In addition to the usual reviews and comments you would find on a horror movie blog, this is also a document of the wonderfully vast horror movie section of the video store I worked at in my youth.
Hey all. It's a lazy Sunday afternoon here. Here's what I've got for you this week.
What A Tease!
A couple of cool videos for some upcoming music projects hit the Web recently. I'm sure you are as excited as I am about John Carpenter's collaboration with French composer Jean Michel Jarre. They will be working together on a track on Jarre's upcoming album. Check out this interview with the masters themselves.
Secondly, Videogram, the horror synth stylings of Swedish musician Magnus Sellergren, has released a teaser for a single off his upcoming LP, Pre-Cert. Here's the video for Outpost 31 Isn't Responding below.
Ihorror recently linked to a cool project from Cousin Barnabas from The Collinsport Historical Society. Remember those See, Hear, Read LP's from back in the day? Well, Barnabas created a little Photoshop project positing Dario Argento's 1977 classic Suspiria in such a format.
Pretty glorious, wouldn't you say? Since Argento first envisioned the age of the girls in the academy to be much younger - you can still see evidence of this as lines like “names which begin with the letter 'S' are the names of SNAKES! Sssss! Ssssss!” do seem odd when spoken by grown women - this doesn't feel so out of place. For more stuff from Barnabas, click here.
This supposed mash-up of Superbad & Zombieland does looks like it could be fun. If anything I am glad to see Landon break out of the Paranormal purgatory he's been wrapped up in for the last few years. Scouts is set to release this Halloween.
Happy Friday everyone. I wanted to unveil a new project today that I've been working away at for quite some time.
The Pallatine Massacre is a CYOA slasher in the vein of Ed Packard's old series of books. Head on over and give it a whirl by clicking on the image above or here. It is fairly robust with fourteen different outcomes (though you can meet a grisly fate in dozens of ways) so it may take you a few play-throughs to get out alive.
The title page was designed by Trevor Henderson, and I hope to add more visual content in the coming weeks.
After snagging a copy while in
Montreal, I finally finished reading Spectacular Optical's second
release, Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s, an
exhaustive compilation of essays that further reinforces just what a
whacked-out decade the eighties truly were.
I was raised in a neutral environment
when it came to religion. Well, truth be told, it may have leaned
toward disdain on my father's part based on his constant mockery of
said establishments. I know our address was eventually blacklisted by
the Jehovah's Witnesses that used to come door-to-door. The point is
that I never gave Satanism any less legitimacy than any other
religion out there. Even as a kid, I knew that the extremes offered
up in the horror movies I watched were just that; extremes.
Not all of us were as liberal, as I
cannot understate what an accurate term “panic” truly is. The
deeper I got into the book, the more fantastical it became. Several
decades removed, some of the fear mongering that was going on was
downright comical. The chapter by Joshua Benjamin Graham on
fundamentalist readings of the occult in Saturday Morning cartoons in
laughable. At worst, they were a disingenuous way to sell toys and
merchandise to millions of children, but a conduit of evil? Let's get
real, people.
He-Man: The Great Corrupter...
As highly visible figures like Geraldo
Rivera – whose infamous 1988 “Devil Worship” special is broken
down by Alison Lang – continued to fan the fire, hysteria began to
take hold.
A phenomenon called Satanic Ritual Abuse arose and several
high profile criminal cases popped up around the world, the most
publicized being the McMartin Pre-school Trial. As written about by
Adrian Mack, due to a lack of evidence, no one was ever convicted and the media fervor over the alleged Satanic activity seemed to
overshadow the real tragedy of grievous child trauma.
The book balances out these horrific
chapters with some lighter fare, including the chapter by W.M. Conley on
Christian evangelical VHS and Paul Corupe's piece on Jack T. Chick. I learned of Chick and his religious tracts just a few years ago around the
release of Dark Dungeons.
I find this trailer highly amusing, yet I'm still not completely sure this is supposed to be satire. What is no laughing matter is the
genuine alarm Dungeons & Dragons brought about in the early
eighties, profiled here by Gavin Baddely. I was introduced to the world of D&D very early on
through my older brother and was acutely aware when the media
started portraying it in a negative light. How anything that fostered
imagination and creativity (I was designing dungeons by the time I
was nine) not to mention reading and math skills, could be rallied
against as evil was beyond me. Alas, I distinctly remember being told
by a friend that he wasn't allowed to play at my house
anymore because I engaged in such activities. Such prejudices are
hard for a young kid to absorb.
Still got my set. Still got my soul.
Naturally, my favourite chapters of the
book were the ones about film, of which they were a few as horror has
often danced with the Devil. Kevin L. Ferguson explores the
integration of technology and Satanism through the eighties films
Evilspeak & 976-Evil, Samm Deighan runs down the fairly robust
history of “Heavy Metal Horror” & Kurt Halfyard quite astutely
heralds Joe Dante's The 'Burbs as the death knell of the Satanic
Panic, even if America's inherent xenophobia still lives on to this day.
When it comes down to it, the
establishment is always going to look for a tangible element to pin
the woes of the world on. Before heavy metal music and its “Satanic”
disciples, it was comic books and now, many years later, violent
video games are allegedly corrupting our youth. Sadly, the
Satanic Panic happened due to a religious
right having just enough clout to sway even the most supposedly
objective of peers. It was a time of widespread insanity and, even
putting aside the prevalent threat of nuclear annihilation, it is
kind of a miracle that we all made it through to the other side and into
the nineties.
Good morning everyone! It's crazy to think I'm three-quarters of the way to three hundred of these things, but the numbers don't lie. Here's what I've got for you this week.
The Bad Man.
I've spoken here many times about the 2013 movie Found. Now director Scott Schirmer has a new nightmare in the works, a sadistic abduction horror called The Bad Man. His Indiana-based filmmaking collective already has many pieces in place, but are also looking for your help to bring this devilish little piece to life.
Schirmer has a knack for pushing boundaries, so I bet there is more to this project than meets the eye. If The Bad Man looks like something you'd be interested in seeing, you can contribute by visiting the Kickstarter page here.
Dead Love.
Here's a thing of grotesque beauty, it's the Arrow cover art for their upcoming Blu-ray release of Jörg Buttgereit’s 1991 flick Nekromantik 2.
This run, releasing November 2nd, is limited to 3000 and has a slew of extras, including a commentary track, new interviews and a making of doc. The release also includes the soundtrack with a one-hundred page booklet. For more info, check out Arrow's site here.
Crazy Love.
A trailer came through my inbox this week for Canadian director Jon Knautz's newest effort, Goddess Of Love.
Being impressed by his debut Jack Brooks, and his under-appreciated gem of a follow-up The Shrine, I am very interested to see where he is at now. Goddess will premiere at London's FrightFest later this month and then at the prestigious genre festival Sitges in October.
There were a few notable horror titles recently added to Netflix North, so I figured this lazy Friday would be a good time to showcase a few of them.
This is a film from a few years ago that sadly flew under the radar. Jamie Collet-Solla (before becoming Liam Neeson's action partner) breathed some really fresh ideas into a story that could laid there like a dead fish. In addition to some solid performances from Peter Sarsgaard & Vera Farmiga, the real standout is then ten-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman as the titular character. Much like Ellen Page in Hard Candy, she is a force to be reckoned with. Small packages don't always contain good things.
This was a huge leap forward for Rob Zombie in my opinion, as the MTV sensibilities of his previous works were abandoned for something more cinematic. The obvious love of films from days gone by is still here, but he seems much more restrained in Lords and lets pace and atmosphere take over. The cinematography and score also help to gloss over what is a fairly thin plot. I'm definitely interested to see on what side of the fence his next flick “31” falls on.
Likely my fave horror film of 2013, Oculus gave me everything I wanted. Mike Flanagan builds on the atmosphere and dread of his previous indie Absentia and weaves a very impressive tale. I feel this is one of the best examples of seamlessly juggling two different timelines within the same space. The cast is strong across the board and the scare pieces are really effective, at least to me anyway.
I just saw this a few weeks ago and was really impressed by it. Mark Duplass keeps showing his versatility having been involved in several genres, from comedy (TV's The League) to romantic drama (The One I Love) to horror (Baghead). Creep is an incredibly simple tale, with the camera pointed at Duplass for most of the film. The escalation as his antics become more uncomfortable for his interviewer is palpable and I liked that they kept finding new ways to invigorate its “found footage” narrative. That is by no means an easy feat in this day and age.
So, there you have it; four titles to keep you occupied should you feel the need to curl up with Big Red. But, for right now, GET OUTSIDE. It's beautiful out!!!
Now that the Midnight Madness cat has been let out of the bag for another year, here's a cool montage put together by MM videographer Robert Mitchell recounting the last eight years of the event.
I was at a good many of these screenings, and have seen all manner of creatures great and small. This video just makes me yearn for September.
