Thursday, December 14, 2017

My Favorite Films I Watched In 2017

Hi there. Here are all of my favorite first time watches for Twenty Dang Seventeener! As usual, I'm playing catch-up with my movie watching. It seems like I'm always a year (or 30) behind so a lot of my faves from this year came out last year or even earlier. Unlike 2016, I didn't keep track of the movies I watched this year so putting this together was even more difficult than usual. My plan for 2018 is to track all of my movie watching again to make this easier. And I decided to expand my Honorable Mentions to three categories just for funsies. I also included the stupidest thing I watched this year. Boy howdy, it was bad and yet, I want to watch it again. Thanks for reading, y'all.

My Top 10:

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Wolf Guy (1975)
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Tag (2015)
Trick or Treat (1986)
Trick or Treats (1982)
The Babysitter (2017)
Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Honorable mentions:

The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015)
Horror House on Highway 5 (1985)
Iced (1988)
Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982)
Happy Death Day (2017)
One Dark Night (1982)
La La Land (2016)
A Cure for Wellness (2016)
Paganini Horror (1989)
Train to Busan (2016)
The Dreaming (1988)
It (2017)
Get Out (2017)
Arrival (2016)
Split (2016)
Don't Breathe (2016)
It Comes at Night (2017)
Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

Netflix streaming dumpster diving (but in a good way):

Beyond the Gates (2016)
The Void (2016)
Honeymoon (2014)
Tales of Halloween (2015)
Last Shift (2014)
The Devil's Candy (2015)
They Look Like People (2015)
Antibirth (2016)
The Pact (2012)
The Midnight After (2014)
The Hallow (2015)
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2014)
III - The Ritual (2015)
The Similars (2015)

Stupidest and best bullshit movie:

American Poltergeist (2015)

Friday, December 8, 2017

Hallowed Friends

So my band, GYROJETS, put out an EP in time for Halloween this year and I wanted to talk about it just a little bit on the old bloogerino. It's called Hallowed Friends and you can listen to it, download it, or buy the CD. Are you still here? Phew, now that those very subtle links are out of the way, I can get down to the heart of the matter, even if, even if you don't love me anymore. I might be misquoting those lyrics.

We started recording this badboy in September and rushed it just a little to have it up on the Bandcamp page on October 30th. Some of these songs will be rerecorded again in the future, especially one of the tracks because we're still writing the song -but I'll get to that momentarily. As usual, my wife LeEtta played the part of our in-house artist and drew some fantastic art for this thing. We told her a few of our ideas and she did her thing. We did the recording ourselves as usual with Sam's drums being squished into a mono channel due to the limitations of my Tascam DP-006. I'm happy with the results but one of these days, we need to get some studio time.

Okay, let's run through the songs! First up is "Laurie Strode", our ode to Miss Strode, as played by Scout Taylor-Compton in Rob Zombie's Halloween II. I probably think about that movie too much. Anything Michael Myers-related makes me happy. We were still writing this one right up until we recorded it. Next up is the instrumental "Why Can't We Be Wraiths?". Sam and I jam a lot just so we can get into that pretentious zone where you mind-meld with your fellow artist. You can't spell artisanal without anal. Wait what? Sam and our pal Ryan Hoge made a bunch of synth sounds that I layered throughout this nearly 8 minute thing.

"Kari Frankenstein" was a birthday present for our bud in our sister band, The Prople. We wrote it the night before her birthday show and then performed it. This was the easiest song to record once we stopped trying to do it all fancy and stuff. You can hear Sam saying, "Yeah, 'cause it's fucking me up..." Then we nailed it the very next take. "We Are [Nearly] Dead" is an unfinished song. Sam wrote the lyrics and does the speaking part. I was flirting with this cool riff for this song forever, then I forgot how to play it. So we made this instead. My guitar is running through a fuzz pedal that my friend Wavley at Eccohollow built for me a while back. The last song is "Gay Werewolves"! I cannibalized some old riffs from a song we don't play anymore and then we wrote this LGBTQ-friendly song. I wrote a line or two while Sam wrote the rest and sings nearly the entire song. This song is so fun to play and hopefully makes everyone feel good. Or hairy.

Well, thanks for reading this and thanks for listening if you clinked those links. I hope you will play "Why Can't We Be Wraiths?" at the next haunted house you build. The secret of GYROJETS is something I will reveal here. It's all a ploy for me to get to hang out with Sam as much as possible. Awww, bless your heart, Richard.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

My Horror Shelfie!

New vlog series where I talk about my horror movie collection. Here's what it's all about:

(I'm not happy with the audio/video quality of the intro. :/ It gets better in episode 1.)

And the first episode:

Friday, October 13, 2017

How I Met Jason Voorhees

Let me set the scene:

It was 1986, I was 9 years old, I was in the hospital, and it was nighttime. In the morning, surgeons would remove my appendix -a procedure which I would wake up in the middle of and flail my arms around like a lunatic- but for the time being, I was watching television while tucked in my bed. Nurses came in repeatedly to check on me, make sure I wasn't eating or drinking anything, and constantly reminding me that I needed to go to sleep soon. For the life of me, I cannot remember what channel or what show I was watching but it may have been MTV or possibly USA's "Night Flight". Suddenly, they announced that there was a new Friday the 13th film in theaters and began to play a music video with clips from the movie.

The song was "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" by Alice Cooper. How much I knew of either Cooper or Jason Voorhees at that time was negligible at best. I hadn't yet had my brain happily poisoned with the first or second Friday the 13th films but their time was coming. So for now I just had this rad and wildly catchy song and rather intriguing clips from the fifth sequel of a franchise that so far -due to my young age- had escaped me. The memory of being tucked under a pile of blankets in an ice cold hospital room and seeing these two monsters for the first time is one that I cherish to this day.

And here is that music video:

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Halloween Season Playlist 2017

Here's to being overachievers!

The Worst Witch
Halloween
Halloween 2 (Rob Zombie)
Slumber Party Massacre
Trick or Treats
Hocus Pocus
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Paul Lynde Halloween Special
Trick R Treat
Sleepy Hollow
Ginger Snaps
Idle Hands
Arsenic & Old Lace
May
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead (Remake)
The Addams Family
Bewitched
Corpse Bride
Halloweentown
Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge
Lawrence Welk Halloween Episode 1978
Garfield’s Halloween Adventure
The Halloween Tree
Once Bitten
The Innkeepers
House of the Devil
Halloween is Grinch Night
Witch’s Night Out
Mad Monster Party
Spookiest Halloween Episodes DVD
Halloweentown High
Scary Godmother
Scary Godmother: The Revenge of Jimmy
Haunted History of Halloween
Simpsons Treehouse of Horror (Various)
Mad Mad Monsters
The Howling
The Fog
Practical Magic
Beetlejuice
Teen Witch
Hack-O-Lantern
Cemetery of Terror
Angry Beavers Halloween
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House
Return to Halloweentown
Hellboy
Martha’s Halloween Special
Witches
Cursed
Poirot Halloween Episode
Rocky Horror Picture Show
Animated Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The Crow
Dracula 2000
Trick or Techrat (Jem)
Cowboy Bebop
Dylan Dog
Cemetery Man
Lost Boys
Elvira Mistress of the Dark
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Blade
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween 6
The Bride of Frankenstein
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Freaky Farley
The Brides of Dracula

Monday, August 28, 2017

I'm Still The Guy Who Does Stuff

The new normal is partial kooky haha screaming. Here's what I've been up to of late.

I reviewed Revenge by The Prople.

I have joined the rad writers of That's Not Current and here's my debut article on SCTV.

My pal Scott of EurocultAV.com still lets me writes reviews sometimes! Here's some:

Malibu High

The Hearse

Inquisition

Wolf Guy

Cops Vs. Thugs

The Climber

House: Two Stories

Here's a new and nearly finished song by my band:

This isn't new but I dug it out of the Doomed Show archives.

Monday, August 21, 2017

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Favorite Horrors Of The 1960s

Here's me getting all free love and flower power and stuff with the 1960s horror that I like and love. Making this list reminded me of the plethora of titles from this era that I have yet to see! There's no Hammer horror on here (or at least a minimal amount) because I want to do a separate list of them another time. So this a list of horrors from the 1960s because lists:

The Long Hair of Death
The Brain that Wouldn't Die
Bloody Pit of Horror
Jigoku
Frankenstein Conquers the World
The Brides of Dracula
The Day of the Triffids
Incubus
Black Sunday
Planet of the Vampires
The Mask
The Whip and the Body
The Masque of the Red Death
The Skull
The Premature Burial
Dr. Orloff's Monster
The Horrible Dr. Hichcock
Terror-Creatures from the Grave
Eyes Without a Face
Atom Age Vampire
Corruption
Succubus
Crypt of the Vampire
The Murder Clinic
Night of the Living Dead
The Witch
Maneater of Hydra
Nightmare in Wax
House of Usher
The House that Screamed
The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism
Kill, Baby, Kill
Mill of the Stone Women
Quatermass and the Pit
Kuroneko
Psycho
Venus in Furs
Captain Clegg
The Living Skeleton
The Curse of the Werewolf
The Playgirls and the Vampire
Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory
Assignment Terror
Even the Wind is Scared
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Shuttered Room
The Phantom of the Opera
Spider Baby
Scream and Scream Again
The Awful Dr. Orloff
Carnival of Souls
Frankenstein's Bloody Terror
Blood and Black Lace
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell
Kwaidan
The Diabolical Dr. Z
The Tomb of Ligeia

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Zombie Movies

Partly due to the passing of the great George Romero and partly due to a discussion with my pal, the great Simon (Creatures of Light and Darkness), I have compiled a list of my favorite zombie movies. As I was talking with Simon, the list kept growing, especially after he sent me his and I was like "oh snap, I'll steal pretty much all of these, thank you". Then the Wiki happened and then my meager list began to morph into its very own horde of the hungry dead. I'm not going to bother with that whole "so what is the appeal of the zombie film?" pontification paragraph. Let's just get rad.

Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
The House by the Cemetery
Zombi 2
Zombi 3
Horror Rises from the Tomb
City of the Living Dead
White Zombie
Planet Terror
Zombi Holocaust
Dawn of the Dead
Vengeance of the Zombies
Tombs of the Blind Dead
Cemetery Man
Bio Zombie
The Hanging Woman
Nightmare City
Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror
Dead Alive
Resident Evil (franchise)
Re-Animator
Bride of Re-Animator
The Living Dead Girl
Night of the Creeps
Return of the Living Dead
The Fog
Messiah of Evil
The Beyond
Mutant
Horror Express
Zeder
Pontypool
Day of the Dead
Oasis of the Zombies
House of the Dead
Grapes of Death
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies
Shock Waves

Friday, June 30, 2017

You're Never Nothing

My band GYROJETS has been around for five years now. We're Tampa's premiere realistic music duo. What is realistic music? I always thought it was funny that bands were so obsessed with what genre they fell into like "post-rock", "screamo", or "reggae thrash" so I just came up with my own genre called "realistic music". At first when I told people that, Sam (the drummer and co-vocalist) would intervene and explain what kind of music we actually were. But now he's sipped upon all the varieties of Hooves Kool-Aid-flavored Slurpees and now tells people that we're realistic music as well. Over at the music blog I contribute to, I selected some bands that influenced me. Check it out!

Sam and I met six years ago on a video shoot and then through a conversation on Facebook, I found out that he played drums. We started jamming soon after and it was obvious that we had a good vibe between the two of us. Our musical interests are all over the place -dare I say, wildly divergent- but there's a common ground sonically which is the glue that keeps our soul-brains stuck together. We are friends first and bandmates second which I think is extremely important. We spend more time talking at band practice then actual practice.

After a few random nights of jamming, we decided to give our duo a name. The names that didn't make the cut are as follows: Only Nero, Faux City Locals, Rigid Parts, Nock Volley, and Proud Papa. In desperation, none of these seemed quite right, so I thought, "What are the worst firearms in history?" Sure enough, the Gyrojet was on every list and they certainly looked ridiculous enough. Thus, GYROJETS were born. We've tried to invent a world where things like haunted pizza exist alongside cat-snakes and toothpaste toast and according to my notes, we've been wildly successful.

Want to hear all of this excitement? Check out our album on Amazon or Spotify! It's great. We worked really hard on You're Never Nothing by recording everything ourselves and begging, pleading, and also asking my wife LeEtta to draw the cover and inner CD artwork for us. That's right, I said CD (Compact Disc)! This is the 1990s and it's still a viable format. Anyway check out my wife's artwork on her site.

So what does any of this have to do with movies? I'll tell you! We have a song about a very special character from Lucio Fulci's The House by the Cemetery called "Ann the Babysitter". But wait there's more! We also have a song about VHS tapes and an accompanying video that you should check out below. I also threw in a recent live clip. We played at a club famous for its beer and brownies. And hey screw it, there's another live clip just for fun in there too.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

THE CINSOM 800! TOP 20 FILMS OF 2016

Hey y'all. I hope you are doing well! I've been missing you guys. Sorry that I haven't been posting much lately. I've been trying to get back to feeling good about being productive and feeling good about things in general after having recently lost a very good friend of mine. I will be talking about that subject at length before too much longer. But anyway, I wanted to look at the results of my little experiment last year.

I actually recorded what films I watched for an entire year which is something I'd never attempted before. Other than watching and rewatching The Avengers, there was actually quite a bit of unseen-by-me viewings in 2016. Because everyone (Brad) likes lists, I've decided to do my top 20 films that I watched for the first time last year. I've split this up into horror and non-horror and the following are not ranked in any way. And away we go!

Horror

Phantom of the Ritz (1988)
The Final Girls (2015)
Nightmare Weekend (1986)
Deathgasm (2015)
The Witch (2015)
Let Us Prey (2014)
Mortuary (1983)
Night Screams (1987)
Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1986)
We’re Still Here (20156)

Non-Horror

The Nice Guys (2016)
Shin Godzilla (2016)
Swiss Army Man (2016)
Midnight Special (2016)
The Phantom (1996)
The Face with Two Left Feet (1979)
The Last Circus (2010)
Voice without a Shadow (1958)
No Retreat, No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers (1990)
Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Oh yeah, duh. I almost forgot to mention! This is my 800th post on this blog. Wait, what!? That's right, folks. Here's to making it to NUMBER 1000!

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Films I Watched: December 2016

Wow! This marks the end of the first year of Films I Watched posts! This was pretty fun. I think I'll do a blog post of my favorite first time watches of the year in horror and non-horror. Let me regroup and see what I come up with. Thanks for reading, y'all.

Silent Night, Deadly Night
Black Christmas (2006)
Krampus
To All a Goodnight
Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye
Dead End
A Christmas Horror Story*
Exists*
I Drink Your Blood
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things*
White Christmas
Black Christmas (1974)
The Holiday
Holidays*
The Ref
Saint Nick*
Rare Exports*
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Holy Hell*
Tabloid*
Amanda Knox*
Love Actually
Merry Friggin' Christmas*
Don't Open Till Christmas
Doctor Strange (2016)*
The Hogfather
Silent Night
P2
Happy Naked Christmas*
Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?*
Silent Night Deadly Night 3
The Doll Master*
Evil Twin*
End Call*
Werewolf Woman
Sense and Sensibility
Dune
New Year's Evil
Terror Train