Self Promotion/Parody

Good morning, y'all. I'm pretty sure that it is Wednesday. People kept calling it hump day and I thought they were being dirty. Speaking of dirty, I made a little Doomed Moviethon promo video. I've been doing this freakin' site for 4 and a half years, why not tell people about it, right? Anyway, here it is:



Ha ha, I poisoned Youtube!

Night of the Living Duder

There are some SPOILERS coming up. If you haven't seen Night of the Living Dead by now... well holy shit, you need to get with the program. I mean, come on. It's the 90s!

In 6th grade, my fascination with horror was still going through its growing pains. My mind had already been poisoned by a number of accidentally amazing moments. Catching Girls Nite Out in the middle of the night while I was supposed to be sleeping, seeing A Nightmare on Elm Street on video with my sister Lora, going to the drive-in with Lora and her future husband to see Creepshow 2 are just a few important things that happened to me. Another monumental event took place on Saturday, October 31st, 1987. All day, I saw commercials advertising a midnight showing of Night of the Living Dead on TV. I don't know why but something told my 11-year-old brain that this was a must-see.

We had just moved into these creepy apartments in Jupiter, Florida called Jupiter Sound Apartments. The place is one of those motel style dealies that was designed to make me uneasy for no reason whatsoever. I only had two friends which I made relatively quickly in the whole neighborhood. Oops, make that no friends. One was Timmy who had just moved to Alaska and the other was Jeff who I caught stealing $10 (my life savings) from my dresser while we were hanging out. My older sisters were now both married and out of the house. So needless to say, my Halloween night was wide open.

Staying up late was no problem. I was already wired from inhaling untold amounts of candy. Just before midnight rolled around, my parents called it a night and I was left alone to face the black and white terrors of George Romero's classic film. From start to end, I ate up Night of the Living Dead. The downer ending where Ben survives a zombie plague but falls prey to dickhead rednecks was truly shocking. But the two scenes that affected me the most were when Tom and Judy met their fiery fate at the gas pump and when Karen takes a trowel to her mother. I was totally fucked up about Tom and Judy's death scene. This cold feeling in my stomach came creeping in like when Travis shot Old Yeller. It seemed totally unfair to me that they got blown up and then consumed by the zombies.

Karen killing and then devouring her mother on the other hand, scared me in the best way. I was exhilarated and oddly happy during that moment. Don't read into that one, Mom. It was also apparent to me that the scene was kind of weird and beautiful. I don't think I had a word for it then but thanks to the freaky sound design, Helen's death is pretty friggin' surreal. Her sped up screams opened up a part of brain that I didn't know existed. Ever since then, I have appreciated directors who use horror as a place to air their freaky cinematic ideas (whether intentional or not) and push the limits of what a typically low brow genre like horror can be used to express.

So yeah, that was a magical night. It is indeed a big turning point. The next day, all of my G.I. Joes were no longer fighting Cobra and vice versa. Instead, these two warring factions had to unite in order to fend off a zombie horde. Soon I would be sneaking peaks at Fangoria magazine at the drugstore, reading Stephen King novels by the truckload, and eventually renting as many horror movies on VHS that was humanly possible.

Skip to 4:00 for Tom and Judy's demise:



Skip to 1:50 for Karen's big moment:

Giallo Meltdown 3

Just in time for my 100th post on Cinema Somnambulist, Giallo Meltdown 3 is finally up. I can't believe that I first had the dern thing back in April. Sorry it took so long. I've been pretty busy with writing articles, making music, smoking cigars and other boring stuff. I'm annoying like that. Anyway, check it out right here. As usual, feedback is strongly encouraged. Especially negative feedback. Don't hold back. I can take it. (No, I can't.)

And just in case you missed them:

Giallo Meltdown (Friday, Saturday, Sunday)

Giallo Meltdown 2

Road Games

Just got done watching Road Games starring Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis. This excellent suspense film (I hesitate to call it a slasher flick) is directed by Aussie Richard Franklin (Patrick, Psycho II) and is friggin' tense as hell. Keach plays Quid, a trucker who thinks he may be on the trail of a serial killer. Curtis plays Hitch, a plucky hitchhiker that wants to help Quid catch the guy. The film has a dark sense of humor, razor-sharp cinematography and a soundtrack (by composer Brian May) so strident that its almost comical.

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch

Halloween III: Season of the Witch gets a bum rap. If the idiots had just called it Season of the Witch and mentioned that John Carpenter and Debra Hill were producing, I think the backlash would have been nonexistent. Of course, not throwing the Halloween tag on it would have made the $14 million that it made would have been nonexistent as well. I was talking about this film with Nafa this morning and he was one of the many people duped into thinking that Michael Meyers was somehow involved. When I rented this one as a kid, I read the back of the VHS tape and thought "well, this is different."

SPOILERS in this paragraph:

I knew from the box that Meyers wasn't involved but I figured that when the killer Shamrock Halloween masks took effect that the kids wearing them would go insane and murder their parents. This didn't happen. In the film, when the Shamrock video plays, the very unfortunate kid watching it falls to the floor and his head turns into bugs. Okay, not as good as kids going on a retail-induced killing spree but it is one seriously fucked up moment and a truly effective scare. His parents do drop dead from fright. That's a bonus. As Tom Atkins is rushing to stop all the TV stations from playing the Shamrock commercial, I was totally on the edge of my seat. Good stuff. I need to watch this one again soon.

Here's a great review

The End of the Dang World AGAIN ?!?!

Why is the world always coming to a dang end? The doomsday clock started ticking when J.Lo released her first fragrance on the world. Was that what Nostradamus was talking about when he said "I am from you! I am from the people!" Maybe that was Schopenhauer.

Anyway! Something new has been birthed onto the pages of Doomed Moviethon. It is the first Doomed Discussiethon. Nafa and I chose a movie neither of us had seen, watched it separately and then talked about it. Wow, this sounds really not exciting at all. But that's stinkin' thinkin'. Click here to see our disastrous thoughts on The Day the Sky Exploded.

Take care, kids.

No Reservations - "Romania"

I love No Reservations. It is the best travel show on TV. It's host, Anthony Bourdain, goes places I would never go and does things I would never do. I'm a shut-in so that isn't really saying much. Okay, sometimes he makes me burn with jealousy. Most of the time however, I'm pretty content to just watch his shows in the safety of my living room.

The best episode of the show is his trip to Romania. Aside from being a complete disaster, it is also one of my favorite Halloween episodes of any show ever. While in Transylvania on Halloween night, Tony and his guide Zamir, visit a Dracula-themed hotel which turns out to be the single cheesiest and most embarrassing Halloween-related crap I've ever seen. Bourdain realizes this terrible mistake and starts drinking while Zamir plays along for the sake of great television.

While I do recommend that you watch the entire episode, the Dracula stuff can be seen if you skip to 8:35 in Part 1 and watch through 4:19 in Part 2.

Halloween w/ the New Addams Family

Hey, hold the phone! What is this? Halloween with the New Addams Family? This requires further investigation.

Halloween with the Addams Family

Something amazing happened to me last summer. Target had the first two volumes of "The Addams Family" TV series in a pack for $14.99. LeEtta and I bought them up with glee. I still need to get volume 3 but for the purposes of this post, I can pick it up later. Since the show was canceled in April of '66, there are only two Addams Family Halloween episodes in the original series.


"Do not be alarmed, we are only little children."

In the first Halloween episode, "Halloween with the Addams Family" (which originally aired on October 30th, 1964), The Addams gang mistakes a couple of bank robbers (played by Skip Homeier and Don Rickles) for trick-or-treaters and invite them in to joing in their Halloween festivities. By the end of the evening, the criminals flee from the house and jump into the back of a police car to escape the Addams' Halloween hospitality. The best moments are when Wednesday and Pugsley dress up as normal people to go trick-or-treating and when the bank robbers catch Lurch hiding during a game of hide-and-seek.


The Halloween poem.


Lurch in his hiding place.


"Oh fire of Salem,
Oh flame of Satan,
Come in Aunt Singe,
We're all a-waitin'!"

The next and final Halloween episode, "Halloween - Addams Style" (which originally aired on October 29th, 1965), kicks off with footage from the previous year. Once again, Gomez is carving a pumpkin in the likeness of Uncle Fester and later, the two play bobbing for apples on a teeter totter. Thankfully, the stock footage ends there as Wednesday returns from trick-or-treating absolutely heartbroken because she's been told there's no such things as witches by a mean neighbor. Grandmama Addams and Lurch cook up a scheme to convince Wednesday that witches do exist but they screw it up.

The Addams family decide to perform a seance to contact Aunt Singe, a witch burned alive at the Salem Witch Trials. Lurch hides in the next room and pretends to be the ghostly voice on Aunt Singe. When the faux Aunt Singe agrees to make an appearance, Grandmama has to go out looking for a live witch to take her place. Luckily, a lesbian woman and her gay husband (that's my theory, anyway) are passing by on a scavenger hunt. The woman, dressed as a witch, ends up being mistaken for Aunt Singe and has the wits scared out of her by the Addams who are completely convinced she's the real thing. Wednesday is convinced that witches are real and all is well.

There are some highlights in the episode like the appearance of Cousin Cackle and Gomez's use of the phrase "vile canard". Of course, I loves me a seance sequence so bonus points on that one. Lowlights come in the form of the stock footage from the previous Halloween episode. Still worth watching.


The neighbors. Marriage of convenience?

October First

Oh man, I loves me some October. LeEtta and I will be celebrating Halloween every day this month like usual. We have Halloween specials and Halloween related horror movies by the truckload. Speaking of truckloads, we will also be moving to a new apartment very soon so this month will be crazy sporadic in terms of blog posts. We've been rooted to the spot for the last six years so from now on, moviethons will be from a new location! That may not sound very dramatic to you all but it's a dang big deal for me, okay?

The End of the Dang World (?)

My fellow moviethoner, Nafa, has contributed a review for a film from a genre that I am truly terrified of. Disaster movies freak me out! I just can't handle that shit, yo. Anyway, click here to check out Nafa's review of the miraculous miracle that is 2012: Doomsday.

Ladies of Giallo # 9

Ida Galli AKA Evelyn Stewart, you magical lass!

Things are a little hectic for me this week but I will be around sporadically. That's a promise.

The Broken Magic of Roberta Findlay

Hatchet

The indie slasher flick, Hatchet, got some crazy hype when it was making the film festival circuit and the teaser trailer certainly helped build that hype. I was eager to see it but then when the DVD showed up at Wal-Mart, I just shrugged my shoulders and kept on shoppin'. Then the lukewarm fan reviews started rolling in and I really put this one on the back burner. The other night, as I was going through my Netflix queue, I saw that Hatchet was available to watch online. I figured, "What the hell, let's do this!"

First thing I noticed was that stingy old Netflix only had the R-rated version. Sigh. What the fuck, dudes? I decided to just deal with it and if I really loved the flick, I'd pick up the dang unrated version somewhere. Anyway, to make a long story short (too late), Hatchet falls somewhere between the hype and the lukewarm reviews. I liked all of the characters, the gore (even in its trimmed form), the fast pace, and the swamp setting. I don't think that Victor Crowley (played by Kane Hodder) will become the next horror icon or anything but he certainly is an impressive baddie. So I say walk but don't run to check this one out.

Art vs. Entertainment, Part 1

When I have a strong negative reaction to a film nowadays, I just assume that I'm doing something wrong. Time and time again, I revisit films that I hated with the first viewing and found that they clicked the second time around. However, when it comes to art films, I have two thoughts: 1. I hate this shit and 2. I will NEVER sit through this shit again. At one time, my favorite movies were indie dramas and all manner of artsy fartsy nonsense. It wasn't until that fateful day while watching Fellini Satyricon that it suddenly dawned on me that I needed to become reacquainted with my old friend, the horror film. I wanted the decapitations but none of the boring shit that came with them.

You see, my need for horror went dormant during the 90s when good horror movies were hard to find. Had I known about genres like Euro-crime, spaghetti westerns (other than Leone), giallo, yakuza, etc. I might have been okay. But no, when the 90s rolled around, I retreated into the worlds of Kevin Smith and Wes Anderson to fulfill my hipster toilet humor emo (?) needs. I also delved into the worlds of Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman for... I don't know... my boring European crap needs. It was horror all along. Horror was always there, waiting for my triumphant return.

This brings me to Attraction AKA Nerosubianco by Tinto Brass. Now I enjoyed Deadly Sweet and found that its artsy diversions refreshing especially since late 60s gialli can sometimes be a little dry. But Nerosubianco, a syphilis-ridden nutsack of a movie, tested my patience through most of its running time. Now it is not a total loss as you'll see when you read my review but damn, I was really not into this one. I'll be reviewing Brass's The Howl soon so there will most likely be another tirade against pretentious junk again. Get me a bumper sticker that says "I'd rather be watching Gialli."

So yeah, in my review for Nerosubianco, you'll see my prudish side shining like a repressed star. I don't think I'm old fashioned or particularly skittish about sex films, I just don't care about them. I really don't care about films that break sexual taboos, especially ones that are now 40 years old. These flicks look very silly years later when it's all just a bunch of grubby hippies showing their (not so) goodies to the world.