Creature of Darkness

Creature of Darkness
Directed by Mark Stouffer
Released: 2009
Starring Devon Sawa, Sanoe Lake, Dan White, Fernanda Romero, Kevin Alejandro
Running Time: 89 minutes
DVD Studio: MTI Home Video (Screener)

After a skirmish with Air Force jets, an alien spacecraft lands in a remote part of the California desert. The alien aboard the ship is not a friendly creature. It hunts humans and it uses a dude's spinal column (taken without consent) as a weapon. The creature gets a fresh supply of human prey when Andrew (played Devon Sawa) and his budz just happen to show up to do some extreme ATV-ing in the desert. When his friends start getting attacked and taken away by the alien, Andrew remembers a story his schizoid uncle told about a very similar occurrence that happened to him when he was in the army. Not willing to go down without a fight, Andrew and his surviving friends take on the deadly alien.

Just so you know, it took me three hours to watch this movie. Any distraction that came up, no matter how insignificant, was a blessing. Even if taken just for laughs, Creature of Darkness will still leave you wanting. This is just a plodding and awkward flick to sit through. The editing is clunky with its fits of energy and then slumps of nothingness. There is some gore and some T&A but they hardly make up for how dull this film is. When shown up close, the alien creature effects are acceptable. Unfortunately, the film relies heavily on bad video game CGI for much of the action shots. Whenever the Army jets or helicopters are shown in flight, it looks like the playback feature on an old flight simulator game.

The actors are all in big trouble here. The occasional moments of decent (though hilarious) dialogue clash with the stretches of screaming and arguing that feel like scripted reality television. Devon Sawa (Idle Hands) is especially manic here and I get uncomfortable just watching his over/underacting. I can't blame these poor folks too much though. All of their characters are irritating and have weak or painfully obvious motivations for every single thing they do. The scene where the girls get high, dance, and discuss which guys they want to screw is probably my favorite in the movie. Just watching it made me smarter and more aware of my surroundings.

I hate to say this but Syfy Channel probably won't even want this one. Oh, who am I kidding? They'll show any dang thing! Creature of Darkness will surely appeal to fans of dune buggies, smoke machines, Devon Sawa's tragic downfall, and generic music queues but this mess is just an embarrassing waste of time. Unless you enjoy pausing bad films to get up and go rooting through your liquor cabinet, unloading the dishwasher, or just running in place, then skip this one.

Quotes

"You know what, Casanova? If you knew jack shit about bitches, you'd still have yours!"

"Courage doesn't need explaining. It needs action."

"Why am I sitting here like some ebony meatloaf?"
"Because we're gonna drag that thing to an ultra-violent death, that's why."

Cross-Posting the Metal

Over at the music blog, I wrote a little about Anthrax. Check it out and have a great weekend.

The Doomed Divas Moviethon

Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you: what is horror? I'll tell you! Horror is Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, Madonna, Kelly Clarkson, and Mariah Carey. Chilling, eh? Over at the new Doomed Moviethon HQ, we subjected ourselves to 5 films in a row starring these true divas of the pop world. This was not a zombie splatter moviethon or another giallo meltdown. Oh no, that would have been much too easy, much too... entertaining. This was probably one of the most terrible things I've ever subjected myself, my friends, and my family to. You are all good and descent people. Do not make the mistakes I have made. Learn from my erroneous errors. And so, I present to you...

The Doomed Divas Moviethon

Wednesday Ramble: That Eurohorror Thang

Can you describe in 700 million words or less that European horror movie thing? I sure as hell can’t. What is it about Eurohorror that makes it so friggin’ addictive? Could it be the lazy menace or the incalculable morbidity? The feeling that something dark is lurking just around the corner or hiding just behind that tombstone is a big part of what makes horror so great. The European flair usually just means that the payoff will be bigger, brighter, or cheaper and yet somehow more endearing. This shit might bore Europeans to tears but for us kids over here on the other side of the pond, their films’ alienness is intriguing if not utterly fascinating. Eurohorror has secret transmissions that awaken those happy (depressing) and morbid (ecstatic) neurons that destroy (invigorate) my dumb brain. For the purposes of this ramble, I’m going to call this unique phenomenon ‘The Vibe’.

I don’t really know precisely where this very rambly Wednesday Ramble is going but I think I’m talking about white stucco walls, dirt floors, strange camera angles, overly bright blood, achingly beautiful actresses, claustrophobic spaces, ethereal music, ridiculous plots, etc. These are all things that make the Italian gothics of the 1960s so great. I want to blame it all on Mario Bava. These characteristics were replicated (and in some cases improved upon) very, very well by Spanish horror cinema in the 1970s. I mean, the Italians didn't really lose it until the mid 1980s. Of course, horrible 70s wallpaper helps too so things like the inept but strangely perfect Werewolf Woman make the list as well. And speaking of werewolves, most of Paul Naschy's body of work (especially with directors León Klimovsky and Carlos Aured) contains this unique sensation as well. Check out any of his performances as the doomed Waldemar Daninsky to see what I'm talking about.

I can’t (or rather, I won’t) think of any quintessential titles that perfectly encompass what it is that makes European horror so wondrous because I’m sure everyone out there has a different list of flicks. But I do have a few here that I’d like to mention that really get under my skin. One of the first European horror films I ever watched that gave me ‘The Vibe’ was Pupi Avati’s Zeder. Ohhhh doctor, I tremble with joy just thinking about watching this movie. Every frame is filled with so much dread and the production design lays on the dull off-white and gray tones that just amp up the feeling that we, the audience, are alone are we are about to die horribly.

One fairly blatant example of that distinctly Euro flava is the wacked out Vampyros Lesbos. Jess Franco shot this little piece of brilliance in Spain, Germany, and Turkey. I’m not much for the softcore elements (and I’m not really complaining about them either) but this film instantly grabbed hold of my soul when I first took a chance on it. There is just something undeniably hypnotic about this shit. And while we’re on the subject of lesbian vampires, there is also a very important and dreamy little number called Daughters of Darkness. If this soft focus gothic poem doesn’t knock your socks off then you’re not breathing, duder. And while I love the film, José Ramón Larraz's excellent Vampyres, doesn't give me the same feeling. Strange, huh? It has all the required elements: buckets of blood, lesbian vampires, and a killer cemetery but nope, 'The Vibe' just ain't there. I'm sure some folks would disagree but damn it, I just don't feel it.

Here are two more Italian examples, one from Dario Argento and one from Lucio Fulci. First up is Argento’s Phenomena. Most of this movie is so wild and bizarre that it is impossible without multiple viewings to pick up on ‘The Vibe’. Late in the film however, when Jennifer Connelly is trapped inside the killer’s house, she finds a hole in the floor and descends right into what I’m freakin’ talking about here. The catacombs beneath the Brückner house are starkly lit, gray, and insanely creepy. Lucio Fulci competes with the sheer awesomeness of Phenomena with his own bizarre adventure in abstract moodiness: The House by the Cemetery.

One Italian director that consistently delivers on ‘The Vibe’ is the late, great Joe D’Amato. Before he disappeared forever into directing porno movies for a living, good old Joe was a cinematographer on the silly but very atmospheric The Devil’s Wedding Night. When he got a chance to direct his first horror film, the man made an art form out of style (and softcore sex) over substance with Death Smiled at Murder; a film that helps me escape the real world and threatens to never let me return. Even when he is wallowing in cheap crap, D’Amato still manages to deliver on that nearly indescribable gloomy goodness with Anthropophagus and Anthropophagus 2 (AKA Horrible). Part 2 in particular is responsible for my current condition as it first entered my mind over 20 years ago when I caught it on late nite television. This Halloween-influenced gore flick with piles of accidental atmosphere never left my mind and has thankfully landed on DVD in the good old US of A. Oops, I almost forgot his death-obsessed masterpiece Beyond the Darkness!

Usually, 'The Vibe' comes from supernatural films but there are also several gialli that deliver what I crave. Whether it is through intent or accident, I get brief flashes of gray brilliance when I watch the yellow thrillers of Sergio Martino. I obsess over the tiniest scenes in everything from The Case of the Scorpion's Tail to Torso and I still can't quite put my finger on it. Other gialli that produce the same haunting reverberations in my soul include Emilio Miraglia's The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave and Armando Crispino's The Dead Are Alive. It helps that both of these films have a dreamlike quality, a heightened sense of ghoulish improbability.

So do you get it? Do any of you out there feel this thing; this unsavory and unwholesome longing for Eurohorror and don't have a friggin' clue why? Or do you have a name for 'The Vibe'? (I'm tempted to call it 'ghoulish improbability'.) Is there some obscure text that has coined a phrase for this stuff that I'm having a helluva time trying to describe? If you have an answer to any or all of these questions, please step forward. I'd love to commiserate with y'all. I know Riccardo Freda, God rest his soul, knows what I'm talking about. Just watch Barbara Steele in The Ghost and soak it up.

 

Here are some related things I wrote:

Say Uh... Phenomena!

 

That Freudstein House!

 

Satan's Dish

The Visitor

The Visitor
AKA Stridulum
Directed by Giulio Paradisi
Released: 1979
Starring: Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, John Huston, Joanne Nail, Paige Conner
Running Time: 101 minutes



Good aliens led by Jesus Christ (played by Franco Nero) send an emissary named Jerzy (John Huston) to Earth to capture Katy (Paige Conner), a little girl with super human abilities. Meanwhile, the bad aliens are trying to get Katy’s mother, Barbara (Joanne Nail), pregnant so that she will give birth to another super kid they can use to destroy the human race. Barbara’s lover Raymond (Lance Henriksen) is actually a plant by the bad aliens, led by the evil Dr. Walker (Mel Ferrer), to help their evil plan come to fruition. When tragic occurrences befall Barbara, Detective Jake Durham (Glenn Ford) discovers that there is something very strange going on with the foul-mouthed and violent Katy. And before I forget, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is somehow involved in all of this. I mean like in a basketball-related capacity.



How did a movie this insane manage to hide from me for so long? And now that I’ve seen it, I’m trapped somewhere between elation and outrage. The Visitor is a confusing shambles of a movie with elements borrowed from The Omen and The Exorcist with alien beings thrown in the mix. I love Italian rip-offs of popular films so I was predestined to adore this film. But there is so much wrong with director Giulio Paradisi’s only horror film that I can’t even begin to pretend that The Visitor is anything but tremendously bad.



Much like the film itself, the musical score by Franco Micalizzi (which sounds like a fake name) is a schizophrenic mix of the perfectly eerie and the explosively lame. Producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (which sounds like a terrible disease) is the man responsible for other rip-offs like Beyond the Door and Tentacles. Unfortunately, he also had a hand at writing the inept story for this film. The cinematography, editing, special effects, production design, and stunts are all deftly handled by a talented crew but it’s a totally wasted effort as the lame script, weak direction, and understandably confused actors bring it all crashing down.



The 1970s must have been very difficult for Glenn Ford, John Huston, and Shelly Winters (who plays Katy’s nanny with psychic powers). They do an admirable job keeping a straight face during all the crap dialogue they have to spout off and I can’t imagine how they got through this project. Lance Henriksen is super menacing and he’s always a great bad guy. Did I mention that Franco Nero plays Jesus Christ? He is never referred to Our Lord and Savior in the script but IMDB has him credited as such. I’m a little surprised that Paige Conner didn’t go on to more things. She certainly has the ‘creepy kid who curses like a sailor’ routine down pretty well.



So is this movie worth suffering through? Well yeah, kind of. The Visitor has some very big names (including a dubbed Sam Peckinpah) looking very discombobulated, a modest budget totally wasted on surreal special effects that do nothing but screw up the plot, and a few genuinely cool jump scares. However, I must warn you that your brain will melt and squirt violently out of your ears if you try and figure out what is going on. My only guess is that this odd and ominous film was written with certain elements from profitable horror and sci-fi films as highlights and then paper-thin connecting scenes were added later.



Quotes

“Yeah, that bugs me, man. That really bugs me.”

The Crazies

I finally got out to the theaters yesterday with my friends Nafa and Max to catch my first horror remake of the year (sorry Wolfman, I wasn't in the mood). The Crazies is about the destruction of a small town called Ogden Marsh. This normally peaceful community is suddenly plagued with violence as its residents begin going mad. The local sheriff (played by Timothy Olyphant) discovers that a military plane carrying an experimental biological weapon has crashed in a river that supplies the town with its drinking water and its only a matter of time before everyone is infected. The military rushes in to contain the virus but their orders are not to save the day. Instead, the situation in Ogden Marsh deteriorates completely while the sheriff and his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell) and deputy (Joe Anderson) struggle to get out alive.

I'm not a purist when it comes to horror movies so if a remake is good, then I'm game. Even if the original is stellar and it's impossible to be improved upon, I still keep an open mind. George Romero's original film has never been a favorite of mine so I was pretty psyched about seeing the 2010 version after catching the cool trailers. Luckily, a cheesy line from the second trailer was not in the theatrical version. The two little girls who tell the sheriff they hear screaming coming from the funeral home didn't show up and I was glad they didn't.

The film sports some excellent camerawork from Maxime Alexandre, the cinematographer on High Tension, P2, and The Hills Have Eyes remake. Break Eisner does an awesome job in the director's seat on The Crazies. The film is frightening and very well-paced with likable and interesting characters. Casting is also a big part of what makes The Crazies so good. All of the main characters are portrayed very well and even the supporting cast is on the ball. I really like Timothy Olyphant. He reminds me of Micheal Biehn (of Terminator, Aliens, The Fan, etc.) and that is a very good thing. Radha Mitchell of Silent Hill is great as well. While I feel just a little guilty about feeding the remake machine, I'm very glad I caught The Crazies on the big screen.

SPOILERS

For those of you who have already seen the remake (or have no plans to ever watch it), there were several key scenes that just blew me away. For starters, the discovery of the crashed plane in the river is chilling. When the sheriff realizes the plane is just underneath their boat and the next shot shows the view from overhead, I got goosebumps. The scene in the funeral home is truly harrowing as our hero discovers the town priest on a gurney with his mouth and eyes sewn shut. When he cuts the stitches on the poor bastard's mouth and the guy mumbles 'behind you', it was cheesy but in a good way. And of course the near-emasculation with the friggin' bone saw is just genius. Danielle Panabaker's death by hanging at the car wash also provided the chills. And moments later, the military helicopter blowing up the heroes' car had Nafa and I cracking up at the sheer dark comedy of the whole situation which was immediately echoed by Joe Anderson's own wry laughter.

Some DVD Booty

Doomed Moviethon Vlog of Doom #0003: Horror Manga

I think I'm getting worse at these.

Nightmare in Wax

Nightmare in Wax
Directed by Bud Townsend
Released: 1969
Starring Cameron Mitchell, Anne Helm, Scott Brady, Berry Kroeger, Victoria Carroll
Running Time: 91 minutes
DVD Studio: Mill Creek (Gorehouse Greats)

After being horribly burned by his girlfriend's jealous suitor/manager, actor Vincent Renard (played by Cameron Mitchell) takes over the job of curator at the local wax museum. He uses a special serum to turn the people he blames for all of his problems into living statues (and passing them off as his wax creations) or sometimes he just kills them. The cops get wise to Vincent's scheme and try and stop him before any more innocent people get hurt. Hey, who gives a flying f-

For better or worse, I will follow Cameron Mitchell (Blood & Black Lace, Maneater of Hydra) wherever he will go. In this instance, I am taking a big fall for my old friend. Nightmare in Wax is a sloppy half-assed snoozer from the same production company that farted out Al Adamson's Blood of Dracula's Castle. Oh look, the two films share the same writer too. If only I'd done my homework before. Now don't get me wrong, Nightmare is watchable enough but it delivers the pain. The script is as muddled as the sound and Mitchell's propensity to mumble through his scenes makes for a frustrating experience if you are actually trying to follow what is going on.

Mitchell chews the scenery in an eye-patch while reliable TV actors Anne Helm (as our big haired heroine), Scott Brady (as the gruff detective), and Victoria Carroll (as the ditzy go-go dancer) get some hilariously banal dialogue to spout off during uninspired scenes. The occasionally skewed camera angles, garish lighting (I thought this was in 3-D for a few moments there), and out-of-focus fun can't make up for how dull Nightmare in Wax truly is. Cameron Mitchell kisses a corpse several times and wrestles with an actress's head poking through a prop table (looks painful) so I had a few laughs.

Quotes

"If I can't have you the right way, I shall have you... another way."


Gaze into my good eye.


Let the healing NOT begin.


Tell all the hep cats I'm back for revenge and stuff.


...and boy are my arms tired.


Vinnie, let me save the movie. PLEASE!


Give me that bass if you want to live.


Why won't Mr. Bava return my calls?


Yay, I got to move!


Hardy har har heartbreak at the expense of the viewer.

Wednesday Ramble: Healing with Fellini

Federico Fellini has always been a tough sell for me. I always struggle to get through his films. They’re beautiful, hilarious, haunting, and always about a half an hour too long. His version of Satyricon was the impetus for me to throw in the towel on art films altogether and get back, way back into horror movies. I’ve tried Roma, Amacord, La Dolce Vita, and even 8½ but I find the guy’s stuff impenetrably boring and repetitive.

My favorite aspect of his films are when characters in the periphery stare right into the camera and prattle off some nonsense at the audience. There’s a lot of that in Satyricon and it is most unsettling. Hell, the whole thing is unsettling. There is tons of bloodshed, wild decadence, and enough kink to make you very, very uncomfortable. And just like the rest of his films I've seen, it's too friggin' long!

The one film that was a pleasant surprise when I first caught it on Turner Classic Movies is Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini’s first color film. While I was recuperating from my illness this past weekend, I noticed that TCM still had the film stashed away in its free ‘On Demand’ thingie. This film is full of ghosts and while I watched it on Saturday, I myself was haunting our living room. I felt like a husk of my former self and needed something to heal with. So, much to the confusion of my mother-in-law (who sat down long enough to catch about three-fourths of the film) and to the weariness of my wife (who was also sick and who just caught the last half hour), Fellini’s phantasmagoric psychoanalytic pop masterpiece invaded our brains and took no prisoners.



"Our dear, happy Juliet, she sees magic everywhere."

Visions of ghosts haunt every corner of this film to the point where it becomes impossible to tell what is real and what isn't. Time itself is happily disorienting. It falls apart along with all the absurd and hilarious chaos while Fellini, drunk on color, holds it all together. Juliet of the Spirits is about a housewife (played by Giulietta Masina) who suspects her husband is cheating on her. She is visited by a number of spirits who guide her through this rough time (but in the end, she must choose her own course with or without the man in her life).

Yes, this movie is too long. In an instant, Fellini can communicate a memory or show what Juliet is thinking but that's not what he's going for here. He has to hammer his idea home through repetition. But his is an off kilter machine that reveals more with each turn. A Fellini movie is like a 2 and a half hour John Coltrane solo. The theme of the film is hidden within the notes and the distracting bleats of the horn. All that you need to know is revealed instantly yet the song becomes more and more dynamic with each measure. Little by little, it all comes together and your head feels like its going to explode. But by the end of the film, you see Juliet's heart shining brilliantly and guiding you to safety with its perfect melody.

Whoa, did I just write that? I should probably stay away from artsy films. Anyway, I can't believe I found a Fellini movie I actually like! I haven't seen everything, obviously, but I take this as a good sign. There's still a lot of his works to go through but this portrait of Juliet is all aces. This petite woman with the thin smile is overlooked, left behind, and not good enough for her shitheel husband and the stuck up women in her family. But the spirits choose her to speak to. The oracle chooses to speak to Juliet instead of her wacky friend Valentina (played by Valentina Cortese (my favorite actress in this film (next to Masina, of course))). Everyone in the spirit world (even those with malicious or selfish intent) knows that Juliet is special. Every dream, disembodied voice, memory, and ghost is there to guide this woman who is so full of love she is about to burst.

I hope I don't seem as though I'm even pretending that I have a clue as to how to write about a film like this. Juliet of the Spirits is just a magical film that is just so overwhelmingly beautiful and fun (okay, it's a lot of work) to experience that I just had to babble on about it. I've watched it twice now and I can't wait to watch it again. For any Fellini film to get to me like this one has is pretty special. There are so many more things to talk about. I didn't even go into the spirits (some of which are just creepy as hell) or Sandra Milo's frozen smile or the private eye (who dresses like a priest). This is just the tip of the iceberg, people.

Gorehouse Greats

You should know that you can have fun at Wal-Mart for just 5 dollars. No, not out behind the dumpsters, you silly. I'm talking about inside the store. The Gorehouse Greats collection has some seriously cheesy thrills for a wonderful price. It is a bittersweet pill for sure but damn it, there are two Norman J. Warren classics on there: Satan's Slave and Terror (both in widescreen)! There is also the mesmerizingly bad Nightmare in Wax starring Cameron Mitchell (which I'll be talking about later this week) and Al Adamson's kooky but boooooring Blood of Dracula's Castle. And that's only 4 out of the 12 movies on this set. I've barely even scratched the surface yet. Go pick yourself up a copy. You will (not) regret it.

Oasis of Fear, other stuff

Godo mroning eevryoen! I won't go into any details of my recent unwellness but mark my words, it was real, real bad. Once I mostly recovered this weekend, I mostly finished making those updates to the Doomed Moviethon that I've been talking about. The main thing is that I am finally free of my old crappy formatting so that I can update the site faster. I was always wasting a lot of time tweaking and retweaking and fiddling and bleh bleh bleh to the old site and it never got me anywhere. Now I'm happy. It's simple and I love it so get used to it. I'm still cleaning up some of the code on the reviews so if you see anything funky, please point and laugh. So yeah, the newest review is of Umberto Lenzi's Oasis of Fear. Check it.

Been sick.

Wednesday Ramble: Rocky Horror

You should not under any circumstances go to an old rundown theater to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show where the audience throws rice and toast and used condoms (regional) at the screen. Well, I guess you could. But you'd be going against the spirit of the film. If you're one of those folks who gets dressed up in lace and/or gold lame to reenact the film at a rundown theater, you too have got it all wrong. The whole point of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is that you watch it completely alone, locked in your room and then cry your eyes out when Columbia gets killed.

In 1990, there was all this hoopla about Rocky Horror's 15th anniversary and I decided to rent it. This a was very odd experience. I was 14 years old and I had absolutely no idea what this film was supposed to be about. I assumed that it was a horror movie, which it is. But it's also a gender-bending camp fantasy fetish festival of gay. This is a good thing, obviously. To say that I didn't 'get it' would be an understatement. But I did fall in love with Columbia and Magenta instantly. There was something eerily comforting whenever they were on the screen. For a teenage boy, it was impossible not to notice Susan Sarandon jiggling about but Little Nell and Patricia Quinn stole my heart. I was crushed when Riff Raff guns down Columbia at the climax of the film. Nobody can get over that.

When I was a senior in high school, I was dating this magical chick who insisted that I go with her and see Rocky at the local almost-condemned theater in Palm Beach County. How could I resist? It was a reason to stay out until 2am and a reason get in good with this girl that I was head over heels in love with (after all, we'd been dating nearly 2 weeks). We went with her obnoxious friends and I got the 'virgin' treatment from the cast when we arrived at the theater. I'm sure this varies from state to state but I seem to remember getting on stage and... I don't know. There was whip cream involved. I've blocked the rest of it out and will need a therapist to uncover that particular public humiliation.

We had a blast. Throwing rice, toast and toilet paper, screaming at Brad and Janet, and dancing in the aisles. It was the best night. Plus I got to make out with my girl in the backseat of her gay friend's hatchback all the way home. She was wearing these bright red stockings and... I don't know. I'm blocking that memory too. On purpose, so you guys don't start throwing up on your monitors. So like a week later, she and I broke up. It was my first real heartbreak and I was totally inconsolable for an entire day.

The next time I watched Rocky Horror, it was after my mom had bought me a copy for Christmas. Like most movies I owned on VHS, I proceeded to watch it over and over again. Oh, there's so much to love in every frame. The gay and cross-dressing themes don't really speak to me (I can hear you guys going 'yeah right') so much as the film's limitless love of bad sci-fi, horror, and rock and roll. I bought the CD of the soundtrack and cruised around Jupiter, Florida blasting it from my car's speakers. Later in my senior year, when I was dating someone new, we went to another midnight showing at the same crap theater with a bunch of our friends.

While I sat there, watching the film with the crowd the second time around, I realized that I should have just left this experience alone with my 'virgin' run. It wasn't fun this time. It felt like a chore to get up and dance. I could tell my gf wasn't into it either (she was a dang stick-in-the-mud so that wasn't a big surprise) and I just wished I hadn't bothered. For me, The Rocky Horror Picture Show's real power lies in one's personal devotion to it. The public spectacle is an essential experience (if only once) but the movie was specifically written to be watched alone. How do I know that? Well, I read this interview with Richard O'Brien who said that "the musical play was only ever meant to be performed before one person at a time. I've always felt that the people who perform it live in front of a large audience are tainting my original vision. Please, I implore you, if you're a real fan of Rocky Horror, watch it all by yourself."

You should really Google that interview. It's fascinating. Anyway, I guess I could launch into a diatribe about what exclusionary dicks the Rocky Horror cast and crew in your area are probably like. But I've heard they're not all like that. Florida tends to ruin everything. Meh, I'm kind of an asshole myself so I'll just shut up now.

Happy Birthday, Doomed Moviethon

On March 1st 2005, I launched Doomed Moviethon. I guess 'launched' isn't really the right way of putting it. My love of horror movies spilled out onto the net and it's been a dirtier and stinkier place ever since. Since then I have begrudgingly broadened my horizons to include cult movies, spaghetti westerns, yakuza films, etc. Yeah I know, what a sellout! I have tried over the years, in my own way, not to suck too badly. I have also tried to keep things as 'commercial free' as possible. I still stand by my mission statement in that I have, so far, successfully resisted clogging my site and my blog with ads for useless shit. One day, I hope to have several books under my belt and you know I'm gonna be peddling them here but you will never see any ads for goth dating sites or cheap Cialis or whatever.

There are a number of people who have helped out along the way. First up is my wife LeEtta who does all the Doomed Moviethon artwork and writes my html. My sweet lady has also suffered through thousands of hours of awful movies and hasn't left me yet. Yay! My friends at work, David and Rue, two old school horror fans, who have provided tons of inspiration for me as well as long lists of movies I need to check out. Next on the thank you list are the DM contributors Eric, Nafa, Shelly, and Jeff. I appreciate your writing reviews and articles for me but more importantly, I appreciate your enthusiasm for film and just giving me a chance to gab endlessly with someone on my favorite topic. Not lunch meat! That is so 2004. I meant horror movies, duder. Geez.

So yeah, I had all this cool stuff planned for today but the weekend slipped away from me. Woops. Gala event ruined! Hopefully this week I'll have some actual new and awesome content for y'all to dig into. Until then... Here is my band playing a sold out show in 2005. (Skip to 2:35 for my guitar solo.)