I Am Legend

Toxic Betrayal
Synopsis: A college students life takes a turn for the worst, after he wins 10 million dollars in the lottery.

Starring: Jaime Parker, Amy and Roosevelt Samarie L
Genre: Horror/Animation
Director: Roosevelt Samarie L
Writer: Roosevelt Samarie L
Producer: Roosevelt Samarie L

(spoiler alert: one of them doesn't make it)

12/15/89

Dear Journal,

I just (well a few hours ago.) saw the movie “beaches” again and it was really sad at the end. It’s about this friendship that these two girls have and one of them dies at the end (that’s why it’s so sad). It got me thinking about friendship and how I would feel if one of my good (or even best!) friends died. I would be so depressed and miserable, I don’t know what I would do.

Well let’s move on to a happier subject. Like my date with Mitch (which is tomorrow by the way.) I hope it goes all right.

Also my birthday is coming up and my party is going to have a horror theme. We are going to see a horror movie then tell ghost stories, have some food then play with my Ouija board.

In case it’s still not clear, it’s sad because of the death in the movie. Of the friend. At the end.

Ah, Beaches. For those not up on their chick flicks, Bette Midler plays a bold and brassy gal (I know, so very unlike her other characters) who forges a lifelong friendship with a sensible and cautious gal (Barbara Hershey). What could they possibly have in common, you ask? Well, not a whole lot, but you know what they say about opposites (“they,” in the late 80’s, being Paula Abdul and a  cartoon cat). There’s fighting, singing, crying, dying, and more crying. All to the tune of a soundtrack sung by the Diving Miss M herself, who made us take stock and ask who the wind beneath our wings might be. Despite it’s somber conclusion, the film has moments of levity, plus plenty of shoulder pads, big hair, and a musical sequence about the invention of the bra (you owe it to yourself to hear “Otto Titsling” at least once in your life if you never have).

To me, Beaches is a scary movie because it shows the fragility of friendship and of life itself. However, others out there might consider it  to be a horror movie because of  its abundance of female emotion and sentimentality. Either way, it was not part of my impending birthday’s theme.

As I previously mentioned, my parents let me immerse myself in all kinds of media related to paranormal phenomena, but they didn’t let me watch scary movies. Nothing with Freddy or Jason or Michael Myers or anything of that ilk. Initially they forbade horror movies until I was 13, but decided to loosen up and end the moratorium a year early. Clearly, I decided to really run with the theme.

What better way to celebrate the anniversary of your birth than seeing a bunch of people die onscreen, tell stories about dead people, and then try to actually talk to dead people using a toy/instrument of the occult? Sounds like my idea of a good time!

Okay, it’s contest time! Being from the Chicago area, I’m pleased to offer two readers a DVD/shirt combo from an upstart film crew from my neck of the woods (no pun intended), Haunt County Productions. ABIGAIL’S WOODS is the story of a group of teens who set out to disprove an old local legend and  end up running straight into it instead. The legend revolves around a witch who was falsely accused of being a child murderer and put to death, but not before cursing the woods upon which she had lived. There’s a werewolf roaming around in there, too! We have two DVD/shirt packs to give away to two readers and all you have to do to enter is leave a comment telling us your favorite werewolf movie of all time, and whether you would want a size Medium or Extra Large shirt (we have one of each). That’s it. Winners will be picked randomly on January 1st 2010, so you can start your new year off with some low budget werewolf fun! So go ahead and enter now, and support your local horror!!!

Brian Mattus has a fascinating article at Fangoria Online:  Asking the simple question:  Are  horror movies supposed to be scary or fun?

Here’s the meat of the piece:

All too often, it seems that people complain that a horror film was “bad” because it wasn’t “scary”. Without any context, this is essentially meaningless. For example, when was the last time a movie scared them, and what was it?

I feel that this “problem” has less to do with the quality of a film than it does with someone’s having built up a tolerance. Besides being a horror fan, I’m also a fan of very spicy food, and I have an assortment of hot sauces made from habanero and scotch bonnet peppers in my refrigerator at all times. My tolerance of spicy food is significantly higher than average, but my fiancee would argue that just because I don’t feel a dish is spicy, this doesn’t necessarily make it so.

Curiously, when horror films aren’t being accused of being bad because they’re not scary, it’s because they’re “not fun”. This seems to be a by-product of the ’80s, when so many horror films were glutting the market that the genre largely descended from “fright films” into horror-comedies – intentional or not.

These are all interesting questions.  In general, the answer of course is both and neither.  To us the crucial element of horror is that it deal with the “horrific” in some form or another.  And whether this is done through being scary or funny is less the issue.

John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN is my favorite film of all time, of any genre. My favorite sequel, much to many a friend’s dismay, is the third installment. That’s right, haters, HALLOWEEN III – SEASON OF THE WITCH. The one everyone loves to hate (well, most everyone) for leaving out you know who. So in celebration of one of the most unfairly hated on films of the ’80’s, here’s a selection of poster images. Enjoy, you can leave your hate mail in the comment section!

What I’ve learned about extended families from Horror Movies.

The thing about the extended family is that you don’t always know what you’re going to get. And, with the influx of recent (if remade) horror movies based around new people entering your life, you get a lot of mixed signals coming from the silver screen.

Movies like:

• The Stepfather (a psycho stepfather marries widows in search of the perfect family),
• The Uninvited (a girl deals with her evil stepmother),
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre & House of a Thousand Corpses (both with murderous families),
• The Stepmother (a stepmother seduces her stepson as part of a blackmail plot),
• The Good Son (a boy moves in with his Aunt & Uncle and his cousin starts to show signs of psychosis, including murder), and
• It’s Alive (where a couple’s monster child kills when frightened).

The common thread for these movies is that families are already screwed up beyond recognition, or some interloper tries to intrude on the already decent family and leaves a wake of broken (and sometimes bloody) hearts in their wake.

Most frequently the new addition is just waiting for some excuse to go on a murderous rampage, so if you’ve recently obtained a step-parent or new sibling, be on the watch out for early warning signs.

Early Alert Warning Signs:

Unexplainable Blood on Hands and Clothes: I like to think this one is pretty obvious, but if horror movies have taught us anything it’s that people buy cheaply spun lies if they want to believe them.

Digging in secluded parts of the yard/woods late at night: Really, who works on their well digging or deep gardening in the dead of night?

The Way they Clutch Sharp Objects when Questioned about their Past: Sometimes it’s a painful memory, other times it’s a warning that they might just drive that grapefruit spoon into your skull and hollow it out like a coconut.

Sudden Disappearance of Family/Friends/Pets/Neighbors/That Kid down the street you don’t really like: People move. Heck, it might even seem that whole communities up and move at the same time like siamese twins. Though, enough unrelated people start turning up missing, it’s likely they’re turning up daisies.

Now that you’re on the look out for the warning signs, once you’ve spotted your unstable new family member. Look and listen for these three signs: Mood lighting, music that just starts and stops at random, and them standing over a fresh bloody corpse with a weapon in hand.

Then and only then should you confront your new family member, by running as far and fast as you can to the nearest police station, befriending the one clean member of the force that you know (since everyone seems to know a police officer in the movies) and get the evidence before it vanishes leaving the squeaky clean after image of your perfect step-father/mother/brother/sister/cousin/goldfish and the credits to roll.

Some of the funniest (and explicitly gory) scenes from the film Black Sheep, a quirky 2006 production from New Zealand that was on TV last night.

Maybe you have to have grown up around menacing herds of sheep to appreciate the humour…

I realize that Thanksgiving has come and gone, so these reviews are a bit late. November, like October, was pretty nutty this year, though, which means I didn’t have a lot of time for writing, but here they are as promised.

October 16, 2009
Return of the Living Dead (1985) Directed by Dan O’Bannon 2/5
I thought I’d enjoy this film because I am all about B horror/sci-fi movies, but this film was pretty terrible. It feels like a bad Scooby Doo episode gone awry. The motley crew of characters are all over-the-top and include a punk girl who likes to disrobe, a prissy girl who’s dating a loser who works at a medical supply warehouse and a random black guy. The idiot who works at the warehouse inadvertently open a canister which releases a zombie gas of some kind and before you know it every dead person in the cemetery across the street is crawling out of their grave and his friends get picked off one by one. If you’re really, really, really bored I say watch it, otherwise don’t bother.

October 18, 2009
Vampires (1998) Directed by John Carpenter, based on the novel by John Steakley 2.5/5
This was not my first viewing of Vampires. I was exposed to this film by Brian a few years back when he was trying to indoctrinate me into the cult of John Carpenter. Vampires is a vampire western of sorts in the vein of the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino film From Dusk ‘Til Dawn (1996) which I would give a similar rating. Both films are entertaining, but they’re a bit predictable, hokey and dated and both feature incredibly mediocre casts.

October 20, 2009
La Cite des Enfants Perdus/City of Lost Children (1995) Directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet 4/5
I really enjoyed this film. It’s not so much a horror film as it is a surreal thriller for children. The filming style and story telling reminded me a lot of Guillermo del Toro’s El Laberinto del Fauno/Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and movies like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985). Ron Perlman stars as One, a street preformer who loses his adopted younger sibling to a mad scientist who is kidnapping children in order to steal their dreams to keep himself from aging. With the help of a young girl named Miette, One must rescue his brother and stop the mad scientist before he causes any more harm.

October 21, 2009
Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) Directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo 3/5
This short anime (48 min) is about a young girl who gets hired by a secret society to kill demons plaguing a military base in Japan during the 1960’s. It was good, but too short. A lot of questions were left unanswered. It’s been made into a full-lenght live action film which I’m looking forward to watching sometime in the near future.

October 23, 2009
Les Yeux sans Visage/Eyes Without a Face (1959) Directed by Georges Franju based on the novel by Jean Redon 4.5/5
This black and white French film is considered a classic and I can see why. Though the film was made in 1959 it is still incredibly creepy. Pierre Bresseur plays Dr. Genessier, a plastic surgeon on the cutting edge (no pun intended) of his field with a daughter whose face is incredibly disfigured thanks to a car accident. Feeling guilty over his daughter’s disfigurement, Dr. Genessier begins kidnapping young women with the help of his assistant in order to remove their faces and attempt to graft them to his daughter’s. The acting in the film is superb and it has quite a satisfying/appropriate ending. If you’re into classic horror, I highly recommend this one.

October 31, 2009
Halloween (1978) Directed by John Carpenter – Always a Halloween tradition

From Beyond (1986) Directed by Stuart Gordon Based on the Short story by H.P. Lovecraft 4/5
Jeffrey Combs who played Dr. Herbert West in Gordon’s The Re-Animator (1985) plays Crawford Tillinghast, a scientist who has built a machine to stimulate the pineal gland and open the door to another dimension. When his partner, Dr. Pretorius is killed by a creature from beyond, Tillinghast is locked up at the local psychiatric hospital where no one believes him. However, a young psychologist decides to get to the bottom of things and takes Tillinghast back to the scene of the crime where all sorts of bizarre things start to happen thanks to the machine and it’s effect on their pineal glands. Like Gordon’s Re-Animator, this film is a bit campy and dated, but these things are what makes his films great.

November 1, 2009
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) Written and Directed by John D. Hancock 4/5
A creepy vampire story/psychological thriller. Jessica has been recently released from an institution in NY where she was being kept because she was hallucinating/hearing voices. In order to get a new start she and her husband move to an old farmhouse with their friend Woody. However, before they even arrive at their new home Jessica begins having strange encounters/hearing voices again. When they arrive at their new house they find a young hippie woman living there and Jessica asks her to stay, though it soon becomes apparent that this was a mistake as the voices/hallucinations only get worse leading her husband to lose patience with her and fall into the arms of the young hippie girl. I really liked the ambivalent ending of this film and I was thoroughly creeped out by the hippie chick and the weirdos who lived in the local town.

[We've got a list of top vampire and zombie movies floating around on the (un) Death-Match site. Well, it's high time that we take a look at werewolves. My lovely friend from The Dartmouth Soundsystem agreed to shower the site with her expertise in this area. She takes a look at werewolves on the big and little screen.]

By Lauren Oostveen

Twilight has made a bold attempt to turn vampires into wimps, and with that mopey sequel in theatres, werewolves are getting the pre-teen treatment, too. Alas. I fear for the youth of today.

For your benefit, here are some facts you should know about werewolves:

1. A werewolf would eat you.
2. A werewolf doesn’t care about your feelings.
3. A werewolf won’t hold your hand while you cry.
4. Lon Chaney Jr. > Taylor Lautner times ONE MILLION.
5. Benecio Del Toro > Taylor Lautner…and I haven’t seen The Wolf Man remake, yet! My assumption is based off of the ridiculous poster. See:

BAD ASS.

If you agree with the statements above…then read on! Here are a few of my favourite werewolves in television and film.

1. An American Werewolf in London
We have many things to thank John Landis for (and a few things to loath him for). My personal favourite of his is An American Werewolf in London, which successfully merges horror and comedy to create a really fun film. Two American backpackers are travelling around the UK when they’re attached by a mysterious beast. Don’t go out to the moors at night, OK?

2. Ginger Snaps
Growing up sucks! Two creepy sisters, Ginger and Bridgitte, are having fun being morbid and stuff when A) Ginger gets her period for the first time and B) Is subsequently bitten by a werewolf. Isn’t puberty the worst? As Ginger gets scarier and scarier, her sister tries to find a way to cure her. Awesome Canadian film!

3. The Wolf Man
This film is like the Holy Bible of werewolf flicks. It introduced the notion that a silver bullet can kill a werewolf, that they are forced to change under a full moon, and that they are supposedly marked with a pentagram. Lon Chaney Jr. portrays a man who goes to visit his ancestral home when he is attacked by a werewolf. His performance in this film is chock full of guilt and torment, leaving the audience more sympathetic than scared. The make-up in this movie is ridiculous, especially when you account for it being 1941 and all.

4. The Howling
Joe Dante, I love you! Please do a sequel to The ‘burbs. Another great 1980s werewolf movie. A TV news anchor heads to a commune-esque clinic to take a break after being traumatized by a serial killer. Fun party, right? NOPE. Straaaaaaange things happen once she arrives. What she doesn’t know is that there is a “den” of werewolves nearby…dun dun DUNNNN.

5. Wolfen
OK, so they’re not really werewolves…just really smart wolves who decide they’re hungry for MAN FLESH. Features kind of heavy-handed social commentary and views of urban decay in New York City. If that doesn’t interest you, your boyfriend Edward James Olmos is in it.

6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Seth Green plays an introspective teenager named Oz who plays lead guitar in Dingos Ate My Baby and turns into a werewolf every once in a while. By dating Willow the witch, he becomes part of the Scooby Gang until things go decidedly bad and he leaves town. Oz is mostly well behaved and only occasionally eats people.

7. The Hilarious House of Frightenstein
This amazing 1970s Canadian kids show had a cast of creepy characters, but The Wolfman stood out for me as being the best. The guy has a bunch of things going for him…he’s a DJ, he gets to listen to Sly and the Family Stone all day, sports a fashionable beard, and has excellent dance parties with Igor. Lucky.

8. Werewolves on Wheels
A biker gang smashes up the monastery of some Satan-worshipping monks. OH NO! But the monks have a trick up their sleeve, as they have turned one of the biker chicks into a werewolf via their evil powers…with dire results, mwahahha.

9. Teen Wolf and Teen Wolf Too
Michael J. Fox is an average guy, but then he turns into a werewolf and is a BASKETBALL STAR and A TOTAL STUD. But what he wants most is to be normal. Sigh.
Jason Bateman stars in the so-bad-it’s-kinda-good sequel with basically the same plot. Except he’s in college. And the sport is boxing. OK.

10. Dog Soldiers
British soldiers are on a training operation in Scotland, which, unfortunately, is overrun with werewolves. And the full moon is rising. Well, darn it. The soldiers fight for their lives as they attempt to live through the night. A pretty tense movie with lots of jumpy moments.

Check out all of Question Entertainment’s TWILIGHT Video, Reviews, and Info

Yeah you think is all fun and games and eat ’til you drop dead…..until you realize that dropping dead could actually be in your future if you aren’t careful ’cause here it comes………..THANKSGIVING!

White meat! Dark meat! All will be carved!

Yesterday, November 23, 2009, was a very good day in the life of this Misfits fan, uh, fiend. You see, as I innocently walked to my mailbox, (which is on the front roadside), I stared up towards the front door to my house… what is that I see? It was a very large bubble mailer, flat and the size of a record album… extremely beautiful looking from afar. My heart began to race as I felt a tad of perspiration come upon my forehead, my legs took me as fast as they would go to this mysterious package. Holding my crap/junk mail in my left hand, I bent down to pick up this glorious bubble mailer with my right hand. The return address read: Cinder Block/FFP… from Rancho Cordova, California… what a wonderful return address indeed. You see, I pre-ordered Misfits Land Of The Dead, (the first pressing and red vinyl version), back on October 15, of this year and it is now in my hands! Yeeaaahhhh baaabbbbbyyyyy!!

The excitement that rippled throughout my body and mind, at this moment of knowing Land Of The Dead was in this bubble mailer I was holding, was a moment I will not forget for a very long time. There are only 1,000 copies of the red vinyl version! Hello, can we all say… rare? Being a Misfits fan/fiend for so long, the sheer exhilaration of finally nailing down one of their rare vinyl singles – is a Horror Punk dream come true for me. With over a month passing by since my initial order, I began to worry, that maybe I was not going to be one of the lucky ones to get a red vinyl copy of Land Of The Dead. Worry no more! Cinder Block is the distribution/mail order company that the Misfits web site uses for selling all things… Misfits. A huge Horror Punk kudos to Cinder Block for landing me a copy and making good on my order! Plus, a bonus Horror Punk kudos to Cinder Block for the protective packaging they used for shipping… my copy of Land Of The Dead is mint/spotless!

The backside of this 12 inch vinyl single has the complete lyrics for both songs: Land Of The Dead and Twilight Of The Dead. A brief write-up regarding the connection between George A. Romero, (the legendary film director for the Living Dead movie series) and Jerry Only, is also on the backside of this 12 inch single. I purchased both of these Misfits songs on itunes as well, needing digital copies is a must. It just feels damned great to order what is known to be a rarity and actually get it! I spent a total of $15.94 on this Misfits gem, (including shipping), this is not shabby when you consider what this same red vinyl version is going for on ebay currently. My best Metal buddy Scott, well, he informed me this red vinyl version is selling in the $60.00 to $75.00 range! (I wasn’t tracking this info myself, due to my waiting nervously for my own copy to arrive in the mail). Let me say this, it was worth every cent to get this Misfits single on vinyl. I am a psyched out dude today and it feels great.

Misfits as they appear on Land Of The Dead:

Jerry Only – bass & vocals

Dez Cadena - rhythm & lead guitars

Robo AKA Julio Roberto Valverde Valencia – drums

The album artwork by Arthur Suydam gets my vote for 2009 Album Cover of the Year, spanning all the Rock Music genres. As a fellow artist, it is hard for me not to stare at this cover with art appreciation.

I don’t consider myself to be a huge horror movie fan, but I like getting creeped-out as much as anyone. In addition to reading a great review for the movie from my favorite critic, I also heard from family members that Drag Me to Hell was genuinely scary and had the bonus of being funny. So I’d been excited to see it for some time.

It was made by the Raimi brothers, who were also responsible for Army of Darkness and the Evil Dead movies, both well-known for being over-the-top, funny “horror” movies– if you could even call them that. Sam Raimi directed, and is perhaps better known now as the director of the Spiderman movies, all of which I think are mediocre.

Given that background, there’s as much to laugh at in Drag Me to Hell as there are things to get scared about. But what I really consider special about the movie is it’s opening. Paced perfectly, it sets up the scares and laughs through the vehicle of a morality tale. This might sound lamer than it is, but it’s rather impressive how universal the Raimi brothers make the heroine’s initial fall from grace seem. We all feel like we could be equally cursed for our own past trangressions.

If you are feeling lost, this is what happens: a woman works in a bank, sees her life going nowhere, and decides that to get a promotion she needs to immediately show her boss that she can be a tight-ass for the bank. Unfortunate for her, she must prove her mettle by denying an old woman further loan assistance on her mortgage, even after the woman gets down on her knees and begs for the loan. Without the loan she says she will lose her home. Our banking heroine denies the loan extension anyway, and the old woman angrily places a curse of death upon her. The curse allows a demon spirit to torment the film’s heroine for three days and then potentially kill her.

All of this happens in the first 15-20 minutes or so of the movie, and is executed masterfully. For this reason I guess the rest of the movie was somewhat of a letdown. Our heroine must try to rather inevitably get rid of the curse as the demon progressively does more and more scary stuff. Sure, there were some great scenes and funny moments, but ultimately I felt like the film never lived up to its promise.

So what were the Raimi brothers trying to say about our personal choices when we choose selfishness over compassion for others? That we are all damned to hell? It’s an intriguing philosophical question, and if anything the movie should make you think about it.

You can watch the preview for Drag Me to Hell by clicking here.

Letter to the editor,

All the king’s men, i.e. top generals and army psychiatrists together, cannot explain the suicides of both stateside and war-zone military personal over the last few years. This year (2009) already 140 active duty soldiers have committed the final act. Has anyone considered the nature of a curse having been issued by our enemy? No professional wants to consider this concept as a valid causal link.

So will someone try to explain the frenzy of the real estate markets and the risks that the banking and mortgage industry took? The statistical odds for failure, which the financial markets experienced, are totally unexplainable. But how about giving the notion of a curse issued by the enemy as a primary cause?

Hence the conclusion: When America stepped foot on Islamic soil, was a curse was issued by our enemy? America’s great military faces suicides, and America’s great financial markets collapse. And still America doesn’t accept curses as real.

Sincerely,
Robert Fournier

The above was a letter sent to a newspaper for publication. Perhaps if we did a poll to expose how many folks in America are believers we might gain about a number around 50% that claim some religious association. If spiritual economics is going to make sense then it can only be applied to believers. All others may be simply out of the loop. Hence the notion of a curse can flourish outside the loop and the idea of a curse might simply be left to graphic novel artists and Hollywood horror movies. We do have a problem, then,

What can those fully aware of the concept of a curse do to assist those unsuspecting of such a reality? They must pray for others. They may commence an awakening through their assemblies. They may initiate an education program to teach the before and after of “The Garden of Eden’s expulsion”. They can tutor the concept of healing while playing down that healing stuff exploited on magical TV. Otherwise they may be subject to the general and common “good” of the society in which they live.

If the common good decides that a sports stadium or performing arts building is the way to go, then the nickels and dimes collected to build such facilities will come out of every single participant within a society.
If the powers that control a society believe that the banking system must be saved for the general welfare then everyone, including the yet-to-be-born, within such a society may have to pay for the bailouts or whatever it may be called.

This is where we might be at. If we build roadways upon which .0001 % of folks using the system will be killed, then lets the statistics speak for themselves. But if in a change of events the .0001 become .001% then something needs to be examined.

Hence there can be no such thing as spiritual economics? Must we hit our leaders over the head with the metaphorical sledgehammer to cause them recognize the nature of a curse or must all suffer the consequences of a non-religious society and dance in the streets with the declaration of separation of church and State? I, for one, demand equal rights to explain the nature of curses. Graphic novelists assist me with this idea!

     Like I mentioned in my previous post, TV: Childhood Memories, the first genre that grabbed my attention when I started watching TV was science fiction. And the first movies, in this genre, I began to watch were those black and white “Big Bug Films” of the fifties, specifically Them!, Tarantula, The Deadly Mantis and Earth Vs. The Spider, my favorite. As I have also mentioned before in that previous post, my brother and I used to be fascinated by insects and spiders, and I’m pretty sure these movies simply added fuel to the fire.

     Every Saturday morning, late morning, or, maybe, noon, hard to remember now, one of our channels back in the seventies used to run Science Fiction Theater, and this is where I saw Earth Vs. Spider for the first time. That opening, with the spider sitting in the middle of its web and the credits zooming into it, was very much something I would not soon forget, nor did I ever. I always thought that movie was better than Tarantula because the origin of the spider was a bit creepier. Earth Vs. The Spider is essentially a Nature run amok tale where the spider in Tarantula is created by a mad scientist, basically making it a Science run amok flick. I personally find horrors based on Nature turning on mankind more effective and creepy than Science based horrors. Tarantula never gave me the willies, Earth Vs. Spider did simply because I became acquainted with that movies first and because up until then I had never seen a tarantula up close, or any spider for that matter. And when they showed it skulking slowly through the town, I had no idea where the head was. I always mistook its abdomen for its head, which, I think, only added to the creepiness I got every time I watched it. And I can’t say whether I was creeped out or fascinated by the fact that it lived in cave and fed on any unsuspecting humans that wandered in and fell into its web. Probably a little bit of both.

     Back then I was still squeamish when it came to onscreen gore, and for a black and white fifties flick, Earth Vs. Spider had three memorable shock sequences, all which unsettled me when I first saw it: the death of the father right after the opening credits, the death of the deputy in the web, and the body the hero brings back to the sheriff’s office.

     That giant ant movie, Them! was indeed memorable, too, and I cringed when James Whitmore was squeezed to death in the jaws of that ant at the end of the film. And it was that flick, and one other, which I’ll get to eventually, that made using a flame thrower cool. I recall many times that when my brother and I pretended giant ants were after us the only we always had to kill them using a flame thrower, and we made them out of those giant tinker toys we had. 

     The next series of movies that began to attract my attention were those where Ray Harryhausen worked his stop motion magic. Up first were, 20 Million Miles To Earth and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. When I saw my first stop motion monster, I couldn’t take my eyes off it, and when I discovered Jason And The Argonauts and all those Sinbad flicks he created those mythical monsters for, I was in heaven. And I still think they hold up today. I have fond memories of actually seeing Clash Of the Titans at the Drive-in back in 1981. Mysterious Island is also an awesome movie, and I have quite a vivid memory of my aunt from Washington D.C. visiting one summer when this movie was on. I remember when it came to that scene where the first stop motion beast makes its appearance, the scene where that prehistoric bird attacks, she burst out in a fit of laughter. I have to admit I was a little hurt that she thought it looked so stupid.

     Some of these movies initially came on late at night, and I remember, when I would find one of them listed in the TV guide, my brother and I would wait until we thought our mother was in a good mood then ask her if she could wake us up so we could watch them. It was a crap shoot, sometimes she would say yes, sometimes she would say no. When she said yes, we were excited, and when 3 a.m. came, it was generally my grandmother that came into our room to wake us. My brother and I would then drag our tired assess out into the living room, and flip the TV on, keeping it low so it wouldn’t wake our mother. This was back in the day when there were only thirteen channels and the networks would go off the air at midnight. I miss that sometimes. And when one of these movies came on, we’d flip it to the channel and wait for the static to give way to the flick. It was exciting, and my brother never failed to fall asleep during the movie. I, on the other hand, was always able to keep myself awake. The movie always ended just as dawn was beginning to break, and I’d wake him up and we’d drag ourselves back to bed. The next morning, we’d talk about the film. Of course, I always did most of  the talking since he could hardly remember anything of what he saw. Eventually, though, most of these monster movies aired during the afternoon some years later, and he mostly ended up seeing everything I had described to him.

     The next series of flicks that acted like crack on my imagination were most of the Godzilla movies, and that includes the stand-alone films, Rodan and Mothra, and a strange little flick called, War Of The Gargantuas. I never liked the way Rodan looked in all those other Godzilla movies. His first movie was where he looked the best.

     There used to be something called, The 4:30 Movie, if I’m remembering it correctly, that used to run monster movies and science fiction flicks during the week. I don’t remember it being on all the time, but every once in a while they used to have a week of these type of flicks, and that’s when I first saw The Thing From Another World, Atragon, Forbidden World, The Demon Planet (aka Planet Of The Vampires), Queen Of Blood (aka Planet Of Blood), War Of The Monsters (aka Gamera Vs. Baragon), Island Of The Burning Doomed, and a very cool, and a very weird movie called, The Navy Vs. The Night Monsters, among others.

     War Of The Monsters has a very distinct memory because I remember school had let us out early that day due to a snowstorm. And at some point during the day, my mother took me and my brother down to this general store, even though it was still snowing like mad out. I found some candy that came in a flying saucer like toy and got her to buy it for me. I own Gamera Vs. Baragon, its original Japanese title, on bootleg DVD ,and anytime it gets especially snowy in the winter, I get the urge to watch it.

     Around the time I was discovering all these monster movies, I was also being unwilling indoctrinated into the horror field by my mother and my grandmother. Even though they got a kick out of these monster movies as much as I did, they also liked watching Chiller Theater, which, if memory serves, came on right after Space: 1999. I don’t recall the exact day, though, I have a feeling it was Friday night. Chiller Theater had a very memorable opening sequence consisting of a dead tree in the background with a trail of blood leading into the foreground, and as this incredibly creepy music played, a brown, claymation arm would surface from the blood and spit out the woods, C-H-I-L-L-E-R. Every time this opening started up, my mother would rush us off to bed, because she felt we weren’t old enough yet to handle the kind of material Chiller Theater reveled in. Sometimes, if the movie was one of those science fiction/monster flicks I had already seen, then I could stay up and watch it, or, at least, a half hour of it.

     A few years after Chiller Theater ended its run, I remember, one hot summer’s day, getting ready to watch this movie, called, Screamers—Roger Corman’s edited version of Island Of The Fishmen—and afterwards my brother and I were going to make some kind of secret hideout out from these cardboard boxes we had in the cellar. Well, just as the film began I ran down cellar to fetch them, just as I make it to the bottom, I suddenly hear the opening to Chiller Theater, which was out of character for the show because it was always strictly a night-time thing. I freaked out, got scared and raced back upstairs intent on getting the boxes after the movie was over.

     Ah, fun times. Fun times, indeed.

     Getting back the heyday of Chiller Theater . . . initially, the only contact I had with the horror movies it showed was strictly an auditory one, for the bedroom my brother and I shared was right next to the living room, and I could hear all the screaming and bloodletting my mother and my grandmother were watching. And, as always, when these movies eventually became too intense to listen to, I would holler out to them to turn the TV down.

     Somewhere along the way, however, they became lax on putting us to bed when Chiller Theater came on, either that or we were getting older and insisting on staying up to see these films, I don’t remember which it was—maybe, both—and that’s when I got unwilling acquainted with some of those films. The ones I got acquainted with first, but still refused to watch in their entirety, were all those Dracula and Frankenstein movies Hammer Studios made. What made these flicks so uniquely repulsive to me was their penchant for making the blood they spilled so vivid and red. And, until I got a lot older, I thought Dracula and Frankenstein movies were all they ever made.

     I remember being pleasantly surprised on another hot summer’s day, during The 4:30 Movie, when my brother and I saw Island Of The Burning Doomed. Even, though, technically, it’s not a Hammer movie, anytime I saw either Peter Cushing and/or Christopher Lee in a film, I naturally assumed it was Hammer related. I was also pleasantly surprised to see the latter actor in a non-Dracula role. Nowadays, I’m still a Hammer fan but not of any of those Dracula and Frankenstein films. I prefer the Quatermass flicks, X The Unknown, The Gorgon, The Lost Continent, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, The Abominable Snowman, and The Reptile. As for those pseudo-Hammer flicks, I absolutely adore Doctor Terror’s House Of Horrors, The Blood Beast Terror, The Creeping Flesh, Island Of The Burning Doomed (aka Night Of The Big Heat), The Beast Must Die, and (cringe), Horror Express.

     I was originally going to make a separate post titled, Movies That Traumatized Me, but I decided to merge it with this one, since I’m now moving into an area where I’m about to discuss more about my traumatic memories of Horror Express, and other movies that insidiously unhinged my sanity, if only briefly. No point in making a separate post when most of these flicks I’m about to tell you about had just as much influence on me as those more kid friendly science fiction pictures I have already mentioned.

     So,  (deep breath), here we go . . .

     I have mentioned that Horror Express in two of my other posts, and if you’ve read them, you should already have an idea of how much that film vexed my sanity, but I’m going to expound a bit more on it in this post. I first came across Horror Express Saturday morning, during Science Fiction Theater. I remember seeing it in the TV Guide and the description they gave mentioned a monster was involved, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to see it. The other was the title itself. Even though it brought to mind unsettling memories of the kinds of gruesome things Chiller Theater dealt with, it also had a ring to it that worked on me subconsciously. There were other flicks that did the same thing, like the already mentioned, Island Of The Burning Doomed. The only reason I wanted to watch that one was also because of the title. It made me think of an island where anyone who happened to set foot on it burst into flames, and all they did was walk around on fire. Creature From Black Lake, The Blood On Satan’s Claw, and The Crawling Eye were three more titles that had me imagining weirdly interesting scenarios.

     The movie started to work my nerves the instant the opening credits appeared; there was eerie music accompanied by the sounds of a train and the image of a single light flashing across the screen. But I stayed with it, getting pulled into the plot, which had Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee matching wits with this alien force the latter unwittingly unearthed in the form of a frozen prehistoric ape-man, in a cave, in the film’s prologue, and trying to find out who this “force” was possessing next. I was instantly repulsed and summarily ejected from the movie the moment this alien claimed its first victim. As it drained this poor baggage handler’s memory, his eyes turned white and bled profusely.

     I remember feeling sweaty, pale and in shock, which is probably what I was, in shock, that is. I quickly got up and turned the TV. But after five minutes of watching something else that didn’t interest me, I had the strange urge to turn it back, which I did, and this process of turning the channel every time something gruesome happened continued throughout the film every time it turned bloody. By the time it was over, I was still feeling shocked and I remember dragging my brother into the field so I could do something else—anything else—to get my mind off of what I had just seen.

     Of all the movies that shocked me throughout those informative years, there are only two that I own that I still have trouble watching all the way through when I put them on. Horror Express is still one of them, the other I will mention a little bit later. But it’s the eye trauma in Horror Express that obviously disturbed me. To this day, any movie that has any kind of eye trauma in it still bothers me deeply, and I don’t exactly know why.

     I remember back in 1999 I was getting this newsletter in the mail that had a list of all the upcoming titles that were going to be coming out on DVD, and when I saw Horror Express listed, two things went through my mind, one of them made sense, the other didn’t.  I thought, “Oh, God, not that movie again!,” and then I thought, “Man, I definitely have to pick that one up,” and I eventually, did, too.

     Other movies I saw around this time, which shocked me, but not to the degree Horror Express did, were The Projected Man and The Incredible Melting Man. Actually, The Incredible Melting Man had one scene in particular that treated my sanity like it was its bitch, and that was when the guy’s face started melting off. I seem to recall seeing that movies on a Sunday afternoon, and, like always, before I knew what I was getting myself into, that awesome title pulled me in. And I also seem to recall doing the same channel switching I did with Horror Express, when I felt it was going to turn gory. I haven’t seen it, or The Projected Man, since those initial viewings. I know bootlegs exist of each one and someday I’m determined to pick them up to see if they still have the power to unhinge my mental state like they did when I was a youngster.

     The next flick I need to discuss, now, is a 1979 TV miniseries, which has just as many indelible memories connected to it as those last two I just mentioned. When Salem’s Lot aired, it was the talk of the school. I was in fourth, or fifth, grade then and I remember this girl I had a crush on was seated next to me, and she and I would, on occasions, discuss movies we saw. We discussed Salem’s Lot the next day, and for a few more days afterwards, with her telling me all about it since I wasn’t allowed to stay up and see it. Even if I was, I would have declined. I heard plenty of it from the bedroom. I also have a vague memory of hiding behind the doorway to the living room to try and see what was happening, but the TV was positioned in such a way where even though I could see the side of the screen I still couldn’t make out any details of the scenes I was peeking in on. I ended up seeing it many years later in a rerun, and it certainly was an experience, I tell you.

     It’s one of my favorite Stephen King adaptations, and even though I also own the remake, it doesn’t creep me out like the original does.

     One more movie I can recall that did a number on me, quite unexpectedly, too, was Empire Of The Ants. I saw it on a Saturday afternoon, and what makes that particular showing so memorable is that the channel aired it uncut. I heard swearing on TV for the first time! But what freaked me out the most, as you might be able to guess, was seeing the bloody damage the ants did to some of their victims. The guy on the boat who gets his stomach ripped into, bothered me, and with the grainy image of analog TV, I misperceived another kill, where it looked like this guy got one of his eyes hauled out of his skull. When I eventually bought it on DVD, I finally saw it was a bloody gash above his eye and not the eye itself that was affected.

     When Jaws and The Exorcist debuted on TV, I think you all can imagine what my response to them was. I actually went to my room in tears when Richard Dreyfus goes down to investigate the upturned boat and that guy’s head pops out. Obviously, it was all about this guy’s his missing eyeball than anything else. And when Linda Blair’s head started to spin around, I panicked, and again left the living room in tears. I don’t own Jaws, just because the movie no longer holds any interest for me, but I do own The Exorcist, and this is the movie I mentioned a few paragraphs back that, along with Horror Express, is the only other  flick I still have trouble watching all way through.

     You can imagine my horror and delight when sometime in the early eighties my family finally decided to get cable, which, at that time, meant HBO and Spotlight (pre-Showtime). Now, all those new horror movies I was starting see advertise on TV would soon be at my beck and call. Yes, even trailers for impending releases used to scare the shit out of me. Squirm was a good example of this, and Prom Night, which I think I had seen already on TV, and, when I saw that one, I learned decapitation bothered me just as much as eye trauma. Every time I saw one of these trailers I would either close my eyes until it was over, or get up and turn the channel. I have an excellent memory of being shocked by the advertisement for An American Werewolf In London. There was a split second in that commercial where they showed the werewolf’s bloody maw, as it marauded through Piccadilly Square, that literally gave me an unexpected start one night in the family room that I will not soon forget.

     Now, I must describe to you a very crucial movie going experience that turned me from a once squeamish horror movie watcher into a hardened been-there-seen-that veteran within the span of two short hours. It all started one summer night in 1982 when my brother, my mother and me were watching an episode of The Twilight Zone, it was the one where Martin Landau is trapped in that booby-trapped one. All the lights were off, my brother and my mother were asleep, and suddenly this commercial comes on for this new movie hitting theaters that summer. It was John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing. Since I adored the original, I got excited, woke my mother up, told her what I just saw and that I had to go see this movie the moment it comes out.

     In the subsequent days and weeks leading up to that fateful night at the Drive-In, I caught Siskel and Ebert’s review of the movie and got a glimpse of one of the thing’s incarnations, the dog creature in the kennel. But I had no idea what I was seeing, and because of that I erroneously believed it was some kind of mutant Brontosaurus. On the one hand I was suddenly disappointed, but on the other hand, I had to know how this “mutant Brontosaurus” fit into the plot.

     When the night finally came, there was a friend of mine that tagged along, his name was Robert Ames, and he was already a hardened horror veteran, and I thought having him along would make it easier for me to tolerate whatever horrors the film was going to throw my way. Jesus Christ, was I wrong. Anyway, it was me, Rob, my brother and my mother that went to the Drive-In that night, and Rob and I started off watching the film outside, up front, near the swing sets, while my mother and my brother stayed in the car. I was totally with the film, right up to the point when Windows walks in to find out what’s taking Bennings so long and sees him writhing, half-naked and bloody in the tentacled clutches of the alien. That scene is mildly deceptive because at first glance it looks like Bennings’ eyes are bulging out of his socket, which is what sent me over the edge. But with the wonderful technology of DVD, and a Zoom feature, I discovered his eyes aren’t bulging out of his sockets at all. When I panicked and looked away, Rob, momentarily turned into a douche bag, grabbed my head, said, “Look at it!” and tried to force me to watch what was happening. I broke free, ran back to the car and laid down in the back seat, shocked to the extreme, more so than what I went through with Horror Express, I think, and vicariously experienced the rest of the movie through the audio and the continually horrified reactions of my mother.

     The next few days, as I couldn’t help but ruminate more on the horrors I experienced, sights seen and heard that fateful night, I unexpectedly found myself wanting to see the movie again, but this time, if there was a next time, I would be more courageous and watch it all the way through. But when I presented this option to my mother one day as we exited the grocery store, she said, “No!” Her excuse was that it was too expensive to go a second time.  So, I never really saw The Thing until it debuted on cable many years later. Now, it’s one of my favorite alien invasion flicks.

     It also had a very weird effect on me because ever since I was traumatized by it, I recall bumping into a slew of other horror movies on cable, horror movies that would have otherwise had me cowering in the corner of the room like a mental patient, and they didn’t seem to bother me at all. I think I inadvertently put myself through some kind of exposure therapy, whereby I exposed myself to something that was so uniquely mind numbing that every other horror movie paled in comparison. And it stayed that way for some time, until I came across a horror movie called, Blood Beach, one night on cable. It’s about this creature that lives in the sand on the beach, and it devours people by sucking them into the  ground. There’s this one shot under this wharf, or boardwalk, that’s filled with a creepy level of contrasting sun and shadow that disturbed me and another shot where this woman, or man, I forget which, stumbles across the lair of the beast and finds all these body parts, and this head comes swinging down in front of her, or him, that also disturbed me.

     There is one other film, however, from that time, I saw only a part of, that traumatized me badly. So much so that I still refuse to watch it to this day. It’s called, The Gates Of Hell (aka City Of The Living Dead), and its one of those Italian zombie flicks Lucio Fulci is famous for making, and those films are simply too gory for me to enjoy. I checked out of The Gates Of Hell when this girl start puking up her intestines, and her eyes started to bleed. I like to think my gore threshold is pretty high, but three are some flicks that go beyond this personal threshold and they include any “torture porn,” Friday the 13th, parts two through five, any Italian zombie film the late Lucio Fulci directed, and a host of others I don’t feel like mentioning.

     Serial Killer and zombie flicks, in general, hold no interest for me either; though, having said that I do own a very small collection of these type of films, and they are Halloween 1 & 2, A Nightmare On Elm Street, The Hitcher, Highwaymen, and Basic Instinct. In the zombie category it’s Return Of The Living Dead, Dead And Buried, Night Of The Living Dead (remake), Dawn Of The Dead (remake), Resident Evil and Planet Terror that I find very watchable.

     Being an adult, I have to admit, I didn’t think there was anything Hollywood could make that could unsettle me. Again, I would be wrong. The scene in Event Horizon where that scrambled transmission was finally unscrambled and you see the atrocities the former crew of that spaceship did to one another shocked me. Cabin Fever shocked me to the point where I actually had to leave the theater. It was the point when the shit has finally hit the fan, and the dog has killed one girl, eaten part of Rider Strong’s would be girlfriend locked in the shed, and he finally decides to put her out of her misery by smashing her skull in with that shovel when I decided to head into the bathroom to calm myself down. I looked in the mirror and I was pale as a ghost. After that I went straight home and actually debated whether I still wanted to continue writing horror. That’s how badly that film affected me and, like Horror Express and The Exorcist, I have it on DVD, and like those two films, once in a blue moon I get an unexplainable desire to actually watch it and put myself through hell all over again.

     Go figure.

     There’s one more movie and one more memory I forgot to mention. It takes place back in the HBO/Spotlight days and concerns a horror movie called, The Entity. Like most of the horror movies I saw back then, it was on late at night, not too late, though, ’cause I remember it starting before midnight, and everyone was asleep in the house but me, as usual. I saw it in the living room because that was the only TV that was hooked up to HBO and Spotlight. All the lights were off and it was just me and the movie. The Entity is one of those rare horror movies that succeeded in scaring me without showing any gore. Which is rare, I can name only one other film that did that, and it too was a ghost story, but a little bit more on that later.

     I could tell right from the opening credits that this was going to cause me some dire trouble. It’s one of those movies, like The Exorcist, that has very creepy music. In case no one remembers it, The Entity is based on a supposedly real life case of this woman who was constantly tormented, and by constantly tormented, I mean she was constantly raped by this unseen entity. By the time the movie was over I was so creeped out I stayed with HBO a little while longer so I could watch the Men At Work concert that was on right after it, just so I had something more light-hearted to concentrate on for a little while before I headed off to bed. I also remember creeping into the kitchen and turning the light on, then creeping into my room and turning that light on, too. The Entity doesn’t bother me like it used to, and every time I back out of watching The Exorcist, it’s this film I downgrade to instead.

     Now, that other movie I mentioned that’s in the same league as The Entity is The Legend Of Hell House. I saw that one on Chiller Theater, one night, or part of it, anyway, and it scared me badly. No surprise there, hey?

     Well, that’s about it for this post.

We already know about eco-disaster movies, eco-friendly movies for children or simply documentaries about the environment and ecology.

However has anyone ever heard of green horror movies?

In the following extract taken from Mother Nature Network website, eco-blogger, Matt Hickman, Talks about “eco-horror films out there that hopefully won’t make your stomach churn or leave you too scared to take out the recycling after 10 p.m.” :

A warning: You won’t find any deep environmental messages aside from “be nice to Mother Nature or else …” in these movies although some are more serious than others. I’m a bit of a scary movie nut myself so I’m glad to make a few recommendations.

“Animals gone bad” films may be a good place to start if you’re weary of anything involving the supernatural or serial killers. Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds is a staple in the genre and still flat-out terrifying. I saw it at a young age and it stayed with me. So long in fact, that last year when I was on a road trip along the California coast with friends, we stopped at a gas station for a bathroom break in Bodega Bay and I refused to get out of the car in fear of an avian attack.Arachnophobia is also a classic sure to make your skin crawl and we mustn’t forget Jaws although a more recent scary shark flick, Open Water, gave me an in-theater panic attack. One of the better murderous animal films I’ve seen recently was Rogue about a bloodthirsty Aussie croc, but if you’re looking for old-school camp, try Day of the Animals. And if you’re curious about the dangers of genetic engineering, watch Jurassic Park.

Moving on from fauna to flora, murderous, possessed trees always give me the chills because, well, I don’t really expect it. Watch The Evil Dead or Poltergeist if you want to have nightmares about Douglas firs. And while we’re on the homicidal plant tip, two films, The Ruins and The Happening, will have you keeping a distance from your houseplants for at least a week.

On the more-creepy-than-scary list is one of my favorite cult flicks, The Wicker Man (the original, not the so-bad-it’s-funny Nic Cage remake). In short, it’s about what happens when a group of sexed-up Scottish pagans are let down by Mother Nature. What happens? Well, I’ll let you find out.

To continue reading the article follow this link

If you’re going to be in the Chicago area on Saturday, December 5th you have to check this out.  The folks at Movieside present Terror In The Aisles 3 featuring the midwest premiere screening of [REC] 2, as well as the director’s cut of NIGHT OF THE CREEPS and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Special guests include both CREEPS director  Fred Dekker, and BLAIR WITCH director Eduardo Sanchez. It’s all going down at The Portage Theatre in Chicago. Tickets are $12 HERE

DIY abortions on Thai TV

I don’t subscribe to the idea that all censorship is bad. As much as I appreciate freedom of speech and expression in the media and arts, I do believe in sensible censorship of the most extreme opinions and/or images. For example, I think it’s quite right that distributing material which incites hatred is a crime in the UK, and that the USA’s Freedom of Speech law, which allows for the same to go unpunished, is a little lax.

But if censorship is to be enforced, it has to be done with common sense, and it must also treat the public with a modicum of respect for its intelligence. Consequently, I think sweeping bans on certain major websites (such as in China), or on publicly expressing certain opinions about a very important part of Thai life and culture (which, for obvious reasons, I can’t discuss here), do more harm than good.

But before I get into any deeper political comment, it was actually a daft juxtaposition in a schlocky Thai horror movie that got me thinking about censorship. It was Long Kong 2, or Art of the Devil 2 in English, which was shown on the cable channel True Film Asia. I only watched a segment of the movie, which was evidently about black magic. What I saw – unedited – was a pregnant woman strapped down on a bed and subjected to the electrocution of her genitals with a cattle prod, followed by a forced abortion by repeatedly thumping her in the torso. The foetus was then crudely yanked out of her, slopped into a bowl and then dumped outside. Nice.

Now, I’m not easily shocked. I’ve seen plenty of gory movies. The scene, while obviously disgusting, didn’t really bother me. But what did get a reaction from me – that of incredulous laughter – was the follow-up scene of one of the bad guys relaxing after the crude abortion ritual by smoking a cigarette – and it was this that got censored! A mosaic blurred out the offending object – the cigarette – whenever the guy lifted it to his mouth (although it was fine to show it being carried in his hand – only actual cig-to-mouth contact was deemed offensive).

Electrocution of vaginas and bloody foetuses in a bowl? Not a problem! But god forbid any impressionable people see the despicable act of smoking a cigarette on TV at 11pm on a Friday night.

It’s not unusual to see mosaicing in Thai movies on TV. It is also used to cover up guns (similarly, it’s fine to see a gaping head wound, so long as you don’t show the weapon that caused it!). But what is curious is that the same censorship is not applied to foreign movies. So Hollywood’s finest are free to tote guns and smoke cigs on Thai screens, but local stars are not.

I’d love to hear the rationale – are Thai people more susceptible to influence when seeing one of their own smoking than they would be when watching a farang? If so, then don’t the powers that be consider that occult practices and home abortions might be slightly more dangerous than smoking? Certainly if I had a child or teenager, I know which images I’d be more worried about them seeing.

Then again, this is a country where prostitution is tolerated – promoted, even, in some places – yet pornography is banned, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. Just don’t mention the ********.

The following is an excerpt from an actual conversation between Conrad Noir and Marco Sparks last night. Yes, this is what they’re really like…

Marco Sparks: So, you’ll never believe this dream I had the other night…

Conrad Noir: I don’t know if I’m really up for a conversation about your hopes and dreams, man.

Marco: Well, when I say “dream,” what I really mean is sweaty, dread-dripping nightmare.

Conrad: Oh yeah? Shit. Nevermind. You know I’m all ears for that. Shoot.

Marco: Well, I’ll tell you about the nightmare in a second, but first let me tell you about my Saturday night…

Conrad: Always a catch, isn’t there? Shit. Okay, tell me about your Saturday ni-

Marco: It was awesome. But then, later on, I was just trying to go sleep, right? And it’s late, I don’t remember the time, but late. So I turn on the TV and put it on mute, just wanting some flickering light and alpha wave manipulation in the room. Or something.

Conrad: Sure, sure. Perfectly normal.

Marco: So then I lay down on the bed. The room I’m in though, there’s no remote. Or, if there is, fuck if I know where it is.

Conrad: Oh, yeah, man’s constant struggle.

Marco: Right, so I’m stuck with whatever the channel is because, well, I’m lazy.

Conrad: I feel that.

Marco: In this particular case, it was A&E. The former Arts & Entertainment channel.

Conrad: “Former” being the operative word.

Marco: Seriously. Airing that late evening/early morning was a seeming non stop marathon of CSI: Miami episodes.

Conrad: Wow. Ouch.

Marco: Ouch is right. And let me tell you, I could not sleep with that on.

Conrad: How do you mean?

Marco: Every five seconds they cut back to a shot of David Caruso! Constantly! And let me tell you, Caruso has two emotional speeds on that show. The first: Putting on his sunglasses. The second: Taking them off again. People could be on fire, running around screaming, bits of their skin melting off or whatever as creatures of the apocalypse commit homicides or devour souls or just what have you, and Caruso’s cool as Fonzie the whole fucking time.

Conrad: That seems accurate with the little bits of it I’ve caught occasionally.

Marco: Also, it’s freakishly bright. Like, too bright and dayglo for even Miami.

Conrad: Okay.

Marco: It would not let me sleep! I turned over, looked at the flickering light patterns on the wall, like some kind of twisted variation on Plato’s Cave and I felt like Caruso was picking me up from the airport and driving me straight to madness!

Conrad: Caruso’s like that.

Marco: This is the guy from NYPD Blue to subjected America to his ass. Why would you want to see this man’s ass?!

Conrad: Or Dennis Franz for that matter.

Marco: Well… obviously. But, so I lay there, squeezing my eyes shut. But it was no good, man. I knew that Caruso was in the room with me. Putting his fucking sunglasses on. Or worse.

Conrad: Worse?

Marco: He could’ve been taking them off again…

Conrad: Okay, so this was the nightmare?

Marco: Oh, no, this was real. Deadly real. Eventually I must’ve passed out from all the stress of his ontological torture and when I woke up, of course, A&E was still on, right?

Conrad: Yeah, of course.

Marco: So, the sun is shining through the window, birds are chirping little songs and I’m a little tired, but I’m breathing a sigh of relief. I’m all like, “Thank God, it’s morning, I made it. I survived!”

Conrad: This is going somewhere bad, isn’t it?

Marco: You bet your goofy ass it is, my friend. Because there on the TV…

Conrad: Yeah?

Marco: Motherfucking Chris Daughtry was on the TV. Somebody was actually interviewing him!

Conrad: Ugh. Gross.

Marco: Exactly! Why would anyone want to interview that fucker? Why is he on the TV? Why did my day have to start with these violent images? It was like… last night I couldn’t enter the domain of sleep and now… Now I can’t be awake with this in the world!

Conrad: I feel like I need a drink now.

Marco: Me too. From just, you know, reliving that traumatic experience. From being the plaything of the sandman.

Conrad: So what was the nightmare?

Marco: Oh, the nightmare. Yeah, sorry. That was last night. I was like in a room, but I wasn’t. I was like “the camera” or whatever. Anyway, there was a little boy and he was trapped in the room. No windows, yet there was moonlight slipping around. And he was sleeping like a little shit does and then goblins crawled out of the cracks in the walls and out from under the bed and cut off his eyelids or something.

Conrad: Damn. I like that. I mean, that’s seriously creepy.

Marco: Yeah, it was something. When I woke up, I knew you’d love it.

Conrad: You were right. And goblins, you say? Wow. Goblins. That part is especially wild. People don’t throw around the word “goblins” all that much anymore.

Marco: Let me tell you something about goblins, my friend. Something you may not know. Something very few people may actually know.

Conrad: Do it.

Marco: Goblins, man. They’re no joke. They’re fucking scary, and they’re fucked up. And they will fuck you up. You understand me?

Conrad: Yes, I believe I do. But let’s talk about something important now. Let’s talk about me and my dreams. And my nightmares.

Marco: Take aim and fire away, baby.

Conrad: So, you know, I’ve been taking melatonin a lot lately, right?

Marco: Cause you can’t get your hands on ambien, right?

Conrad: Yeah, sorta. I got tricked into trying to go all natural, which is a sham. Whenever in doubt, just go with hard drugs.

Marco: Put that on a t-shirt.

Conrad: Don’t tempt me.

Marco: But I feel you. I have several friends who don’t realize they’re becoming recreational vicodin addicts, which is cool, cause this is America and shit. But I can’t do that stuff anymore. It gives me freaky nightmares. I mean, genuinely freaky nightmares. Like, where the goblins show up and tell me I’ll have erectile dysfunction for the rest of my life and or will be forever locked in a mortgage I can’t afford.

Conrad: As long as you’re not longer dreaming about Avril Lavigne, you’ll be fine.

Marco: I’ll have you know: That was a very special time in my life.

Conrad: Anyway… me. And my nightmare.

Marco: Do it.

Conrad: So, I guess you’re supposed to take melatonin only so much, right? Until it stirs up your… well, I don’t know. Something. Some kind of chemical. I’m not a trained doctor or anything. But you take it short term, you get some rest, you move on.

Marco: Gotcha.

Conrad: But I keep taking it because it gives me juicy nightmares. And I’m a horror movie fan.

Marco: I remember that you were a Freddy guy more than a Jason guy.

Conrad: Exactly! Anyway, so the one I had last night… Wowza.

Marco: Oh?

Conrad: Oh yeah. So I’m like wandering around in this fucked up, dark version of Chuck E. Cheese’s, right?

Marco: This already sounds terrifying.

Conrad: Oh, it was. Believe you me. It so was. And there’s all these fat, sweaty white people around me.

Marco: Your ultimate nightmare.

Conrad: My ultimate daymare, you mean. But there they are. And there’s famous gross white people there too. Like Jeffrey Dahmer.

Marco: I remember that Peanut used to date a guy who looked like Jeffrey Dahmer. Man, I hated that guy.

Conrad: Me too. Well, Dahmer, anyway. But he was the guy who, later on I discovered, didn’t belong in the dream. But there was other famous people too. Like Mary Kay Letourneau. And Roman Polanski. And Joey Buttafuoco. And Debra Lafave. And Pete Townshend. And Bobby Fisher. And Gary Glitter!

Marco: Oh shit. You were at a child molester convention!

Conrad: Exactly. By accident, of course. Once I realized what was going on, I was like, “Oh shit, I gotta get the fuck outta here!”

Marco: Shit. I hope so.

Conrad: So I take off for the door, right? But right as I get to it, I notice the little bulletin board listing who all the speakers are going to be at this thing.

Marco: So, it was like a proper convention then? With speakers and talks and things?

Conrad: Yes! Terrifying, right?

Marco: Very.

Conrad: So I’m running my finger down the board, just looking at all the famous names. I remember that R. Kelly was on there, of course.

Marco: Right. Yeah. “Age ain’t nothing but a number,” after all.

Conrad: And then I get to the end. The keynote speaker.

Marco: Ooh, this is going to be good, isn’t it? Who was it?

Conrad: I’m not bullshitting you here. It was Jon Gosselin.

Marco: Oh… wow.

Conrad: I know, right?

Marco: Yeah. Wow. Eeesh.

Conrad: But, whereas everyone else had their name and like a title of what their speech was going to be about or whatever, after his name… there was just one word. One single word.

Marco: What was it?

Conrad: It was simply… “Gangsta.”

Marco: Oh. My.

Conrad: Uh huh. It shocked me away. And I sat there, in my bed, just catching my breath from the sheer intensity of the thing. And I just whispered it back to myself. “Gangsta.”

Marco: Wow…

Conrad: Yeah, I know.

Marco: Yeah.

Conrad: Yeah.

Marco: Yeah, uh… let’s talk about something else, okay?

Channel the terror of Crystal Lake in this “Jason” hoodie from the Friday the 13th series by Marc Ecko. Bloody full zip-up hoodie with breathing holes and mesh eyeholes for visibility. Four button flap pockets, flocking, leather straps and metal rivets, rib knit sleeve cuffs and hem. Damn, I could have used this for Halloween.

You can cop this hoodie here.

Being one of the people who voted for “Paranormal Activity” to be released nationwide, I had very high hopes for the film. Was it going to be like “The Blair Witch Project?” Perhaps it will be bigger? Well, for this moviegoer, neither of those happened.

The film starts out innocently enough with the recent quintessential mockumentary staple, the claim that it is from official records of some sort and what we are about to see actually happened. Well, KNOWING it was a fictional movie did not help one “get into” the verisimilitude of the opening, let alone the rest of the movie. As things progress, hokey yet effective supernatural phenomena occur in the residence of the two main characters, Micah and Katie. The brash and obnoxious (yet funny) Micah decides to first document the strange happenings with a camera and THEN try to get rid of whatever is causing all the mischief. His wary girlfriend Katie is found to be the subject/cause of the paranormal activity due to a past of being haunted/followed by a demon. Katie initially tries to shrug off the “demonic presence” but becomes more terrified after each new unexplained activity (ie. keys mysteriously moving from the counter to the floor, doors closing by themselves, things making loud noises in the night). Generally, there is a good build-up to the “climax” of the movie, but the ending is a bit of a let down. Not only do we find that Micah has been killed, we ALSO find out that Katie killed him because she was possessed by the demon, and evidently has gone missing soon afterwards.

This movie was not as riveting as “The Blair Witch Project” and thus did not seem to be as terrifying as all the tiresome tv spots promise it to be. Yes, there were some genuinely creepy moments (Katie standing over her beau for 2-3 hours at a time before going back to sleep), but these were just interesting instead of unsettling or flat-out horrifying. The mockumentary style of filming was a very nice touch and did lend itself very well to this film. Instead of wowing us with special effects, it creates seemingly realistic footage of a couple in a possessed house. The acting is pretty good in this movie, partly due to the very tangible on-screen chemistry between Sloat and Featherston. Both played their parts very well as suburbanites caught in a very peculiar situation. It almost made the average moviegoer think “Hey, this could happen to me!” But, like I said…ALMOST.

Overall, I would give this movie a 3 out of 5 stars, seeing that it made a very brave attempt to deliver everything it promised in the trailer, and that it was very realistic as far as mockumentaries go.