A bigger buffet.
For yet another year, I’ll be participating in Adam Lemke’s Halloween Horror Challenge. Once again, I’ll try and keep some capsule reviews going of what I’ve seen (and I’ll try not to give up halfway through the month again), probably doing weekly capsule updates to save time. Also, as usual, I’ve amassed far more films than I’ll actually be able to watch within a month. So what the hell: Here’s the options, so you can at least know the pool from which I’m drawing. I severely doubt I’ll be able to watch all of these, but I’ll sure as hell try to knock out as many as possible. Note that this doesn’t include any potential theatrical releases which might catch my eye (i.e. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil), nor does it account for any wild hairs I might get up my ass to watch something random. So… yeah. Good luck with this, I suppose.
Baba Yaga (1973, Corrado Farina)
Barracuda (1978, Harry Kerwin & Wayne Crawford)
Bedlam (1946, Mark Robson)
Bereavement (2011, Stevan Mena)
Blood Hook (1987, Jim Mallon)
Boardinghouse (1982, John Wintergate)
The Body Snatcher (1945, Robert Wise)
Boy Meets Girl (1994, Ray Brady)
Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror (1981, Andrea Bianchi)
Cat People (1942, Jacques Tourneur)
The Chilling (1989, Deland Nuse & Jack A. Sunseri)
A Chinese Ghost Story (1987, Ching Siu-Tung)
A Chronicle of Corpses (2000, Andrew Repasky McElhinney)
The Corpse Grinders (1971, Ted V. Mikels)
The Corpse Grinders II (2000, Ted V. Mikels)
Curse of the Cat People (1944, Gunther von Fritsch & Robert Wise)
Deadly Sweet (1967, Tinto Brass)
Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973, Joe D’Amato)
Demons (1985, Lamberto Bava)
The Devil (1972, Andrzej Zulawski)
Don’t Deliver Us from Evil (1971, Joel Seria)
Don’t Go in the Woods (1981, James Bryan)
Don’t Go Near the Park (1981, Lawrence D. Foldes)
Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2011, Adam Munroe)
Fall Down Dead (2007, Jon Keeyes)
The Forest (1982, Donald M. Jones)
The Funhouse (1981, Tobe Hooper)
The Ghost Ship (1943, Mark Robson)
Grizzly (1976, William Girdler)
Harpoon: Whale Watching Massacre (2009, Julius Kemp)
High Lane (2009, Abel Ferry)
A Horrible Way to Die (2011, Adam Wingard)
Island Fury (1983, Henri Charr)
Isle of the Dead (1945, Mark Robson)
It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958, Edward L. Cahn)
I Walked With a Zombie (1943, Jacques Tourneur)
The Leopard Man (1943, Jacques Tourneur)
Madman (1982, Joe Giannone)
Maniac Cop (1988, William Lustig)
Nail Gun Massacre (1985, Bill Leslie & Terry Lofton)
Negative Happy Chain Saw Edge (2007, Takuji Kitamura)
A Night to Dismember (1983, Doris Wishman)
Paranormal Entity (2009, Shane Van Dyke)
Pop Skull (2007, Adam Wingard)
Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991, Ngai Kai Lam)
The Rite (2011, Mikael Hafstrom)
Screwed (1998, Teruo Ishii)
The Seventh Victim (1943, Mark Robson)
Seven Women for Satan (1976, Michel Lemoine)
The Sinful Dwarf (1973, Vidal Raski)
Sombre (1998, Philippe Grandrieux)
Stake Land (2011, Jim Mickle)
Syngenor (1990, George Elanjian Jr.)
The Terror (1963, Roger Corman)
Three on a Meathook (1973, William Girdler)
The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967, Harald Reinl)
The Uh-Oh Show (2009, Herschell Gordon Lewis)
Vanishing on 7th Street (2011, Brad Anderson)
Video Violence (1987, Gary P. Cohen)
Video Violence 2 (1987, Gary P. Cohen)
Virgin Witch (1972, Ray Austin)
White Zombie (1932, Victor Halperin)
Box these tales, Donnie.
Sharp-minded blogger (and two-time White Elephant participant) Jaime Grijalba is currently hosting a weeklong Richard Kelly blogathon over at his blog Exodus 8:2. I’d planned to contribute a piece on The Box, but I wasn’t able to get a copy in time. Still, there’s time yet to participate if you’ve got something you want to write, so I figured I’d at least let others know about it.
Here’s Day 1 and Day 2. More will be added throughout the week. (Blog’s in Spanish, but translation is piss-easy when you’re on the ‘Net, don’cha know.)
Looking for mushrooms.
While I tentatively get the Dusk to Dawn Project (v. 2) under way, I might as well throw this out there: There’s a number of films I’d very much like to cover for this that have proven a little elusive. If anyone has a line on where to find a copy of any of these, I’d be really appreciative. (Not that I expect anyone reading this to have a print of Santa’s Christmas Circus or a non-German-dubbed The Manson Massacre in storage somewhere, but maybe an old taped-off-HBO copy of Birds Do It, Bees Do It or the VHS of The Stepdaughter, which I’ve missed opportunities to purchase affordably at least three times?)
Anyway, here’s the missing pieces. Gimme a holler if you can make any of them un-missing. (Also, if anyone has a copy of Randall Clark’s book At a Theater or Drive-In Near You, I’d kinda like to read that.)
Birds Do It, Bees Do It (1974, Nicholas Noxon & Irwin Rosten)
Blazing Battle (1983, Imam Tantowi)
The Brave Little Tailor (1956, Helmut Spier) [the English dub, preferably, but even a subbed version would help, since the extant OOP German DVD has no subtitles]
Danish Love Acts (1973, Erwin C. Dietrich)
The Double-Barrelled Detective Story (1965, Adolfas Mekas)
The Fountain of Love (1966, Ernst Hofbauer)
Four for the Morgue (1962, John Sledge)
Hard Candy (1976, Stephen Gibson) [the hardcore version; a softer re-edit is available on an OOP DVD under the title M 3-D]
Helga (1967, Erich F. Bender)
Isle of Sin (1960, Johannes Kai)
Kenner (1969, Steve Sekely)
Lost in Pajamas (1968, Radim Cvrcek)
Macabro (1966, Romolo Marcellini)
Maniacs on Wheels (1970, Guido Malatesta)
The Manson Massacre (1971, Kentucky Jones) [original English-language version - there’s a German-dubbed print out in the wilds of the greymarket, but I speak zero German]
Martin the Soldier (1966, Michel Deville)
The Mating Urge (1959, no director credited)
Nest of Spies (1956, Jean Stelli)Pigeons (1970, John Dexter) (due on DVD in the near future from Scorpion Releasing!)
The Road Hustlers (1968, Larry Jackson)
Sabu and the Magic Ring (1957, George Blair)
Santa’s Christmas Circus (1966, Frank Wiziarde)
Sexy Susan Sins Again (1968, Franz Antel)
The Stepdaughter (1972, William W. Wall)
Summerlust (1973, William R. Kowalchuk)
Tobo the Happy Clown (1965, Edward Finney and William Rowland)
The Tough One (1966, Jose Luis Romero Marchant)
2000 Years Later (1969, Bert Tenzer)
Violated! (1974, Albert Zugsmith)
The Weed of Crime (1962, Jun Fukuda)
Women for Sale (1969, Ernst Hofbauer)
Yakuza Deka: No Epitaphs for Us (1971, Ryuichi Takamori)
Tear up the map, draw a new one.
I’ve never been good at sticking to things. I don’t think I’ve ever finished something I set out to do, honestly - eventually, it gets to be a chore just keeping myself going. This has only gotten worse in the years since I’ve taken on a modicum of responsibility at my job, gotten married and so on. This is why I haven’t written much these last few years.
But these days, I can’t stop myself from thinking that the Dusk to Dawn Project… well, there might be something there. When put together, the films I’m dealing with aren’t just amusing, unpretentious entertainments - there’s a whole world, an alternate history of cinema that says important things about the prevailing culture in which they swam. The more I turn it over in my head, the more it becomes clear: If I finish one damn thing, this has to be it.
So, that’s what I’m going to do. Go back to square one, start clean. In the past, I’ve tackled these films haphazardly as I acquire them; now, I’m going to attempt to do this in roughly chronological order, to give a sense of how things progressed, how trends waxed and waned. Accordingly, the first entry will be up soon on Claude Alexander’s THE WONDROUS MIRACLE OF BIRTH, which actually isn’t as old as I figured it to be but does make for a solid bridge between the roadshow days and the time period with which I’m dealing. The reviews I post here will hopefully be more comprehensive than some of my earlier stabs at this stuff, yet they probably still won’t represent the final product in my head - there’s still a lot of reading, a lot of research that I have ahead of me. Think of these as skeletons of eventual men.
So there it is. This is what I must do. Hopefully, you’ll find some value in it. If you do, let me know. I could use the encouragement.
New things, new things.
Hey, in case you’re reading this: Yes, I know the blog died again. It tends to do that around this time of year. But no fear - in a couple of months, this space will be alive with Muriel Awards activity! Before that, though, there’s something else.
Because I clearly don’t have enough to do, myself and Simon Abrams are looking to put together a podcast where we talk about… stuff. Movie stuff. We’ve both agreed, though, that we don’t want to be constrained by the new and the popular. To that end, we’re gonna pull random titles from our Netflix queues and talk about them. (We’ll also spout off on various topics/films that interest us, if we feel the desire, and I know there’s a couple of ideas we already have lined up for devoted casts.)
This, then, is where you come in: We’ve randomly chosen four titles from Simon’s queue. We need you to decide which goes into our eye holes. That means… POLL. Which of the following four films would you, dear devoted reader, like to hear two fellows yammer on about, around and through?
[Poll closed, suckas.]
The Horror Challenge : THE RETURN!
If you enjoyed my dalliance with Adam Lemke’s Horror Challenge last year… well, you’re in luck, ‘cause I’m doing it again this year. You know the drill - as many horror films as possible during the 31 days of October. Hopefully this year, I’ll keep up better with the writing, too.
Also! I announced a blogathon over on Our Science last week. October 17th. Killer animals is the theme. All participants are welcome. If you didn’t know, now you know. Be there or be somewhere else.
Feed her!
My review of The Human Centipede (First Sequence) went up over the week at In Review Online. I’m not a fan.
Where we’ve been.
I’ll be back soon - got a few things that need taking care of first. In the meantime, here’s a few pieces posted at In Review Online (which just debuted its snazzy new design):
Plans change. Again.
So, just a couple months after back-burnering the Dusk to Dawn Project, I’ve decided to bring it back. I like the From the Shelf idea, but here’s the thing: I can do that ANY TIME. Because I own these flicks. They aren’t going anywhere. However, I’ve noticed a disturbing number of DVDs I need for the Dusk to Dawn Project (and my need to see every Something Weird/Image double-feature disc) slipping into unavailability via Netflix. Time is of the essence and all that.
So, yeah. That’s happening. I’ve got a couple more From the Shelf updates to spin out, but after that we’re back to where we were.
Another new thing.
The folks who run In Review Online have been nice enough to let me splatter my blatherings onto their crisp, clean site. On a regular basis, no less! That is to say… I recently became a staff writer there. My first review is for Kevin Smith’s better-than-you’ve-heard Cop Out. So yeah. Check that out, and while you’re there peruse the other reviews as well. They’ve got some sharp minds behind their pens there…
