Rites of the Dead)- Refreshing spin on the zombie subgenre whose only flaw is that certain scenes were cut out that might explain the buildup to the ending better.

Hellboy and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army: Both the movies are great, but they have minor pacing issues and also threaten to collapse under their own dark storylines (particularly the first one).

Mother of Tears: I appear to be in the minority in thinking that this is an honorable ending to the Three Mothers Trilogy. I think other critics need to realize he's never gonna be back to his Suspiria days and deal with the change. As it is, the movie is out of its mind with gore and insanity and cheesy scripting. It's biggest flaw is that, I'm sorry Dario, but your daughter can't act her way out of a paper bag.

 

Top 22:

22) Deep Red/Profondo Rosso: Speaking of Dario Argento's glory days...great detective story with plenty of twists and turns. Bright colors and darkly beautiful murder setpieces.
21) From Beyond: Crazy sexual horror sci-fi from Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs.
20) Wizard of Gore Remake: This isn't the perfect movie, but the performances of Crispin Glover, Jeffrey Combs, and Kip Pardue make this movie better than just another remake. Story gets a little confusing, but the atmosphere makes up for it.
19) John Carpenter's The Thing: A classic. I get the feeling I'd place this higher if I hadn't heard so much about it beforehand. Great movie.
17) Hostel: Part II: The major reason I like the Hostel and Saw movies is psychology. And if there's one thing the second Hostel nails, its the psychology of the hunters. For me, I can isolate the tortures and puzzles of the two series, and segregate them from the rest. If you can handle it, I recommend it. Plus, Hostel II has a feministic slant almost in its ending which is kinda refreshing.
17) Tales from the Crypt: Old-fashioned British horror. Subtlety, tension, and twist endings straight out of EC that some directors could learn from.
16) The Frighteners: Where other people worship at Peter Jackson's altar for Lord of the Rings, I choose to bow for his horror movies. This, combined with Dead Alive and Bad Taste, makes for brilliant watching. (And it proves that Jake Busey is a nowhere near as much of an idiot as his brother Gary.) Michael J. Fox is also great. Brilliant blend of horror and comedy as usual.
15) The Return of the Living Dead: Last year I put ROTLD 3 on my list and I still consider it one of my favorite movies. I also said I'd seen parts of this at the time. Now I've seen it all, and I think it's one of the great forgotten horror movies of the 80s and I'm thankful it's starting to get its due.
14) The Craft: One of the many reasons Fairuza Balk is one of my favorite actresses. A movie with great performances and good effects that is one of the more faithful, more sympathetic portrayals of witchcraft and teen life (respectively) I've seen.
13) Hell's Ground (Zibahkhana): A brilliant riff on Texas Chainsaw Massacre and other slashers from Pakistan that feels fresh and original because of the cultural spin.
12) They Live: A great Roddy Piper sci-fi b-movie with classic scenes and campy lines that's still relevant 20+ years later.
11) (tie)Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead: NOTLD is the better movie, but both are still great pieces of horror social commentary.
10) 13: Game of Death: Asian flick filled with twists and turns and suspense that's a perfect fit for the modern climate of Reality TV.
9) Repo: The Genetic Opera: This will be the next Rocky Horror Picture Show, mark my words. Campy b-movie musical greatness, warts and all.
9) An American Werewolf In London: Another great blend of horror and comedy. I've seen bits and pieces for years, but this was the first time I think I watched it beginning to end.
7) The Ruins: The opening might be a bit trying, but some of the effects and the feeling of panic make it great. Best wide-release straight horror film of the year.
6) Slime City: Pure, badly scripted, low-budget, campy, b-movie fun. It's a shame it's so unheard of.
5) Phantasm: I'd seen a lot of this movie before, but I've never sat down and watched it all at once I think. A really good, underrated horror/sci-fi blend.  Barely made the list since I finished watching it the 31st.
4) Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Outside of the fact that the little kid in it is INSANELY annoying, the action is perfect and its the one movie I know of where Arnold actually figures what acting is. Outstanding.  I wouldn't put it on here, but Monsters HD was airing it and its predecessor, so whaddya gonna do.
3) Perfume: Story of a Murderer: Contrary to what one might think, this is not really a horror movie. It's more of an atmospheric dramatic mystery that...just so happens to involve someone killing beautiful women. I have never seen a movie convey the idea of scent as well as this movie does.
2) Frailty: If there's one thing I love, its a movie that combines horror, suspense, mystery, and a statement about religious fundamentalism. With a great twist. Fantastic.
1) (tie)Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead and The Toxic Avenger: I heard of Troma for the first time a few years ago when I saw their table at a convention. I also saw the first crazily tasteless 5 minutes of Poultrygeist there. In May, I went to a special screening of it, and I've been obsessed ever since. The best of Lloyd Kaufman's movies are deranged melanges of horror, comedy, and gore. I wish more people could appreciate their twisted, deranged sense of humor, but until then, I'll just enjoy head crushings, great jokes, over-the-top crazy violence and more by myself.

 

Okay, among other wacky things since I quit smoking I've been having these weird-ass vivid dreams. Last night I'm helping this old guy cut up and remove a tree that was blocking a small dirt road, and we look over to this building/tree (it was both, sort of a Giger-esque monstrosity of architecture) and these humungous sloths were cavorting around in it like monkeys, swinging from branches etc, and I turn to the old guy and say "c'mon, man, giant sloths don't exist!" and he looks at me very sagely and says "This is a dream, mate, they exist in dreams." And I thought, well fair enough then!

Okay so some dream-time later I'm walking around on a wet sports field, and I see this baby swan (the size of a real, adult swan) so I start patting it's head. Then all of a sudden I'm being chased by its mother, this GIANT swan that stood easily like 18-20 feet tall with a huge beak, it looked like some prehistoric beast, and i was fending off its violent pecks as it chased me around trying to kill me for daring to touch its offspring.

Why can't I just dream about naked chicks?

The caption above is from the flick "Home Alone" when Mac decides he's not scared any more, but it applies to me in the way I'm not scared of movies like I use to be. I just dont get that terrified can't sleep feeling...I guess its all a part of getting older and more cynical. The last thing that scared me was a book on a serial killer, BTK, who (among other terrible acts) threw a cinder block through a lady's front window, then killed her when she jumped out of bed to investigate. That sh*t scares me, the thought of a demented sicko throwing a brick through my window and topping me before I can reach for a weapon, actually had me lay awake for a few minutes before a combination of pills and booze ensured a restful night.

I do get scared...things make me jump, and I can always appreciate a well made horror flick. On the occasions when I can bring out that child in me, I do get the creeps watching a good horror movie. Even one I've seen countless times before. I just sometimes miss the days when I'd get into bed, the lights'd go off, and I'd lay awake in fear until sheer exhaustion had me nodding off. It used to happen after most horror movies, actually...but I guess the flipside is that nowadays I'm ecstatic when a flick can make me feel that way, I appreciate it all the more.

Yikes, I've just rattled on like a pratt again about nothing particularly interesting. Oh well. Its been fun.

Why is it that some things scare us more than others?  I guess it depends on our personal experience and imagination. 

For me, the things that scare me are the things I can't see, but imagine might be there, you know, the things that go bump in the night.  Which for me is not necessarily a good thing....

You see, being a flight attendant for the past 22 years, I spend a lot of time alone in strange hotel rooms.  Of course, the urban legends we were told when we started flying didn't help.  Seems there was a flight attendant who didn't show up downstairs to be picked up with the rest of the crew.  The captain called her room and she said she was having trouble finding her one shoe.  The captain went up and helped her look.  He started opening the drawers (which we never use on overnight trips) and in one of the drawers, there was her shoe....along with a note that said "thanks for letting me watch you sleep".  Yikes! that one still gives me goosebumps.

 

Hey there nieces and nephews!  You might want to put on your galoshes for this trip because we're heading down to some wet and sticky southern jungles tonight.  Go ahead and grab those spearguns too, just in case, as we travel deep into the dark depths of the Amazon to pay a call on one of our cousins from the other branch of the evolutionary tree.  Tonight we seek the Creature From The Black Lagoon.

 

 

This is another night of firsts in the Dusty Musties.  First Universal film to make an appearance in this blog and the first appearance by the great director, Jack Arnold.  It's also our first visit to the Happy Days of the 1950s. 

     Leather jackets and greasy hair.  Poodle skirts and bobby sox.  High school gyms and Malt shops.  Horror was leaving the gothic castles, crypts and haunted forests of literature and folklore behind and looking towards a future where alien spaceships filled the skies and giants and robots walked the earth.  Adjectives like Terrifying, Horrifying, and Blood-curdling were being replaced with words like Amazing, Astounding, and Fantastic.  Science Fiction was starting it's decade long reign as the ruler of the Horror genre.  But while others were catching the Earth on fire or colliding it with other worlds, or even making it stand still, Universal was introducing us to a clawing monster from a long ago age in the forbidden depths of the Amazon.

 

 

Universal Studios had already given us Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and the Wolfman and their numerous sequels. They had even reached the point where they were including these great Horror monsters in their Abbott and Costello films.  Although being responsible for the great initial popularity of Horror films, the original Universal monsters had been overexposed and just didn't have the scare appeal they had had a decade earlier, so Universal rose to the occasion and produced some of the best Sci-fi/ Horror films of the period.  Some even in the new fad, 3-D.

     Like their magnificent "It came from Outer Space", Creature From The Black Lagoon was also filmed in 3-D, but it was probably the last of the 3-D boom pictures and since viewer interest in 3-D was fading , most movie houses presented it in 2-D.

    The producer, William Alland, who had also worked with the director, Jack Arnold on It came From Outer Space, got the inspiration for the Creature from overhearing the Mexican cinematographer, Gabriel Figueroa talking about legends of half-men/half-fish creatures that lived in South america.

 

 

Jack Arnold was arguably one of the best sci-fi directors ever.  Not only did he direct our film in 1954, but prior to that, he also directed It came From Outer Space and would go on to direct such classics as Tarantula and the great, underated Incredible Shrinking Man. Jack also has the distiction of having two of his movies mentioned in the song Science Fiction Double Feature from Rocky Horror Picture Show.

     He was another master of the Black and White format, and while telling great sci-fi/ horror stories, he managed to also fill them with more action than most films of the time.  He wasn't afraid of difficulty and having the reputation of being a little hard-nosed and tough helped him to lead his cast and crew into making some great hard-to-make movies.  The production values are great and the conversion of Universal's backlot into a Amazon jungle is simply incredible.  While watching the action, remind yourself, that except for the underwater scenes which were filmed in Florida, this entire movie was filmed on Universal's backlot.  The set and design guys did an amazing job.

 

 

We'll now head into the dense Amazon on the boat of Captain Lucas who has heard the legend of the Man-Fish. The cast who board Captain Lucas' boat, the "Rita" features Richard Carlson as Dr. Reed, the icthyologist and leading man, who realizes, perhaps too late, that they are not equipped to fight a monster. Carlson had also been the lead in It Came From Outer Space. The character of Dr. Reed would become one of the first of the new breed of scientist/heroes.  Previously, scientists in Horror films were usually of the "Mad" variety.

    His girlfriend Kay Lawrence is portrayed by the beautiful and curvy Julia Adams. Julia (later calling herself Julie) mainly worked in western genre films, but would later pull off the TV trifecta of acting in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Night Gallery, and Kolchak.

   Mark Williams, the money man who funds the expedition is played by Richard Denning, whose other claim to fame was being the husband of Evelyn Ankers, the love-interest of The Wolfman.

     The other two scientists are Dr. Maiva, portrayed by Antonio Moreno, who had been one of the greatest stars of the silent era in his youth and Dr. Thompson who is portrayed by Whit Bissel (what a name). Bissel portrayed scientists and professors in many of the horror movies of the time,  including I was a Teenaged Werewolf, I was a Teenaged Frankenstein, and the marvelous original Invasion of The Body Snatchers.  He also played the wonderfully done undertaker in the terrific Magnificent Seven.

 

 

The creature was designed by the beautiful and sexy Milicent Patrick, an ex-Disney animator.  The suit itself was possibly the best of the foam rubber monsters, including gills that actually flapped when the creature was out of water.

 

 

Glenn Strange, who had portrayed Frankenstein's monster in several of the post-Karloff Universal films was originally offered the role of the Creature, but turned it down when he saw how much swimming was involved.

    The 6'-5" Ben Chapman was eventually chosen to play the Creature above water and had ten pounds of flat weights in the feet of the costume to force him to slide his feet instead of stepping. 

     The world class swimmer Ricou Browning was chosen to wear the suit in the underwater scenes in Florida.  Browning was a producer of, and diver in, many of the underwater shows at the Florida Water Show parks that were very popular at the time.  He would later go on to produce the original Flipper movie and write for the TV show that it spawned.  During his career he ended up producing, directing, co-ordinating stunts, acting, and performing underwater cinematography in many situations where water played a crucial element in the shoot. 

     During his his lengthy swimming scenes as the Creature, Browning would sometimes hold his breath for as long as 4 minutes.  Where Carlson and Denning were using oygen tanks, Browning was just using his lungs.  Jack Arnold did not want to use any breathing apparatus as part of the Creature suit, believing that air bubbles would take away from the illusion that water was flowing through the Creature's gills.  While watching some of the underwater fight scenes, you'll notice clearly the air bubbles flowing from the tanks of the humans, but nothing from the Creature.  It's amazing when you realize that Browning was performing all the swimming in that suit as well as the fighting while holding his breath.

 

 

It was the early 50s when films with a large amount of underwater content like Moby Dick, Hunters of the Deep, and of course our movie,  were finally being able to be made.  The scuba tank (originally called the underwater lung) had just been invented by Cousteau and Gagnon ten years before Creature From The Black Lagoon began filming.  Previously, all divers were connected to the surface using air hoses. 

     Most cameras at that time were not meant to be underwater and filming underwater presented quite a few difficulties.  There are strange optical properties involved when filming underwater.  The camera angles are very important and light diffuses and changes color, as well as loses contrast. Cameraman Charles Wibourne designed a light weight water-proof camera unit with two cameras side-by-side shooting each scene at two different angles simultaneously.

 

 

While many of the Sci-fi/Horror films of the 50s tried to blind us with science, this one actually starts out by teaching us how the Earth was formed and how life began.   After our lecture, we find Dr. Maiva hard at work in the Amazonian jungle where he discovers the fossilized hand of a humanoid creature that defies explanation.  So after bringing his remarkable find back to civilization and gathering the good doctors Reed and Thompson, the wealthy Mark Williams, and the beautiful Kay Lawrence, love-interest of all creatures, human or otherwise, they head into the jungle on the good ship, "Rita" hoping to find more fossils, not the real thing.  Boy, are they suprised. What starts off as a jungle paleontology quest, complete with pith helmets, soon turns into a fight for survival. The Creature finally gets a glimpse of the lovely Kay and realizes that humans may be good for more things than just being killed.  Much underwater stalking ensues. I find the scene when Kay is swimming on the surface, back lit from above, with the Creature swimming face-up beneath her to be very erotic.  Jack Arnold even admitted in later years that scene was a stylized simulation of sexual intercourse.

 

 

This film includes plenty of action, with a decent body count for a Universal picture.  In addition to the victims of the Creature, base camps, boat crew members, and others, he is also harpooned, poisoned, set afire, stabbed, shot, and even hit with a rock in futile attempts to hold off his constant attacks.  Trapped in a forgotten lagoon by a deadly Creature from another age, who will escape the claws of the creature?

 

The Creature was the last of the great Universal monsters and his iconic features are almost as recognizable as those of the Frankenstein monster. Compared with Frankie, Drac, the Mummy, and the Wolfman, he may have been Universal's most original monster.  Aurora created model kits for him just like they did Dracula and King Kong and rightfully so. 

     Some of you may say that he's not Dusty--everyone knows who he is.  Yes--but honestly, how many of you have actually watched the film?  Just as I thought--Dusty.  He did spawn two sequels and although not bad, they don't hold the magic of the first one.  TV was still in its infancy and the classic Universal movies had not been released yet to that medium.  If you missed them in the movie theatres and drive-ins then you had to wait for a second run.  The Creature fed the hunger for a new monster and he didn't need spaceships or radiation to be scary.  He filled the gap between Davy Jones and Jaws as far as monsters who can drag you to a watery grave go.

 

At only 79 minutes it contains enough action and adventure to seem much longer.  The soundtrack is not bad either and even features Henry Mancini as the composer of the romantic river exploration music.  Several composers worked on it and it pays off.  The music used for the underwater scenes is great and a nice example of how light and minimal sound can be effective.  The trumpets which blare, "Da-Da-Daaaaa everytime the Creature makes an appearance are also a nice touch.

    You may wonder if Gene Roddenberry and the Star Trek writers were inspired when Dr. Reed informs Mark that, "Dr. Maiva is a scientist, not a fortune teller" and you may wonder at the shivering of environmentalists everywhere as a ton of Rotenone is dumped into the lagoon to drive the Creature to the surface.  Regardless of the wondering, I think you'll count yourself among its many fans, one of which was Ingmar Bergman, who loved this movie and rewarded himself by watching it on his birthday every year.

 

Now load your tub with bubbles, grab your rubber duckie, watch Creature From The Black Lagoon and try to scare yourselves.

 

Next time we'll scurry close to the borders of Dusty Mustie land and check out an early 70s flick, complete with color (a rarity in Dusty Mustie land).  You may want to bring that bug spray.

Stay tuned to TBS on August 7 at 11pm for Night Tales the series hosted by Flavor Flav!

Based on the double feature horror film aired on BET last Halloween, this new series of Tales from the Crypt  style series in sure to be a horrifying hit !

will keep u updated!

 

 

It's been a long-ass time since I've had the time to add a post here. As soon as I got to school, I found myself with 13 hours of school and 10 hours of work per week.... not to mention trying to find time to do homework and write reviews for the newspaper and applying to study abroad and applying for a film series internship... not to mention trying to stay healthy and failing. But let's talk about the month in horror. I haven't seen as much as I'd like (I'm taking 2 film classes and altogether have to watch 3 movies a week for my classes), but here it is...

 

Before I went back to school, I watched Urban Legend, Dead Silence, The Amityville Horror (1979), and The Backwoods. I also finished reading "The Ruins" and "The Stepford Wives."

The only reason why I slightly enjoyed "Urban Legend" was because I love urban legends and because it was filmed in a really nice location. For the most part, however, it was a rip-off of all the other 90s teen movies and I hated the main character. But this movie reminded me of those "Scary Stories to tell in the Dark" books that I used to read. Now I'm on the hunt for them.

 

I could definitely have lived without seeing "Dead Silence." It wasn't awful, but it was just... nothing. It didn't contribute in any way to my movie-watching. It was decent, the score was nice and I liked the atmosphere, but there was nothing to be taken away from this. As far as I can see, this film is really just another brick in the horror wall.

 

I thought "The Amityville Horror" was much more worth my time. I love the 70s. It's probably by favorite decade for any type of film, but horror especially. This is the decade where they were building the fine line between the stuff that Hitchcock and others did and the fun junk of the 80s. I've also found that every 70s horror movie has managed to deliver at least one or two decent scares, and I really liked the score to this. I admit that this one isn't the best 70s horror movie, but I did still enjoy it quite a bit. It's got that "70s air" that I really like.

 

"The Backwoods" is actually quite decent, which is more than I was expecting even with Gary Oldman in it. It wasn't as much a horror movie as I expected - more like horror in the way that some might consider "Straw Dogs" a horror movie. Sometimes I forget it isn't. The characters in this weren't entirely stupid, which was a nice change.

 

"The Ruins" by Scott Smith was frightening. It's always scarier to read something because it's more bearable to take in all the horror without actually seeing it but at the same time you're watching it in your head. This book was really frustrating. My friend and I are always talking about how frustrating it is when the villain feels "entitled" to cause the horror. I talked about this in my review of "Inside" for those of you who read it.  My friend and I both love horror, but we really do get frustrated with villains who think they have the right to do these things. Same with this book. The villains are the vines, and they are annoying. Still an awesome book.

 

"The Stepford Wives" by Ira Levin was awesome. I've seen the movie (er, the original, so all of this will be referring to that on since I haven't seen the one with Nicole Kidman), and I think I actually preferred the ending of the movie to the book. The same thing happens in both, but it's so abrupt in the book that it threw me off. Again, the villains are annoyingly "entitled" to doing this. This book makes me fear marriage, but it did come out at an opportune time because women were really going out of their way to claim their independence, so it was relevant. I liked it.

 

And then, with an unfortunate last trip to the movie theatre (my mother and I saw "The House Bunny" - gag), I was off to school. Since I got back to school, I have been watching and reading what I can between all the crap I have to do at school. I've read some Clive Barker short stories (yum) and I read "Flowers In The Attic," which I loved, and started the sequel but couldn't get through it. So far, movies have included....

 

"Deathdream." I forgot the year, but I think this just beats out "Black Christmas" as my favorite Bob Clark movie. This one is GREAT!! It's about a kid who goes off to Vietnam, dies, and returns home as a zombie. Symbolic, no? I think the best part was that the guy reminds me of my brother. Anyway, I thought this movie was pretty genuinely creepy, though the mother was the creepiest of all. Awesome movie, totally going to add it to my Christmas list.

 

"Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America." Three short films by the same guy, Douglas Buck, all deal with dysfunctional family situations in America gone awry. This is like "The Squid and the Whale" meets "The Shining" or something like that. The first one is quite possibly the creepiest short film I have ever seen. The second one is sort of a follow-up, and it's expected after the first one - not as creepy. The third one is altogether different. It's much longer, for one thing, and is completely devoid of blood (as opposed to the others). It's more of a horrific drama. All three are very grainy and all rather disturbing, especially the first one.

 

I watched "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror" for my History of Cinema class and LOVED it. I loved it a lot more than I did "Dracula." I love watching early horror, especially the German expressionism stuff, like "M" (which we also saw but I've seen it before and I won't talk about it here, though I love it). By this point, filmmakers were figuring out that shadows are damn scary and that most of the horror is in atmosphere. The only thing I didn't like was that in the version we watched some parts had sound, like whenever people gasped or screamed. It was very distracting and tacky.

 

The second movie I showed for that Obscure Film Club I mentioned earlier was an early 60s movie called "The Innocents." It was beautifully shot, though I wasn't a huge fan of a lot of the dialogue and how it was delivered - very British. However, some of this was rather creepy. They were really figuring out how to make ghosts scary at this time and they did pretty well. None of us really liked the ending, though. It was pretty sudden and ambiguous. I didn't mind how ambiguous it was, but the ending was so abrupt that it was ridiculous.

 

My friend and I decided to watch the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" instead of doing Japanese homework. I liked that it followed the book a lot more accurately than the 1978 one did. I didn't write about this one right away, so I don't remember as much of what I liked about it as I would like to, but I did enjoy it.

 

"The Experiment" was a good chance for me to practice my German numbers. It was also a damn good movie. It came out a few years ago and is based on the Stanford prison experiment of the 70s, where random people were put in a fake prison as either guards or prisoners and were observed. It definitely had that frustrating villain aspect, but it was expected and these guys volunteered and, anyway, I think the amazing buildup was definitely worth it. Great movie.

 

That's it, except for the book that I am a chapter or so into called "Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender In the Modern Horror Film." I like it so far, and it's really put me in the mood to watch "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." I showed "Inside" at the beginning of the year to a group of about 8 or so friends, and they all hate me now. Maybe this is a good excuse to get them to like me again - another horror movie.

...has been a lot less lazy lately. But thanks to the library, my friendly neighborhood video store, and various online sources, I've been able to set aside times at night when I get to see lovely, delicious horror movies. (At least, when my mother and I aren't going to the movie theatre to watch "Mamma Mia," but I'll pretend I never said that. I know I'm female, but I think most of my friends forget that.)

 

EYES WITHOUT A FACE!!!!!!!!!! I loved this. Not only is that one chick in this (Alida Valli from Suspiria and The Spider's Strategem), but this film is so amazing I couldn't believe it. The French really have been doing it right from the beginning. This is so classy and perfect and almost seems like it isn't a horror movie. It's gothic, very eerie, and it's got the father doing this for his daughter. Also, I've always been a big fan of blood & gore being implied rather than shown, ESPECIALLY in cases where it's going to end up looking fake. It's easier to imply than to spend hours on makeup and special effects that will someday be laughed at. Also, I loved that everyone seemed to have their own theme song in this movie. Really, really awesome. I've always like old horror movies like this.

 

My friend and I rented "Session 9" because we wanted something actually scary, and I'd heard a lot about this one. Also, it was between this and "Urban Legend" WHICH, by the way, I still want to see. I heard about this movie from somewhere, but I can't remember who from. It's some famous person's favorite movie. Some author, I think. I keep thinking Chuck Palahniuk, but then I think.... but really.... would this be his favorite movie? It's driving me nuts, though. Oh wow, I was right. I just looked it up. (Also, this has nothing to do with movies, but why are my eyes watering? .... oh, my mom's chopping onions.) I thought this movie was pretty eerie, but it's really a night movie. It would be completely ineffective during the day. I liked that the characters were not complete morons like characters can often be in a horror movie. Pretty spooky though, and though the twist was somewhat unoriginal the very last line still managed to send shivers down my spine.

 

We also rented "Turistas." I actually don't watch a lot of new horror. I don't ever go to the movie theatres to watch horror movies, usually because the ones that are out don't seem all that great (except for "The Midnight Meat Train" - I would DEFINITELY go see that if it was playing anywhere nearby). I remember when this one came out and I saw a preview for it. If I had told myself then that I would watch it a year or so later, I wouldn't believe it. But I did watch it, and I didn't hate it. I didn't particularly like it, either. For some reason, I just didn't consider it to be a horror movie. Like "real horror." The beginning is supposed to set the tone and create foreshadowing, but it didn't faze me in the least. I was sitting there and usually I feel at least a little bit queasy or unsettled if there's an opening like that or a scene somewhere in the movie like that scene, but I remember being completely aware of not being frightened or grossed out or really anything in the least, except for possibly indifference. Also, a lot of the time what makes a horror movie scary is having someone do something for absolutely no reason other than because they are absolutely sadistic. In this case, I won't lie, the guy has a pretty good reason to do this stuff. He's right. The gringos invaded their country. I think that if I was in Brazil, though, in a situation that seemed like it'd end badly, I'd think of this movie and be scared. In real life, people do things for a reason. But in the film world, the less of a reason there is, the scarier the movie is.

 

I am also reading the book "The Ruins" because I'd like to see the movie and I'm indulging in one last horror book before I go back to school on the 31st. When my friend and I were at Blockbuster renting those last two movies, I almost checked out either "The Ruins" or "Rogue," but, surprise of all surprises, everyone's (least) favorite video store has a clever new ploy to put all their hardworking, independent-owned counterparts out of business: "charge $5.43 for new releases and 99 cents - $1.99 for everything else. There was no way I was going to spend almost 6 bucks on a rental movie, geez, even a horror movie! I'll wait till I'm back at school and my netflix is started up again.

 

On the subject of reading, I finally got an issue of the August Rue Morgue. I got it around the 11th, I think, but I don't know if I mentioned it. I got it when I was driving (I WAS DRIVING!!! Hah - this is a big deal for me. I'm 19 and just learning how to drive) home from Eastern Washington and we stopped at the Barnes & Noble in the Tri-Cities. This issue is loaded with goodies. Not only does it focus on Pumpkinhead, it goes into the Clive Barker movies that are being made. The Midnight Meat Train, Book of Blood - and there was one more. Then there was something about the short story Pigeons From Hell, and southern gothic art. And Thriller on the back page. This is probably the second-best issue of the summer, right after the May issue on French gore. At least in my opinion. Close after the August issue is the June issue, on Japanese horror, and then the Hellboy one - for some reason, I wasn't big on it. Maybe because I have no real interest in seeing the movie.

 

When I get back to school, one of the first things I'll do it get my Friday night film club going again. Most of what I show is horror, but I also show random obscure movies. I don't think I've mentioned this before either, but I'll end this blog entry with the movies we watched last year in film club.

Pink Flamingos

Suspiria

The Devil's Backbone

Funny Games (the original, though it doesn't exactly matter)

Cannibal Holocaust

Blood and Black Lace

Man BItes Dog

Cemetery Man

The Iron Rose

El Topo

Sleepaway Camp

Ma Vie En Rose (little gay boy, not Edith Piaf)

Eraserhead

Cinemania

Sisters

 

Favorites: Pink Flamingos (I love John Waters), Suspiria (duh), Man Bites Dog, Cemetery Man, The Iron Rose, Sleepaway Camp (again, duh), and Sisters. I'll tentatively add Cannibal Holocaust to the favorites too. I don't think I ever want to see that poor turtle being torn apart ever again, but I'm glad I watched this. This was one of the movies I was too afraid to see until I decided to show it in film club (Man Bites Dog and Pink Flamingos were two others on that list - so were Irreversible and Audition, and I saw those this year too!). I'm really glad I saw it. It had a great (scary) message and I enjoyed it a ton more than "House On The Edge of the Park" which, if I'm not being a dumbass, is done by the same guy - Ruggero Deodato.

 

With that, it's time for dinner. Maybe I should ask my mom if we can cook ourselves a turtle. :D

Just a quick note here.

I used to read Fangoria for my horror.  I liked it at first, but I got this feeling that there weren't any true film reviews in it and it just seemed to say every movie was fantastic in excessively praising articles.  Plus the writing style made it a chore to get through an entire issue (I like reading cover-to-cover).

So I'd just finished writing that senior thesis, and I was in a Barnes and Noble and saw a magazine with Dakota from Grindhouse on the cover in one of the most striking pictures I'd ever seen.  The magazine had articles about grindhouse's history, tons of interviews with people invovled with the movie and grindhouse in general (Zombie, Rodriguez, H.G. Lewis, William Lustig, etc.)  They were showing a reverence to the past while looking toward the future, which Id NEVER seen in Fangoria (a fact which REALLY didnt help in writing a paper about past movies....).  Then I read the reviews and saw that they actually reviewed recent THEATRICAL FILMS!  I defy people to try and find print reviews in Fangoria of films that have come out that AREN'T part of random pieces of pointlessly praising fluff.  They also reviewed direct-to-dvd films and rereleases of classic horror.  There were even articles on movies from before 1950 which Fangoria wouldnt be caught dead publishing.

 

Not only that, but there were reviews of books, cds, games and comics/graphic novels; articles on culture and art that related to horro, darker music.  This was Rue Morgue, Canada's premiere horror magazine.  I couldnt get enough and have only missed one issue since then (because no one was selling it oddly....).  It's never been hard to get through the articles even on things I didn't really care about before.

 

What made me write this post?  Well after about 12 issues, I've decided to get a subscription.  I filled out the info, sent it away.  A couple weeks passed and I actually got a hand-addressed form letter from the magazine (actually signed by the editor-in-chief) thanking me for subscribing to their magazine.  I'm sure being a popular magazine, they get a good number of new subscriptions per month, but doing something like that is really special.  They really care about their audience much like this website cares about its visitors.  And just like I respect this site for that, I respect the magazine for it too.

 

Anybody else read genre magazines?  Fangoria's more for mainstream wider-release movies, so I have respect for them too, but I worship Rue Morgue.  lol.

It has never bothered me before. People do it all the time. It's their lives, their choice. I will never meet them, they will never meet me. All is well....Except for when it happens to hit me in the face. It's still not my choice, it's still not my life. Nothing I can do can change things. I have to scream, maybe even something more. I can't even face it's back. The problem has it's ways of destroying me. It's eating the back of my mind. And I can't hide from this feeling. I can't stop this feeling. I would like to sneak up and launch an attack but everytime I'm close I pull myself back. I can try to forget. But I can't forgive. Playing God as if there was one, is more than wrong. I don't belive in this way of life. If I could erase my memories and the Law. If I could punish them for all their wrongs. But What is mine. For not stopping this Unimagineable act............What is this place we live in? Choices are not choices to a one sided story. But where will I go to escape this rage....Maybe sleep and dream....See what could have been and what life would be like. What's it mean to give up on something so sweet? A chance to change the world, to save lives. TAKEN. Not, to help the world, just one's selfish want. To END something pure.We never knew eachother. We never will. It's not your fault, you didn't deserve your fate....Everytime I think of you....I almost feel that I've gone insane. The better being of your pass is you'll never feel any pain. GIVE IT TO HER....All of it...The only thing to do. But what good does this do? Never can I bring you back, although Would I want to? My Anger becomes my pain, then I suffer in this shame....What do I have to do to forget....But I would never forget you.....Right now things feel like me verses me and all of them. Hush my thoughts, kill my crave, to see what it's like to know your name. Forgive me you may, but what happens to you?.....

Twentieth Century Fox and MGM Home Entertainment released a collection of horror classics on Blu-Ray on September 15th, and I got the lot of them. If you haven't made the jump to Blu-Ray yet, it is a leap worth leaping in my opinion - big screen TV and Blu-Ray together is the closest thing to being in the theater that I've experienced, with the added benefit of no cell phone rings or couples murmuring sweet nothings to each other in the row behind... not to mention that my feet rarely stick to the floor in my den. Rarely.

 

The weekend of September 19 and 20 was rainy and flooded in the East Tennessee town of Athens, where I live. With no outside work to do the time was ripe for a horror movie marathon. After gazing longingly at my new wood chipper sitting idle in the barn near a pile of branches soon to become mulch, I unwrapped the first of the new Blu-Rays and settled in...

 

Child's Play

 

Pretty much everyone has seen this film, but it had been a very long time for me. While not scary at all, Chucky has become an icon of horror, albeit silly horror. The crisp visuals did make watching this one more enjoyable than I remember and I exclaimed out loud more than once about how good it looked.

 

For those who don't know the story, a serial killer who is also into voodoo is cornered in a toy store where he makes his last stand against the homicide detective determined to take him down. The killer planned for immortality by learning an ancient voodoo spell capable of moving his soul into the body of another prior to death. I guess he planned to continue "hopping bodies" over and over again to cheat death through all eternity. Unfortunately for him, there are no available hosts in the toystore after hours, so he settles on a "Good Guys" doll.  The doll winds up in the hands of a little boy who soon discovers that it has come to life and embarked on a killing spree.

 

This one if actually pretty fun... a bit better than I remembered. I just had to try not to apply any logic to the situation. I can buy a doll coming to life via a voodoo curse, but the strength the doll had to knock over adults with no means of leverage took a bit more work.

 

I'm not usually one for "special features" on these DVDs, but the piece on special effects was pretty cool. The mechanical dolls used to give Chucky life, along with the scenes where a "little person" was dressed up as a a knife-wielding toy, were fascinating. On to the next...

 

 

Wrong Turn

 

I had actually never seen this one before. The premise is that a young medical student in a very hot Mustang speeds through the West Virginia countryside on his way to some very important meeting and makes a "wrong turn", later slamming into another car packed with camping gear and leaving himself and a group of youngsters without transportation and stranded in the middle of nowhere. In "The Hills Have Eyes" fashion the kids are picked off one by one by a family of grotesquely deformed folks who proceed to cook them up and chow down. Lots of gore and sillyness ensues, and the film is not bad.

 

I didn't look at any special features, but the shots of "West By-God" Virginia are amazing in Blu-Ray. I did particularly enjoy the chick in the tree getting her head cut in half also, and the way that her dead body hit against limb after limb as it hurled toward the ground was a nice touch.

 

 

Wrong Turn II

 

There was no question that the sequel to Wrong Turn had to be next. This one starts the same way as the first, except this time it is a hot chick in a hot car driving through the same West Virginia wilderness. She is an actress on her way to film a reality show with an end-of-the-world theme. She takes, you guessed it, a wrong turn... and hits a deformed guy crossing the road. He literally flies over the car and lands in a heap behind her - quite dramatic. After she gets out to investigate the carnage the accident victim gets up, straightens his body, and acts creepy, while another emerges from the woods and cuts her in half length-wise with a machete. AWESOME scene!!

 

The rest of the cast gets tired of waiting on the now-dead actress and begins filming. The host of the show is played by Henry Rollins, and he is fantastic as an ex-marine searching for a niche in the world. Rollins absolutely steals the show as he lurks around and plans the rescue of the reality actors who are dismembered and disembowled one by one.

 

This is an example of a sequel soundly surpassing it's predecessor - I really enjoyed Wrong Turn II. There was even some character development here, unlike many of the horror of late. Not a ton mind you, but just enough so that I shouted with glee when some of the losers met their ends, and cheered for others as they attempted their escapes. This is a good one.

 

 

Misery

 

What a classic this one is. I hadn't watched Kathy Bates as Annie in a long time.

 

Annie is a dorky country woman who "rescues" her favorite author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) after he has a terrible accident in a snow storm. Sheldon writes trashy novels about a woman named "Misery" and Annie is his "number 1 fan". After the rescue, Annie holds Sheldon hostage and he psychosis becomes more and more pronounced.

 

I was amazed by the preformance of Kathy Bates in this film. She won an Oscar for the performance, and it is very clear that she deserved every ounce of that little gold statue. Truly amazing... and the hobbling scene is worth the price of admission on it's own. Chances are that most have seen this film a few times, but another watch is always warranted, and the Blu-Ray experience just adds to it. This was a very good purchase.

 

 

The Hannibal Lector Collection

 

The saga of Hannibal Lector is presented all together here with three DVDs included, Manhunter, The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Of course, all had to be watched back to back in a Lector extravaganza Sunday afternoon.

 

Manhunter is the "prequel" that introduces us to the cannibal, Hannibal. Lector eats his way through respectible society with a determined cop on his trail. Lector is finally caught and imprisoned, setting us up for...

 

Silence of the Lambs, the classic film starring Jody Foster and Agent Starling. So many classic lines. So many enduring characters. Silence of the Lambs is a true classic that I can watch over and over. Blu-Ray is a nice touch, but I'd watch this film again in any form.

 

Hannibal is the sequel starring Julianne Moore as Starling. She does a fine job, but I would have liked to see Foster again in this Role. The follow-up to a classic is always difficult... where do you go next? Hannibal decides that grossly disfigured characters, man-eating hogs and feeding a victim his own brains for dinner is the perfect place to go. Good film, though not nearly as powerful as Jody Foster in the main event. Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal is perfect throughout.

 

 

 

Slowly but surely my DVD collection is being transitioned to Blu-Ray because the experience is intensified with the almost 3-D quality of the picture. For the most part I am not replacing DVDs I already own but rather just buying my new ones in the new format... but this bunch was an exception that I don't regret. Oh, and I forgot to mention, both Child's Play and Misery include both the Blu-Ray and the DVD versions, so there's somethign for everyone. Good stuff, and highly recommended.

 

What a weekend!

Tonight is a night of celebration here in Dusty Mustie land.  The nieces and nephews are chattering around the bonfire.  We're breaking open a great vintage of Banana wine.  Life is good.  Because tonight is our first Hammer entry to add to the Dusty Mustie collection.  It's also the first time Christopher Lee has appeared among the Dusty Musties.  It's "Dracula Has Risen From The Grave".  Yeah Baby!

 

It's also the first appearance among us of that greatest of all horror villians, the most feared being to ever haunt the living: DRACULA!  Bram Stoker's cursed count has appeared in over 60 film adaptations, and inspired countless other vampires on film.  Christopher Lee has portrayed the king of all bloodsuckers a record 9 times, (7 for Hammer).  No sleight to Lugosi intended (he will soon be making his own appearances in these posts and is also a true Horror master), but Lee was always my favorite count.  Hammer's version was a more violent and bloody take on the legend than Universal's, but without going over the top into gory and Lee still maintained the charm and dignity befitting the character.

 

 

Lee, at 6'-5", gave the count a towering commanding presence. He wore the teeth well and filled the cape magnificently.  His eyes never lost that intense glare whether they were red and bloodshot when your death was near or clear and focused when in seductive hypnotizing mode.

 

 

We could devote pages to Lee's career, but let me just throw out a few tidbits:  He was born on May 27th, 1922 (Vincent Price's birthday was also 5/27 and Peter Cushing's was 5/26).  He was born in London and served in the RAF during World War II, as a member of special forces in the intelligence field.  He is also a Knight.  He has been quoted as saying, "One should try anything he can in his career except folkdance and incest."

 

You youngsters know him as Count Dooku in the Star Wars universe and Saruman in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  He was the only cast member of the latter to have actually met Tolkien.  But if appearing in both these tremendous movie series was not enough, he also has the distinction of being a Bond villian, Scaramonga, in The Man with the Golden Gun.  He was a distant cousin and good friend of Ian Fleming's and has said that he thought Pierce Brosnan was the closest to Fleming's image of Bond. He also portrayed Sherlock Holmes three times on film. I believe at one time, he was considered the center of the Bacon's Degrees of Seperation Universe by being able to be linked to anyone in Hollywood in an average of 2.59 steps, beating out even Bacon himself. He has been honored by several stuntman unions for doing many of his own stunts in the early Hammer days, severely injuring himself on several occasions. He has appeared in over 220 film roles, over 85% of which were as one of the bad guys, making him truly a villian for the ages.

 

  Getting back to Horror, where we belong, he has portrayed Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, and the Mummy on screen.  He turned down the role of Dr. Loomis in the original Halloween, a decision he admits to regretting. He was good friends with, and lived next door to Karloff in London. Like Chaney, Jr and Karloff, he never liked the term "Horror" film.  This was art to these men and the others like them who loved the genre and their fans.  He also  likes heavy metal music and his favorite director is Tim Burton.  Lee's contributions to the genre cannot be overstated and he is possibly your ol' Uncle Pump's favorite Horror actor.  It is an honor to induct him into this blog.

 

 

Hammer studios' contributions to the genre , also, cannot be overstated.  While American filmakers embraced the atom and many sci-fi wonders in the 1950s (some of which, will also make their way into this blog), Hammer brought classic Horror back to the forefront and filled a black hole in the hearts of true Horror fans, who were tiring of different varieties of men in lizard suits and giant bugs.  Hammer with  Lee and Cushing and Fisher and their assorted lovely ladies led the re-birth of Horror and may have produced some of the most beautiful gothic films ever made.  I will explore the relationship of Cushing and Lee, true best friends, later on when I post movies in which they both appear, but I will add this:  after Cushing died, Lee said he knew he would never have anything in his life again like their friendship. 

 

Hammer hit the screen in the late fifties with "Curse of Frankenstein" and "Horror of Dracula" instantly making their mark on the genre and making Cushing and Lee household names, at least among Horror fans. I will dig up and throw upon our altar more about the beginnings of Hammer in later posts when I talk of earlier films, because Dracula Has Risen From the Grave wasn't made until 1968, a full ten years after Horror of Dracula.  Dracula Has Risen From the Grave was the third film in the Hammer/Lee Dracula series, and yes, Hammer considered them sequels to each other, at least the first few.  Some would say it is the fourth film because they are counting 1960's Brides of Dracula, but since Dracula wasn't even in it, and although it's a fine movie, I don't count it in this sequence.  Our film followed Dracula: Prince of Darkness. Dracula's demise in that film, directly relates to his re-birth in ours, so there is no question about it being a sequel.  Dracula: Prince of Darkness has the distinction of being the bizarre one where Christopher Lee's Dracula did not speak--at all!  He thought that the scripted dialogue was so awful that he refused to utter it, and they made the movie anyway, and honestly--it's not that bad--just a little weird, and we certainly don't have a problem with weird, do we?  And don't fear --Lee speaks in our film and what he has to say is none too pleasant.

 

Dracula Has Risen From the Grave also has another distinction.  It managed to be one of Hammer's best productions and their single  most profitable film, without the involvement of Cushing or their famed director Terence Fisher.  Fisher had been injured in a car accident and the directing duties fell upon Mr. Feddie Francis, one of the best camera men in the business.  Francis started as a camera man, worked his way up to cinematographer, and then director--never losing his camera man's eye.  A brief note for those youngsters who still have their bananas peeled for them:  Cinematography is not a map of where movies are made.  The cinematographer is in charge of all aspects of camera work, imagery, lighting, lens choice, filtering, etc, in other words: the "look" of the film.  Along with art direction, and set design, the Cinematographer turns a writer's words, an actor's performance,and a director's vision into an actual work of art.  I believe cinematography is very underated when heaping praise on a film.  I think we all have been guilty of saying how beautiful a film is and then not even checking the credits to see who the cinematographer was.  A black banana of shame to us all as we promise to do better in the future. The grand and beautiful Cinematography is one of the things that make Hammer films so magnificent and irresistable to watch.  Very rarely do you see films in our genre look as wonderful as these. Dracula Has Risen From The Grave was also the first film to be rated by the MPAA.

 

 

 

Freddie Francis would bounce back and forth between the director's chair and Cinematographer's lens with ease.  He directed over 30 films including The Creeping Flesh, and the wonderful anthologies, Tales That Witness Madness, 72's Tales From The Crypt, Torture Garden, and the marvelous and vastly underated Dr. Terror's House of Horrors.  Freddie won two oscars for Cinematography, one being the American Civil War film, Glory.  Among his other Cinematography credits are the superb 1980 The Elephant Man and 1991's great remake of Cape Fear.  Freddie Francis, who just died 2 years ago, was a true God of the lens, and along with Terence Fisher, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Ingrid Pitt and all the rest of Hammer's other cast of genius and colorful characters, both in front of and behind the lens, assures that our British friends across the Atlantic can always stand tall and proud, earning their place among the best the Horror genre has ever had to offer.  One of the ways you know you're watching Hammer is when you realize that every aspect of the film was produced  with a love of the genre and a desire to create a piece art with their films.  If Romero and Raimi are working men's blue collar beers, and Hitchcock is champagne, and Jason and Myers are shots of strong vodka (I guess cronenberg is a hit of acid), then Hammer is the smooth aged Cabernet Sauvignon of the genre.  There's a time and place for them all, but tonight we drink wine my friends.  Deep red and bold.

 

 

With all the praise I've been piling on, you probably thought I'd forgotten there was an actual film under here to discuss and a cast that included more than just Lee.  But I haven't and here we go.   Being the first Hammer Dracula film, The Horror of Dracula usually places high on "best of" lists, which make me think that alot of folks stop with Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula when exploring the Hammer catalogue. As great as those two films were, Hammer actually got better as they went along and didn't start stumbling until around 1970. I dare you to watch Horror of Dracula and Dracula Has Risen From the Grave back-to-back and still say Horror was the better film.  I would be tempted to climb the tree myself and toss coconuts upon you.  First does not always equal best.  Now you know your ol' Uncle Pump to be a promoter of great old films, dusty and forgotten and love them I do and he regrets how forgotten some of these absolute gems have become, but it's not just because they are "firsts" or just happen to be old.  Old does not always equal good or better.  As much as I love the original King Kong, I would never say it is better than Jaws. I would never say Psycho is better than Halloween, or even that Evil Dead is better than Evil Dead 2.  I wouldn't say Hawks' Thing was better than Carpenter's and I surely would not say that the first Friday the 13th was the best of that series. May I end up in a testing lab if I ever exclaim Rosemary's Baby to be better than The Omen. I believe Dracula Has Risen From the Grave to be the best of Hammer's Dracula series.  With the sucess of their previous films, by the mid to late sixties, Hammer was at their peak and running on all cylinders.  Lee had gained a firm grasp on the role through the two previous films and was at his evil best here. I always thought his face seemed a little too youthful in 1958's Horror of Dracula, but ten years later,  when our film was made, he looked never more perfect for the role.

 

The script was penned by Anthony Hinds, son of Will Hammer, one of the studio's co-founders.  He used the pseudonym of John Elder and as Elder wrote the scripts for our film as well as other Hammer greats like Taste the Blood of Dracula, Rasputin: The Mad Monk, The Reptile, and the Mummy's Shroud.

 

The opening scene of this movie is possibly the best use of a church bell in the genre since Quasimodo rocked Paris.  I won't give away the mode of the actual rising of Dracula in this film, but I will say this time he is pissed like I haven't recalled seeing him before. Not content to bite a neck or two and hang out waiting for the vampire killers to arrive like in many movies, this time he is enraged and out for revenge.  Lee's Dracula is sometimes maniacal in this film, and he will savagely beat any horse or human in his way.  Not content with just a horse -drawn carriage, this time he has a black hearse, complete with coffin and black-plumed, black horses.  He is a mobile and terrible presence--literally Hell on wheels.  This is probably the most action-filled of Hammer's Dracula movies and the film benefits from more screen time by the Count, himself,  than there was in the two previous films.    It appears that a monsignor has taken it upon himself to desecrate Dracula's castle with exorcisms and blessings and crosses, while the darklord slumbered, waiting to be revived.  Imagine Drac's fury upon seeing his front door decorated with a huge cross hung like a wreath.  Everyone involved in this horrible insult must pay!

 

 

Dracula is constantly menacing as he adds priests and serving wenches to his stable of slaves.  He is a hard and unforgiving taskmaster and his punishments are severe.  He is unstoppable and unkillable as you witness him survive attacks that would have rendered lesser vampires unto dust.  The horns of the great soundtrack, composed by James Bernard,  literally pound when Dracula is upon the screen. I mentioned Lee's eyes earlier, but I again will mention the horror in them as he uses them to fill some with spine-chilling terror and others with a wonderful desire for him.  His mental seduction of Maria that rapidly turns physical is the perfect example of why women find vampires sexy.

 

 

The rest of the cast is a mix of veteran and new actors. You have the veterans, Rupert Davies as the Monsignor and Michael Ripper as Max, the inkeeper/tavern owner.  Michael Ripper is truly one of the unsung heroes of Hammer films.  He appeared in more Hammer movies than any other actor, 35 in all, usually playing an innkeeper, coachmen, village official, constable, etc.  But we know that this excellence in the supporting roles is so very important to a film and Ripper never dissapoints.  The lovely Maria, niece of the Monsignor, is played by the beautiful Veronica Carlson in her first of three films for Hammer. Veronica is now a painter in Florida who sells her paintings of her Hammer co-stars for big bucks.  Barbara Ewing, in only her second film, portrays the cleavage-baring Zena.  Barbara had previously had a small part, as did Ripper in Amicus' Torture Garden.  She would go on to have a long career on the British stage and screen.  Rounding out those in Dracula's sights are the young and handsome Barry Andrews playing Paul, the atheist who smells of beer and Ewan Hooper as the drinking, tainted,  tortured, head-bashing priest.

 

 

This is a Hammer Horror Whopper of a film, my friends.  Hammer throws everything but Peter Cushing and the kitchen sink into this spectacular production.  From well-whipped black horses to misty town rooftops where much of the action takes place.  Artfully reproduced villages and burgs, taverns and churches.  The classic vampire defenses are used, garlic flowers, garlic oil, prayer, wooden stakes.  But their ability to stop this enraged fiend are highly questionable.  I know crosses are constantly used in vampire films, but I don't recall one where the religious symbol is featured so prominently throught the movie.  The eerie graveyard scenes are here as well as that lush Hammer cleavage.  Great rooftop chases, more action than most Dracula movies, an insane with rage Dracula portrayed by Christopher Lee at his very best--What's not to love?  This movie also proves that the best way to convert an atheist is to bring a vampire to the party.  When Dracula himself marks you for death, who can survive.  You'll need to watch this  one to find out who falls to his fury and who is left to try to battle this most powerful of the undead.

 

 

Give yourself a delicious treat and watch this movie--you deserve it horror fan. 

 

And please tune into the blog for our next entry when we'll be getting all wet as we splish and splash into the sci-fi 50's.

Meanwhile, the party's over, I'm cleaning up--you go and try to scare yourself.

 

 

 

 

Alright Monkeys and Monkettes, let's take a trip in Uncle Pump's educational time machine in honor of schools starting back up.  Today our journey will take us back to the 18th century as we look for the origin of the word "Bedlam". 

 

Ahhh--found it already have we.  We're sitting in front of a hospital.  Why it's St. Mary's of Bethlehem Asylum, now known as Bethelem Royal Hospital in London.  From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

Bedlam is : "scene of mad confusion," 1667, from colloquial pronunciation of "Hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem" in London, founded 1247 as a priory, mentioned as a hospital 1330 and as a lunatic hospital 1402; converted to a state lunatic asylum on dissolution of the monasteries in 1547.

Yes Bedlam was the nickname of St. Mary's of Bethlehem Asylum.  A particularly harsh environment for the mentally challenged in 1761, which is when our story is set.  Now, for the telling of our story, we have to travel forward to 1946, but first let me make a Dusty Mustie comment in general.  One thing you will see time and time again with older classic horror films, is that most are set in centuries prior to the filmmaker's.  Most modern horror films are set in current times--most older ones were not set in their current time.  Is any gothic horror made anymore?

Well back to 1946 and our feature presentation:

Karloff, Lewton, RKO--all three will make frequent appearances among the Dusty Musties, and this is great film to showcase them.

 

We'll start with Karloff, a true icon of the genre.  Truly one of a kind.  Frankenstein's Monster.  The Mummy.  And is there a more dinstinctive voice in the genre?  He narrated and was the voice of The Grinch, who was stealing Christmas way before Mr. Skellington came along (he even took the roast beast!)  and honestly, who's voice was Pickett trying to imitate when he recorded the original classic Monster Mash?  Because of how great he was as Frankenstein's Monster and the Mummy, alot of younger primates don't recall what a great actor he really was in a human role.  With the possible exceptions of The Body Snatcher and Targets, this may be his finest acting performance.  He plays the Master of the asylum, George Sims.  Such a lush performance.  Notice the difference in facial expressions and even body movements as he shifts effortlessly from subserviant, groveling kisser of the dandy Lord Mortimer's fat ass to the ruthless, cunning, and cruel Master of the inmates.  Karloff's performance alone makes this film worthy of multiple viewings.

 

Now we come to Mr Val Lewton and his wonderful relationship with RKO pictures.  A relationship that brought us The Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, and The Body Snatcher.  These are the three that most folks have heard of, and as much as I love them, I think Bedlam is right up there with them.  As producer, this was Lewton's most expensive film for RKO, but also the least sucessful.  It didn't impress moviegoers or RKO and Lewton never made another picture for that studio.  Most folks have never heard of this movie, but I think it deserves to be mentioned with Lewton's best.  It is easily his most underated film. 

 

Most folks think Lewton directed these horror classics for RKO, but although he was involved in every aspect of the film-making, the actual " getting your hands dirty" directing was done by his frequent collaborator Mark Robson.  Robson and Lewton co-wrote the screenplay which was inspired by a William Hogarth engraving.  The scene depicted in the engraving is actually reproduced in the film.

Although Robson is usually completely forgotten in the shadow of his mentor, Lewton, he was a fine director in his own right who would later get two best director nominations from the academy for 1958's Peyton Place and 1959's Inn of the Sixth Happiness.  He would later go on to direct 1967s Valley of the Dolls, and 1974's Earthquake.

 

As you can tell from the age of the movie and the posted photos, this is a black 'n' white movie and a beauty.  The use of shadows was very important in a black 'n' white movie and Lewton and Robson were masters.  They were absolute geniuses in the use of lighting and shadows and it is rare to see a black 'n' white film so lush and  beautifully  shot.

Karloff/Master Sims' adversary, Nell Bowen, is portrayed by the lovely Anna Lee, a goddaughter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and probably best known for her later lengthy run as Lila Quartermain on the soap, General Hospital. And a worthy adversary she is, as her character takes an instant dislike to Sims and his methods of dealing with the inmates under his care.  She is the one who does not fall for his blowing of smoke up noble asses.  The banter and arguments between Sims and Miss Bowen are some of my favorite moments in the film--true examples of fine verbal swordplay.  Another trivia note regarding Anna Lee:  The dress she is wearing when she mounts her horse is the same one Vivian Leigh made from curtains in Gone With The Wind.

Many may not consider the film itself to be a Horror film, but more of a psychlogical thriller, although the setting of an 18th century English insane asylum should garner quite a bit of fear.  Nell Bowen is the protege of Lord Mortimer, although she makes it clear that, "He has no more freedom with me than any man".  They happen to be taking a carriage ride (I love those carriage rides) past the asylum when an unfortunate "accidental death" occurs.  She dislikes Master Sims immediately and is further disgusted and horrified to learn that Sims is making a profit by charging people to come in to "see the lunatics in their cages".  Her rage only grows once she sees his treatment of the inmates.

During her angry persistance at trying to cause Sims' downfall through Lord Mortimer, she finally crosses the wrong lines and ends up at the mercy of Master Sims as one of his inmates.  It's a chilling and forboding moment during her first night in the asylum when Sims, gleefully evil, shoves the money in her mouth.

What will become of young Nell?  Who will come out on top?  Who will survive their stay in Bedlam?  You'll have to watch it to see.

The cast is rounded out by a great group of inmates, whose various afflictions, illnesses, and disorders I won't spoil.  Look for a young Ellen Corby (of Grandma Walton fame).  Look for Ian Fleming's inspiration for suffocation by gold paint.  You won't have to look for the other important character, The Quaker, who is everywhere spreading his message of creamy Quaker goodness that we're all the same in God's eyes (now whether God loves us all or God thinks we're all fucked, I'm not sure).  There's also the wonderful Mr. Wilkes who doesn't mind letting Nell know that he requires much more freedom with his proteges than does Lord Mortimer.

 

For those of you interested in the evolution of women's roles in Horror films, Anna Lee's portrayal of Nell Bowen has been described as the first real feminist heroine, setting the stage for the Strodes and Ripleys to come.

As dusty as this Mustie is, compared to many more well-known 1940s Horror movies, I believe you'll have to look hard to find one that decade that truly surpasses this gem.  The film is a wonderful example of how deep, and rich black 'n' white filmaking could be in the right hands.  The dialogue is a tremendous piece of writing and Karloff and Anna Lee give performances as good or better than anything else they've done.  And the ending--oh the ending--it is truly worthy of the film.

That's it for this session.  See this movie.  Eat your bananas. 

And please--try to scare yourself.

The title Haxan is usually followed by "Witchcraft Through The Ages" but that wasn't added to this 1922 gem until 1968 when they tried to ruin the film.  But I'm getting ahead of my self.  Let's begin another way.

I believe witches have been neglected in films compared to their horror brethren like vampires, zombies, werewolves, etc.  I know, I know--you're thinking and shouting out movies:  The Witches, The Witches of Eastwick, Hocus Pocus,etc.  Decent movies but not scary.  If I am thinking movies like Rosemary's Baby and The Wicker Man--then I'd have to lump in all kinds of satan/cult movies.  I hate to bring up  the Witchboard or Witchcraft series--for any reason. The Devil Rides out is decent enough and then there was that old 70s one with Oliver Reed and orgies whose name I can't remember and one with Shatner and some yawnfest with Hot lips, Peter Fonda and an RV--not witches--not witches--people in hooded cloaks do not a witch make. 

Now that brings me to witch movies I actually like:  The Craft, Suspiria, Black Sunday, Blair Witch Project, and Bell, Book, and Candle. (I know--but Kim Novak was so hot) And don't get me started on Angelique of Dark shadows fame--I would have left Mary Ann and Ginger on the island and stuffed Jeanie back in her damn bottle to be able to take Angelique to the harvest dance.    OK, back to pupose.  But they're still not that Halloweeny, Old Crone, Macbeth, boiling cauldren, eye of newt, poison-apple, broomstick witch that we've had images of ever since we met The Wicked Witch of the West and her funky sock-wearing sister in the Land of Oz.  Can we have that type of witch action and still manage to scare someone?  My friends, the answer is Haxan.

It was filmed in 1921-1922 and yes--it is a silent movie, with subtitles in Swedish and English.  But in my opinion, it may be the most important silent horror film ever.  And yes, I've seen Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Caligari, The Lost World, and Der Golem.  For raw horror imagery and daring, it trumps them all.  The director, Benjamin Christensen, who also plays the Devil and a cameo as Jesus Christ, was brilliant, inventive, and for 1922, very,very bold and daring.  Eventhough it seems he was trying to educate his audience, I can't imagine the shock and horror they experienced in the theater and yes again--this movie was banned in many countries. It would be another 40 or so years before this much obsenity and blasphemy was included in a horror movie.  Universal certainly didn't go down some of these roads. It was shot in Denmark, but for for a swedish audience.  It wasn't allowed to be shown in Denmark until 1941.  And since we're getting the dates out of the way here, the 1968 version with narration by William Burroughs and a wacked out jazz soundtrack ruins the experience completely.  Do not watch that version or if you feel compelled to out of curiosity, don't do it til you've watched the original 1922 version first, with it's great classical score by the likes of Schubert, Mozart, Bach, Wagner, and Beethoven.

The imagery, sets, props, etc are like something out of a horror fan's dreams.  This is like experiencing the very beginnings of horror, I kid you not.  Imagine looking over Poe's shoulder as he wrote "The Fall of the House of Usher" or cuddiling up beside Shelley as she dreamed of Frankenstein or being one of Romero's zombies in the original NOTLD.  Yes--it is that kind of "witnessing the birth of horror" moment.  I have no problem stating that this movie is essential viewing as much as NOLTD, TCM, Halloween, the Exocist, etc

And lest you think me insane or on someone's payroll, let's get into the nasty , creepy facts upon which I build my gushing fanboy praise.

It's filmed in 7 acts,(called scenes in the movie) the first of which is like a slideshow of the old woodcuts and paintings that you've seen before with witches kissing the Devil's ass and being tortured, etc along with photos of relics and idols and such (watch for a cameo by the Exorcist's very own Pazuzu, the plague demon).  This is lecture -type stuff, complete with a pointer as he describes the ancient beliefs on Hell and demons. Fascinating stuff as a guy from the 1920s describes the mystical beliefs of the 15th century.

We start with the juicy stuff in Act 2 in the witch's lair and I must say that it is like the ultimate witch's lair with pots, potions, animal skeletons, corpses, etc.  You'll see that graverobbers were bringing corpses from the gallows to witches before they were bringing them to Dr. Frankenstein.  And of course they needed to be well sniffed to sample their freshness.  Without watching Act 2, how would you know that a potion made from cat feces and dove hearts would soften the heart of any man? The special effects start here as well, and from what I've seen--Christensen was way ahead of his time in that department as you watch a little demon eat through a door.  The Devil makes his first appearance in this act too, and HELL Yeah!!--what a Devil he is, looking just like a Devil should as he pops up to call nude fat-bottomed girls out to play.  He also seems to enjoy watching old crones puke and the dance of the maidens and pig demons is not to be missed.  I'll try not to be this spoilerish with the rest of the Acts, but I wanted to keep your interest and anyway, this joyful ride is just beginning.

Act 3 is the accusation and capture, complete with rolling witch cage.  Let's just say that it sucks to be Maria the Weaver who begs from door to door.

Then Act 4 where all the gloves of everybody come off and we're told that "the burning of a witch is a sweet scent to God" (how do you not love that line?)  The persecution starts , complete with "good inquisitor" - "bad inquisitor" dynamics.  And what's a little cup of inquisition without a couple spoonfuls of good ol' torture.  And not only does poor old Maria start rolling over and laying accusations on everyone and their kin, Mr. Christensen, kind man that he is, decides to graphically show us in re-enactment fashion, all the stuff she's confessing to.

And yes that is 1922 ass above you embracing that lucky demon. There is much cavorting with Devils and Demons and if you want to know what Devils and Demons are supposed to look like, then watch this film.  The broomstick flights of the witches are right out of a child's nightmare and may seem tame by today's special effects standards, but in 1922 I bet you could hear screams around the corner as people ducked in their seats.  This is the Act to skip if you're offended by blasphemous imagery such as cross desecration, Demon molestation, bloody baby cooking and much more.  But no--not you--you want to watch--that's what I like about you.

In Act 5, everyone is getting rounded up and we learn that helping witches resist arrest, refusing to bear witness against a witch, or even admitting to having a sinful thought, can lead to dire consequences.  Also starring the little monk who likes to be whipped--oh he's such a little sinner.

Act 6 graces us with more pig demons and cats who like to soil altars.  We're also given the coolest demonstrations of some of the popular tools of the torture trade. 

SIDENOTE BREAK: I've wondered before about the individuals whose job it was in medievel times to come up with some of these devices.  Talk about some fucked up dudes--damn.

Oh--and the Devil is back in Act 6 with the purpose of corrupting a whole convent and making nuns do un-nunly things.  He's starting his corruption below by softening them up a little.

Then we come to Act 7, which from a horror standpoint is the weakest act.  Our lecturer is back with the morals of the story which is OK, but I don't think the burning times are quite on us again yet.  He's basically showing a few scenes to point out that common misfortunes today, like being ugly, twitchy, hunchbacked, or being a kleptomaniac!? could have gotten you killed in the 15th century.

We do find out that one of his actresses told Christensen during filming that Devils are real because she has seen them sitting at her bedside and the ending scene is almost magical in it's message.  And wait til you find out how to say "The end" in Swedish--I know--you'll just google it.  That's cool, but please watch this movie. 

I know I walked a fine spoiler line with this blog entry and probably crossed it once or twice, but in my experience, I've had a hard time getting folks to sit down and watch a black 'n' white, silent, foreign movie. It's got all three strikes against it.  But this needs to be the exception.  I will push very few movies this old, this hard.  True horror fans can sit back and just enjoy all the wonderful horror imagery, like the shot above, even if they don't want to get into the plot.  I can't imagine a true horror fan not liking this and you very well may consider it the best silent movie you've seen.  Now go try to scare yourself.  OO OO EE EE

 

After 12 straight conventions in Cherry Hill, NJ, Monstermania decided to move northward and hold a convention near Hartford in Cromwell, CT.  I try to do conventions if it's a feasibly short distance for me to get to them or if there's something at them that I feel I can't miss.  Connecticut's not easy for me to reach from here, but it's not Pittsburgh or Cleveland either in relation to Jersey.  But mostly, Monstermania becaume the offer you couldn't refuse.  According to the staff, the goal of the convention was to gather, in one place, the most fan-friendly guests they've ever had....sort of make a good first impression.  This meant a 25th Anniversary Nightmare on Elm Street Reunion.  This meant an Evil Dead reunion.  This meant Derek Mears making his 3rd straight Monstermania (4th if you count the upcoming August Cherry Hill one).

 

Comparatively with the Fangoria convention from the week before, Monstermania is like a whole other....far better held part of the world.  Where Fangoria stupidly schedules movies and panels at the SAME TIME causing people to miss either great movies or good panels, Monstermania tends to schedule the movies on Friday evening and the panels all day Saturday, thereby allowing people to get the best of both worlds. Where Fango couldn't put the panel room in a separate place from the vendors, Monstermania put the vendors in one area of the hotel, then all the guests on the other end of the hotel and finally did their usual combination film room and panel room idea in a fully enclosed, separate room (the same general and very wise idea they use in Cherry Hill).  While this still works well, I have one complaint.  In Cherry Hill, the hotel is fairly linear, so it's fairly easy to reach each room and section of the convention off of one pathway.  At the Crowne Plaza in Cromwell, the hotel has one of the most inane layouts I've ever seen.  While it's easy to reach the vendors rooms, the panel room is a bit off to the side and the guest room is literally hidden away in some kind of nook off the path.  Good idea in theory, screwed up minorly by bad hotel architecture.  Also, and I don't blame the convention for this, but getting there on Friday was nuts (I stayed over with a friend on Friday night).  A 2-3 hour drive, because of traffic, took 4-5 hours and was murder in the summer heat.  But I made it and I have pics and notes from panels for you.

 

FRIDAY:

I learned this technique at Monstermania that has never steered me wrong:  With special exception for big celebrities, on Friday I basically hang around the guests room and a bit in the vendor room, meeting EVERYONE on the quiet Friday.  (I tried once to meet people on a Saturday....it didn't go so well.  There's a reason this con was my 3rd attempt to meet Derek Mears at a Monstermania.)  So let's begin my run through every guest but one (On Saturday, I probably shouldve gone and seen Robert Englund again, but I figured I should save the money since I already saw him.  Wouldve been a lot easier though...all inside line.  WAY better):

 

JASONS:

 

   

 

Steve Dash (Jason 2) on the left, Richard Brooker (Jason 3) on the right.  Also at the con were CJ Graham and Betsy Palmer, but no photos, because as you saw in the last blog post, I met them at Fango.  I've seen Dash at another Monstermania.  He's kinda relentless on the the whole Warrington Gillette thing.  All his signage is for "The Real Jason" and he even will sign stuff that way.  Richard Brooker is kind of refined and a very nice, well-mannered kind of guy.  Very much like Angus Scrimm.

 

EVIL DEAD:

 

 

 

On the Left, Hal Delrich (who played Scott), on the right, the Ladies of the Evil Dead:  Betsy Baker (Linda), Ellen Sandweiss (Cheryl), and Sarah York (Shelly).  All four of these people charges substantially less each than every other guest, which is awesome and shows a lot of respect for fans, especially in times of recession.  Hal was really nice and was friendly to all the fans.  I was surprised he didnt take part in any of the panels.  The Ladies are great because they travel and do conventions and panels as a unit.  They have special things with the Ladies of Evil Dead logo, and are, just like Hal, really nice to fans.  The Ladies actually were a real highlight of the con and provided one of the most awesome events I've ever seen, but more on that later.

 

CHRIS SARANDON:

 

 

Chris Sarandon from Child's Play, Fright Night, Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas, and Humperdinck from Princess Bride.  I really wish that the event I did on Saturday hadn't taken as long as it did since it meant I missed his panel, but I did get to talk to him about just how rough his makeup in Fright Night was.

 

NIGHTMARE REUNION:

 

       

 

In order:  Ronee Blakeley (Nancy's mom Marge), Amanda Wyss (Tina Grey), Charles Fleischer (Dream Study Lab doctor), Leslie Hoffman (Hall Monitor, and the only "Female Freddy"), and John Saxon (Nancy's father).  Not pictured are Heather Langenkamp (nice, also was there with the producer who made His Name was Jason, so we might see a similar Freddy one at some point), Robert Englund(see above), and Jsu Garcia (Rod, who was in the area but was unable to get away from a film he was shooting, even though he wanted to.)  Ronee Blakeley seemed a bit spacey but otherwise nice.  She went on after the movie to have a fairly decent singing career...but I'm not entirely sure what's going on now, she might not be able to walk easily anymore (had to ride up to her panel I think in a scooter....).  Amanda Wyss and I talked about how rough the filming of her death was and how iconic it became.  I didn't talk to Fleischer about Nightmare (because I'm weird).  I also didn't ask him about being the voice of Roger Rabbit.  Nope, if you know me, you know I couldn't pass up the opportunity to talk about his performance as the shy postal worker in Demon Knight.  Leslie Hoffman and I talked about how she's kinda like a "that girl" of horror, in that no one knows her name but everyone knows what she did.  She also said she loves cons, but people won't ask her to come, even though she was, truly, the only female Freddy (wore the glove for that scene and everything.  Had it playing on a small tv at her table).  And John Saxon and I talked about his great performance in Pelts, from the Second Season of Masters of Horror.  I told him I wished he'd lived longer in the movie cuz the character had a lot of potential.  At the later panel, Robert Englund talked about just how many roles and how many great actors Saxon has worked with (imdb him some time, it's kind of amazing).  All were super awesome and nice.

 

FRIDAY THE 13TH 2009:

 

 

 

On the left (finally), Derek Mears (Jason), and on the right Arlen Escarpeta (Lawrence).  (I couldve done better on my pose in the one on the left....apparently I don't show fear well.)  Derek continues to be one of the nicest, most genuine people I've ever met and is literally born to do conventions.  I reminisced with him about his appearance at the March monstermania and his antics there.  (See prior site report for that one if you want more info).  The Mallrats poster is because he was next to another Jason...Mewes.  That becomes relevant in a Q&A (and I shouldve looked to see if he had Zack and Miri Make a Porno since I loved that movie).  Arlen, also a great guy, continued to prove my point I've made before that you can love or hate the remake, but the cast has some of the most amazing chemistry I've ever seen.  He said he'd just been to one of the cast member's baby showers.  He was also situated right next to Betsy Palmer who stayed the whole time (I told you in the other one that she was generally a good person).  And now for something completely different, the costume of the con.  As last time, it's not about what it is, it's about who it's on.

 

 

This the only time I've seen a girl wearing the Heath Ledger Joker costume.  (once again, like Fango, there wasn't much to choose from...and her friends were um....whorier).  After that I headed to the film room for one of the most awesome things I've ever done at a convention:

 

THE EVIL DEAD (W/LIVE COMMENTARY BY THE LADIES OF THE EVIL DEAD)

 

 

You can vaguely see Ellen Sandweiss coming in from the left in this shot.  They'd mentioned earlier in the day they were gonna do this if they stayed up late enough.  They all did.  It was amazing.  Covered everything from crushes on Bruce Campbell to Sam Raimi to the Tree rape to various behind the scenes tidbits, to just how many times Bruce Campbell ends up flying into a bookcase or shelves in the movie.  I'll have more of their thoughts in the discussion of the panel, but this was literally amazing on every single level.

 

After this, I headed over to a friend who I'm very gracious to (I'dve never made it back for the next day if I had to drive all the way back to Jersey again).  The next morning, I headed out bright and early, hoping to make sure to get a certain autograph...what I got...was yet another reason to appreciate this convention.

 

SATURDAY

 

BRUCE CAMPBELL(!):

 

 

How to properly run a massively important celebrity draw:  Bruce Campbell, in his appearances, has an agreement to only sign 400 autographs a day, one per person.  Monstermania gave out numbered tickets and actually was still giving them out later on (I got in fairly early given I was there an hour before the whole con started).  When the time came, they had us line up outside by number, then brought us in to a second, shorter, air-conditioned line, then to Bruce Campbell.  The system got us in in under 2 hours, and Campbell has this down to a science to the point of being able to get all 400 done in the exact 4-5 hours he says he can, even with talking to people.  This photo was the best of about four I have because how it works, is they have you give the camera to a worker who takes your picture candidly.  Works awesome because you have to be really unlucky to not get a good photo that way.  Super awesome.  And wait till you hear later about his panel.....But first, another interlude:

 

 

Normally at conventions, a group comes who brings some kind of prop from a LionsGate film.  Usually it's the Saw 2 Head trap or the Halloween Michael Myers costume or the Saw 4 blade chair.  This time, the My Bloody Valentine 3D screen worn pickaxe and costume were there.  And again, I won't pay extra to stand in front of a dumb background or get a photo on a corny plastic background.  Now back to the panels:

 

SID HAIG:

 

 

The blob in the middle there (I swear, it must be a law that every convention's panel room must have terrible lighting) is Sid Haig of...far too many classic horror movies to count.  It should be noted that, again, Monstermania beat the hell out of Fangoria by actually using mikes on the sides of the room to make it easier for the guests to hear you and for you to hear them.  Common sense really.  I liked the whole "bullet idea" from last report, so let's do it again:

• He liked Devil's Rejects more than House of 1000 Corpses, found it realer and more gritty.
• It is possible to see Capt. Spaulding's....coinpurse...in his sex scene with the pornstar in Devil's Rejects.
• At the time of the panel, he did not know when El Superbeasto would be released.  I've since seen info putting it at Sept. 22nd.
• Sean Connery, with whom he worked on Diamonds are Forever is a great guy.
• His role as the judge in Jackie Brown taught him that it was okay to hold out for the good scripts.  He had quit in 1992 and became a certified hypnotherapist because he believed he'd been typecast.
  
• On his dream scene with Ginger Lynn in Devil's Rejects:  "How hard could it be?"
• On Rob Zombie:  He's easy to work with, knows what he wants, tells his vision to you, and gets out of the way..but he "wasn't ready for [him]".
• Advice for getting foot in the door acting wise is Winston Churchill's "Never Quit".
• On David Carradine.  Great guy to work with, told him "There are no failures in Hollywood, only people who quit too soon."
• Has a future project called Dark Moon Rising and will actually sing on the soundtrack.
• Favorite directors he's worked with:  Zombie, Tarantino (is as crazy as he is), and Jack Hill for the history
• The tutti fucking frutti line was an improv that was one of many that made Rob Zombie fall out of his chair.
  
• There were two things Haig said that I will remember forever:  First, he mentioned Tarantino's level of respect for him.  At Spike TV's Scream Awards, Tarantino responded while recieving an award that "My hat goes off to any award show that will recognize the work of Sid Haig" (Haig had been nominated for Rejects and won).
• Second, and most relevant here, someone asked him about why he wasn't nominated for an Oscar for Devil's Rejects.  In response, he discussed his feelings and what he knows about the way studios percieve horror.  He said major studios shy away from horror.  To prove his point he told the story of what happened when House of 1000 Corpses was made.  Originally, Universal was distributing it.  They had a screening for many people including an executive from Universal.  She left the theater crying and shaking.  The film was axed the next day and later picked up by LionsGate.  Later, Anthony Hopkins would be in Hannibal, which would be classified as a "psychological thriller".  Hopkins recieved a nomination for his portrayal of Hannibal previously and the same woman was later asked in an interview why Hopkins can get nominations but people like Haig can't.  Her response:  "Because we know Anthony Hopkins isn't like that."  Food for thought.
  
• "Who needs an Oscar, I've got 9 Action Figures, FUCK!"
  

 

LADIES OF THE EVIL DEAD PANEL:

 

 

Sandweiss, York, and Baker (L to R).  To the rain of gunfire/list of bullets!

• On the Musical:  Tons of fun, Ellen's been to all 3 (Chicago, New York, and Toronto).  "Sea World with Blood"
• On Remake possibilities:  It will never be able to top the original, and they'll believe it when they see it.
• On the Sequels:  Ellen liked it's comedic style and setting.
• On the "Scene":  Sarah has a 19 year old daughter who hasn't seen the movie.  Betsy has a 22 year old and a 19 year old that she will show it at a reunion.  Ellen had an exhusband that refused to allow her to show their children.  She finally did when they were 15.  The script also originally said "Cheryl is attacked in the woods".  Sound effects were added in post so that it looked as it does now.
• Bruce Campbell was brought up Christian Scientist and had never taken aspirin at the time the movie was made.
• Movie most definitely involved much moonshine and weed.
• They got together 8 years ago, Ellen was in Detroit and Sarah and Betsy were in LA.  Betsy was a guest of honor at a convention and Rob Tapert gave her the idea.  They went to a convention in raincoats, incognito to get a feel and have been together since for this.  Ellen hadn't seen them in 20 years.
• Favorite actors they'd want to work with:  Sarah:  John Cusack, Betsy:  Meryl Streep, Ellen:  Phillip Seymour Hoffman
• Ellen was a seat filler at the Oscars and once sat as a result near Hoffman, Streep and Steven Spielberg.
• The set for My Name is Bruce was built on his Oregon property.  Ellen really liked working on it since she got to play Bruce's ex-wife, thereby technically making him marry his onscreen sister from Evil Dead (mmm...incesty)
  
• The biggest offscreen romance was really just "Bruce and Sam"
• Currently working on a web series called "Dangerous Women" in which they play suburban soccer moms who must do battle with their evil dopplegangers.
• I asked them about Brutal Massacre.  They said they actually had trailers.  Gary Bednob had a trailer with Ken Foree and Ellen and at some point, Bednob and Foree stopped being friends which was, of course, awkward.  They had a lot of fun filming it.

 

And now, what I call....THE BRUCE CAMPBELL STANDUP COMEDY HOUR:

 

 

I love how a photo comes together sometimes.  I had a few others...but the best just HAPPENS to be the one in which he is bathed in an otherworldly halo from the chandelier overhead.  He also asked that the mikes be removed because he prefers freeform Q&As.  BULLETS!:

• How to begin a Q&A:  Bruce asked the crowd who'd lost a job.  One guy worked for a bank and had lost his job. Bruce gave him a dollar and called it his bailout.
• People he'd like to have worked with:  Bob Hope, Danny Kaye
• On the reception of My Name is Bruce:  "I signed two of those fucking movies today."
• Adrienne King (Friday the 13th) lives up the road from him, Kirstie Alley does as well (she bought it from Johnny Depp)
• Loved Blair Witch but hated its sequel on principle without seeing it because of what it stood for in relation to the original.
• His next book:  Vagabond:  The Gypsy Life of an Actor
• Bulgaria:  Love the people, love Bulgaria...crappy place to make a movie.
• When did Hollywood lose its soul?  When they started "putting movies on Taco Bell cups".
• On Spiderman:  Raimi's started torturing Tobey Maguire now.  Also, his cameos are signifigant.  He gives spiderman his name (as wrestling promoter), he defeats spiderman (as the usher), and he doesn't help spiderman well because parker was being a douche in the restaurant (as the maitre d)
• Maniac Cop 2 was funded by "entrepeneurs"
• Freddy V. Jason V. Ash won't happen because he'd only do it if he could win and he'd only have control over the Ash part of the project.
• I asked him about The Woods....because I'm a Lucky McKee fan and I figure he hasn't been asked about it enough.  He said "McKee's a weirdo" and after reading the script, his only question was "How do we win?".
• On David Carradine:  Rational, peaceful, nice man
• On horror:  we cycle:  Shocking (NOTLD), Funny (Nightmare), Torture Porn (which he says are lazy filmmakers who find suspense difficult to pull off)
• On the possibility of Ashton Kutcher playing Ash in a remake:  "Wouldn't you love to see him raped by a tree?"
• Bubba Ho-Tep was the weirdest script he's ever read.
• And finally, when one person asked him if he could say hello to his friend on the cellphone, his response was "Sure if I was your little fucking monkey".

 

FRIDAY THE 13TH PANEL:

 

 

L to R:  Arlen Escarpeta, Betsy Palmer, Jason Mewes (really), Derek Mears, Ron Millkie (poor him, he didnt get to answer one question.  Played Officer Dorf in the original), CJ Graham, Richard Brooker, and Steve Dash.

 

Why Jason Mewes you might ask?  Well, he came in and mess with Mears a bit, so Derek invited him up (he is a Jason...get it?).  He didn't really jump in the convo much but it was still absolutely hilarious and surreal to see.  Mostly the panel was just as chaotic as at Fangoria and covered most of the same stuff.  The minor new stuff though:  Palmer said she did the role for 10,000 dollars, no residuals.  "I did it to buy a car".  She also didn't do Freddy Vs. Jason because it was a crappy line and "I have integrity".  Dash was offered the third movie, but was told he'd have to pay his way to California.  The Jasons were never played Englund money.  Freddy Vs. Jason was called what it was because Sean Cunningham wouldn't sign off on calling it Friday the 13th.  Derek Mears, as the new Jason, wanted to take it back to basics and make Jason into a character again.  Also, they're still negotiating the possibility of a sequel to the remake.  For more info on Friday the 13th from other cons, try the prior Fango and Monstermania site reports.  Moving on, we conclude with....

 

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET REUNION:

 

 

L to R:  Fleischer, Langenkamp, Englund, Blakeley, Hoffman, and Wyss.  (Saxon was tired, understandable).

 

One final blaze o' bullets:

 

• Englund is writing a book, due out in October, called Hollywood Monster.
• Hoffman was originally the stunt coordinator and they decided they wanted someone who looked different.
• Englund on his career:  He was the nerd for 5 years, the best friend for 5 years, the geek for 5 years.  He calls his career a happy accident of a career.
• Englund wrote a script for Part 3, parts of which would filter into later movies.  It keyed on Tina's older, wilder sister.  She went on to investigate the backstory of Freddy.  It became the pilot of Freddy Nightmares and big parts of Nightmare 5.
• Behind the Mask occurred because Freddy's Nightmares (the fearfactor like reality show) bombed.  It was the second script he picked up.
• Englund is a Penn and Teller fan
• On Johnny Depp:  They thought the town would tear him up, instead he's stayed earnest and has a sense of etiquette.
• As I mentioned earlier, Heather is making a documentary.
• Fleischer:  Kreuger has realism like Dracula and Frankenstein.
• Amanda:  All women read first for Nancy.
• Fan Favorite:  3.  Cast likes either 1 or 7.
• John McNaughton was once signed on to do a prequel.
• "Freddy is the damage under the grass in our suburban world" (Englund likened it to the opening of Blue Velvet.  He said he takes pop culture and beats you with it.)
• Englund's favorite kill:  "The hearing aid kid"
• Remake thoughts:  Fleischer:  Go for it, but it won't erase this, hollywood only has 36 plots and they recycle them; Langenkamp:  wants to see one she can get scared at;  Englund:  It's how hollywood works, he had problems with the King Kong remake; Blakeley:  Compared it to Body Snatchers; Hoffman:  Compares it to Star Trek and J. J. Abrams; Wyss:  mixed feelings but wishes them well.

 

In conclusion, Monstermania continues to prove they are the best convention.  Even at a slightly more flawed convention in a place less conducive to the convention, it still runs like a well-oiled machine and is a joy to visit.  I'll be attending the next one (end of August, back in Jersey) and probably every one of them for the forseeable future(something I can't say with every other convention).  As usual, brilliantly put together and showed deep respect to fans and guests.  I leave you with a final thought.

 

Fangoria had toilet ink.  And people from T-Mobile trying to get you to change cell providers.  Monstermania had rooms of genre vendors selling fanged teddy bears, tshirts, bootlegs, action figures, etc.  And a guy doing actual castings for dental acrylic vampire fangs onsite.  I wonder which convention really is better.....

 

This is Crypticpsych saying....don't fall asleep.

HEY YOU!  YES YOU!  YOU LIKE WINNING FREE STUFF RIGHT????

 

Owing to an error at the publisher when they sent me my subscription issue for the month (happened because I need to renew it), I now have a second issue of Rue Morgue this month to give away to a forum member!  (Btw, because this was just an error and I don't usually end up with stuff like this, don't expect a lot of this.  I just decided to be sure to give this to someone who would appreciate it)

 

So what are we playing for???

 

 

BUT!  I'm not gonna just give it away......we're gonna have a trivia challenge relating to it!  Here's how its going to work:  In this issue, and all issues, of Rue Morgue is a column called "Coroner's Report" in which Monica S. Kuebler compiles 13 dark and morbid facts.  So I'm going to ask you a question about one of the facts listed in the issue you're trying to win!  All you have to do to win is be the first forum member to comment with the correct answer to:

 

WHAT IS THE TECHNICAL TERM FOR "THE FEAR OF BEING BURIED ALIVE"?

 

If you win, I'll congratulate you and ask you to message me with your address, to which I'll send your free issue by USPS...and if Attrage happens to win, I'll find some way to ship it to Australia...

 

The contest begins NOW!  Good luck!

 

EDIT:  THE CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED!  BLOODYBONES IS THE WINNER!  THANKS FOR PLAYING!

I love horror movies based on true events. These ones tend to freak me out a bit more. My favorite one was " The Last House on the Left". I was glad they remade it but i was hoping that Zombie would have done it. I really enjoy Zombies movies too. I just love the whole 70's thing he's got going on in his movies. Now I noticed a similarity in " Devils Rejects" and " The Last House on the Left". The slapping scene, where the bad guys told the 2 girls to slap each other.

Just a few words for those who might be wondering where I have been.

Back in July the company that I worked for shut it's doors and apparently there is not much call for someone in the heavy equipment business when there is little to no construction going on. I started to drive a truck for a delivery company over the holidays to bring in some cash but that ended January 1.

One would think that I have had a lot of time to view horror movies and write about them but one would be wrong. Instead I have been trying to figure out how to start over when I have been in the same field for so long. Well, I went back to a time when I was in the IT industry and decided to jump back in that fire. Problem was the last time I ran an IT department we were using NT and Windows for Workgroups (I just dated myself).

The good news is that I start school on Tuesday to bring myself back into the fold and should be able to find some type of job shortly after. Now maybe both me and my ulcers can calm down and get back to what I enjoy doing. Spending time with you guys.

Thanks for caring and listening,

The Zombie Master

I was just at the local Blockbuster and  was checking out the "horror" section and I was thinking about the days of the mom and pop video stores.  When you could find 4 or 5 in a decent size town, when VHS ruled (and sometimes Beta-max).  I remember finding titles such as "Return of Aliens: the Deadly Spawn" (and as far as I know, despite the "return" in the title, this was not a sequel),  "Unmasked Part 25" (also, not a sequel), "X-tro", and something where Alice Cooper was a werewolf.  Foreign movies...often bloody and more often hilariously bad were plentiful.  Stores with names such as MovieMania, Visionex, and At Home Video.  Bad horror movies...bad Conan knock-offs...bad comedies starring Linda Blair or John Ritter...these places had it all.  A lot of movies I remember watching have never been released on DVD and probably never will and Blockbuster would never carry them if they were.  There is EBAY but some movies are best watched once and nearly forgotten.  Remember any films like this:  share.

All right, I'm comfortable enough with my slightly re-edited intro now to begin doing this.  Updates will be irregular as I'm not sure how many parts this is gonna be or how much proofreading some of these sections will need.  All will be put into the same category though on my blog, so you should be able to find them there.  Now then:

 

 

For this first part of this, I just wanted to give a touch of background in what lead to this project.  The program I was a part of in college forced us to do academic research papers in both my Freshman and Sophomore years.  I remember doing one on Donatello and his works, I remember doing one on the evolution of Freedom, Equality, Slavery, etc. in Enlightenment literature, and I BARELY remember writing a paper about Martin Luther King, Jr. and how his preachings were based in Judeo-Christian philosophy that he had read and in his upbringing.  (Riveting, no?)  So time rolls on, and in Junior year they let us go into Seminar classes on more localized subjects.  I took one on Southeast Asian Culture and Anthropology which was very interesting and a class on human sexuality. 

 

That was where the seed of this was planted:  The Human Sexuality and Gender class.  At the end of it, we were to write an essay relating to the subjects we'd discussed in class.  There was no set rule of what we had to do, it just had to relate to the class and show that we could apply what we'd learn to something important to us outside the class.  By that time, I was becoming more and more horror-loving, so I thought about androgyny.  I thought about why certain characters in horror are gay, or why some male characters have feminine qualities, or why a director might use transsexualism as a plot device.  So I banged out a relatively quick 7-pager hitting Silence of the Lambs, Stephen King's IT, Sleepaway Camp, and the "Spoiled" and "A Fatal Caper" eps of Tales from the Crypt.

 

I actually enjoyed writing that paper so much that when the time came for our senior thesis, it was still on my mind.  We were told that we had our choice of what to do.  I still went in thinking that I had to do something classically academic.  Until someone stood up and said they were doing it on the process of opening an art exhibition.  Someone else had done it on the process of opening an AIDS musem in NYC.  And I thought....if they can do that, then I should be able to....and thus this was born.

 

But not anything like this.  The original outline was an unfocused mess.  At that point, the thesis was about just how sex was used, it didn't prove a point or anything.  It was going to cover how adult film stars cross over into mainstream film usually through horror, androgyny and homosexuality(expansion of the first paper), sex as an amplifier of unsettling scenes, sex and religion, sex as a marker of the victim, sex as it relates to famous movie villains and their characteristics, and sex as a trap.  The number of movies used wouldve been astronomical and I'dve prolly had to deliver it with a crane.  My main professor in this class though pointed out the unfocused aspect and told me to look back over the books I was using for support.  Which was when I started to see that people kept using phrases as "Shift" and "inaugurated" the modern era in discussing Psycho.  And by that time, I'd seen Psycho and I could tell it was good, but I knew other movies came after that changed the genre as well.  And thus I pushed for a fluid timeline of modern horror rather than the Psycho dividing line theory (as I started calling it) and everything else fell into place.  It led to the chronological structure, the idea to use fewer films, etc.

 

I'm very proud of it and soon, I'll begin serializing it in earnest, but for now I just wanted to let everyone know what led up to the paper in my life.

 

And yes, that is the title page I used.  I had the idea to use a picture of each main female protagonist pre-2000 I focused on in it.  Jeryline was pretty hard to find a good photo of.

Yesterday was Friday the 13th. I had marked it on my calendar with yellow highligher and some aqua blue sharpy, so it pretty well stood out. I was counting down the days, waiting for the unholy day to come. Questions raced through my mind. What exciting thing was going to happen? What plans did I have? Where would I go, what would I do, and most importantly, what was the weather going to be like?

I woke up to my phone alerting me that I had a text message, interrupting strange dream I was having of me driving down the interstate watching in wonder at a police car moving sideways. "So early?" I thought.

It was my friend Allison. "Happy Friday the 13th!"

Ah, yes! A smile spread wide over my face. We exchanged what we were doing at the moment and left it at that. Conversation over.

Unfortunately, I did nothing yesterday. And it was nearly one hundred degrees and I was in no mood to step outside.

Before I go on, I will tell you a little about what Friday means for me. I don't usually watch TV except for 'Dr. Know' on the Science Channel. Fridays, however, are different. That is usually when most of the horror movies come on and AMC has their 'Fear Friday', a collection of random horror movies that seem to becoming rather predictable of late, I'm afraid. Every week after everyone goes to bed, I settle down with popcorn and assorted food and drink and watch whichever movie happens to tickle my fancy and 'The Soup' (a totally unrelated TV show).

As I said before, I was excited it was Friday the 13th. That's because, in my logic, it would be like Halloween, when all the sensible movie channels play nothing but the Halloween series. "Surely today will be the day everyone (the movie channels) decide to break out all their Friday the 13th movies!" I thought. "Yes! It must be so!"

Was that the case?

No, it was not. I sat there, on the couch, scrolling through the guide, looking, searching, hoping the word 'Friday' would pop up and the evening would be set. No dice. Nothing. Not even a non-Jason Friday the 13th related movie. I was quite disappointed. Curses for me that I never bothered to pick up Jason or his mother at Hastings!

I hate unemployment. So depressing.

Still here? I'm suprised, for I have it set in my head that I'm a rather dull and boring person, although no one has told me that I am.

So there were no F13 movies on the tv. Why should I care? Because. Would it not do Jason justice to show him chopping someone up on the day we all know so well, partly because of his series? This makes me fairly upset, even if it does seem a bit out in left field. I think I said it above, but I will say it again: we show Halloween on Halloween. Why can't we show F13 on Friday the 13th? I've seen it on when it wasn't Friday and it wasn't the thirteenth. Then again...

I never see April Fool's Day on April Fool's (to be quite honest, I never looked, but one of my friends would have told me, I'm sure). I never see Black Christmas, Silent Night Deadly Night, or any of those other winter horrors around Christmas (I've checked that one. Too many family classics: A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, etc, etc, but come on AMC, you have Fear Friday!). My Bloody Valentine never plays around Valentine's Day. There are more, I'm sure...

Granted, yes, I have most of these on DVD, but I never see them on TV. It puzzles me. Sure, there's stuff that must be censored and such, but still. Have a little holiday horror spirit! By that I mean all holidays.

If you're looking for my point I'm getting to, I'm not positively sure I have an actual point. I'm just saying, so many holiday movies and no one wants to play them on their day. Yes, yes, I know, with the exception of Halloween. But you know that.

*sighs* That's my rant for today. I must bid you adieu.

I gotta stop writing such long posts...

Au revoir,mon amis, á la prochaine! Goodbye, my friends, until next time!

Before I begin this liveblog, I want to address statements I've seen in other reviews.  Many people on other sites claim that The Sacrifice from last week cut away from the gore and was obviously cut for network tv.  OF COURSE IT WAS.  IT'S ON NETWORK TV!  Even then, I defy you to show me another show on network tv that had some of the visuals seen in this episode. 

 

Also, they were annoyed about the commercials, claiming tension couldnt be built up.  A) Last I heard, these were going to be released uncut later on on dvd.  Just like Masters of Horror.  and B) I did not see a single time in the last episode where the commercial break killed tension.  If anything the commercials served as almost a afterthought after some moment in the plot or story where the action reached a crescendo. Once they were over, the action picked up right where it left off.

 

My favorite though...had to be the guy mad about the presence of the NBC watermark in the corner the whole episode.  I assume that person has never seen tv in the last 5-6 years since EVERY CHANNEL DOES THAT.

 

Now then.  On to the episode at hand:

 

1000 PM:  Well thats a hell of a lot darker than I thought Eric Roberts could pull off.  Nice scene.

 

1002 PM:  Hey wasnt that guy playing the criminal in "Pick Me Up"?  I could be wrong....

 

1006 PM:  I think I'm finding this exchange on Harry's methods way too amusing.

 

1007 PM:  I'm really surprised at the range Eric Roberts is showing.

 

1009 PM:  NICE!  Completely unethical....but nice!

 

1009 PM:  What the hell is up with those pants?....eh minor.

 

1010 PM:  Ep's movin slooooooow.  Comparatively with last week I mean, not that thats a bad thing.

 

1011 PM:  I take a similar amount of sugar in my coffee.  Just a random thought.

 

1013 PM:  Crime scene tape?

 

1014 PM:  I saw a review of The Incredible Hulk on a horror site today.  I have no idea what it was doing there.

 

1015 PM:  It occurs to me as I type this that Brad Anderson, the director of this ep, did the Sounds Like ep in Season 2.  I liked that ep, even though it moved very slowly.  This one, I'm not so sure yet.  Very little's really happened yet.

 

1017 PM:  Why is Nashville Star on this network?  What is this, like it's 4th network?

 

1017 PM:  Where have I seen his partner before......and the We will Kill you in grafitti on the back of the door and Bodies in basement written on the wall were nice.  Set design and props are the hallmark of this ep thus far.

 

1019 PM:  Surprising how little music is in this after last week's great sound work.

 

1021 PM:  And just as I say that, Anderson starts messing with the senses.  Well he does have a style....

 

1022 PM:  Seems to be a far more cerebral ep than last weeks.

 

1023 PM:  Are we really going the witchcraft route here?

 

1024 PM:  That was decent.....yet a bit lowkey...music was nice...and a decent buildup...but a bit much for pretty much a glorified jumpscare.

 

1025 PM:  ARE WE CGI-ING SHADOWS IN A WINDOW NOW????  REALLY????

 

1026 PM:  What the hell was that he stepped in....and i'm liking the continuously changing grafitti figures.....but this episode really is far too lowkey and ghost storyesque thus far.  Unless this changes fast, I'd think they shouldve moved this toward the middle of the season.

 

1029 PM:  Wow...that was a really really dumb ad for Secret flawless deodorant.  Just a thought.

 

1031 PM:  Social worker's a bit hammy.  Okay, no, REALLY hammy.  lol

 

1033 PM:  This had better be building to one hell of a climax and soon.

 

1034 PM:  I think the thing he stepped in had bullets, teeth, and FEATHERS??? in it....weird.

 

1035 PM:  And it doesnt occur to him that it's odd that Howdy Doody is playing on the tv.....OK THAT WAS GOOD.  The grafitti figures have been the best damn things in this ep.

 

1036 PM:  At least his partner's good comic relief.

 

1037 PM:  Was he just watching......?  Was that what that was supposed to be?  If it was, they couldve done it better.

 

1039 PM:  Anyone know why Snoopy shills for Met Life?  I'm just curious.

 

1041 PM:  WHAT IS THIS THE FREAKING PREDATOR?  IS HE A GHOST HUNTER NOW INSTEAD OF A P.I.?

 

1042 PM:  This climax is getting better......I liked the otherworldliness of his flashback.  And how his color just kinda blends into the background.

 

1043 PM:  OH NICE!  That explains the teeth and blood thing.  Feathers mustve been my imagination.

 

1044 PM:  Ok, im not so sure he was in Pick Me Up now, but I have seen him before.  I just don't know where.

 

1045 PM:  THATS WHERE WE'RE GOING WITH THIS?...3......2.......1........

 

1046 PM:  THERE IT IS.  We're recycling Masters of Horror sidetwists eh?  Nicely filmed but unless they surprise me...um, like now...that was totally irrelevant.

 

1049 PM:  GOD THAT GUY IS SO GOOD IN THIS EP.  please please show it.  please.....damn.  That would've been a fun visual for network tv.  Came close though.

 

1050 PM:  In commercial now, I can say that that was a very nice climax actually...it just took way way way too long to get there in an hour ep.  In this case I do think that these commercials hurt the ep, only because they pad out the running time and interrupt the slower part of the ep.  In the first ep, there were almost like, spaces for them.  like perfect slots that prevented loss of tension and atmosphere.  Here they just dragged the ep out with them.

 

1053 PM:  I like this ending thus far.  It's kinda lifting the opening a bit.

 

1055 PM:  Saw that part coming.

 

1059 PM:  I'm just gonna say it...after seeing that preview for "Family Man", next week, I bet you money I know what the "Twist you'll never see coming" is.  I'll say when I do this next week if I do.

 

Overall, a far smaller step back than I thought at the start.  Eric Roberts is very very good in this episode as is the criminal.  The social worker's very hammy most of the episode but calmed down at the end.  This episode is actually hurt far more by network tv, not by lack of gore but by commercials that make the episode longer.  For that reason, when they release this on dvd, the far quicker story will probably be better.  This didnt hurt the sacrifice because the action was constant.  The ending/climax lifts this ep big time.  But its nowhere near the standard thus far, The Sacrifice.  I will say this.  The atmosphere/props/set design are brilliant.  It's just set design doesnt carry an ep.  Worth seeing, and hopefully better without the breaks in the slower parts of the ep.  In fact, the last commercial didnt feel as bad.  Because there was action in front of it, not just random exposition.

 

And yes, I do realize the irony of mentioning a flaw related to commercials in the episode in the same post as lambasting people for it in another review.  Thank you.

So, I went to Hastings yesterday. It could have been the day before; I don't remember. I got two movies, two books, and three cds, but for the time being we are just worried about the first movie I picked up.

Originally I wasn't going to go into Hastings, but the person I was with at the time wanted to see if they carried Oliver and Company and I felt obliged since I was the one driving. We walked in, I found O&C for the friend and wandered over to the horror section, ah, my favourite part. Not really looking for anything in particular, I scanned the shelves looking for a title that really popped out at me.

And then I saw it.

There was only one there, almost hidden between Friday the 13th and some other movie whose name escapes me. I probably wouldn't have stopped if it hadn't had been for the bright yellow spine and those huge red letters that screamed out FREAKS.

I immediately stopped and shivers, literally, shivers went down my spine. So this was it. This was the movie I had heard so much about from my elders. The movie that scared the hell out of so many... And it was right there in front of me, practically begging to picked up. So I did. I picked it up. I picked it up, realizing it was the only one there, and that if I didn't take it, someone else would come along and snatch it up.

After that I was feeling pretty good and rather free with my money (which made me realize Hastings was rather expensive, but did I care? Of course not!). Walking out, I was happy with my purchases. All I had to do was get home and pull out my dvd player.

I arrived home a pulled the dvd out of the shopping bag. Like the spine, the background was a palish yellow with huge red letters. Then there were the people. On one side you have two "normal" people, more or less, and then on the other side you have a small group of odd beings, big and small, both sides glaring viciously at the other.

By now the dvd player and the tv were both turned on and running. I popped in the movie and prepared myself for the hour to come.

I was amazed. This movie was very surprising. The plot (for those of you who have no idea) is basically about a little person (as I must be politically correct), Hans, who falls in love with a big person, Cleopatra, even though he's engaged to one of his own stature, Frieda. Of course, Cleopatra is only toying with Hans until she learns of his grand fortune he has inherited. Then the two get married and Cleo begins to poison him, which doesn't go too well with the rest of the preformers. At the end there's this grand chase scene and Cleo get turned into a chicken! Or a duck. Either way she's been turned into one of the "freaks" she so horribly ridiculed. But what can I say, she had it coming.

All in all, you have to look at the deeper theme that runs through Freaks. A person is a person, no matter what they look like or how strange they are. It is how they are preceived that drives us away and greed that draws us near. I suddenly hear Dr. Seuss suddenly echoing in my ear: "A person's a person no matter how small." And I must ask, how was this movie so scary? Granted, this was made in the early 1930's; there weren't many horror films back then that really pushed the envelope. Maybe it's my generation. We've been pushed and hammered with all this gore, suspense, cheap thrills, and such, that we don't find the classics scary. They are good, yes, but not scary. Ok, maybe a little. I admit, I was on the edge of my seat towards the end. Yes, what they did to Cleopatra did freak me out. And I did scream in the 1960's 13 Ghosts, and I still can't sit all the way through The Exorcist, but those are whole other movies in whole other decades.

Perhaps I can answer my own question. There was certainly a shock in seeing this film. What other movie has its main roles made up almost entirly out of circus sideshow performers (who were fabulous by the way. I love them all)? So shocking it was banned from the UK for nearly thirty years! But isn't that going against everything that Tod Browning was warning of by directing Freaks? Don't judge by looks alone, otherwise you end up as a quacking mutant in a slideshow yourself? (Ok, so I added on to it, but hey.) Or was it offend one, offend them all? (Which I believe, is really not the case.) Either way, do you see my point? By being afraid of someone's appearance (as many were) you were kind of in the same category as Cleopatra and Hercules, cruel and ignorant. Sure, back then most people didn't know why these sideshow characters were different, but they were still people who had feelings. There is no need to be mean.

Maybe I'm being a bit preachy. I'll step down off my soapbox for a moment. All I'm saying is watch Freaks. It's a really great movie. It changed me, it really did. I don't know how to explain it. Let's just say it really opened my eyes.

Oh, and a bit of cool trivia I learned by watching the special features on the dvd: The man who played Hans, Harry Earles, was also in The Wizard of Oz. He's part of the "Lollipop Guild." He's the one wearing blue. Harry was also the brother of Daisy Earles, who played Frieda. She was also in The Wizard of Oz, I believe, but I'm not sure which part. I don't think it was a major part, but I could be wrong. My sources aren't that detailed.

Mmm, forgot to mention, this movie was based on a short story called "Spurs," by Tod Robbins. If you want to check it out here's a link I found: http://www.olgabaclanova.com/spurs.htm Quite different from the movie, but you can see the similarities. Much different ending too.

Now I want your opinion. What do you think?

BTW I'm watching the original The Fog tonight. I forget how much I love the zombies and their glowing red eyes. Well, the main one anyway. That is one of the best endings ever. Leaves you with a bang. Also The Puppet Master. Really neat score, I think. Blade was the best.

I have received a lot of grief over the fact that I do not except certain movies as zombie movies even though they are advertised as such. Not that I really care about what others think I do feel that I owe it to my peeps to give some clarification on why I am so anal about the subject. So, let me explain.

 

A zombie is a reanimated corpse. Whether your flavor is voodoo, toxic substance, cosmic radiation, or someother form of inducing a zombie state, the cause must kill the body before it is reanimated. 

 

Films such as 28 Days Later, which I thouroughly enjoyed, and the god forsaken piece of filth that is the remake of Day of the Dead have humans that are not reanimated corpses but rather humans infected by a virus that causes changes while still alive.

 

Although I am not willing to alter my impressions on this subject, I am willing to say that I am more than acceptant of a new sub-genre where these films can be correctly labeled.

 

 

 

 

 

Well I do, at least for a half white guy.

I just figured that with a title like that somoene would actually read this shit, especially if pics were included.

Here is what I don't get, and maybe some of the womenfolk at The Ossuary can enlighten me.

 

Why are women so totally bipolar when it comes to men?

We all hear this come from women. "I want a guy who is nice and sweet who isn't a piece of shit". Five minutes after saying that the same woman who says that hooks up with the first convicted felon/Hells Angel/piece of shit they can find. A month later they are whining about being abused, used, etc etc etc.

I just don't get it. What part of piece of shit don't these women understand?

 

Just my bitch

 

 

 

 

 

HEY YOU!  YES YOU, READING THIS POST!  YOU LIKE FREE STUFF RIGHT?

 

I want to play a game...again....

 

Earlier this year, I gave away a free issue of Rue Morgue magazine for the answer to a trivia question.  I had a lot of fun with it, and figured if I was able to at some point, I'd do it again...but I don't like doing things half-assed......

Over the past 3 or so months, from the various conventions I go to (and postal service screwups), I've been accumulating a decent-sized pile of convention schwag and, after a long time trying to figure out how the hell I was going to do this, I think I've come up with a challenge thatll be a bit more complicated than knowing the answer to a trivia question.

SO WHAT ARE WE PLAYING FOR?

 

Due to a postal service screwup, I am, again, able to give away a free issue of Rue Morgue!  This time, Issue 91, featuring a Blair Witch retrospective and pieces on Straw Dogs, Combat Shock, and the history of death masks, among many other things.

 

BUT WAIT!  THERES MORE!

 

             

 

A) An Inglourious Basterds one-sheet I picked up at Monstermania in August, B) A deck of Fox Home Entertainment "Vote for Gore" playing cards I grabbed at Fangoria in June, C) A T-shirt for the now-defunct Fangoria webchannel, Fangoria TV, size Large, that I grabbed at Fangoria in June, D) Autographed 8X10s, 1 of the Friday the 13th Pt. 2 onesheet, signed by Lauren Marie Taylor ("Vickie"), 1 of Judge Doom and Roger Rabbit, signed by Charles Fleischer ("voice of Roger Rabbit"), nabbed at Fangoria and June Monstermania respectively, E)  A black pen (the red's just on the inside of the barrel) advertising "The Uninvited" from Fangoria, F) A wide range of Alien Trespass one-sheets, all different, from Fangoria, and G) a Saw VI onesheet from Monstermania August.  EDIT:  H)  THE WINNER WILL ALSO GET HIS OR HER CHOICE OF THE TWO SELLSHEETS SHOWN ABOVE THAT I PICKED UP AT MONSTERMANIA IN AUGUST.

 

So, by now, I'm imagining you're curious what you have to do to win some of these FABULOUS PRIZES....Well, over in the music section, I've uploaded 15 instrumental tracks from various horror movies, each named "Contest Song 1", 2, 3, etc.  Some are easy, some are a bit more challenging, a couple pretty rough and no movie is repeated (I've linked them here, clicking will open each in a new window, they play automatically):

Song 1

Song 2 (I will only accept ONE answer for this)

Song 3 (Two possible answers)

Song 4

Song 5

Song 6

Song 7

Song 8

Song 9

Song 10

Song 11

Song 12

Song 13

Song 14

Song 15

 

So here's what you do: In order to keep my BHM site inbox relatively empty, email me a list of the 15 movies these songs are from at crypticpsych@best-horror-movies.com.  As an example, if song 10 happened to be the theme from Halloween (pointless hint:  it isn't), you'd email as part of your list "10) Halloween".  I'm not gonna be an evil EVIL human being and ask for song titles, composers, or anything like that.  Just movie names.  After the contest ends, I will look over all the entries and the entrants who get the most movies right will then be randomly picked from to determine the winner.  REMEMBER:  Even if you don't know all 15, email what you DO know, properly numbered.  If no one is able to get all 15, I will move to 14, and so on.  This contest IS open to international members as well, so if, for example, you live in say...Australia, England, Canada, or Romania, by all means jump in.  (And if you're curious how come there's only one winner...it's because I don't know a really good way to break the nine prizes into tiers.)

 

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:  It is my wish to give these prizes away to active forum members.  Therefore, I also ask that you include your forum name.  Two or three posts won't cut it here.  I'm not asking for someone who has over 1000 posts on the site...or necessarily even over 200.  Just a person who's active in discussions so that I'm sure I'm giving these to an avid horror fan AND an avid Ossuary member.  If you join the site after this contest opens and enter, I may disqualify you solely on the grounds that I don't know how much you'll post after the contest (we've had a few people join up, post like 5 things, and then vanish totally into the ether.  I don't aim to give this much stuff to such a light poster.  No offense.)

 

So have fun, everyone, and get your entry to me by midnight Eastern Standard Time on September 9th!

 

Let the games begin.

Welcome back nieces and nephews.  I hope you've been managing to scare yourselves.  If not, your ol' Uncle Pump is just going to have to do it for you this time.  

 

We'll stay in the 60s this time, but not on the ground with the baboons.  This time we'll move further up in the evolutionary tree.  Swing from a higher branch, if you will.  Mr. Karloff will be joining us again and this time he brought along a studio and director that will also appear more than once in the Dusty Mustie archives.  Let's start our introduction to AIP (American International Pictures) and Mr. Mario Bava with Black Sabbath.

 

 

One of the first and best anthology films, Black Sabbath paired Bava with Karloff (because he was under contract to AIP at the time).  This marvelous gem of a horror film is as Mustie as they get and by all rights should not be Dusty at all, but alas it is--especially the true version.  This film was shot in Rome and originally released in Italian.  When AIP brought it to the states, it was changed completely.  The original title, "The Three Faces of Fear", was changed to Black Sabbath , to cash in on the title of Bava's previous classic Black Sunday.  The one benefit to the name change was the fact that this is what the band Black sabbath took their name from. The entire score was replaced, the dialogue was dubbed, the whole lesbian subplot of the first tale was eliminated, and much blood was removed  from the second story. Even the order of the tales was switched around.  A great Mario Bava film was watered down to the point of being fit for American TV audiences of the time.    Please watch the the original Italian version with English subtitles to truly see Bava's vision.  There's no excuse not to, since our good friends at Anchor Bay were kind enough to release the uncut original version on the DVD shown above.

 

 

Let's chat about the still, in my opinion,  underappreciated director,  Mr. Bava for a moment.  Some folks don't know him at all and some folks think that Argento was the only great Italian horror master,  No knock against  Argento (who will make his own appearances among the Dusty Musties) at all, but Mario Bava was at the very least his equal, if not better.  His Black Sunday(1960) was, and still is an undisputed classic of the genre and his 1963 The Evil Eye helped kick start the whole giallo subgenre.  His painfully erotic Whip And The Body, with Christopher Lee, came out also in 1963-five years before Belle du Jour and ten years before Last Tango in Paris.  He helped start the Italian and American slasher subgenre with Blood and Black Lace in 1964 and added more fuel to the fire with Hatchet For The Honeymoon and Twitch of The Death Nerve in the early 70s.  His influence can be seen in the work of many modern directors and has been admitted to by as accomplished and diverse a list as Ridley Scott, Quentin Tarantino, Federico Fellini, Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, Guillermo Del Toro, and David Lynch.  Bava moved from the medium of black and white to color filmaking without missing a step.  He was one of the first directors to fully embrace and understand the impact of color in a movie.  His use of color was the work of a true artist, using distinct groupings of primary colors to manipulate our eyes into sending signals of approaching doom to our scared brains.  He used simple, but brilliant color schemes to move us almost unknowingly from real to unreal, from comfort to dread.  Now that boxed sets of his work are being released, maybe he'll get more recognition.  Even his death in 1980 was overshadowed by Hitchcock's just two days later.

 

Although I slapped their hand earlier (and rightfully so), for butchering this movie for it's American release, let me also sing the praises of AIP for giving us, not only this movie and Black Sunday, but also the great Corman/Price adaptations of Poe's stories and many other fine horror films of the era.  It was only AIP that really gave any kind of American challenge to the horror mastery of Britain's Hammer films.

 

Now--on to the movie.  Not only does he act in the second of the three tales in this film, but Karloff is also our host.

 

 

We find Karloff now heading towards the twilight of his career.  He would only make a handful of movies after this one and his health was already failing.  He would die just six years later.  But an aging Boris Karloff is still KARLOFF!  He was the man.  Having dissapointed his family with his career choice, he moved from England to Canada and worked as a farmhand and manual laborer, while acting in bit parts whenever possible.  He was already 44 when he became a household word by his superb portrayal of Frankenstein's monster.  His given name was William Henry Pratt and in his younger days, folks called him Billy.  It is widely believed that he came up with the name Boris Karloff himself.  He stated in public that the name came from his mother's side of the family, although no record of the name Karloff has ever been found in his family tree.  No less a director than James Whale told Karloff that his face had startling possibilities.

 

The first tale, The Telephone is possibly the weakest of the three stories told, but still a delight.  Oh the imagery of  the glint of a steel blade in a black gloved hand.  This chapter is all about style and beauty.  Speaking of beauty, Michele Mercier, who portrays the high class call girl Rosy is a sight to behold.  She is a perfect example of how stunning an Italian woman can be.  Just being allowed to watch her sit on the end of one of the most beautiful beds I've ever seen and smoke cigarettes makes you feel that this consort has earned her fee.

 

 

Watching her terror increase as she receives call after call from someone who can clearly see her is delicious.  This tale was clearly the inspiration for many phone call/ stalker films to come.  Set in Paris, this tale has our lovely Rosy involved in a very cool, psychotic, homo/hetero, love, and murder triangle with just enough of a twist to make it all worthwhile.

 

 

For the second tale, we travel to the old Russian countryside and the countryside is marvelous.  Creepy woods, old ruins, mountains, mist-enshrouded farmhouses, low-lying fog everywhere, the great heaving bosoms of Maria and Sdenka (by now you know ol' Uncle Pump loves him some heaving bosoms), and the swinging head of Alibeq the Turk.  This story is called the Wurdalak and is actually based on a short story by Tolstoy.  As far as I know, this is the only time Karloff portrayed a bloodsucker, and he waited until late in his career to do it.  His performance is well worth the wait.  As Gorca, Karloff is no sleek, classy, sexy Lugosi or Lee, nor is he quite the raging, brutal fiends of 30 Days of Night.  He makes this role his own and plays it to a tee.  Wurdalaks don't only like the taste of blood, they want that blood to come from the ones they used to love.

 

 

Now my little chimplings, I get to point out a source of pride.  Most of you are too young to have been scared by Karloff.  You know his legacy, you like seeing him in the old black and white classics, but he doesn'r really scare you.  I saw this film when I was still in Elementary school, and folks, that image above scared the tar out of me.  I woke up more than one night, imagining that face at my window.  I can say "I was scared by Karloff". 

 

This segment, though barely 30 minutes long, feels like a movie itself.  The handsome and dashing, young Count Vladimir comes to the farmhouse on the same night that the Wurdalak comes to get reaquainted with his loving family.

 

I love the line, "My lips are dead without your kisses". Folks--this tale has it all.  Even a dog with a howl that would make any werewolf proud and how many future filmakers were inspired by little Ivan's cries of "Mama, I'm cold" There's some very chilling stuff here.  It'd take an evil clown with power tools to equal the level of creepiness in this segment.  You can be dashing, you can run, you can hide, you can even fall in love, but will any of that protect you from the Wurdalak?

 

Now a tiny little sidenote before we move on the final story:

The dashing Count Vladimir is portrayed by a fellow by the name of Mark Damon.  Before this, he mostly played in old fifties love and romance films.  He played in some other horror films afterwards and even some spaghetti westerns, but his major claims to fame were: 1.-as a producer, he helmed such films as The Choirboys, Das Boot, The Neverending story, 9-1/2 Weeks, Wild Orchid, and Monster with Theron and Ricci.

2.-He turned down a role in a Sergio Leone film and then introduced Clint Eastwood to Leone for A Fist Full of Dollars.

Sidenote over--Let's forge ahead to the third tale, in Victorian London, The Drop of Water is nasty little story of revenge from the grave.

 

 

We all know it's wrong to steal from the dead.  But what if the dead just happen to be an old medium who regularly communicates with the dead and lives in a creepy old house with creepy old dolls and a gazillion cats.  Sure sounds like a place I don't want to steal from.

That's all I can really say about the third and final chapter wthout some serious spoilers.  I will say Ghost tales don't get much spookier. 

 

Bava considered Black Sabbath his favorite out of all the movies he made.  That's good enough for me.  It should be good enough for you too.  If you have not already experienced this masterpiece, then you have some true blood-curdling moments ahead.  Until next time, Go try to scare yourself.                                      

 

 

 

So today i was thinking about how much i'd like to start over. How much of my life I'd like to change. My whole life has been one unfortunte accident, and my blessings have turned into curses. For example. My parents are veryyy wealthy and because of that i was forced to grow up faster. I attended my parents' parties, did 16 beauty pageants, and went to a private school. Growing up, I had a body guard. So did my little brother. It was hard to make friends, let alone date. I think in high school i MAYBE had 2 boyfriends. My parents pushed me aside, so i delved into the world of horror movies when i was veryy young. My dad had a passion for them, so i snuck some of them. My brother is the same way. I would go down to San Diego to visit my mother's family, and while i was there they let me run around with my cousins. But after the shark attack, everything changed. From that day on, they smothered me with protection.

I never had independance till I was almost 19, when i finally told my parents i was going to a college in Ireland. They said ok. My social life has improved, but i still don't date. It's hard to find someone who can tolerate me for long periods of time, while also maintaining the same interests and passions as me. My obsession with horror scares off most people, and due to the fact that i have very contriversial views, i offend more. Guys think i'm a nerd, because all i talk about is horror, politics, and science. I haven't had a date in almost 3 years, and my parents wouldn't let me see the only guy i've ever truely cared for. I wish, like most girls, that i could be different. That i was prettier, less nerdy, and that i was elegant instead of clumsy. The fact that I'm schitzophrenic doesn't help either. I wish that a boy could see me as something beautiful, instead of a freak. But i know it won't happen.

I know nobody will read this, and if you ARE reading this you probably think i'm some spoiled emo bitch. Well, i'm not. I know nobody cares, but i thought that I might as well write SOMETHING down. I need to get it out.

You know, my life is busy.  Very busy.  Also, my handwriting is sloppy when taking notes quickly.  Very sloppy.  These two factors contribute to me taking over a month to write this (and the next one about a con I went to the week after this one).  I uploaded the pics to facebook fairly early on (if you've added me, you've can see them) with captions but not with full report notes.  I saved those for here to save time.  Then life intervened.  But now, I have a spare moment, and I've transcribed three days worth of notes from a tiny press notebook into 6 pages of singlespaced Word notes.  So, let's get started.

FRIDAY:

It should be noted that Fangoria this year returned to Manhattan for the first time in at least a few years.  (They'd been in Secaucus for some time.)  They held their event in the Jacob K. Javitz Center, about 10-11 blocks south of Madison Square Garden.  It looks like this:

 

   

 

Ooo...modern-arty.  And yes, the quality of these shots is quite subpar and there's a reason for that, which we'll come to.  Now, before someone thinks this was a big convention, that registration table is for a home design and decor expo that was setting up for the coming week.  To reach Fango, you walk around that....go down an escalator...down another escalator...and into the room.  To put that in perspective, I was told at one point that the room in which they held the convention was the room in which they held JUST the panel discussions at the East Coast Comic-Con.  For the love of God, use the space. 

Now you might be thinking this is just the vendor's room.  You'd be wrong.  To the right (off camera) is the screening room (small).  To the left (off camera) is the photo-op room (small).  Inside is the vendors room....and the panel room.  In one.  Separated by a black curtain that only covers half the space, vertically between the two rooms.  Repeating.  Vendors room in SAME ROOM with the panel room.  Let the numerous flaws of that sink in for a second.  Then take a closer look.  See those little pink lines in the room?  Those are T-Mobile Mobile Makeover sales people.  Yeah.  One of the vendors at a HORROR CON....was T-Mobile wandering around asking people to change service.  Which tells you how much trouble they must've had getting vendors.

First thing I did when I went inside continued to set the tone for how angry this convention made me:

 

BETSY PALMER

 

 

Ms. Palmer was very nice (she does that pose without being asked....don't look at me like that).  There's also a reason these photos look better than the others...again, later.  But I also learned some very important things from her.  See, in order to do this convention properly, I learned last year to use package deals.  Last year, I was able to get a Silver pass and get into the party (saving a ton of money on photo-ops).  This year they closed it to all but Gold people.  So I bought a gold pass.  As part of that pass deal, you get a card.  Like so:

 

 

 

That card represents complimentary autographs...from basically everyone.  Now here's the flaw.  This pass cost me a substantial amount of money.  Enough that it was feasible that my theory that a buck or two would go to each celeb who agreed to the deal would make sense.  Which was why I was angry all weekend (and grew more annoyed as the same thing kept happening to Danny Manfredini, the cast of Last House on the Left, and Ari Lehman) when I found out from Betsy Palmer that either they did not tell the celebrities about the gold passes or did not make their benefits clear to the celebs.  This meant the celebs, who normally might charge 20 or 30 for an autograph...were getting no money for this.  Creation Entertainment and Fangoria took all the money from the tix.  Ms. Palmer left within the hour after the con began on Friday.  She didn't return until after her panel on Saturday...for a couple hours.  Then she was gone the rest of the weekend and frankly I don't blame her.  It's insanely disrespectful to not tell celebrities about this aspect, whether you agree with them charging for autographs or not.  Thus, the sad sorry state of this con (in terms of logistics and organization) began.  Moving on, I headed.....through the curtain (the pure unmitigated idiocy of that will become apparent more and more)....to the panel room.

 

GUILLERMO DEL TORO AND CHUCK HOGAN

 

(L to R:  Tony Timpone, Chuck Hogan, Del Toro, and the head of Creation whose name I don't know)

Let's get something out of the way right now. I really dont like Tony Timpone.  One of the many reasons I read Rue Morgue is because its current editor-in-chief is a tattoo covered woman with flamingly orange-red hair who speaks to her readers like one of them.  Their previous editor went on to make award winning horror shorts and still writes for the magazine from time to time.  As is obvious, they both have a love of the genre.  Tony Timpone dresses like a used car salesman.  He looks like a used car salesman.  He acts like a used car salesman.  At a convention, I have never once seen him effectively guide a panel.  I've also never once seen, on any level, him show true, honest, heartfelt love of the genre.  I.  Don't.  Like him.  Moving on.
Del Toro and Hogan were there to discuss their new vampire novel "The Strain".  They were on a book tour and literally ran in just to do this panel (which shows a lot of respect for fans that seems to jive with how unbelievably kind I've heard Del Toro is.)  As I usually do, here's stream of consciousness as to what was discussed:  Originally the novel's idea was pitched to Fox by Del Toro as a series idea.  After they declined it, Fringe mysteriously had a premiere involving a 747 much like the opening of The Strain does...but he's not claiming plagiarism.  Because Del Toro would not go PG13, The Strain did not become a movie instead.  Del Toro on Twilight:  "Vampires are brutal creatures, they do not fucking sparkle, they want to rip your throat out." and "I'm too fat and ugly to believe in beautiful vampirism." and finally, that Twilight "doesn't fucking peel [his] banana.".  The book, however was not writtten as a response to Twilight.  The book does go into detail about vampire biology and as Del Toro says, ""If you want to know what happens to vampire's peepees, this is the book.".  The novel's characters include a Mexican gangbanger and vampire hunters who are not professionals.  The idea of the novel was also based in the idea of the reality of coming home and feeling like you want to eat your family.  One of Del Toro's greatest vampire influences was a book called "Living Vampires, Dead Vampires".  They were stories told as matter of fact and "fuck you if you don't believe them".  There is humor in The Strain, but it isn't necessarily intentional.  Del Toro also believes that mystical creatures should be treated like real animals and like they exist. The Strain is the first part of a proposed trilogy.  The second book is well on it's way, and the third will begin after he films "The Hobbit".  Del Toro is also a gamer, having finished Call of Duty 4 and is currently playing Left 4 Dead.  Bookwise beyond the afforementioned stories, Del Toro was influenced on vampires by Dracula, I Am Legend, Count Magnus, Carmilla, and Salem's Lot.  Moviewise, his world is based in Let The Right One In and Martin (for it's portrayal of the loneliness of that life.  He loved the power of Martyrs but won't watch it again (much like he felt about Funny Games).  He loved Firefly, but True Blood didn't grab him and as for Buffy, "[he's] waiting for a boner to watch it, but it hasn't happened."  Del Toro called working on "The Hobbit" very nice karma and related a story of how Peter Jackson met him at the airport in New Zealand with a gift of Warhammer models that he has since painted and used.  He mentioned that his favorite special effects were in The Thing, saying "Bottin is a sick bastard" and his favorite prosthetics were in Amadeus and The Exorcist.

NOW.  About that panel room.  About midway through the panel, one of the members of GWAR took it upon himself to stand at one of the openings and yell that people should go to the GWAR table.  At what point did it seem like a good idea to the organizers to connect the rooms?

 

HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS

 

 

Hey, you know what's funny?  When you put a panel room RIGHT NEXT TO A VENDOR ROOM.....the vendor room gets noisy.  And when the vendor room gets noisy, it drowns out the panels.  In theory that defeats the purpose, which is why you DONT FREAKING DO THAT.

 

So, the Godfather of Gore.  Smartly, they basically just gave Lewis a mike and let him roll whichever way he went.  Super nice guy (I'd talked to him beforehand at his table in the vendors room about the Grand Guignol).  First, he previewed his upcoming new film "Grim Fairy Tales" with a clip of a person playing on a game show called 'Uh-Oh" during which she loses an arm.  (and later has it sewn back on).  He says the movie is about a channel that discovers it has a hit with the violent game show "Uh-Oh".  In response, they request a new show called Grim Fairy Tales (that is also of course violent) from which the movie gets its name.  I asked him during the panel if he had a favorite current director to which he replied "Anybody who puts their head in that lion's mouth has my respect."  Lewis says the idea in Grim Fairy Tales is that no one gets killed.  It's more to make people say "Isn't that ridiculous."  Lewis believes that digital is the future (over film).  Lewis also mentioned that it is his voice on the soundtrack to 2000 Maniacs and proceeded to lead the crowd in a rousing rendition of the theme complete with yeeeeeehas.  The original guy they were going to use had a voice that was too high and Lewis took no screen credit for doing the song.  In terms of his impact, Lewis said that it made no difference how primitive the movie was back then and that as a result of their work, certain special effects and gore effects exist and are able to be purchased.  Interestingly, Lewis also mentioned that people protested his movies but that there was no legislation in place against violence (just sex and language).  As such, the government's hands were tied.  Lewis also mentioned a movie he's in development on and filming called "Mr. Bruce and the Gore Salon", about a weight clinic that removes fat from people and replaces with stainless steel. It has a London Sheraton character that is analogue of Paris Hilton.  Lewis believes the main idea of his movies is to have a good time.  On Wizard of Gore, Lewis called it Murphy's Law in movie form. Mitchell camera was supposed to be built to last but left them with a full day's worth of dead film, for example.  Also, a carcass was supposed to be ripped from top to bottom.  In so doing, they got carcass all over rug of house they were using, cops were called.

 

LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT VILLAIN REUNION:

 

(L to R, not guy on right:  Marc Scheffler, David Hess, Fred Lincoln)

Three of the four Last House on the Left villains were there (Jeramie Rain was having knee surgery).  Regarding the remake they thought the direction and camera were good, but that that was to be expected, and the rest was crap.  Also, they believe the original was a product of it's time and had chemistry the remake did not.  Also, in the original people talked less about the rape (which was more implied) and more about the film as a snuff film (according to them).  In the remake, critics focused on the rape.  The actors bonded during the original and had lots of fun when they weren't acting.  Regarding the movie's ad campaign, the men said that it worked particularly because of the movie's verite style. There also was no true story, it was all advertising and the film originally had 3 other titles that failed before the actual one and the advertising campaign.  The film was originally inspired by Ingmar Bergman's Virgin Spring.The men are also pursuing a lawsuit over residuals.  Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham originally wanted this film to be a porno, but the actor's refused leaving us where we are today with both their careers.  Last House was also funded with money from a Marilyn Chambers movie.  The actors also believe that their characters never intended to kill their victims.  In terms of quotes, Sheffler said this has had the most impact of all the TV he's ever done, David Hess said in terms of acting, "It's easy to get into the dark side, but it's hard to get out without changing.  Lincoln was the most talkative and interesting.  He's still involved with the adult industry ("I'd rather fuck, kiss, suck, etc. than kill").  He also said the original script was one of the most disgusting things ever and mentioned he was supposed to decapitate someone and have sex with their neck and body ("Who does this?").  But the message that should be taken away from how they felt and feel about the role was probably when Lincoln said "If one asshole sees this and does something, I'd be ashamed for the rest of my life."

I then left the panel room to hit the film room to see the highly anticipated....

 

DEAD SNOW

 

Dead Snow, reviewed elsewhere on the site quite effectively by Will from the UK, is amazing.  Pure and simple.  Full disclosure, I missed roughly 10-15 minutes of the opening due to the other panel, but it appears all I missed was footage of them frolicking in the snow really.  This movie...is the Norwegian version of what happens when Evil Dead meets Dead Alive....with NAZIS.  The characters are engaging, the movie is fun on every level and the visuals are amazing (can you say on-rushing batallion of Nazi zombie soldiers?).  Best of all though is that Dead Snow has some of the most inventive gore shots in my recent memory and a brilliant sense of humor.  This is the tip of the iceberg:  machine gun snowmobile, hammer and sickle, chainsaw, beating zombies with parts of other zombies.  This is not just a must see.  This is a holy mother of God why are you still reading this go see it now movie.

 

SATURDAY

 

 

 

On Saturday, I met Marilyn Burns and saw a bit of a panel for the new Jack Ketchum adaptation "The Offspring".  I remember nothing of the panel as it was early, so I do apologize for that but I do have....

 

TRAILERS

 

There was a long...LONG...trailer reel.  I tried my best to pick out the ones that seemed either interesting, different, or new and I've uploaded my picks for the best to the video section for your perusal.  I make no claims on the movies themselves (with the exception of Dead Snow and as you will see momentarily, Dead Air) but the trailers do look good for low-budget movies, independent movies, documentaries, horror-comedies, and straight horror films.  My picks for the best trailers:  The Children, Grace, Hysterical Psycho, Skeleton Crew, Pig Hunt, Not Quite Hollywood, I Sell the Dead, George's Intervention, Dead Air, and Dead Snow.  I'd link to them, but it's just as easy for you guys, when this is done, to go take a look at the video page since they're all there, one after the other.  After that it was time for....

 

TOXIC AVENGER MUSICAL

 

Also known as:  two understudies (maybe?) perform songs out of costume on stage without any set pieces at all.  Don't get me wrong, I love the musical and will see it again before it leaves NYC, but this was just sad.  They performed "The Legend of the Toxic Avenger", "Evil is Hot", and "Hot Toxic Love".  Jesus, get a guy in a Toxie suite at least!  It was at about this point I realized just how stunningly empty this convention was for a Saturday.  Moving on was:

 

HELLRAISER REUNION PANEL

 

 

Doug Bradley and Ashley Laurence (who's wearing sunglasses because of cornea issues).

Doug Bradley's Favorite Hellraiser parts:  The tortures in 1 and 2 and the audience of death in 3.  For the most part, he's happy with the series but wishes some hadn't been taken to theaters.  Said 5 6 and 7 were all made into Hellraiser movies from pre-existing screenplays.  Ashley Laurence's first screen test was with Doug playing her father and Pinhead. Barker's initial direction to her: "Your uncle's in your father's skin and he's trying to have sex with you and kill you, maybe not in that order. Go."  Bradley also believes Pinhead's voice goes between a monk and a butcher, not like voice in hellbound heart who is supposed to be light and breathy.  It's also lower than his regular voice and played with in post.  Clive's one note on Pinhead to Doug: Do Less (was nudged toward standing in one place, no movement). Tribal makeup and scarring were an early Pinhead idea.  Regarding Hellraiser 4, Bradley wanted the unhappy ending with the merchant and Pinhead destroyed (welcome to Oblivion) instead of the corny pin on the floor ending they used.  Regarding Hellraiser 6, it originally had a character named Kirsty with a dog named Cotton. Bradley got Laurence back in on the condition she'd only do it if her sequence were to be a dream because she believed the character wouldn't act that way.  On the idea of a Hellraiser Remake: Laurence: "Shouldn't be made but there's a built-in audience."  Bradley: It's in Development hell, chaos and confusion, they don't know what they want to do. Every exec wants their snout in the trough. It's an admission of a failure to do your job which is to find the next Hooper, Craven or raimi. Money Is everything, and he's had no calls about the movie.  For fun on the set of the movies, Bradley enjoyed doing Monty Python sketches as Pinhead (this parrot is no more...).  Facts about horror you never realized you needed to know:  Pinhead could easily get through airport security after the first two movies because the pins were plastic thereafter.  Currently, Doug Bradley is working with Renegade Arts doing readings of Lovecraft and Poe.  I asked Laurence about being coated with blood for Hellraiser 2.  She discussed how she was coated with corn syrup and food coloring...and then they broke for lunch which she shivered her way through.  Regarding fan fiction, Doug Bradley said it was gratifying people cared enough about the universe to make their own version.  Finally, whats the status of Pinhead v. Myers you might ask?  Originally Doug Bradley was interested as an actor, Barker was going to write and Carpenter direct.  Barker wanted to make that world where they could coexist.  Pinhead mightve had a problem though since he likes a good conversation.  In the end, Moustapha Akkad kiboshed it.  (And for the record, Doug Bradley did not like how Rob Zombie removed the supernatural element from Michael Myers.

 

Then while I waited in line, it was DENNIS PAOLI:

 

 

Paoli wrote From Beyond, Re-Animator, The Dentist, etc. alongside Stuart Gordon.....but since Fangoria can't allow one line to die down, and since HAVING THE PANEL ROOM NEXT DOOR MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO HEAR, I have no info on Paoli since I couldnt hear him.  Up Next:

 

GLASS EYE PIX:

 

 

In this case, again, because it was a bit disorganized and hard to hear, I have no real info other than who everyone is and what they're involved with. From left to right:  Jim Mickle, Nick Damici, Glenn McQuaid, James Felix McKenney, Joe Maggio, Larry Fessenden, Graham Reznick, and Jeff Grace

And what they are involved with:
I SELL THE DEAD (Glenn McQuaid), SATAN HATES YOU (James Felix McKenney), STAKE LAND
(Jim Mickle, Nick Damici), BITTER FEAST (Joe Maggio) and I CAN SEE YOU (Graham Reznick), plus composer Jeff Grace (THE ROOST)

Want more info?  Google their upcoming movies:  Satan Hates You, Bitter Feast, Hypothermia, I Sell the Dead, and The Viewer (which I do have info on that will come up momentarily).  Up next,

 

JASONS

 

 

L to R: Kane Hodder (7-10), Warrington Gillette (2), Betsy Palmer (1), Ari Lehman (1), CJ Graham (6)

 

There is no greater craziness than Jason related panels at cons.  Palmer doesn't know how she had so many children. Didn't think anyone would see the movie, said "what a piece of shit". (always says those lines)  Lehman thinks he's a comic....good guy, but seems to almost think he's a standup comic.  Kevin bacon and Betsy Palmer got into the movie via NYC. Betsy Palmer, aka, how you can tell how crazy these get: "I never had sex on any playhouse, I had it out on a lawn."  Remake thoughts; Lehman: Fun film, Palmer, they're trying to make money (sean Cunningham and tom savini) Hodder, will see it and probably like it.  Lehman thought Jason lived, Savini said it was a dream. Lehman turned out right in the end.  The Friday the 13th 2 controversy over Jason is that Warrington Gillette is credited as Jason, but Steve Dash did all the stuntwork.  Kane Hodder's Favorite kills: Sleeping bag and frozen head.  Part 7 is his favorite.  CJ Graham was the second choice for his movie.  Palmer's seen the original movie three times, twice under duress.  Also, according to Betsy Palmer; In Ecuador they call it Tuesday the 13th (due to their superstition).  Warrington Gillette auditioned for John Furyk's role in the movie, but ended up as mongoloid hillbilly Jason.  And finally, Palmer did not originally know how Ari Lehman would look and was a bit offput by his mongoloid look.

 

So, much like the previous night where I avoided a fashion show hosted by GWAR, I then avoided a tattoo contest....mostly.  I went back out into the vendor's room.  I managed to meet up with Tatyana Kot, star of "Blitzkrieg:  Escape from Stalag 69":

 

 

And then a very important panel....

 

TRICK R' TREAT

 

Michael Dougherty and Dylan Baker

 

I SAW 20 MINUTES OF TRICK R'TREAT!  HA!  And all I will say is I saw a segment, very gory and darkly funny, based in the razor blade in the candy legend, a flashback story of a group of deformed children in halloween masks, and Brian Cox doing battle with Sam, the film's mascot.    The film looks absolutely amazing.  The film is a throwback to anthologies.  It is the holy grail of current lost horror films, having been sat on for 7 years after it was written in 2001.  Dougherty believes this is because studios don't know how to properly market anthologies.  Dougherty also believes the film fits because we're entering a fun cycle again (hardcore 70s, fun 80s, cycling around to fun again now.)  The character of Sam (see poster) is peripherally in every story as a spirit of the holiday.  Merchandise is out in stores (it came out before the movie by accident).  Dylan Baker's "Principal" character is said to be a cross between Norman Bates and Norman Rockwell (I saw it in his clip).  Which brings me to current release plans:  A road show started this month and will include ComicCon, Fantasia, After Dark, London, Toronto, and Fantastic Fest.  It will be out on dvd b4 halloween.  Also, comic books will be out in early October as a single graphic novel, and the soundtrack will be out in Late Sept.  The DVD, at least, will have commentary, a doc on halloween and its history, and the original short film that led to this.  Oh...and for you Spidey fans, Baker's been told The Lizard is coming...but has not been told when.  Up next:

 

PANDORUM:

 

 

We have Ben Foster of X-Men 3 (who seemed drunk) and mixed martial artist Cung Le.  I missed almost all of this panel while getting my free autographed Trick R' Treat poster (hell yeah).  But what I did see, and the trailer, failed to impress at all.

 

Then after a Walking Distance panel (Adrienne King's first movie in a long time), my camera died.  Hence the terrible quality back at the beginning.  It really sucked for a reason to be apparent.  So I went to the Hudson news inside the center and got a disposable.  Got back in time for:

 

DEAD AIR:

 

 

 

After a panel with some footage, I was actually very amped for this.  I went and saw it as a time filler before the Saturday night party.  (That's Josh Feinman and Elle Travis btw).  My opinion on Dead Air:  Well, you might want plot....it's the story of a grizzled radio veteran doing his show the night of a mass zombie outbreak in his town that threatens his and his team's survival...wait....*flips flips flips* oh these are my Pontypool notes.  Let me try again.  It's the story of a grizzled radio veteran doing his show the night of a mass zombie outbreak in his town that threatens his and his team's survival.  That's better.  In all seriousness, Dead Air is like the unintentional American remake of the great Canadian film Pontypool.  Here's the real shock though...IT'S BETTER THAN PONTYPOOL.  Bill Moseley nails the radio host role and the film also has a slightly different, more political, more conspiratorial tone that is very interesting and won't be for everyone.  A great, highly recommended movie that seems a good directorial effort by CORBIN BERSEN!

 

VAMPIRE BALL:

 

 

So then I headed to the New Yorker hotel.  Here's an idea...hold the party in the place you're holding the Con...LIKE YOU DID LAST YEAR.  And give info as to where to go when you reach the hotel.  NO wait, i'm not done bashing this party yet.   Last year, it was an ice cream social with cash bar.  at 10 o clock, ice cream's good.  This year, it's a VEGGIE AND CHEESE PLATE THING IN A TINY ROOM WITH A CASH BAR.  And of course the shitty distorted posters and fango covers projected on the walls did NOTHING to make this seem like a "Vampire Ball" (though two people did have the balls to appear in costume).  I can't complain too much though...as it allowed me once again to save a load of money on photo ops even if I was still using the disposable out of necessity:

 

     

 

In order:  Coralina Cattaldi-Tassoni and Dario Argento (I think she was his date since I never saw her the rest of the con....and HELL YEAH), Doug Bradley, Tobe Hooper, and Ari Lehman.

 

I repeat...I hate the disposable camera so much.  Those photos at the top were me just burning film since I'd charged my camera before sunday:

 

SUNDAY:

 

Sunday began with the costume of the Con.  It's not often you see an age 10 or less Leatherface:

 

 

Then SMASH CUT:

 

 

Other than that the trailer looked hysterically funny and bloody and HG Lewis and David Hess are involved (as seen above), I don't know much about this one.  But I mention it here....BECAUSE SOME MORON DECIDED TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB IN THE VENDOR'S ROOM WITH A CHERRY PICKER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PANEL.  THATS NOT DISTRACTING AT ALL IS IT?

 

Then it was LYNCH MOB:

 

 

With Tony Darrow of Street Trash and Paul Borghese of Sopranos.  I feel bad for Borghese, his name wasn't even on the screen.

 

This was a weird one.  The trailer never worked, Tony Timpone couldn't run this panel if he tried since no one asked a thing.  The info I do have though is that it was filmed in Lynchburg and has lots of gore, mobsters, and T&A.  The panel was filled with insult comedy and self-deprecating humor.  Regarding Street Trash, Darrow was told he'd ruined James Munro, Jr's movie since he'd made it into a mob film.  They also arrived at the premiere on a garbage truck.  His part was also 90% ad-libbed and his cane was due to a malignant melanoma in his foot.  Finally, Lynch Mob's promotional material says they used real blood.  What happened was Darrow was injured in the head on an effect, refused treatment, and his blood was part of the makeup they used in the shot.  Up next:

 

VINDICATION:

 

 

I'd give names but I lost track. Far left is definitely Alan Rowe Kelly, woman after Rowe Kelly is I think Zoe Chlanda, then Jerry Murdock, then Keith Frazer, then I'm not sure, then the far right bald guy is director Bart Mastronardi.

 

Vindication is an indie film about a boy tormented by his guilt.  It also has touches of discussions of sexuality in it as well.  The film recieved a great blurb from Clive Barker who got a hold of it through his life partner who knew Mastronardi.  More information later on.  (and I got another free awesome autographed poster)  Next (in case you couldnt tell, I'm getting tired.)

 

WILLIAM LUSTIG:

 

 

 

The owner of Blue Underground and director of Maniac brought release and remake news.  Blue Underground is moving toward blu-ray: current blu-rays: Stendahl Syndrome, Dead and Buried, Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Two Evil Eyes.  Coming soon: The Crazies, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, The Toolbox Murders, and New York Ripper.  In July: Bad Boy Barny.  In August: Fire and Ice.  In September: New York Ripper.  The company is now focused on repurposing, not gaining new stuff.  Maniac may be on blu-ray in a year. Caroline Munro, Tom Savini, and Joe Spinell all came onboard for the movie originally through Creation entertainment (the company who runs this con).  Lustig also says a Maniac remake is increasingly likely with at 12 million dollar budget.  He also thinks Joe Spinell's character could be played by Tom Sizemore.  Maniac's 16mm print was thrown out in the 80s, so the Blu-ray will be made from the negative.  New York Ripper will feature a new featurette comparing NYC of the movie's time to NYC now and the changes.  AND NOW THE MAN OF THE HOUR:

 

DARIO ARGENTO

 

 

 

Dario with his translator Paolo on his left, and Maitland McDonald, the moderator on his right.

 

Quick thoughts because i'm tired:

-"You're free to do what you want" on Masters of Horror. "You're sure?" ->The discussion that occurred before he made the censored ep Jenifer for MOH.
-Jenifer, Pelts, and Mother of Tears to a lesser degree were an experiment in blending sex and horror.
-Finishing trilogy: Suspiria, Inferno 2 years later, and then takes break to avoid having to expand on it over and over again. Seeing the restoration of Suspiria brought him back into the trilogy.
-Agatha Christie's 10 Little Indians was a big influence.
-Giallo: Didn't know what had happened to the film at the time. Doesn't speak with producers. Adrian Brody was very good and he had no problems with him. He knows music and cinema and he was friends with Asia Argento.
-Same thing on Two Evil Eyes with Harvey Keitel, he was very good.
-Actors he's had problems with: Tony Monsanti in Crystal Plumage. Had problems the whole film and afterwrs. Also, the Girl lead in Opera to whom he had to speak through an intermediary.
-"I do films because I like to do films. It's my life. Without films, it's nothing."
-Suspiria was inspired by school days, believed school was full of witches. "we were slaves of the teachers".
-Shot Do You Like Hitchcock and Stendahl Syndrome in Turin due to it's strange architecture.
-Martyrs is dedicated to him. Believes its similar to Spanish wave "interests"
-He's happy we have new people doing films similar to the way he did them.
-Digital is flat, 35 gives deeper bigger color, wanted to do same style as old Technicolor.
-Bava was not as much an influence as Hitchcock. He considers Bava too jokey.
-Ending of Suspiria and Third Mother: they laugh because it is finished, or because it's not real, it's a film.
-Never wanted to actually do a zombie film, only produce. Considers it romero's area.

And finally on the right, Dario recieved the lifetime achievement award (it's a hand clutching a heart)....BUT WE'RE NOT DONE!  After people paid too damn much for stuff at the auction and random time filler with new spooksmodel Danni Doll (it shouldve been BHM forum member Kaci),

 

TOBE HOOPER

 

 

 

More quick hits due to fatigue:

-Influences: Robert Weiss, Fellini, Antonioni, Welles, Hitchcock, Corman.
-His mother went into labor in a movie theater.
-Eggshells: Experimental comedy, first movie. Grueling difficult production whose nature helped the movie gain power.
-His films tend to have difficulties
-Masters gave him final cut and a budget.
-Working on From a Buick 8. Screenplay is done, and is working on casting.
-Lifeforce: mancini requested the scoring job, hooper liked him. Great experience. Blu-ray is in the works. Shouldve been called "Space Vampires".

-He likes adapting stepehn king because he loves his work. He tries to produce the feeling he had when he read the book.
-Invaders from Mars: Guy who installed a satellite dish on his house ended up doing the score for him.
-Craft services is better and you have more time on a big budget but the challenge is the same.
-Hooper's recorded a commentary for a new funhouse bluray or dvd but they're probably hanging on to it.
-"Rob Zombie is a dear friend and I sanction what he did. He's a cool dude." (On House of 1000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects)

Also, above is the Texas Chainsaw reunion panel.  Marilyn Burns, Tobe Hooper, Caroline Williams, and Tom Savini.  Me, I left.  Went to go see:

 

THE VIEWER/VINDICATION:

 

The Viewer, which I mentioned briefly earlier, is a 3D horror short by the people at Glass Eye Pix.  In it, you're accused of a crime and a profiler is attempting to read your mind and find out what happened.  The visuals get crazier and crazier and the whole short has a distinctly Warhol-esque feel to it.  It's very well done, both in terms of 3D and overall.

 

Vindication is a very unusual, very different film.  It's the story of a guy tormented by a violent visualization of his own guilt and inner feelings (sexual and otherwise).  It's a very interesting film and very well done considering we're talking a 3 year labor of love filmed on weekends made on a shoestring with paychecks.  It's very ambitious, very deep, and tends to stick with you a bit after the fact.  While it's, of the three movies I saw, the worst, it's still better than a lot of mainstream hollywood pablum that does hit theaters and deserves to be seen.

 

And with that, i'm done.  It's midnight here and my head hurts.  Overall, Fangoria massively disappointed me even while having a ton of amazing things.  It's like Chiller with more focus...and that's not a good thing.  Unless they pull something utterly amazing out of their ass next year, I ain't shlepping up to NYC for this next year.  So I leave you with a final thought.

 

When gothically designed and "Horror"...toilets....are your vendor....YOU NEED.  MORE.  BETTER. VENDORS.

 

So we were able to get some funding for this horror feature film we want to produce. We got a good crew and excellent equipments.

We will shoot on Red one which is basically as good as film.

We have to main issues that are bothering us;

1-We are not sure about the script, some think it lacks a little originality.

2- The film is in English, and we have some actors who are in th list, but we need more talents to chose from, being in Iraq we don't' have many options.

So can you help?

If you are a writer and would like to help drop me a note.

If you are an actor of know actors in the 26-30 age range contact me

 If you don't care, watch our film when it comes out early next year J

 

Thanks all

I'm on a roller coaster of thoughts and I was just wandering if anyone else on this website likes super heroes and villians?

 

You know, just wandering...

 

Random pic!

What's this...? The streets are filled with more sidewalkers than usual, many of them pulling screaming toddlers along behind them. Ashen-faced husbands dawdling behind their frazzled wives, packs of over-dressed tweenies suckling on guarana-infused fruit juices in oversized cups, strained businessmen eyeing the latest diamond necklaces in shiny jewelry store windows for their already-over-diamoned wives and mistresses... Aw nuts...is it that time of year again already? It seems mere months ago I was contemplating the benefits of taking a flamethrower to my local mall-crowd versus the inevitable risks in such a venture. And as fun as it would be to watch flaming masses running for their lives, I'm just not built for prison. I'm far too delicate. So yes, once again I lament my lack of balls as I'm stuck behind yet another family out to "make a day of it" while Christmas shopping and choosing to block the path of purely mercenary shoppers like me: looking to get in and out with SWAT-team efficiency and incur minimal collateral damage, preferably while staying within a Scrooge-like budget and preserving what little sanity I have left amid the flashing lights and endless swirls of tinsel draped in every stinking shop window from here to K Mart and back again.

 

It's times like these I can really see the benefits of being an emotionless zombie, a chainsaw-wielding psychopath, or a megalomaniacal villain bent on world domination (and no, not Donald Rumsfeld, someone way cooler, like Ernst Stavro Blofield, or even Hank Scorpio). And it's not like I can't see the benefits in these pursuits at any time of year, it's just during the holiday season it seems more pronounced, and far more attractive than usual.

 

The cynic in me comes out with a vengeance, grabs a bottle of whiskey and settles in for the season. He takes a swig of cheap scotch and barks: "Why is it that so many people who never go to church, never pray, live lives of debaucherous sin and could quite easily mistake a Rabbi for a Reverend choose to celebrate this ridiculously commercial holiday in the name of Jesus Christ?" I myself, the most non-religious person I know, still do the whole Christmas thing. Why? Fuck knows. It's the one time of year I actually see my family I guess, even though more often than not our 25th of December celebration more closely resembles "Festivus" than "Christmas", complete with the "airing of grievances" and yes, even the dreaded "feats of strength" where the celebration is not over until someones pins the head of the household..."stop crying and fight your father!" Still, there's some consolation in the knowledge it's the one day of the year I can get raging drunk in front of my family and not feel guilty about it. C'est la vie.

 

Today's quote is from Bela Lugosi in the Ed Wood abomination of 1955, "Bride of the Monster" and perfectly sums up how I feel at this time of year. Til next time, bon appetit, compadres.

 

"Home? I have no home. Hunted, despised, living like an animal! The jungle is my home. But I will show the world that I can be it's master! I will perfect my own race of people. A race of atomic supermen which will conquer the world!!"

Hello. 

Before we begin, I should point out this will be different from the other site report.  For one, Fangoria is panel structured.  Monstermania has panels, but fewer of them.  Also, because of what happened Saturday, I missed all but one panel and all but one screening.  But that's ok, most were simple Q&As.  Also, Monstermania (rightfully in my opinion) tends to believe in free photos with celebs once you buy their autographs.  No tickets needed.  So lots of my freakish (heh) mug with famous people.  And, as a result of that difference, don't expect tremendous things like I did with each of the panels before.  While the signings were cool, I don't have paragraphs of material from them.  Still, as I've said before, I love this convention.  At it, the celebrities really seem to be glad to be there and the convention generally respects the fans. (with one notable exception.)  Oh, and I might mention things I got signed.  Hope no one minds.  So here we go.

 

FRIDAY

Remember kids.  Friday is always best for a convention like this.  Lines are short to non-existent in most cases, and the vendors have primo stock.  I NEVER had to wait more than about 5 minutes (but OH would I pay for that on Saturday).  Away we go:

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET REUNION FOLKS FOR FRIDAY:

We have:  Penelope Sudrow(nightmare 3 "Jennifer Caulfield"..."Welcome To PRIME TIME BITCH!"), Brooke Theiss (Nightmare 4 "Debbie Stevens"...Roach Motel), Lisa Wilcox (Nightmares 4 and 5 "Alice Johnson"), Rodney Eastman (Nightmares 3 and 4 "Joey Crusel"...the topless women), and Lin Shaye (Original Nightmare (Teacher) and New Nightmare (Nurse with Pills)).  I also met up with Heather Langenkamp again.  But I already took a photo with her before so I sub that in here. (MY GOD...THAT HAIR....*cough*...never mind.)

So  Some of the people from the movie hadn't arrived yet (as you'll see on Saturday's group).  In general, all were awesome.  Sudrow asked for my email so she could get a copy of the picture.  Hasn't emailed yet, but I'll give it to her when she does.  Theiss, Wilcox, and Eastman were all genuinely nice.  Shaye was cool too.  Commented on her clothing chose.  Seems bright, fun, and cheerful doesnt it?  All were a bit surprised because the entire Nightmare group were in the room next to the Anchor Bay Booth...and Anchor Bay likes audience participation.  Over a microphone.  Thankfully I'd seen it before and was able to explain it to them.  Langenkamp was there for this and to promote her new directorial move in an upcoming anthology film called "Prank".  She, Ellie Cornell, and Danielle Harris (Halloweens 4 and 5) each directed a component.  I wanted to go to their panel early Saturday...but I was in a line.  Still, it sounds awesome.  I also inadvertenly minorly smudged an autograph I got from her.  She responded (awesomely) by putting her thumb in the smudge saying "now you've got my thumbprint".  Cooooool.

 

CORALINA CATTALDI-TASSONI:

 

Coralina Cattaldi-Tassoni of Demons 2, Opera, and most recently, Mother of Tears.  Super awesome.  I will come back to Mother of Tears in Saturday.  As for Ms. Cattaldi-Tassoni, she signed things for free if you bought an 8X10.  So i have an awesome Mother of Tears one with Argento doing his trademark, namely being the killer's hands.  Also, as a testament to her greatness, notice the open cell phone on the table.  When I walked up, she was on the phone.  I didn't mind and wouldve let her finish her call, but she actually put the person on hold and did my autograph.  Really nice.

 

JASON MEWES:

 

This is me...cheating again.  I've met Jason 3 times now, and I got a photo the first time, so I figured, why keep pestering for that.  Anyway.  Fact:  Apparently Jason's publicist doesn't know how to spell his name.  His poster (with photo of Jay) said he was (not kidding) "Jasen Mewes".  They had added red marker to turn the E into an O....sorta.  How do you mess that up, in THAT way?  He was super nice.  I was at the convention with my friends from Fangoria Con.  Jason had a hilarious conversation with one of them.  All in all, his usual awesome self.

 

KANE HODDER:

 

Somebody give me an acting gig.  lol.  This is actually the culmination of a mistake at my first con two years ago, Fango Secaucus 06.  At that con, Kane was there for Hatchet.  At the time, I didnt realize celebrities could charge (at that con, most I saw werent.)  So I saw a 25 dollar charge and said heck no.  Then.  Now, I'm not an idiot.  So here I am with Kane Hodder.  We got into a discussion about how Jason is similar to James Bond since so many people have played him (CJ Graham was next to him for example.)  He said he thought CJ did a great job as him and that each one brought their own thing.  He...also signed my copy of Hatchet with the word "Jason", but I think he was going on autopilot and its still cool either way.

 

A. MICHAEL BALDWIN:

 

Mike from Phantasm.  It goes well with Angus Scrimm's autograph from fango.  Great guy.

 

JOHN KASSIR:

 

You know those moments in life that you know are really important to you?  This is one of three from this con.  John Kassir, voice of The Cryptkeeper, Buster Bunny, and Santa's Little Helper.  (plus a stampede of wild animals Bart once unleashed.  Apparently you make a lemur sound by blending a Cat with a Raccoon.  The more you know.)  He slipped in and out of the Cryptkeeper voice FAR easier than I expected which was awesome.  For 25 dollars he'd also do your voicemail as Cryptkeeper or Buster Bunny.  We also talked about his acting episode of Tales from the Crypt, Oil's Well That Ends Well.  He talked about how much he liked doing it, how they incorporated the Cryptkeeper laugh into his character.  He also told me (I did not know this) that one reason they did that was that they thought it was one of the last eps.  But the show was picked up for another season shot in England.  Great guy.

 

JEFFREY COMBS:

 

This is the second one.  Jeffrey Combs, Dr. Herbert West (among many other things).  It occurs to me now, I really should have had him sign "The Black Cat" episode of Masters of Horror (as well as the Re-Animator he signed for me) so that i could continue my Masters quest.  Either way he was great.  We talked about his most recent role, that of the "Geek" in the Wizard of Gore remake.  He hasn't seen it yet.  I told him how much I liked it and asked him about his role and how they did it.  (As the geek, he bites off a rat's head and sticks his tongue in maggots and eats them)  He said the maggots were rice.  Also asked me if they'd CGI'd them so they looked like they were moving on his tongue.  I said, if they did it was barely noticeable as such, which is a compliment compared with a few bits of CGI in the film.  Also, while I was there, an employee brought him drinks from the bar.  Hilarious response when he tried it and saw its strength.  This is actually the second attempt.  The first photo was hilariously interfered with by.....

 

JAKE BUSEY:

 

Jake Busey of Starship Troopers and The Frighteners.  Jake was at the table next to Jeffrey and was messing with him (makes sense as they were both in Frighteners).  Their chemistry rivals that of Malcolm McDowell and Udo Kier at another con I went to who were sniping each other over their makeup and showing each other stuff they were signing. Awesome.  Also wrote "Got 1 More than Starkweather" on the dvd which is supercool (if you get the reference that is).

 

Not Pictured:  Derek Mears (new Jason from Friday remake).  Seemed super nice, but I just didnt have time;  The Lost Boys Reunion:  I'm sorry if you like the movie, but I've never seen it so I didnt spend the money on it.  My apologies if that disappoints you.  But speaking of the Two Coreys (who were there)

 

HOTEL BAR:

 

See?  Friends from Fangoria, Maura and Jessica (thanks again guys.)  It should be noted the next day I also ran into the folks from the Fangoria ice cream party.  lol.

 

Who else you ask?  Well that's where the Two Coreys come in.  The guys on my left and right are security guards.  The guy in front...is Corey Haim's assistant.  And thus, the one notable exception.  Corey Haim, from all I've heard, was not ideal.  He had a habit of leaving over and over to smoke packs of cigarettes, he was continually sipping his coffee cup (interpret as you will), he probably drove the other guy signing in the room nuts (more on that in a moment), and he lost it at one point.  See, Corey Feldman and his wife were elsewhere (smart).  But when someone mention in Haim's line that he had gotten her to sign her Playboy, Haim flipped out that she was there and signing, left the room, was seen gesturing pretty hardcore outside, then came back and did everything in his power to pretend to be happy etc.  Not Cool man.

 

I should also note, that this is far better than Fangoria's idea.  I just pay for the drink.  I don't pay extra on my ticket.  And after autographings close, the celebs filter through.  I saw the Nightmare reunion group, Coralina Cattaldi-Tassoni, the Lost Boys Reunion, Kane Hodder, and Derek Mears all passing through and ripe to have a photo taken if you were nice to them (i'd imagine).  Rather than stay to watch a midnight showing of Nightmare 3, I was tired and left sooo.....

 

SATURDAY:

 

THE LINE AND THE BURN:

 

Welcome to the first 5-6 hours of my Saturday, through which I missed the Prank Panel and Q&As for Jake Busey and Jason Mewes.  Where was I?  Outside.  In line.  I never even went inside.  Here we see the people who kept me sane in that line.  Not sure of the names of the two on the left.  They left when the wait crossed about 4 hours.  On the right (I think...) we have Heather and John.  Having people to discuss movies/remakes etc. with was invaluable in getting me through the wait.  Mostly the line moved at slow increments.  Took 2 hours to get shade (at least.  and me with no sunscreen, I got a minor burn).  I also didn't bring my book, even though it occured to me.  Heather was the smart one who did.  lol.  Also, a vendor came around at one point and doled out free comic books.  I got a copy of Ghost Rider.  Very smart of them.  The line stalled (while under the awning thank god) for an hour and a half while the person took a lunch we had been told about 45 minutes earlier (not his fault, he cares for his fans, thus he wanted to make sure they were all served).  Similarly, the previous night, Heather and John were shut out of autographs when the signing closed with 10 people in front of them.  (the person signing had been doing so for 5 hours, no breaks.  Definitely understand).  So.  Who was all this for?

 

ROBERT ENGLUND:

 

Now that's a photo.  I could've gotten my tongue out more though...I kinda look like I'm rolling my eyes.  Englund was awesome.  Highlights of his fans:  one person tried to get him to sign a Jason mask.  Don't know why, don't do it.  (he won't.  it's not his place.)  Another had him sign her arm.  She's going to get the signature tattooed on (AWESOME).

Corey Haim was also being annoying as all hell  (Englund was the guy I pitied for having to be in the room with him).  Random loud comments  when Robert would switch to Freddy voice (which is just as great as you'd think.)  You could tell Robert was really annoyed.  Englund also was selling various charms and actually, the backplate to the Freddy pinball machine (150 dollars).  I had him sign my box set along the side (he didn't like the effect because it meant they had to be together to read the signature...sorry about that mr. englund, just trying to be economical).  I also had him sign Dance of the Dead.  We got into a discussion about how I'd seen people bash it and didn't know why to which he wondered how people could bash Richard Matheson.  Awesome.  Oh. and...quoting:  "You got tongue, that's for the refrigerator!"

 

NIGHTMARE REUNION SATURDAY FOLKS:

 

We have:  Andras Jones (Rick Johnson of Nightmare 4...invisible karate), and Toy Newkirk (Sheila Kopecky of Nightmare 4..."wanna suck face?")  Not pictured:  Ken Sagoes(Roland Kincaid of Nightmare 3 and 4) who was there, but who I missed, timingwise.  They had both at the same table (space issues I'd wager).  Both were awesome.

 

TYLER MANE:

Tyler Mane, Michael Myers from Rob Zombie's Halloween.  Needed to have him sign an 8X10 Kristina Klebe signed at Fangoria.  Was super nice and liked what she wrote.  Note to myself though...if I'm going to try to mimic the person who I'm takin a photo with's hand gesture, I should probably LOOK WHAT HE'S DOING!  (IDIOT!)  After this, I headed upstairs for....

 

MOTHER OF TEARS SCREENING:

 

So.  My thoughts on Mother of Tears.  First of all, I should note, off the bat, that I have NOT seen Inferno.  It's in the mail and has been on backorder for over a month.  However from what I saw, that doesn't matter, as I still understood the plot.  Number Two:  See where that poster says "An Instant Cult Classic"?  Truer words have never been spoken.  Not kidding:  This movie contains:  a howler monkey of death, nudity, lesbians, gore, and a couple moments of ABHORRENT CGI.  The acting...particularly of Asia Argento...is pretty average.  And the script.  Oh.  My.  God.  The script...I have no idea what happened to it.  All that said....It's genuinely creepy, has fantastic gore, and, somehow, still has this feel of quality to it.  In other words, with all those problems, I LOVED THIS MOVIE.  Put another way, Troma once got a hold of Stendahl Syndrome and did a release of it (Blue Underground has the rights now).  Troma SHOULD have pushed to get this.  It would've fit right in.  A fun, popcorn, entertaining, cult movie.  Just don't go in expecting a life-changing experience.

 

 

NIGHTMARE PANEL:

 

Apologies for grain, but I was front-row, standing room and the light was dim (this is post photo-editing).  Left to right:  Lin Shaye, Rodney Eastman, Ken Sagoes, Lisa Wilcox, Andras Jones, Brooke Theiss, Toy Newkirk, Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund.  Penelope Sudrow was there at some point I think, but I'm not sure.  I applaud Robert and Heather for steering questions and getting everyone involved since the crowd was asking them questions only pretty much.  Things you learn:  Kincaid and Joey would be an even match in a fight, Robert never understands how people claim there's misogyny in the Nightmare movies when a strong woman ALWAYS beats Freddy (I show that in my thesis), Robert's "suck face" with Newkirk was ruined on the first take when his Freddy dentures fell into her makeup prosthetic mouth, some of the scenes they filmed led them to nightmares later (like Heather having nightmares about Freddy's tongue wrapping around her head in new nightmare); Robert thinks that the original is scariest, Dream Warriors and Dream Master are best two-pack, and New Nightmare is his current favorite (it changes); Makeup is tough to do over such long periods, Robert has a lot of respect for Andrew Dice Clay, and lastly, Robert didn't know how he was going to do Freddy originally...until he channeled his jealousy of the looks of Heather and Johnny Depp into it and created Freddy, fittingly, out of it.  Great panel.  Overflowed out into the hallway and the head guy of the convention had them open the doors so the rest of the crowd could here.

 

SAW IV TRAP:

 

The knife trap from Saw IV.  Costs nothing to take a photo of it.  Costs 20 bucks to get in it for them to take a pic of you and put it in a stupid liner.  I like my choice more.

 

And now, my COSTUME OF THE CONVENTION:

 

 

This woman came dressed as Baroness from GI Joe.  Points for originality at a horror convention and the fact that runners up (Jason from Freddy vs. Jason complete with Freddy Head, and perfect Predator costume) didn't consider how hot it was and had to keep leaving and taking a breather.  And if anyone out there was going to say something about the fact that I chose a woman dressed in leather, I say, you must not have been at a horror convention before.  This is tame.  There were also schoolgirls running around among multiple other scantily clad women.  So give me more credit than that folks.  lol.

 

Up next:  PERICLES LEWNES:

 

Let me guess.  You're thinking "WHO IS PERICLES LEWNES?"  Pericles Lewnes has been mentioned on this site, here.  Yes, that's right folks, it's the 20th Anniversary of his Troma classic, Redneck Zombies.  Pericles was awesome, loved my shirt, and was also there promoting his new film, Loop.  I also mentioned our site to him and he gave me his business card.  I need to discuss something with Horror Czar about this which could be super cool *crosses fingers*.  Pericles was an unannounced guest fooooor.....

 

TROMA!!!!:

 

See, THIS is what Fangoria was missing.  I bought FAR too much at this table (don't ask just how much) and I still didnt' get all I wanted.  If they show at Chiller in Parsippany in October, I'm gonna nab copies of Special Needs and Dracula v. Frankenstein.  They were great to all comers.  This is the abbreviated version of their table.  Lloyd had the big stuff with him in Toronto at Rue Morgue's Festival of Fear.  It was, and is still, always a highlight of the show for me, seeing that the table is still there.

 

And with that, I bid you farewell.  It's 1151PM here on the east coast of the US and I am VERY tired.  Spent all night uploading photos, etc.  Had a lot of fun though doing this.  It was far easier than putting them on facebook, which I did first.  I really need to put away everything I bought.  I'll also be heading out of town Thursday night through Monday afternoon (going home home to New Orleans for the first time in four years (i was born and lived there 15 years).  Shouldnt cause problems though (liveblog's off for a couple weeks.  Dem and Republican Conventions.)  I will also be site reporting again in October for Chiller in Parsippany.

Until next time, this is Crypticpsych saying:  Always wear sunscreen.  And don't...do...smack.

 

So I was lying in bed this morning, looking all over my bedroom at the pictures that I have posted on nearly ever spare inch of wall. I put most of this stuff up when I was 14, 15, and 16 and so a lot of it is movies that I loved back then but am indifferent to now. Since I'm not home for eight months of the year, I haven't bothered to update anything. One of the pictures that I glanced over at was a small poster of "The Ring." That made me start thinking about how I got into horror in the first place. I think I may have already mentioned that my dad showed me a ton of Hitchcock movies and read me some Poe and that is one of the reasons I got into horror. Lots of things sort of pushed me along in the horror direction for a lot of my young teenage life, but I don't think there's a single thing that pushed me over the edge as much as "The Ring" did.

I was thirteen when it came out, and several of my fellow-eighth graders came to school telling everyone that it was quite "creepy." Naturally, being a "creepy" buff, I gathered my right arm (my best friend, who watched all the 80s horror movies with me last summer) and we hauled our skinny eight-grade asses to the movie theatre.

"Creepy" was an understatement, at least to me. Just because scary things fascinated me, it didn't mean they didn't scare me out of my absolute wits. I was covering my eyes throughout the entire thing and cowering under my seat. I missed nearly every scene, even covering my eyes during the investigation parts that weren't even scary. The atmosphere of the film alone was enough to send me running out with my tail between my legs, but I stayed throughout the entire thing, bugging my friend and the lady beside me (who'd brought her eight-year-old son!) to tell me what had happened in every scene that I missed (which was nearly every scene). When this hell finally ended, I was sweating and shaking and the little boy with the woman was crying in her arms. My friend thought it was a pretty good flick, nice and creepy (what the hell was the matter with these people!?!?! didn't they get SCARED!?!?!?!). I couldn't eat dinner that night and I couldn't sleep all night. I kept hearing that awful ring TV noise in my head and expecting Samara to jump out of the corners. The worst part was, since I hadn't seen most of the movie from covering my eyes, everything I'd missed I filled in with my imagination, which made it a hundred times scarier. I'm not exaggerating when I say I was terrified for a year.

Yet somehow I couldn't stop talking about it. Though I was still scared half to death, I began to relish my fear and told my other friend all about it and how scary it was. She's shy but isn't nearly as fearful as she appears to be (that's still the case, I was surprised that she was up for watching "Inside" with me in June), and she began to get a bit curious. She decided she wanted to watch it, and after I vehemently refused to watch it with her, I finally agreed. I was still terrified and extremely apprehensive, but somehow was looking forward to it. Instead of going to the Homecoming dance at my high school, I went to her house and we watched "The Ring." And this time I actually watched it. We only closed our eyes when the dead girl popped up in the closet, and again when I thought the guy popped up in the end. Ha - he actually pops up later, along with a flashback of the girl, so we kind of lost on that one (though not as much as her sister did when we woke her up with our screaming).

After that, I was completely obsessed. I was obsessed for at least two years, maybe a bit more. I found out that this was a remake and rented the original from Blockbuster. I found that the Japanese one wasn't nearly as intense and downright frightening as its remake, though it really was "creepy." Ironically, I probably would have enjoyed that one much more as a thirteen-year-old, just because it's more suspense-based than anything else. Anyway, after watching "Ringu" I bought "Ringu 2" and "Ring Ø: Basudei" from amazon and watched those. I bought and read the manga and the trilogy of books by Koji Suzuki. I rented "Rasen" and "The Ring Two" (which I didn't like quite as much) and "The Ring Virus" from South Korea (did not like it either). I even managed to do a Ring-based geometry project in 10th grade (does the angle at which Rachel falls into the well affect when and where she will hit the opposite wall?).

This is actually kind of embarrassing when I look back on it, but I know it's essential. After having my pants scared off by America and then being fascinated by the eerie suspense stuff that the Japanese seemed to be doing, I started going a little nutty over Asian film. I watched "Uzumaki" and "Kairo" and "Battle Royale" (I bought the book and some of the manga, too). I watched "Dark Water" and "Ju-On" and briefly skipped over to China for "The Eye" and South Korea for "A Tale of Two Sisters" and "Whispering Corridors." In San Francisco, I bought and watched "Suicide Club" (awesome!) "2LDK" (awesome and funny) and "The Red Shoes" (not so much), which is from South Korea. I watched "Shutter" and spent some time working up the nerve to watch "Audition" (finally watched it last spring). Like I said, I went crazy. The movies I mentioned are just the ones I can remember.

Along the time that I mentioned, mostly in my junior and senior years, I got interested in horror from the 70s and hopped back over to America for that. My 70s search brought me to "Suspiria" and Italy, which took me all over Europe. And now, I'm open to horror from every corner of the globe. I think that what happened to me with "The Ring," as pathetic of a story as it is, is a perfect example of being so afraid of something that it fascinates you. It's that mix of fear and fascination that keeps me going today.

And today... let's see. Well, yesterday, actually, I saw two movies, one with my friend (back from China! yay!). That was "Wolf Creek," which I liked. I'm really not a huge fan of things jumping out at you. Hitchcock was right in saying that "there is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." As a matter of fact, I've found that the bang actually brings some relief to the situation instead of fear. When you expect a bang and it never comes, the tension is still there. This movie did that quite well, I think. And I really don't get it when people say this is a rip-off of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." The similarities are far and few, I think.

The second one I saw was "Pumpkinhead." I rented it mainly because it's the subject of this month's Rue Morgue and I like having seen a movie before reading about it. It's pretty campy and damn fun, so naturally I loved it and now I can't wait for my idiot Borders branch to get the magazine already. This is getting pretty long though, so I think I'll stop.

Wait, one last thing about "The Ring": when I was 14 or so, maybe 15, I was talking to someone online. Someone I hadn't met. Maybe it was on the imdb boards. Anyway, I asked them what their favorite movie was and then they asked me. Of course, I said "The Ring." I don't remember what they said word for word, but they basically said, "wow. that's an old movie." I was pretty taken aback at that, honestly. I really don't remember exactly how old I was, but the movie hadn't been out for more than two years for sure. I really don't get people like that, but oh well.

So I know this isn't a horror quote, but I think it's fun. And I like to leave with quotes.

"Unfolding in front of us is a scene so chilling, so horrific, so utterly bizarre that if you look real close and real fast--you can actually see Alfred Hitchcock in the background, cleaning the windows."

                                                      -Party Monster by James St. James

Yeah.....that title sounds so much better when they do it. 

So yeah, as I previously blogged, I rented six movies last Monday and said I would give my quick thoughts later (might do full reviews of some at some other point way later but this will do for now.)  After not watching any of them until Saturday I decided to watch the six pretty much in a row.  Remember kids, I'm a trained professional.  Sorta.  So now here are my thoughts in the order that I watched them.  While the order was done pretty much at random, I should note that this basically is the order I wouldve gone for:

 

1)  Funny Games (remake) (2007)-

Rating:  7 Callaway Drivers out of 10

I wanted to say great things about Funny Games, I really did.  And its a good movie with a pretty captivating storyline.  But it suffers for certain reasons.  For one, like Hard Candy (which I like), the movie presents your main family as people who you never really identify with.  They're uppercrust snobs basically, who you have a bit of a rough time wanting to see survive since they seem like theyd be phony around you and stab you in the back when you aren't looking.  Similarly, the villains seem kinda exactly like the people they're going after:  rich, upper class snobs as seen in their attire.  So you don't know why their doing it and can't really identify with them either.  Thatd be ok if, like in Hard Candy, the story kept rolling without a slow patch and the viewer was continually along for the ride and not kept in tension.  But unfortunately, after a "misunderstanding" with a shotgun, the villains leave their victims for a while and you the viewer are treated to roughly 10-15 minutes of them trying to free themselves and dry their phone and escape.  The length kills that, particularly when about 3 minutes of it is just Naomi Watts's character trying to stand up slowly and remove her duct tape and shut off the tv.

I should note though that the movie does get 7 drivers because the villains are still very good in the way they toy with their victims.  Also, the breaking of the fourth wall that happens four times over the course of this movie, is something I actually enjoyed, stylistically speaking.  Overall, the movie has an engaging plot but cant maintain its pace around the middle.  It's actors are ones you dont particularly care survive or not even though it should be noted they give good performances.  And I should mention, I actually predicted the ending sequence right down to the final shot, which is not necessarily a good thing.  It's worth a rent at the least, but I wouldnt buy it both for the reasons I've mentioned and because the dvd is as bare bones as bare bones gets.  There is literally NOTHING on it.  Overall, its above average, but underwhelming for me(I may have set the bar too high for it so your mileage may vary).  Moving on to Saturday's second film:

 

2)  ZA:  Zombies Anonymous (AKA Last Rites of the Dead)(released on dvd 2008, made in 2006)-

Rating:  9.5 Jars of Look Alive Face Cream out of 10

Of the 6 movies I rented that day, this was the only one I did not go in thinking about.  I didn't even know about this movie.  I'd never even HEARD of it.  But when the title is that interesting and the synopsis grabs you like this one's did, I couldnt resist.  And I am damn glad I did.  This movie is outstanding.  A review I read after I'd seen it summed it up perfectly:  It's not a zombie movie, it's a movie about zombies.  It's a blend of a dark comedy, a drama, a horror movie, a splatter flick, and an action movie.  The movie is very well shot for an indie film...hell it's better shot than some mainstream ones.  The gore is GENERALLY convincing (and when it isn't well remember, it's an indie flick).  The plot pours in almost Romeroan levels of social commentary.  You could see it as musings on terrorism and guerilla warfare, a look at racism, and indictment of religion, all in one.  Not to mention the acting is solid throughout.  I cannot say enough good things about this movie.

So why didnt I give it 10 out of 10 you ask?  Because the movie does have one flaw.  Whoever lined it up for release made a series of very bad cuts.  You can find the uncut sequences on youtube if you look hard enough, but as it is, one character cuts her hair after a certain event occurs and dyes it.  This isnt shown, she just appears that way.  Thus, if you don't know it's coming, you might be lost for about the last third of the movie.  Also, some of the violent bits were excised unfortunately, but it should be noted that what remains is spectacularly bloody in and of itself, so I personally didnt' miss it.  However, in general, both of those points are small potatoes considering how pleasant a surprise and how awesome this movie is.  I recommend it to everyone on every level.  It was a great way to end Saturday.  Now:  Sunday's foursome began with:

 

3)  The Ruins (2008)-

Rating:  8 Ringing Cellphones out of 10

How ironic that I'm going to begin this review of a movie that I liked a lot by saying something I'm going to come back to in another part of this:  I'm sick and tired of these damn movies that pretend every teenager is from Laguna Beach or The Hills or some other show filled with vapid, dumbass, rocks-for-brains partyhound teenagers.  This movie lost a star and a half at the very start for having such thoroughly unlikeable leads (with the exception of Mathias who I loved).  I mean, I KNOW Jena Malone could act better than that.  Granted, by the end of the movie, she and the rest proved that point quite well which is why it's still an 8.  Once I got past that opening bit, I was captivated by the atmosphere and the outstanding gore effects, not to mention the plot twists (like the flowers).  I have a lot of respect for a movie that actually produces a genuinely frightening atmosphere AND gets a wide release these days.  I'm probably being unnecessarily harsh on it, because it is very good, but those damn actors really got me in the wrong mood from the start.

That, and the other lost half-star I blame on the people who released it.  Are we that jaded we can't have a nihilistic ending anymore?  The dvd is made with an alternate ending, has another alternate ending, and has the original theatrical ending.  Two of the three end on a downbeat in a way.  Through a tiny change, one of them doesnt.  Guess which one they used in theatrical release.  We CAN handle a dark ending studio people.  Geez.  Overall, though, definitely worth seeing if you can get past the eyesplittingly whiny characters early on so that they develop more as the film progresses.  Next:

 

4)  13:  Game of Death (released in 2006, dvd in 2008)-

Rating:  10 Twisted Challenges out of 10

If someone gave you the chance to win tons of money, what would you do to get it?  How far would you go?  This Thai(read:  subtitled) import asks that question of a down-his-luck salesman and takes you along for every second of the ethically questionable and morally challenging ride.  This film has it all.  The challenges are twisted, sometimes in ingenious ways, the movie is filled with a dark twisted humor (the chair beating in one challenge is darkly hysterical), the actors are all believable, and the overall ending caught me completely by surprise. 

When I originally said this and the next film were on the rental list, I said that I hoped they weren't just saw clones.  This one isn't by any means.  This film is more of an adrenaline fueled thriller with inklings of films like Shoot 'Em Up and Wanted in it.  Is it strictly horror?  No, it's definitely more thriller than horror.  However, it's deeply engaging, totally unforgettable, and a wild ride.  An outstanding accomplishment.  Next:  was the other a Saw clone?

 

5)  Steel Trap (released in 2007, dvd in 2008)-

Rating:  6 Nursery Rhymes out of 10

Oh....Steel Trap.  Ohhhhh boy...I'm torn on how to describe my feelings for it.  First things first...see that case?  Looks great doesnt it?  Yeah don't expect to see it.  Or almost anything like it.  Number 2:  Following is the word for word synopsis on the back of the case:  "A New Year's bash in an abandoned high-rise building turns into a grisly bloodbath when five guests receive a mysterious text invite to a VIP party on the 27th floor.  Joined by two crashers, the strangers soon realize they're trapped, and the only way out is through the twisted clues of a psychopath.  The catch?  Each game leads to one of their own gruesome deaths.  With a series of shocking twists, Steel Trap holds you in its grip all the way to its mind-blowing ending."  Now TELL ME that's not Saw/Saw 2.

Well actually....it isn't.  They try to hook you in with that.  If you notice, the cover has a distinctly Saw feel (note the saw blades).  It's actually a slasher film more than it is a Saw movie.  The challenges never really lead directly to someone's death, and the movie is more a scavenger hunt than a death trap type situation.  Not only that:  the acting....is unbelievably hammy and bad.  On a hilarious level.  You will be laughing at almost every character by the time the movie is over.  The script is equally hysterical, switching between insanely dumb dialogue, snarky one-liners, and random statements of the obvious.

Why you may ask, did I give it a 6 then?  I liked it actually.  Because its so unbelievably hysterical.  It's very much one of those "you people are so stupid" movies.  I also like the look of the killer, even though he's underdeveloped and underused.  Also, the use of twisted nursery rhymes to lead people around was amusing, as was murders themed off of little nameplates the victims were given early on.  But the big thing that saved it from a 5 or less was the ending.  Is it mind-blowing?  No.  Did it come out of left field? Hell yes.  But it was also one of the most surreal, hilarious, ways of revealing the ending I've ever seen.  As a whole, this movie gets a 6 because I love this movie.  And I KNOW I shouldn't.  And now.....we come to....*sigh*....

 

6)  April Fool's Day (remake) (direct to dvd 2008)-

Rating:  2.5 Pranks out of 10

Hollywood rule no. 1:  If you can't outright lie about what the movie is on the cover (see above), the other way to sell some direct to dvd movies is to throw a pair of....assets...on the cover.  See that thing that says "unrated"?  Yeah, ignore that.  It's direct-to-dvd.  It's ALL unrated.  Now then.  I wanted to hate this movie on every level.  Unfortunately I couldnt.  Not on EVERY level.  But damn close.  First off:  That thing I mentioned about the Hills-ified horror movie in The Ruins?  This movie keeps that the whole time.  Only one of the principles comes close to giving a good performance.  Terrible and thoroughly unlikeable actors.  Second:  If you're gonna remake an 80s slasher classic, dont do this:

This is the original cover art/poster art of the classic original.  If you ever have a chance, take a look at the picture on the dvd of the remake (the disc itself I mean).  It's basically an exact replica of this shot, minus the noose.  The shot is from behind, girl's holding a knife, and the rest of the characters are toasting.  Theres a fine line between remake and ripoff.  And that crosses it, turns around and pees on it.  Also, whether youve seen the original or not, the plot basically walks you by the hand to the thoroughly unsurprising (as a result) end (and cribs pretty danged liberally from I Know What You Did Last Summer to do that, oddly).  The music is also bizarre:  you cant tell if they're just using bad, out of place music or paying homage to the 80s (I HIGHLY doubt that option).

I couldve given it 1 instead of 2.5.  But:  Scout Taylor-Compton is pretty good in this actually as Torrance.  Thats worth a star.  Also, the way that the movie revamped the old twist itself in that they updated how it was all done did deserve a star.....until they went and wrecked it with a double twist (almost triple twist really).  So I gave that a half-star instead.  Thus a VERY generous 2.5 stars out of 10.  Do not see this movie.  3 minutes and 27 seconds in, I wanted to throw the dvd out of the player.  I didnt.  I'm still not sure whether I should have or not.

 

And thats all folks.  I dunno when I'll do something like this again, but if I do, youll be the first to know.

Until next time, please remember:  Friends don't let friends do direct-to-dvd remakes.

This will be short, since I'm about to head out on a day drip to Port Townsend - possibly the most haunted town in the state of Washington :) - and I've been pretty busy all week long. I do have one or two things to talk about, though.

 

First, I just got a phone call from my brother in Russia, where he lives. He's taking a trip to Italy with his girlfriend and wants to know if I want anything from the Dario Argento store. DO I!?!?!?!?! That's the exciting news.

 

The movie news goes as follows: This week I haven't been watching as many horror movies as I will be watching soon. I've had my boyfriend visiting me from Oregon, and he doesn't like horror movies. Fortunately for me, we do this thing where we pick a couple of movies each and then watch them all. I picked "The Vanishing," which I wrote a review about, and "Nattevagten," which I would write a review about if I had a chance to see it twice... but I don't. In fact, we almost didn't get to see it at all. We just got a TV at my house, and we don't have a VCR. The movie was on VHS. I almost rented a VCR for $10 and a $25 deposit, but at the last minute my friend let me borrow her VCR. So "Nattevagten" (1994), remade as "Nightwatch" with Ewan McGregor, was really good, although I think a more appropriate English title would be "Night Guard" or "Night Watchman." Oh well. I first heard about it in a little teeny book my cousin's wife got me at City Lights for my birthday called "100 European Horror Films" (link below).

 

Basically, it's about a law student who gets a job as a night watchman at a mortuary. He needs a job to get him through school and thinks it will be easy money. Unfortunately for him, there's a lot in store for him. Nothing out of the ordinary happens the first night he's there, but it's quite obvious how extremely terrified he is. Somehow, the film makes you feel like you're in there too. You have to walk past all those dead bodies down there. You have to sit and wait for the dead-body-is-actually-alive alarm to ring as well as he does. It's already terrifying. But then it becomes even more terrifying when things actually begin to happen. Things begin to happen when the murdered bodies of prostitutes begin coming into the morgue. I won't give any more away, and I wish I could actually write a review of this but I always like to see a movie more than once (The Vanishing I had seen a long time ago - or at least most of it. I felt like I knew it well enough to write it with only one viewing fresh in my mind) before writing about it.

 

Another movie we saw was neither of our choices - it was my dad's, and it wasn't really a horror movie. It was more of a thriller. It was called "Tell No One" and we went to see it at the Egyptian Theatre in Seattle. It was probably the scariest thriller I've seen, though. It was very edge-of-your-seat, and though I didn't absolutely love it (or that damn shaky camera), I thought it delivered the suspense quite well. It's about a guy whose wife is murdered but eight years later he receives an email from her. When he begins to investigate, people start dying and he is suspected. This wasn't bad, not horror but involves serial killers and such, and I liked it.

 

Off to Port Townsend. I checked out a few movies from the library and hope to watch them soon. "Wolf Creek," the Geoffrey Rush "House on Haunted Hill," and Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere."

 

 

 

100 European Horror Films:

http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_2538.html

So, I'm sitting now at the little glass table in the dining area off the kitchen, right next to three floor- to- ceiling windows that look out over the back deck. I like to sit here and work when I'm doing updates and such for the site because it is close to the refrigerator and there is easy access to the wine glasses and corkscrew.

 

Anyway, I noticed something strange a few minutes ago - strange noises coming from the windows. Since there is light inside and it is dark outside I can't see anything but my own goofy reflection when I look out the window, but still the noise continued to the point that I had to stop everything and stare for a while. Finally I saw the source of the sounds... a June Bug. I think that's what they are called - brown bugs about the size of a dime that are round and fly around in clumsy patterns, slamming against the glass and making quite a racket. Then I noticed another, and another... after a few minutes there were dozens of these little beasts slamming their brown bodies against the glass in a quest for the light. Seriously, I think there are a MILLION of them out there, all propelling their bodies against the glass. Are they really after the light???

 

This experience has made me think of movies like Hitchcock's The Birds and countless creepy-crawly type movies that never fail to freak me out. I hate bugs. No, really... those June Bugs are totally freaking me out.

 

I guess fear can take many forms in horror flicks with the raging psycho with a machete being only one facet. I remember The Descent creeped me out to no end before I ever laid eyes on the cave-dwelling monsters because of the close-quarters of the caves. Do people really go into caves for FUN??? The worst part of Slither was when that huge fat lady exploded and all of those slugs came out and tried to get into everyone's mouth... yuck.  And now, June Bugs.

 

If I don't come around for a while it just may be because a hoarde of June Bugs broke through my window and consumed my flesh until there is only a skeleton sitting at my computer screen. If that happens, please send help.

 

Don

Wow.  I had no idea such a sick and warped mind was creating films for us.  I would see a foreign filmmaker and ask myself, "Do you really feel like reading all night?" because I tend to fall asleep or miss some crucial peice of information.  This Masters of Horror installment was perhaps the sickest storytelling I've ever seen.  The torture scene was unbelievably realistic...and the sound effects.  Holy crap...genius I say.  I went to my Netflix Que and ordered all the Miike I could find.

Hey guys.  I've got my site Backwoods Horror up and runnin, sort of.  Do me a favor and go check it out!

 

boggy out

 

UPDATE: Made some changes to the site.  Doesn't look AS bad.  Plan on putting up some audio and video at some point.  I'm a big fan of the Deadpit boys over at Deadpit.com and have been inspired to do my own sort of show.  What I'd REALLY like to do is something along the lines of the old spookshows that'd come on local access channels, you know, with THE COOL GHOUL, etc.  And have a show that does reviews and news and maybe shows a public domain classic now and then with MST3K like commentary.  Anyhow...plans for the future.

boggy out.   again.

We'll get to the liveblogging in a second.....

 

BUT FIRST:  A sneak preview of a movie review I'm working on.  I'm reviewing a movie that's very very close to my heart and that I consider to be one of the, if not THE most underrated horror movie of the last 20-30 years, specifically by critics and the horror intelligencia.  How underrated?  Well....Compare it with the other things I've reviewed thus far.  From Rottentomatoes:

 

Tales from the Darkside:  The Movie:  Critics-38% positive, Users-60% positive.(underrated yes, but not as underrated as this.)

 

Disturbing Behavior: Critics-28% positive, Users-37% positive. (they mustve seen the edited cut.)

 

Poultrygeist:  Critics-68% positive, Users-66% positive.  (EVERYBODY LOVES ZOMBIE CHICKENS!!!!)

 

and...?????????:  Critics-35% positive;top critics-17% positive, Users- 70% POSITIVE!

 

HOW?  How the hell did the critics get this so wrong?  I'm sick of this movie getting critically eviscerated for no reason, and soon I'll prove why I think it shouldnt be.  What am I reviewing?  Well that would ruin the surprise wouldnt it......suffice to say that what Darkness Falls is to The Horror Czar, this movie is to me.

 

Now then.  Ahem.....

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!  IIIIIIIITS.......

 

 

So sue me, I was bored last night.  lol.  It's nothing special.  I just sliced the bottom off a desktop background from the nbc site, cropped it a touch, and added a text box of Chiller Text in Paint.  Easy.  The original had those weird lines in it, btw.  I dunno.

 

And away we go.

 

0959PM:  I'm sorry but Last Comic Standing was WAAAAAY better before they drove it into the ground....but that's neither here nor there.

 

1000PM:  Scenes of an intense nature?  Wow, now THAT's an unwieldy euphemism.

 

1001PM:  PANCAKES!!!!!....sorry couldn't resist....they really have nailed that idyllic suburbia look thus far.  I don't know if it's the church, the house, the costume....just seems....suburban.  That's a compliment btw.

 

1002PM:  Remember kids...distracted driving is dangerous.....seeeeee?  And that is a fantastic touch.  the blood, the amazing grace. That was really good and lightly eerie.

 

1004PM:  a crucifix?  really?  wow that's creepy....looks like we've got our patented haley joel osment creepy kid quotient intact.

 

1005PM:  See...this is what happens when you START eerie and unsettling.  You get an entertaining ep, thus far.

 

1006PM:  This'll prolly do what masters of horror did in season 1.  Namely, win the emmy for best opening titles.

 

1007PM:  "Wanted" has so much potential, and I really hope it fulfills it.

 

1009PM:  I really hate this hidden camera talking VW ad.....and I'm only going to say this once.  Re:  The Baby Borrowers:  LEAVE THE DAMN MAURY PLOTLINES ON MAURY YOU IDIOTS.  DON'T TURN THEM INTO STUPID REALITY SHOWS OR TAGLINE THEM "IT'S NOT TV, IT'S BIRTH CONTROL"!....cough....rant over.

 

1011PM:  Ronny Yu btw, is our director of the week.  I personally liked Freddy vs. Jason, btw, so I have very high hopes for this.....nice, "family man" is the newspaper headline alias of the serial killer.  Awesome.

 

1012PM:  "Spiritual transmigration is a stunningly crappy defense."  Outstanding...lol

 

1013PM:  I kinda like the intensity of him trying to convince the lawyer.  Very nice, and not quite overacted.

 

1014PM:  COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL.....

 

1015PM:  Set design victorious again for the prison walls.

 

1016PM:  God's will?  and that closet line is awesome.

 

1017PM:  The chemistry between these two is amazing.

 

1019PM:  See that?  Tennnsion.  Build tension and suspense before the commercial, and I don't mind waiting for it to come back.

 

1020PM;  Did I just see a rabbit steal 7Up and a woman destroy her ex's stuff with her teeth?  GOD commercial's have gotten weird.

 

1022PM:  OK, I just saw Tiki Barber v. Ed McMahon, Ice-T v. Joan Rivers, Raven-symone v. Wayne Newton, and Kathy Lee Gifford v. Dog the Bounty Hunter.  Celebrity Family Feud will....survey says!.....SUCK.

 

1023PM:  Why do I get the feeling the "tapes" will make the dvd release? lol

 

1024-1025PM:  Oh awesome.....church.  lol.  This whole scene is a brilliant blend of humor and a dash of dramatic irony.

 

1027PM:  Wow, he's a niiiice man.

 

1028PM:  Well, that was a stupid thing for you to do, idiot.

 

1029PM:  Shreveport?  But....hes in ohio.........i'll let it go.  And that was nicely twisted.

 

1030PM:  Well thats an interesting wrinkle to the story.  It's a different way of telling it, and I think I like it.  Not everyone will, but I do. 

 

1032PM:  I'm loving this sense I'm getting of these two characters and their traits.  They work so damn beautifully together.

 

1033PM:  Oh yeah, that's helpful.  First you spoil the Robert Downey Jr. cameo in the trailers for Hulk, now in the new one, you ruin theLou Ferrigno one.  Keep it up.  Why don't you just show the dang ending and save us the trouble?

 

1035-1036PM:  Hmm...James Taylor at the PNC Bank center.....I don't think I can yell no loudly enough to convey my displeasure.

 

1037PM:  I'm loving the sense of tension that's just simmering throughout this whole ep.

 

1038PM:  This ep has a fantastic script......and abu ghraib references anyone?

 

1039PM:  "You're embarassing"  wow these fish out of water-esque scenes are really good and funny in a darkly comic way. 

 

1040PM:  Skabetti?  Ok, I'm not sure if I find the little girl more creepy...or annoying.  Cute.  But annoying.

 

1041PM:  God, I love these family scenes.  On some level this ep seems kinda like a kindred ep with Family from Season 2.

 

1044PM:  Ok, really.  Just stop.  I honestly think they've reached the bottom of the celbrity barrel, busted through it, and dug 8 feet into the dirt below with the people on the celebrity family feud things.  I could be wrong.  But jeez.  The kardashians?  The Girls next door?  REALLY?

 

1047PM:  Now that was a nice touch.  I honestly didn't see that coming....the public record thing.

 

1048PM:  Ok, I just think Amazing grace is an inherently creepy song when done right.  As like this.  Brilliant use of music/sound.

 

1050PM:  WOW that's twisted.  lol. *standing ovation*

 

1051PM:  I took that online challenge.  Got a 4 out of 10.  Questions were oddly specific.  Surprisingly good quiz.

 

1052PM:  I'll be seeing Get Smart tomorrow.  My mom saw it in sneak preview, said it was hilarious.  But I will be the judge of THAT!

 

1053PM:  If The Baby Borrowers is successful, I swear I will lose all faith in the American tv viewing public.

 

1054PM:  All right, lets see this twist that I'm supposed to not see coming.  I know what I think it is, but I'm thinking I'm gonna be wrong at the moment.

 

1055PM:  Oh THATS convenient.  Of course that's where he is.

 

1056PM:  I really hope they didnt just cgi those utensils.

 

1056PM 2:  I'm not really thinking I'm wrong anymore......lol.

 

1058PM:  Ok, not quite what I thought it was gonna be....but damn close.  lol.  Great ending.  Very Crypt-esque.

 

1059PM:  I'm liking the look of next week's Landis ep.  Preview had some good imagery.

 

OVERALL:  An outstanding episode.  As good, if not better, than The Sacrifice.  By having tension to begin with and a storyline with tension inherent in it, the commercial breaks mattered less as I was engrossed in the story.  This episode worked for me on just about every level. Good acting, good set design, great chemistry in the cast, a dash of dark humor, just a brilliant brilliant ep.  Ronny Yu should be very proud of this.

 

And, btw.  I'll be going to the Saturday and Sunday of the Fangoria convention this weekend and I'm planning to do a site report blog as soon as I can afterwards.

 

Until next time, I bid you dark dreams.

 

 

I've just (finally) finished IT, by Stephen King, and I have to say, "ehhhhh"... To elaborate, I just didnt like it as much as I thought I might. I didnt go in with an expectation one way or the other, having finished it though, I can't honestly say I'll ever read it again. I've always been a fan of the made-for-tv movie adaptation. A lot of screaming fanboys rant and rave about how great the novel is, and how shit the film is by comparison. Whatever. The film is not great, and suffers from a pretty damn woeful ending, and having read the book now, I can fully admit that the ending of the movie stinks even more. That's it? A fucking papier mache spider with some halogen globes in it's gut? After Tim Curry's fantastically creepy Pennywise, that was a giant letdown. It just failed miserably to capture the mood, style or substance of King's words. And yes, the acting is not fantastic either. But I enjoy the movie anyway, in a nostalgic kind of way, and it's a great way to pass a couple of idle weeknights, watching it as a "miniseries".

One thing that always strikes me about King's writing is how dead-on he nails childhood. It's obvious this guy relished his. He perfectly captures the "crush" mentality of Ben for Beverly, and likewise Beverly's feelings for Bill. In addition, the childhood games, pranks, and mischief kids that age get up to. Again, absolutely spot on. I was laughing hysterically at the bit where Henry and his pals eat the baked beans and go lighting their farts at the dump. Not that I ever did that. I'm just sayin...

The way he juxtaposes the adult "lucky seven" with the kids, paragraph by paragraph and chapter by chapter, is amazing. King is one damn talented writer. Definite shades of "The Body" (or Stand by Me) in the bits with the kids. The way he builds mood, fleshes out the story of Derry, Maine, and of "IT" itself, is again, wonderful writing. The way he depicts the inherent belief of childhood as opposed to the cynical non-belief, and indeed blindess of the adult townsfolk, again, magic.

Still, things annoyed me. For one thing, it's overlong, at times I found myself sighing in frustration, and muttering "fucking jeebus h christ, man, just get on with it..." and certain elements really got on my nerves, the most intrusive was Richie Tozier's "Voices"...although they play an integral role at the end, which I figured they would, when King would have him go on and on with them, I just found my eyes wandering off the page. If I knew a kid like that, I'd be slapping him upside the head. To King's credit, some of Richie's friends, on occasion, do just that.

Couple of things scared me, and were wonderfully creepy, Pennywise beckoning to little Georgie from the drain struck me with a cold shiver. The interrogation of the guys that throw the homosexual fella off the bridge, again, creepy, I paraphrase:

Kid: "I don't know who that guy under the bridge was though, I'd never seen him before."
Cop: "What guy?"
Kid: "The guy in the clown suit. The guy with the balloons."

Again...cold, cold shiver.

I found IT's manipulation of people fascinating, not just Henry Bowers, but the entire town. The part in Mike's history of Derry where the guy comes into the tavern and starts hacking those guys up with an axe was fantastic too. I enjoyed the book heaps, it was certainly a great, much-needed revelation as to what IT was, and how it was an integral part of the town itself, and I was grateful to learn a lot more about the lucky seven. The Turtle (completely absent from the film) was a great turn too, especially the "sicked up the universe" aspect...King has a wacky imagination.

Freaking hell, there I go again, getting all wordy, this wasnt supposed to be a review of the book, I'm just killing time on a very boring Friday the 13th afternoon at work.

All in all, my beginning comments were a tad harsh, I did enjoy the book, just wasnt floored by it. I actually have a favourite King novel, the oft-overlooked "Gerald's Game." It's a masterpiece, in my opinion. It's engrossing, fascinating, and above all, the third act is fucking terrifying.

Well, as I said, it's Friday the 13th today...I'm off to watch some horror movies...

I've seen this done with award shows and stuff, and thought itd be interesting.  My feelings as I watch Fear Itself's premiere and its ads.:

 

1000PM:  I'm not sure how I feel about the blonde guy in the back's acting ability.  Guy in the red cap's pretty good though.

 

1001PM:  "We're Screwed."  "Ya think?"...there are so many better ways that line could have gone.

 

1002PM:  Music's nice....

 

1003PM:  A)Visually, this is a great open.  B) Auditorially, it isnt.  Serj Tankian's "Lie Lie Lie" is not...horror.  Nice try.  C)  Shed a tear for the fact that "Created By:  Mick Garris" pulled all further influence on the show after the strike.  Here's hoping it survives without it.

 

1004PM:  What is it with the comedies I know I'm gonna hate?  Trailer for Don't Mess with the Zohan's on.

 

1006PM:  What established credential does Breck Eisner have to be directing an ep of this btw?  I'm just curious.  I know he's doing The Creature from the Black Lagoon remake...but come on, you don't start the series with that.

 

1007PM:  Have to give credit for the nice atmosphere, setting and music (again) wise.

 

1008PM:  If I don't find out what the hell happened to the injured guy by the end of the ep, it's gonna bother me.

 

1011PM:  RELAX???  YOU JUST DID THE SAME DAMN THING WITH YOUR GUN!  At least the women are pretty.  And that's a great hippie line there.

 

1012PM:  Thank you Lemon.  River branch.  But did you just say you were looking for turtles?

 

1014PM:  Forgot to mention earlier, thankfully this is in HD.  And that also just answered my question about whether theyd try minor gore.  Stitching the open wound, that clears that fear right up.

 

1015PM:  Don't get me wrong, far more impressed with that being done in Pelts, but that was very nice for a broadcast network.  But the commercial breaks might get annoying if they put them in the wrong places.  Haven't yet.

 

1017PM:  It should be noted, that tomorrow, I'm waiting for the Parents TV Council to present a massively overblown and stupid angry campaign about this.  They don't appear to have watched this yet.  At least not from their website.  They're too busy getting mad at Applebees for advertising on shows that go against parent company IHOP's family friendly image.  (seriously.  im not kidding.)

 

1019PM:  OH JUST KILL THE HORNDOG ALREADY.

 

1020PM:  Ooo...instant service.  Nice.....

 

1021PM:  Lemonwall?  Lemmywal?  uh...what?

 

1022PM:  Oh please go there on the stew.  Please go there.

 

1022PM no. 2:  His flatscreen and his madden 08?  Product placement much?

 

1024PM:  Nicely done bloodless thrill, i must admit.  Creepy emasciated priest is a nice touch.

 

1025PM:  I'll be seeing Strangers tomorrow night hopefully.

 

1029PM:  I repeat for a third time.  Damn thats good music work.

 

1030PM:  No one ever listens to the DONT GO BACK OUT THERE....such a cliche....

 

1031PM:  OHHHHH LEMUEL!  GOT IT!

 

1033PM:  Is that blood or sweat dripping into that bucket?  Nice touch....

 

1034PM:  Really?  you're going there?  Unexpected, yes.....WHOA!.  Ok, thats a good way to change up that cliche.  That's a really good way.

 

1035PM:  I've gotten into this discussion elsewhere on the forums regarding ratings, but I gotta say...it doesnt exactly inspire confidence for me in "The Happening" that the main selling point is that it's M. Night Shymalan's first R-Rated movie.  Just a thought.

 

1037PM:  Love that garbage tree ad so much.

 

1038PM:  OH SHUT UP!  THAT HAS GOT TO BE THE STUPIDEST HULK PRODUCT PLACEMENT EVER!  GOD THAT EP OF AMERICAN GLADIATORS IS GONNA BE DUMB!

 

1039PM:  Now THAT'S a nice prop. (license plate mobile)

 

1040PM:  SWEET!  IT IS BLOOD DRIPPING INTO THE PAN!

 

1041PM:  I liked your stew?????  Lemuel is such obvious comic relief.

 

1042PM:  Ok, I gotta give credit here.  I didn't think theyd have the balls to go demon cannibalism far on network tv.  My faith in this show is now totally restored.

 

1044PM:  Well that'll be uncut on the dvd prolly...lol

 

1045PM:  I have no idea why I have such a good feeling about Get Smart.  I probably shouldnt.

 

1046PM:  Notice how it's Snapple Antioxidant Water instead of Sobe Life Water now?  Somebody got bought out.....

 

1047PM:  OK, someone's waaaaaaaaay too prepared for this.

 

1049PM:  Oh, of course you're from there, why wouldnt you be!

 

1050PM:  The head wound on lemon's hair's really nice for network tv....

 

1051PM:  Ok, that was nice.  lol.

 

1052PM:  SOMEBODY GIVE THESE PEOPLE A SOUND AND MUSIC EMMY!

 

1057PM:  Damn, I was hoping for a different twist...

 

1057PM no. 2:  Never noticed all those antlers.  Nice touch.

 

Overall:  Very very good episode, particularly for a network tv horror anthology show.  Acting was far better than I thought at first.  If lions gate keeps up the plan I've heard of releasing these with additional footage on dvd, i'll be adding this to my collection on its release.  I'm very very excited for the rest of this series.  Already was gonna watch them all, now I'm optimistic about watching them all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I just watched Diary of the Dead.  I didn't want to jump on the bandwagon of hate before watching it, so I just didn't pay attention to previous reviews.  Sad to say though, they were right.  This movie blew chunks.  I look at it like this: Say you're taking this really hot lady out on a date, things have gone sweet all night, and now you're back at home and she says she has to go powder her nose or something.  So she goes to the bathroom and you start to notice this horrible smell and all of these horrible sounds coming out of there.  I mean, she's still hot, but....

That's the best analogy I can make.  The first part of the date represents Romero's zombie canon up until Land of the Dead.  Then there's land of the Dead (the sounds) followed by Diary of the Dead (the smell).  I mean, its Romero, but...  This movie looked like it should've been released by Brain Damage.  I could find nothing redeeming about any of it.  Other than frying the zombie's head with the defibrillator, the kills weren't all that spectacular, the dialogue was atrocious, the acting was terrible, the list goes on.  It wasn't worse than the remake of Day of the Dead, but, I mean, that wasn't Romero so I expected it to suck.  It's all about expectations.  With Romero, the expectations are high, high, HIGH, so when I see something like this, it just saddens the heart.

So my recommendation.  Well...netflix it and make your own decision, but I wouldn't rate this one very high at all.  I guess it'd warrant a 1 out of 5.

 

Till next time boils and ghouls...

After much hoping and schedule shifting and good old fashioned intuition, at the moment it appears that I'm headed to the Lower East Side on Saturday night to see Poultrygeist a second time.  Why you might ask?  Well, A)  It's that damn good, and B) I've managed to corral a friend or two this time.

 

Anyone who saw Grindhouse in theater (as I did) knows how important seeing a movie in a theater can sometimes be.  As an example, I'm not tremendously interested in The Strangers.  Something is bothering me about the trailers, specifically my faith in the two leads and their acting ability.  But that's neither here nor there.  What is important is I feel that I could watch The Strangers on my tv and get the same experience I'd get in the theaters.  I can't have that with Grindhouse and Poultrygeist.  Poultrygeist is fantastic on its own.  But it's even better in a decently packed theater of Troma faithful itching to see the blood and gore paint the walls.  In Poultrygeist's case, I now have a memory of being in a place where a theater collectively cheered as one when a person was killed in a meat grinder.  You can't get that stuff in the home theater usually.  Similarly, I have a memory of being in a far less packed theater (which was a crime.....) when those in attendance collectively cringed....when the tongue lesion popped in Planet Terror.  That's why I refuse at least at the moment to buy the two disc Grindhouse releases.  I have a sneaking suspicion that something will come out this Halloween that will reward my waiting, but I have no reason to think that other than that there have to be more people than me in this world who want to recreate their own experience of seeing the original with EVERYTHING intact.  (I could of course just import the 6-disc Japanese special with both american releases, the theatrical cut, and a bonus disc, but I don't wanna deal with the shipping fees or figuring out that dollars to yen thing.  Plus I doubt my dvd player can play it.)

 

Anyone out there choose to get the two-discs?  If you did, what are you gonna do with them if they release a special edition?  Incidentally rumor has it that Poultrygeist will, ironically, be similar.  A single disc in october, and a double disc with documentaries and stuff in 09.  Guess which one i'm waiting on.

 

Speaking of Poultrygeist, I'm going to soon link troma's Poultrygeist page to our Poultrygeist review here to both increase best-horror-movies traffic possibly...and to get myself out there more...heh.

 

Also, am I the only one who's started to become really careful getting dvds?  When Sweeney Todd and The Mist came out, I got them both in the two-disc version because I was 90% sure they couldnt upgrade those much.  We live in a time of too much double-dipping to not do that. 

 

I'm proud...ish...to say that I've only double dipped to completely upgrade a dvd I'd already bought a few times:  I had Nightmare on Elm Streets 1-3 when i dumped them to get the box set, Night of the Living Dead (no not the new release, I got shafted into getting that recut one in a sale and thus switched to a different one.  And when I get it signed in June, I won't upgrade it again), and Saw simply because the special features on the uncut version intrigued me too much.  I mean, as an example, I have the original pressing version of my favorite movie A Clockwork Orange, and I refuse to upgrade it....partially cuz I waited so long to get it, and partially cuz it's autographed by Malcolm McDowell.  :-D  Ditto for a copy of Cujo I have that I'm not upgrading.  That's just my opinion on the subject though.

 

Anyone else generally as a rule opposed to double dipping?

 

And finally, I'm gonna ask again. Is there some restriction on the lyrical content of the music we post on our profiles?  Yes or no?  Anyone?

 

 

This is not likely something most people will ever come in contact with.

 

I've got a creek that comes through my property behind the house. It's beautiful and is one of the reasons I chose this place (I'll need running water and plenty of room to grow food and livestock when the inevitable zombie epidemic hits). There is one thing that I didn't anticipate though... beavers.

 

 

Before this year beavers were this mythical kind of "thing" that you might see on the nature channel or National Geographic. They are smart, industrious and actually pretty cool in a beavery sort of way with their flat tails and sharp teeth. Well, they are anything but cool when they stop up the creek causing floods in the areas where the garden and the barn were to be.

 

 

It wasn't always like this. When I first got the place and realized there was a beaver dam out back I didn't see the harm. The water was not, at that time, coming over the banks and there was essentially no harm done. The little fur-balls made their dam and created quite a trap for small fish and crawdads so their little beaver lives were full and rich, and I had my own thriving family of beavers living out back. There's something about beavers that I didn't know... they don't create a bountiful home and then bask in the luxury of their surroundings - they keep building... and building... and building. If the beavers could have their way the whole world would be one huge muddy swamp swarming with crawdads that they have no time to eat because they are too busy buidling up their dams ever higher. By the time the flooding started the dam was well established - about 7 feet high with so much mud and rocks packed in that it took me hours to bust through it enough to let the water flow away from the barn site. When I was finally finished I dragged by beaten and broken body to the shower to wash off 3 inches of grime and fell into bed exhausted.

 

 

Did you know that beavers are nocternal? I wasn't thinking about that as I sauntered out to the dam site to inflict more damage on the thriving rodent habitat. But wait... the flooding is WORSE! Those rascals had come out in force over night, clearly angry at my vandalism of their aquatic shangra la. Now I really had my work cut out...

 

 

Finally I got that dam all the way down and tried to remove all traces that it ever existed. Maybe they would think they lost it and move somewhere with a lower crime rate. No such luck... I was repayed by not one but FIVE new dams along the creek. It seems several of the youngsters had moved out of the house to make it on their own.

 

 

Todaychecking the creek for evidence of beaver dams is a daily chore. If I go out there every day then there aren't too many sticks and logs to clear and it doesn't take long. If I wait a week then it all starts over again.

 

 

So yes, I have a huge problem with beaver. Every night I have beaver working overtime that are up all night and just won't leave me alone, and it's driving me crazy. Oh, the irony.

So here I am on week two of sobriety and God it fucking sucks.

 

What do people do when they aren't getting loaded? Rodney Dangerfield asked in Easy Money. I still have no clue.

It's an easy question to ask in Aberdeen Washington. Literally everything here revolves around drinking or partying. There was a study done in the 1980's and it found that Aberdeen has the worst drug, alcohol, and suicide rate in the United States when compared to other towns of similar size. I can believe it. Remember Kurt Cobain was from here, and you know how fucked up he was.

 

So here I sit. It sucks. All my friends drink. Most are alcoholics or borderline alcoholics. Others use drugs. Same goes for my family. Coworkers - same thing.

I can't even go fishing and get away from it. Yesterday I was throwing spinners on the Wishkah River, and two guys show up and start fishing. Of course they brought with them the much needed 18 pack of beer, and were passing a joint back and forth.  I finally just left not being able to handle it any longer. It's just too tempting to be around.

 

I remember Ozzy saying while drunk, that sobriety sucks. I think he's right. So does being an alcoholic. I look back at my life and between the years of 12 and 33 there was nothing or little to show for it. In August 2002 when I gave up drinking after nearly dying from it, til now I managed to accomplish a hell of a lot. Two degrees, honor rolls, honor society, a good job, and engagement (the engagement wasn't so good lol). Thats a hell of a lot. I wonder what I can do with twenty years of sobriety. I already know what I can do with twenty years of living in a haze. 

 

More to come

Hopefully

 

Well, the headline of this post is a little misleading... there aren't any "Jenna Jigglers" in this clip (unlike the previous one... damn they are big, round and fake...) because this is some commentary and such. For instance, did you know that Zombie Strippers is NOT just about zombies and strippers, but rather has a deep and significant political message that the more cerebral of the viewers will notice and appreciate? Then again, for those "low brow" fans of zombie films, there are zombies and strippers.

 

Personnally, I found this an amazing revelation and now have a renewed respect for the political courage of Jenna and the depth of her acting ability. I mean, to be able to portray very impactful social and political commentary while appearing to simply strip on a stage topless with blood all over her. That's talent.

 

 

 

Find more clips, cheese, shocking revelations and contests at www.HorrorUnleashed.com

 

Don

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Welcome nieces and nephews to the inaugural edition of Uncle Pump's Dusty Musties.

Now pull up a coconut or hang by your cute little tails while I break some news to you.  There were horror films before "The Ring".  There were horror films before Hannibal Lector ate his first liver and Jason swung his first machete.  There were even horror films before zombies decided to go shopping up in Pennsylvania malls.

I'm creating this blog to dust-off some old treasures and share their light with some of you young termite-munchers.  And to you older silverbacks, maybe I'll bring back some fond memories of drive-ins and late-night horror shows.  Some will be so old that silence was the rule and some will just be personal favorites. Maybe some films you've heard of and never seen and maybe a few for the kids.  Some you may have seen and dismissed or some you just forgot.  Some may veer slightly from horror into sci-fi and fantasy and few may be just to demonstrate that "bad" movies existed in the good old days too.  Dusty because they're old-none made after 1975 and Musties because I believe all of these gems are integral parts of the stone foundation upon which our modern, shiny steel horrors are built.

I couldn't think of a better one to kick off this exploration than " . . And Now The Screaming Starts"

From Amicus, who along with AIP, were Hammer's rivals for the horror buck of the time.  They were known for their horror anthologies, and when this single story motion picture came out in 1973 it was in direct competition with a Hammer that was already starting to stumble.  I saw this first at the drive-in, but a lot folks remember the edited TV version that received a bit of airplay over the years.  If you are buying or renting this, please try to get the uncut original version or you'll lose alot of blood in the American TV version.

Directed by Roy Ward Baker who had already done the original 1972 "Tales from the Crypt" and "Asylum" for Amicus.  Before that he directed the infamous "Vampire Lovers" and the underated "Quartermass and the Pit" for Hammer.  He is probably best known for directing "A Night to Remember" which was THE Titanic movie prior to Cameron's version.  That movie is definitely a non-horror Mustie if you have the time for it. 

The film is beautiful.  That great gothic countryside, sets, and costumes that the Brits did so well, opening up with a misty carriage ride.  For future reference--movies that have horse-drawn carriages in them will always score extra Dusty Mustie points.  Based on the novel "Fengriffen" by David Case, it features Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Patrick McGee, and Stephanie Beacham.

Stephanie portrays Catherine  who has arrived at the manor to marry the young Lord Charles Fengriffen.  Catherine's screaming starts before the first house tour is complete and rarely stops but verily I say unto you-Ms Beacham's bosom heaves and heaves some more.  Stephanie delivers all the screams and cleavage you should expect in an early 70s British horror film.  But poor Catherine's wedding night turns out to be alot more (and Charles' a lot less) than was expected.  Catherine falls victim to the curse placed on the family due to the horrible deeds of Gandpa Fengriffen 50 years earlier.  Herbert Lom, best known as Commissioner Dreyfus in the Pink Panther movies, plays Granpa Fengriffen.  Dr. Whittle, played by Patrick McGee, trys to help and ends up having to call upon the expertise of Dr. Pope, played by Peter Cushing in one of the worst hairpieces I have ever seen.  You would need to staple a dead possum to your head to be more strange-looking than this toupee.  Cushing, Lom, and McGee had also worked together in "Tales from the Crypt".

By now, you may be saying, not another girl comes to old estate and suffers madness movie.  Well it is that movie, but . . .

It is so much more. The beauty of the house (same one used in Rocky Horror Picture Show)and Stephanie's heaving bosom.  It is thick with atmosphere: creepy paintings, creepy woodsman, full moons, old graveyards, ferocious dogs, howling wolves, and a great maniacal grave desecration. And then there's the two main villians, a severed hand and a horny, one-handed, eyeless zombie ghost.  And not just any severed hand--this one knows Jedi mind tricks.

So thanks for reading this first blog entry and I hope you somehow manage to scare yourself.

 

During the Summer of 1973 the year of my Birth, Tobe Hooper filmed one of the greatest Horror films ever! The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is my favorite Slasher film of all time. Just today I watched the 2003 Remake of Chainsaw again and I have to say it kicks ass hell yeah. Marcus Nispel did one hell of a job retelling one of the most beloved horror films. Scott Kosar addapting the screenplay did a very clever job indeed. The acting was to me excellent! Eric Balfour is a rising star and R.Lee Ermey was born to play sheriff Hoyt then there is Jessica Biel very good actress and I have to be truthfull and say she is some wicked eye candy. If you have not seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre you need too get out from under the rock you live under and watch both the Org and the Remake. P/S Also pick up the Beginning which is a very good film that tells how Leatherface became Leatherface. Till next time Take care my fellow Horror Fiends!

*cheesy classical music plays*  Mmmmyessss, hello and welcome to masterpiece theatre.  For I am your host, Chester P. Farnsworth Johanssen Worchestershire III.  Today we will be examining an exhibition at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City on the artistic merit of rich, colorful clothing about beautiful flowers and happiness to understand better that the world is in fact a beautiful, merry place filled with people who are genuinely good, outside and in....*record scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatch, sounds of a massive scuffle*.........

 

You know for a wiry guy, he's got a mean right cross.....

 

 

 

*Metal and rock and roll play*  Greetings denizens of the underworld.  Today, I, Crypticpsych, will lead you on a journey through the dark and the macabre that is the "Gothic:  Dark Glamour" exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.  Above, you see the only picture I'm legally allowed to take.   Seriously, photography prohibited.  After entering the building, a friend of mine and I hung a left at the swarovfski crystal dress and happier looking exhibit....and headed down the stairs into the basement of the building, the only appropriate place for this type of exhibit.  Through the doors, we find first a quick examination of the history of Gothic clothing and Gothic style from clothing worn for mourning purposes in Victorian times all the way up through modern usage in general involving infatuation with death and decay and in movies (including a costume from Bram Stoker's Dracula).  Here, i'm going to cheat.  At the end of this, I'll direct you to the exhibition's website since, today was unfortunately the exhibition's final day and I have no idea where it will end up next.  But since it has a website, it means I can technically swipe photos.  So, for example:

A mourning dress from the 1870s, and:

Kambriel's "Midnight Bustle" from 2005.

 

On the wall nearby this, Gothic photography is seen including an interesting piece that appears to be a woman held up by a series of cords and strings off the corner of the photo.  The photo at the beginning of this report was also included, used for the exhibitions program and promotional materials (imagine that hanging from lightpoles on 7th ave.)

 

Now, also in this room is "The Cabinet of Curiusities", a gallery of Gothic accessories from the past and present.  Poison bottles, bottles of laudanum, a human skull obtained from an anonymous donor, a death mask, animal claw brooches, necklaces that seem to be made of bone, bird skull necklaces, gothic crosses, pocketwatches, etc.  For example (since the top hat tatooed with the bat on it isn't working today):

A Bat Belt Buckle from Early 20th Century Europe

 

After taking in the Cabinet, you head into the exhibition proper.  The exhibition itself is divided up into 7 stages in a single room with black walls and minimal light outside of mood lighting (as it should be).  Depending where you enter from, first is "Night".  This part of the exhibition is devoted specifically to the use of the color black in Gothic fashion and the interesting connection that developed between black clothing and elegance, as in the 1400s and 1500s, black dye was expensive.  So we have such modern designs to showcase this point as:

Kazuko Ogawa's "Elegant Gothic Lolita dress", representing Japan's Gothic Lolita style of the 1990s, and:

 

Alexander McQueen's "Hooded Suit and Thorn Necklace" (I particularly like the necklace) from 2007 England.

 

After "Night", we have the "Ruined Castle", depicting Gothic clothing's connection to the ideas of decay and decomposition alongside some pieces that showed the influence of the clothing of priests and nuns in Gothic styles.  Unfortunately, I cannot show you two of the dresses that were shown here, no matter how much I may want to, as they were not in the online version of this.  Both of them were outstanding in that one of them, paraphrasing the placard in front of it, was made to look as though it was decaying to show the layers of clothing beneath, showing the history of Gothic fashion all in one place.  The other was made out of numerous fabrics and materials, including plastic, silk, etc, to create a stunningly elegant flowing dress that also evokes the idea of a dress made out of the dregs of other dresses or even out of the most beautiful garbage possible (yes, I realize how bizarre that sounds, trust me on this one.)  I can, however, show you a dress from this section that showcase French Revolution influence:

 

Christian Dior's Evening Dress and Cross Necklace.  While this photo makes it difficult to see, this dress is based in the writings of the Marquis de Sade.  The Cross Necklace appears to be made out of large metal nails or spikes, while the dress itself actually has an embroidered image of De Sade himself with the quote "Is it not by murder that France is free today?"

 

Moving past "Ruined Castle" along the wall, we enter "Haunted Palace", showcasing more on disintegration and madness.  This section was relatively small and quickly over, so I only have one photo and it's actually of one of my least favorites in the whole show.  But since I liked 90% of them, damnit, I'm allowed one that makes me think "God what the hell were you thinking":

 

Alexander McQueen's Sleeveless Evening Dress from 2001.  It's made with feathers, and those are glass microscope slides on top.  While I freely admit I like the creativity of doing that, it just doesn't work up close.  The placard says it evokes "beauty, horror, and madness".  Well, I'll give them two of those....

Next along the wall we have the "Laboratory".  Ironically, me being a scientist and all, this WOULD BE the one that is not pictured at all on their site.  SO you have to rely on my descriptions.  Basically, this section focused on the fusion of fashion with science.  What do I mean you ask?  Imagine a dress with a piece on back that leads to a separatory funnel and tubing that wraps around the arms.  Or a dress that, in its torso, features what appears to be broken glass with two strategically placed magnifying glasses positioned out over it.  Or shoes that have metal heels that force you to have good posture.  Or a corset of weathered leather stitched and sewn together, a la Frankenstein.  Very interesting and I wish I had a picture because words really can't do it justice.

 

Next, we have "Strange Beauty".  This particular section discusses Gothic as the outsider and points out strange inspirations in some of the clothing.  Not pictured was an amazing piece inspired by Mexico's Day of the Dead.  It featured a skull head and a series of bright, sequiny skulls and macabre images as well as a stocking underneath with fabric bones on it, creating the idea of your body becoming an actual skeleton.  Very original.  But this was also...where my favorite outfit of the whole exhibition was, and one that was perfect for this site.  I give you:

 

Rodarte's "Evening Dress".  Now if I had you guess the inspiration for this for hours, you'd probably never nail it down.  This dress...is inspired by Japanese Horror Movies.  See how it looks kind of like a Japanese kimono in style?  How the black has the distinct feel of long-flowing asian ghost hair?  According to the placard, they even experimented with the dye used to make the red in this dress because they were aiming to nail down "blood in water".  Just an outstanding piece.

 

In the center of the large room, you see the "Cemetary".  It's surrounded by a fence to evoke the cemetary feel, but also because this is where the Gothic fasination with death and decay meets "being fenced in" and claustrophobia.  Corsets and high collars were heavily featured within.  This included an amazing piece that was a corset but also a high collared piece that basically held the head almost completely still.  As well as:

Jean Paul Gaultier's Dress and Neckpiece.  See what I mean?  Claustrophobia and limited head movement.

 

Finally we conclude, with the "Batcave", named after the famed London punk club whose motto was "Blasphemy, Lechery, and Blood".  In the Batcave are offshoots of Goth such as Punk, Cybergoth, Gothic Lolita, etc.  It was set up a 7 windows made of two-way glass.  Every minute or two, the lights would shift for 30 seconds, allowing you to catch what was billed as "a lightning flash" of the clothing.  Innovative...though annoying if you're trying to see everything.  For example:

 

A Cyber Goth ensemble by Dane.  (I liked it actually, though I also think if the wrong person wears it in the wrong context, tis a bad scene), and:

 

H. Naoto's Elegant Gothic Lolita Ensemble with Angry Doll.  Supposedly, this design was actually created with the assistance of the real Gothic Lolita's of Japan's Harajuku district.

 

And thus ends the tour.  Mostly, the clothing was women's fashion, but there was some men's clothing.  Cloaks, capes...the punk stuff for men in the Batcave, but unfortunately, no photos on the site to show you.  Also, as i've mentioned, I was unfortunately only able to see this on the absolute LAST day of the exhibition.  I believe the website of it will continue to be up though for quite some time.  It can be found here, where you can see the pictures which i've posted here and some others.  Also, I'd be remiss to mention that this whole exhibition was put together by Dr. Valerie Steele, author of The Corset:  A Cultural History and Fetish:  Fashion, Sex, and Power.  This piece actually exists because, in I believe August-September, she will be releasing Gothic:  Dark Glamour in book form.  All the pieces in the exhibit will be in this as well as other pieces, and a precopy was at the exhibit.  All in all a fantastic exhibit that, once the book comes out, you too would be able to use to prove that Gothic...and in some ways horror (besides the J-Horror inspired one, one piece was claimed to be inspired by Elvira Mistress of the Dark [I disagree], another by The Wicker Man [definitely agree]) are not ugly, but are darkly beautiful and deep and deserve more respect than outsiders tend to give it.

Okay this film has been reviewed in good style by The Zombie Master and there's not much I can add so I'll just whack up a few quick thoughts.

 

The film sees Romero taking us back to the "beginning" of the zombie outbreak, ala Night of the Living Dead (1968). A group of film students making a horror movie in the woods under the supervision of their alcoholic professor begin to hear strange news reports of the "dead waking up". At first it's dismissed as a hoax (ala the War of the Worlds radio thing) but increasingly strange and brutal events let them know this "hoax" is all too real. The film then follows their attempts to get home and be with their loved ones while attempting to survive the spreading chaos, all filmed from first person perspective by directing major Jay (Joshua Close) on his hand held camera. The film benefits from the return of known and loved "shambling" zombies, innovative hand held camera style that is NOT nausea-inducing (Cloverfield I'm staring in your direction), and good old fashioned tension and gore. It suffers however, from heavy handed narration and a social commentary that bludgeons the viewer over the head far too many times. Okay, the government controlled media are lying to us. We're a society of voyeurs. I get it already! It also suffers from the narrator's ridiculous excuse for the music cues and funky editing in the film. If you are going to go for the hand-held, documentary style, go all the way and have no music. For me, that would have amped up the tension, because every time there was a slow dissolve or a creepy music cue, I was reminded that I was just watching a movie. Taking the premise of the movie in mind, I wanted more realism slathered onto my zombie smorgasbord. That's one thing that Cloverfield has over this film (I stress the ONE thing, this is a far superior effort to that film), it stuck to it's guns and presented itself as "footage found after the chaos" etc.

 

But those gripes aside, I actually really enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. The beginning was very well done, and put me at ease with familiar feelings that yes, I was watching a good old fashioned Romero zombie flick done on a shoestring budget where the story is king, the grotesque deaths plentiful and varied (the de-fib eyeball pop is an instant favourite) and the characters expendable. The cast was mostly unknown to me, which is always a good thing in a film like this because I couldn't predict who'd get chomped and who'd live, minus of course the knowledge that the most annoying female character obviously survived to provide the woeful narration. Okay one more gripe. The camera guy, Jay, is a bit of a dick. I mean, the bit where he insists on filming the attractive blonde girl being chased by the zombie-mummy-guy instead of, oh, I don't know, putting the fucking camera down for a second, and helping the poor girl had me rolling my eyes. It just wasn't believable, no one as supposedly good natured as Jay would simply film the whole thing without offering an ounce of assistance, even after his insistence that he needs to capture everything on film. This was labouring the "we don't slow down to help, we slow down to watch" point a bit too much.

 

However these few eye-roll moments were counterbalanced by some truly awesome bits. I really liked Samuel the deaf Amish farmer who saves the group at one point by dynamiting a pack of approaching zombies then turning to the group and displaying a sign enthusiastically announcing: "I'm Samuel. Hello". I love his calm demeanor and the way he just squints slightly as the smoke and zombie remains fall around him. Highly amusing. The scene in the tenement building where the cops take revenge by shooting the old couple in the hearts so they can "wake up dead" is chilling. The black militia hunkered down in the warehouse was a great subplot, and I liked the way it began, with the "my gun is bigger than yours" confrontation in the woods.

 

Romero keeps his players in line; no one overacts, everyone is believable. And there are some nice little character moments amid some genuine moments of tension and terror. I liked the black militia guy's parting thoughts to Debra, and several quiet moments when the group starts to lose members and they realise that this is for real and they themselves might not make it out alive.

 

I liked that the chaos has been stripped down once again to it's bare essentials - a small group of survivors just trying to do their utmost to survive the unbelievable carnage they are suddenly and inexplicably faced with. Diary has more in common with the original trilogy than with Land of the Dead (2005).

 

In closing, the final "downloaded" video shown at the end gave me chills and had me beaming with satisfaction. A great way to end the film.

Note: This is a story written in the form of a journal, so if you are just joining me and want THIS blog to make any sense at all, go back to my blog entitled "The Journal of 'Red' Chote - entry 1" and start from the beginning.

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Journal entry: 28th November 2010 - 6.15am  

 

I don't know where to begin this entry, journal. I went into town yesterday. I loaded up the 4x4 ute and took the shotgun and a spare jerry of petrol. I drove out to the highway, turned left, and headed towards the town of Winidjango. It was deserted along the highway. Unusual, to say the least. Normally, there are semi trailers going hell for leather delivering food, cattle, or other things between the town and the city. But if that was odd, what was waiting in Wini was odder still. Nothing.  

 

That's right, nothing. Not a fucking, goddamned thing. No people, no cars (moving ones anyway, plenty just parked or abandoned in the middle of the main street), not even a fucking mangy dog begging for scraps. Nothing. The whole fucking town is deserted. I've missed something. Some emergency situation that's required the whole town be evacuated.  

 

I didnt stay long. Just spent enough time to load up the back of the ute with food, petrol, batteries, a new radio and other bric-a-brac to get me through the next few weeks. Then I high-tailed it back here to try the radio. Again, nothing. My eyes wandered over to Georgie's letter, still sitting, unopened, on my dresser. I should open it. But my heart sinks at the very thought. Instead I made a plate of baked beans and cooked a damper, had another few beers. I don't know what to do.  

I havent dropped a blog in a while (not enough bran in my diet perhaps) and I feel the urge today, so in a shameless act of self-promotion, and because I have ridiculous amounts of time on my hands at the moment but no motivation to actually write anything original, I thought I'd provide some handy "click here's" to my horror movie reviews on BHM so I can continue to wallow in my neverending delusions of importance. Feel free to send me your thoughts, but please, keep the "talentless HACK!" comments to a minimum. They cut like razor wire.  

 

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/arachnophobia-1990-movie-review.html  

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/a-bucket-of-blood-1959.html  

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/carnosaur.html  

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/day-of-the-dead-1985.html  

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/friday-the-13th-part-2-the-definitive-slasher.html  

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/friday-the-13th-part-31.html  

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/from-hell.html  

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/ghoulies.html  

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/henry-portrait-of-a-serial-killer.html  

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/the-hitcher-1986-horror-movie-review.html  

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/monkey-shines-1988-horror-movie-review.html  

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/pet-sematary-1989-horror-movie-review.html  

http://www.best-horror-movies.com/prey-2007-horror-movie-review.html  

 

And no, that's not really Friday the 13th Part 31: Jason does a Self-Improvement Seminar. "I just felt my career was flagging," Jason said. "I mean, yeah I went into space and took on Freddy...not to mention all those innocent teenagers I slaughtered...it was fun. Oh, Lord, it was fun. But I just, y'know, wanted something more. You get to my age and you...just want something to look back on, something to tell you grandkids about. Something that will let the world know, that Jason was HERE, and he MATTERED! So now with Tony Rich's Get the Life YOU DESERVE! I've taken up tai chi, I've finally gotten rid of the hockey mask I've been hiding behind all these years, I've moved out of my shack in the woods and leased a zippy little condo in Southern California, I've even taken steps to put my mother's death behind me and move on...I've joined an internet dating service. My days of mindless slaughter are behind me...I'm ready to LIVE, dammit, and I owe it all to Tony!"  

 

Well, look at that...I got the urge to write something original after all. Now, excuse me, I have to go get raging drunk.

Two things:  One, two new reviews are up that I don't think I've linked to yet:  The Ring and Demons.  Enjoy!

Two:  Time for more from my thesis.  Today, we will be finishing off the 1970s with the iconic Halloween.  Cited works include the film itself, Robin Wood's essay "An Introduction to the American Horror Film" from Planks of Reason:  Essays on the Horror Film, Joseph Maddrey's Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue:  The Evolution of the American Horror Film, Tony Magistrale's Abject Terrors:  Surveying the Modern and Postmodern Horror Films, James F. Iaccino's Psychological Reflections on Cinematic Terror:  Jungian Archetypes in Horror Films, and Tony Williams' "Trying to Survive on the Darker Side:  1980s Family Horror" from The Dread of Difference:  Gender and the Horror Film.  Next time, we roll into the heavy hitters of the 80s final girls with Friday the 13th.

 

      The other movie that can be seen as part of the initiation of the defensive, responsive, strong-willed female protagonist is also one of the original "slasher" films. The film in question is John Carpenter's Halloween. In it, the story of serial killer Michael Myers is told. As a child, Myers killed his older sister in an apparent response to negligence she showed in choosing to have sex with her boyfriend while she was supposed to be babysitting him. He was sent to a mental institution for 15 years to determine the root cause of his crimes and was examined by Dr. Loomis, who discovered that "what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil"(Halloween). Shortly before Halloween night, Myers escapes through Dr. Loomis's inadvertent help. It is at this point that the film shifts from a focus on Myers and his instability to Myers and his obsession with Laurie Strode, the protagonist.

      He proceeds to Haddonfield, his original hometown, where he begins a murderous rampage, targeting young women in an apparent mission to gain further vengeance against his older sister. In fact, some analysts believe that Myers sees Strode as a new, reincarnated version of his dead sister. (Wood 196) Much of the finale of the movie is a showcase of Myers's bloodlessly filmed, violent murders of Strode's friends in what a relentless quest by to get to Strode and finish what he believed he started that earlier Halloween night.
      Interestingly, the movie stars Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of the actress who played Marion in Psycho, Janet Leigh. (Maddrey 62) One can compare the characteristics of the mother's character to that of Curtis's to see just how far the female protagonist had come in the 17 intervening years between the films. In Psycho, Marion was simply a victim. She had no method to fight back against Norman and was taken relatively by surprise. She was somewhat suspicious of Norman, of course, after their short discussion during dinner in his parlor, but she both appeared to be more suspicious of Norman's "mother" than Norman himself and showed nearly no signs of actual trepidation about her safety after her meeting with Norman. Instead, she appeared more scared of someone discovering the stolen money than of losing her life. She also decides to disobey both her boss's orders and societal norms of the time by stealing the safe deposit box money in and of itself, and driving out of town alone. Overall, she appears to be far more similar to Laurie's friends Halloween than to Laurie herself. The two girls, Lynda and Annie, are both self-absorbed, thinking only of themselves and ignoring the preliminary signs that Myers had returned. As for their own sexual prowess, they are both specifically shown, either by word or deed, to be quite sexually active. These ideas combine in the end to get both them and one of their boyfriends killed.

     Laurie Strode is quite different from these particular stock characters, however. First, from the initial moment that Michael appears in Haddonfield, the only person observant enough to notice his stalking and to actually stop and consider its implications is her:

     "Laurie's marginal interest in sex, in contrast, allows her the ability to concentrate on other matters; we note on several occasions early in the film that her friends mock her nervous response to the looming presence of Myers.[...] Unlike her clueless girlfriends, Laurie senses intuitively that there is trouble brewing"(Magistrale 158-9)

     "Laurie Strode is a survivor-type, but she is characterized by her reactions rather than her actions" (Maddrey 133).

She is also, as previously mentioned, a virgin, as well as generally respectable, ethically and morally speaking, thinking of others or her surroundings before herself. As an example, a comparison of the events surrounding Lynda and Annie's deaths to those of the final battle is quite revealing. Lynda and her boyfriend Bob die after they have broken into a house to have sex, one being stabbed while getting a beer afterwards, the other being strangled in bed with a phone cord. Annie is killed in her car while she prepares to shirk house-sitting/baby-sitting duties to go see her own boyfriend. Both girls thus die as a result of decisions that indulge their own prurient self-interests.

     In Laurie's final fight against Michael Myers, on the other hand, the most important thing to her is not really her own life so much as the lives of the children she is caring for. (Magistrale 158-9) While she is fighting to stay alive, her first action once Michael is physically pursuing her is to run to the house where the children are so as to protect them. She keeps them with her through almost the entire final act of the movie in an effort to keep them safe. Once she has succeeded in this quest and it has become clear that Myers is after her, not the children, she fights for her own survival, using her intellect to try and outwit him by hiding in a closet. While she hides, she shows a resourcefulness not seen in female protagonists before by using a wire hanger to gouge out his eye (similar to slightly earlier in the sequence where she attempts the same action with a knitting needle) and allow her to momentarily escape. (159)
     It is important to note, however, that the full transformation from weak protagonist to strong independent heroine has not fully taken place in Strode. While she keeps herself alive through intelligence and ingenuity, she is not the person who doles out the "final" blow to Myers. That distinction belongs to Dr. Loomis who takes advantage of Strode's removal of Myers's mask, shooting Myers as soon as he retrieves his mask and is about to administer the coup de grâce to Strode, knocking him out a nearby window. (Iaccino 133) While this act does not kill Myers, thus freeing him to years of sequels, it does point out an interesting fact. While Halloween is said by some to be the first instance of the "final girl" survivor in "slasher"-type horror movies, she is still not fully independent, still not strong enough to fully save herself, and still haunted by the weaknesses of Marion and Lila in Psycho. (Williams 170)

 

A couple of days ago my boyfriend and I were talking, and I was excited because I finally had gotten Re-Animator on netflix so I could have him watch it (he's not a horror fan, so I'm turning him into one)... then he went and asked me a terrible, awful question: "what are your top 5 horror movies?" And suddenly I knew that the only way my homework would get done would be for it to do itself....

 

I'm no good at making top 5 lists, or top anything lists, because there's always something I forget and there are always way more movies that I know I WILL probably have on my list... once I've seen them. I decided to try and make a few top 5 lists, one for each category, I suppose. Top 5 Halloween horror, top 5 Christmas horror, top 5 summer horror, top 5 mood horror, top 5 giallo, etc. So here goes.... and if some seem out of place, it's because I probably saw them around a specific time and therefore associate it with that time of year.

 

Top 5 Halloween Horror

1. Halloween

2. The Thing

3. Texas Chainsaw Massacre

4. Ringu

5. Phantasm

 

Top 5 Christmastime Horror

1. Black Christmas

2. Silent Night, Deadly Night

3. Nattevagten

4. Cemetery Man

5. The Exorcist

 

Top 5 Summertime Slashers

1. Sleepaway Camp

2. April Fool's Day

3. Happy Birthday To Me

4. Pumpkinhead

5. Friday the 13th

 

Top 5 Summertime Horror

1. Re-Animator

2. Night of the Creeps

3. Evil Dead/ Evil Dead II

4. American Psycho

5. Hellraiser

 

Top 5 Zombie Movies

1. Dead Alive

2. Night of the Living Dead

3. Dawn of the Dead

4. The Beyond

5. Fido

 

Top 5 Giallo

1. Opera

2. The Psychic

3. Torso

4. Don't Torture A Duckling

5. Tenebre

 

Top 5 Old Horror

1. Eyes Without A Face

2. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

3. Nosferatu

4. M

5. Les Diaboliques

 

Top 6 Horror Movies That Don't Fit Anywhere Else/Mood Horror

1. Carrie

2. The Abominable Dr. Phibes

3. May

4. I Spit On Your Grave

5. Hellraiser

6. Blood Feast

 

That's enough for now... I still feel pitifully amateurish.... there are so many movies I need to see, and I'm not even sure of the order on these lists... or if I've forgotten any.... comments/suggestions are quite welcome.

 

5 minutes later: I just realized that I didn't add "Inside" anywhere to the above lists. It may very well be my favorite horror movie, even though I say that very hesitantly because I don't like to limit myself. I suppose I could have added a foreign horror list. On that list would be Inside, High Tension, Cemetery Man (I'd move it), Man Bites Dog... and The Eye.

Cupid's Quiver is the third episode of Friday the 13th: The Series and is about an ancient statue of cupid that causes women to fall hopelessly in love with the man who carries it. Unfortunately for the love struck females the second they utter the words "I love you" their love interest becomes compelled to kill her.

 

Thoughts:

 

This one is funny on a number of levels. First, the opening scene; A very nerdy dude brings the statue into a bar, hits on a woman who soundly rejects him, and then aims the cupid at her so that some kind of laser-beam can come out of it and change her tune. At the "love motel" later that night she speaks "the words" and he proceeds to choke her, until the cops come storming in out of nowhere. Doesn't make sense that the cops were there and it makes even less sense that there are several members of a fraternity there with them. What? Anyway, a frat boy steals the thing right out from under the cop's noses.

 

The frat dork that the brothers allow to clean up the joint steals it next and starts to find the power. Kills one girl by locking her in a truck with a bee hive which was pretty fun... beyond that there are no big revelations and the story goes along as you would suspect with no real surprises. Still, the way that the items work and the evil they bring are actually pretty brilliant. Good writers in story if not in dialog.

 

My first movie review for BHM, a review of Uwe Boll's Seed, is online now in the Movie Reviews section. Check it out and tell me what you think!

What is a monster? The dictionary defines it generally as any creature combining the features and forms of various animals (including humans), and/or so ugly and deviating from the normal shape, behavior, or character of natural creatures as to cause fright. This seems at first glance like an adequate description. It certainly covers Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, and Rosie O'Donnell. But is that all? Isn't the Thing from outer space a monster, too? How about the Devil from The Exorcist?

Well, it turns out the dictionary gives itself an escape clause of sorts, by providing as a secondary definition "anything unnatural." In that sense, the Thing is a monster, since it doesn't belong to OUR natural world (although it is ultimately natural in the sense of being part of nature; i.e. a natural part of the universe), and Satan is one, too, inasmuch as he's SUPERnatural. Hence, the definition I'm using for this list includes both the primary and secondary definitions of "monster."

Well, if so, you will ask, why isn't The Exorcist in your list? Was it not good enough to make the Top 5? No, on the contrary, I'd put The Exorcist at the top of practically every horror movie list it qualifies for. I just don't think Satan ultimately qualifies as a monster, because even though the dictionary says "anything unnatural" is a monster, I don't think anything truly supernatural can count, since monsters, in my book, must still obey the rules of physics. That's one of their weaknesses, if you will. Hence, God and His Angels (of whom Satan is one, albeit fallen away from God) do not qualify as monsters. So, as much as I'd like to put The Exorcist at the top of every list in sight, I've got to exclude it from this one--and that leaves the following five as the absolute best, most horrifying, monster movies ever made:


5. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

While Body Snatchers is a very good movie, it might not merit this high an honor were it not for its ending. The final scene of this movie so brilliantly and effectively transcends the horror genre itself that it gives it a weight few other movies of any kind possess. There is no need to postulate conscious effort on the part of its authors in establishing such a universal metaphor: it is such a simple and natural one it could easily have been done unconsciously. But either way, intentional or not, the horrifying, riveting final moment of Body Snatchers is carried off so beautifully that it raises a very good, or even great, movie to the status of "classic" and "must see."

4. 30 Days of Night (2007)

30 Days is not what I'd call a great movie technically, but it is one of the most frightening I've ever seen, at least the first time around. This may be because A) I knew nothing about the comic book upon which it is based before I saw the movie, and B) I saw it on the big screen in a dark, somewhat empty theater. The premise is great: vampires invade a remote, snowed-in town where the sun won't come up for a month. It's like a vampire Mardi Gras, except less bloody. Well, not really. There's lots and lots of blood. These are vampires, after all, and not of the stone proper, pinkie-in-the-air variety. These are more like King John vampires, ripping off shanks of mutton and tearing at them greedily while the juice dribbles down their chins.

But oh, how great they are. There are two elements that combine to make this movie work: the vampires, and the absolute empathy one feels for the terror of their victims in hiding. If anything, rather than the viewer saying to him- or herself (as I often do), "Why don't they do something?" there are too many times in this movie where you want to yell at the actors, "Are you out of your mind? Don't go out there!" As a viewer, it actually occurs to you while watching this movie that there might be worse things than starving to death. Yes, the vampires are scary. Really scary. They're scary looking--being about nine parts Nosferatu to one part Barnabas Collins--and they're scary acting, in the vicious and barbaric way I've already alluded to. They also don't speak English, which to us Americans may be the scariest part of all. No, these are Russian immigrant vampires, and it's entirely doubtful whether they've ever bothered to apply for any stinkin' green cards.

In any case, my praise for this movie may lessen over time, but for now I consider it to be a much better movie than the mainstream critics do. Like I said, this one's not so much about the technical excellence as it is about the scary. In my opinion, it's way scary.

3. The Thing (1982)

What's this? Another trapped-in-a-remote-snowed-in-outpost-with-insatiable-evil-on-the-loose movie? Well, yep. That's what it is. But this one was first and it's still the best. The stars here are, well, the stars (a bunch of 'em, and not a bad performance in the bunch) and the location. Ah, the location. Rarely, if ever, has the remoteness and loneliness of a place been more effectively communicated than in this movie. The fact that The Thing is a horror movie no doubt contributes greatly to this, but there's ultimately a symbiotic relationship between the emotions we experience: we're scared for the victims because they're so isolated and alone, but we also feel their isolation all the more intensely because we're scared for them.

The performances are uniformly top-notch, with the finest one offered by Kurt Russell in what is in my opinion far and away the best performance he's ever given (I mean that as a compliment). He was simply born for the role of MacReady. Russell as MacReady results in one of those rare confluences in pictures where you honestly sit there and say to yourself, "Damn, I wish I was as cool as that guy." Anyway, MacReady's badassedness is essential to the success of the movie, because he's able to maintain the unity of the group in a situation where it would otherwise disintegrate and destroy the story. The Thing wouldn't work dramatically if everyone just retreated to their own little corner, set up a defensive barricade, and shot anything that came into view. So while, as I've said, every performance here is good, Russell's is the most essential, and all the better because it's most essential.

I won't go on about the special effects like most people do. Honestly, I wasn't that wowed by them, even at the time. Yes, they were technically impressive, but they had, and have even more now, that same obvious phoniness about them that science fiction movies of the '50's have. Yet they're serviceable enough to get the job done--which in the end is all that's needed since, contrary to what most people thought at the time and still think today, The Thing isn't about the gore and the effects. It's about the people, and the definitive proof to settle all arguments about that is in the ending. The Thing's ending, just like Body Snatchers', remains one of the most memorable, haunting, and in its own way beautiful, endings in all of filmdom. When MacReady and Childs, exhausted and defenseless, with nowhere left to run and each unsure of the other's intentions, sit down in the snow together with the last dregs of a bottle of whiskey to wait, it's another one of those great movie endings that will probably never be topped. Both you and they know they're both going to die, no matter what happens. I get chills just thinking about it.

2. Alien (1979)

A haunted house in space. That's how I used to think of Alien. I thought it was the modern version of the haunted house story, and I thought the brilliant thing about it, the thing that made it work, was that the Nostromo was a haunted house you couldn't just walk out of. But over ti