So I was just last week bemoaning the fact that small but excellent independant horror films are not getting theatrical releases. Brilliant films such as Rogue, and Midnight Meat Train are getting sent straight to DVD despite great reviews from critics and preview audiences alike.
Maybe that is slowly changing...and if it is, then this film should truly start the ball rolling!
This was such a pleasant surprise for the wife and I, that we couldn't believe it. Truly suspenseful with lots of cringeworthy gore, violent inventive deaths, a creepy as hell villain, a hero character that hasn't really been done before, a great great nude scene, and perfect use of sound design including a music score comprised of ambient sounds, and the use of Bauhaus' Bela Lugosi's Dead.
A perfect mix of a first time director getting to stretch his wings and show what he can do, coupled with a great scriptwriting team who gave us Feast and Saw IV-VI.
PLEASE support horror this weekend, especially independant horror, and go see this movie. I would let slip a couple of the nicer setpieces of the movie but I knew very little going into this and I think it would work best for others if they did the same
Just found out from Ken at Monster Island News that Universal has changed the release date for their Wolf Man remake for the astonishing 4th TIME, now coming out in February instead of November to avoid competition with the Twilight sequal. As if that wasn't bad enough, they are taking "advantage" of the time in between to add new special effects scenes that will change the title creature from the original Lon Chaney type 2 legged creature to a 4 legged one that will more resemble a wolf.
I can't for the life of me understand the need for this change. This is right up there with all the changes to the character of Godzilla in his Tri-Star remake years back. If you are going to alter things that much, why bother calling it The Wolf Man? It also seems like an insult to Rick Baker's talents and efforts who had designed an amazing tribute to the makeup of the original film, not to mention that Universal has already posted lots of publicity photos of the original look over the past year or so (remember, this was supposed to be out 2 years ago!!!)
Hopefully this news is a little premature and it won't be that radical of a difference. I wouldn't mind if the character de-evolved over the course of the film with the 4 legged animal only being in the last 10 minutes or so. Also if they play up the tragic romance of the storyline, the move to February may be a great idea, making it a Valentine's Day release would be perfect strategy for the studio.
Added some items to the page over the past few days, including about 35 more tracks on the music player including the theme song to the original Prom Night which blew me away that I could find that! Also added more to the always updated list of blogs that would be of interest to anyone that comes here. Please check them often as I will be adding more. Lastly near the top of the page I put in a Netflix widget that shows 10 random titles from my Qeue list. Check it out and let me know what I should watch next!
So it seems like I've been on a mummy bender lately, and I've seen about 6 or 7 of these in the past few weeks. I noticed I had never seen this before, hell I had never even seen a trailer for it. but, it was a Hammer picture, albeit a late entry for the studio, so I thought it would be a fun one to get me back in the game of reviewing.
A word of warning afendi, this falls in that despised category of mummy films (at least despised to me). In other words, it is a mummy film without a mummy in it. When you sit down in your carsophagus with a bowl of tana leaves to snack on and pop in any movie with the word Mummy in the title, what you are expecting to see is a guy in a red fez and a pencil thin moustache directing an unstoppable shambling corpse wrapped in moldy bandages, that goes around strangling anyone who gets in it's way. This one, however is primarily about reincarnation and the paranormal acquisiton of artifacts.
Having said that, I will remind you that this is a Hammer Studios Production, so there is a level of quality to this that saves it. It was released in 1971 and appears to take place roughly in that time period, so I was expecting the groovy mad mod feel to their later films that ruined the Dracula series (for a perfect example of this go see Dracula A.D. 1972) Fortunately it still looked and felt like the gothic masterpieces that Hammer excels in.
Also what Hammer was known for at the time was their films becoming increasingly sexier and gorier in an effort to keep people coming to see their films, so there is quite a bit of tame gore in this in the form of severed hands, bleeding stumps and torn throats. As for the sexy side of things within 1 second of the opening credits finishing we are treated to the heaving bosum of Valerie Leon whose credits include a few of the british Carry On series of films, and Queen Kong. This girl has the best cleavage I have ever seen in a Hammer film, and she personally saved the movie for me.
It is a fairly interesting story and visually it tried to be more than what it was so it fit the bill for an entertaining diversion, but without any major stars such as Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee (Hell, it doesn't even have Michael Ripper in it), it just seems to fall a little flat...except in the case of Valerie Leon.
So where can you see this if you so choose to? Well, unfortunately it appears to be out of print at the moment. It is available on Netflix, which is where I got it, or you can try finding a local video store that has a copy for rent. I included the Amazon link below, as it looks like a few people have copies for sale there, and it doesn't yet appear to cost a Pharoah's ransom compared to the cost of most out of print titles I've seen.
So I am always searching for people's input here and I know there aren't too many people that come here yet, but if you have any thoughts or comments on this flick or any others let me know, or just drop me a comment to talk about anything you want. Constructive criticism is welcome!
Ok, it's been brought to my attention (finally by someone other than myself) that the 7 months since my last update to this blog is long enough of a break. Having said that, I am going to take advantage of my abundant free time, to make this a somewhat fun place to be to the 2 people who may randomly stop in to see it (Hi Jessica and Vanessa ^_^) I'm going to assume that since it's come and gone in theaters, and is now available on DVD that everyone has seen My Bloody Valentine 3-D, so I won't bother with the review I was going to do for it except to say I loved it, and if you haven't seen it, go buy it and watch it! BUT don't bother watching it in 3-D at home. That still hasn't been perfected yet. SO! While I am thinking of some fun things to do to spruce up the joint, I'm going to ask my immense fanbase if there is anything they wish me to write about? Any movies that you're curious about and want a review for? Is there anything you've seen lately that you enjoyed and recommend?
I'm going to see My Bloody Valentine tomorrow, but since I live 500 miles from a decent movie theater, I have to see it in traditional 2-D :( I'll write up a review for it tomorror night! Check out the trailer, and also, use the link below to get the uncut special edition of the original that came out this week!
Well, for better or worse, it's coming out on DVD. This is one of those movies where the people who are tremendous fanatics of the books, are incredibly thrilled with how the movie turned out, just because it's Twilight. As long as it provided more merchandising to buy at Hot Topic for the next year, it could do no wrong. Does that make it a bad movie in my eyes? No, actually I kind of enjoyed it. Did they do things wrong in it? Of course they did it's a movie adaptation of a popular book. That goes without saying. But it was entertaining, and there was a couple of elements of the book that they actually improved on, for instance actually being able to witness the fight at the climax and introducing the bad guys as a viable threat early on instead of in the last 15 minutes. Things that they really didn't do well with was the visual of Edward in the sun, Bella's rush to blind trust in Edward, and the actual casting of Edward himself. I'm sorry but the guy was far from the beautiful thing that he was supposed to be. He looked like a freaking zombie in most shots, especially next to the rest of his family. But overall, they did a fairly good job on it, especially the visuals. I understand that the director will not be coming back for the officially greenlit sequal, which can only hurt the project I think. What's everyone else's take on it?
As a follow up to my post last week, here is news of betty's passing:
LOS ANGELES – Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controverisal photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85.
Page suffered a heart attack last week in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, her agent Mark Roesler said. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.
"She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said. "She is the embodiment of beauty. " Page, who was also known as Betty, attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere, where they remained for years.
Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.
The latter helped contribute to her mysterious disappearance from the public eye, which lasted decades and included years during which she battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.
After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.
"I don't want to be photographed in my old age," she told an interviewer in 1998. "I feel the same way with old movie stars. ... It makes me sad. We want to remember them when they were young. "
The 21st century indeed had people remembering her just as she was. She became the subject of songs, biographies, Web sites, comic books, movies and documentaries. A new generation of fans bought thousands of copies of her photos, and some feminists hailed her as a pioneer of women's liberation.
Gretchen Mol portrayed her in 2005's "The Notorious Bettie Page" and Paige Richards had the role in 2004's "Bettie Page: Dark Angel." Page herself took part in the 1998 documentary "Betty Page: Pinup Queen. "
Her career began one day in October 1950 when she took a respite from her job as a secretary in a New York office for a walk along the beach at Coney Island. An amateur photographer named Jerry Tibbs admired the 27-year-old's firm, curvy body and asked her to pose.
Looking back on the career that followed, she told Playboy in 1998, "I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous. "
Nudity didn't bother her, she said, explaining: "God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds. "
In 1951, Page fell under the influence of a photographer and his sister who specialized in S&M. They cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her signature and posed her in spiked heels and little else. She was photographed with a whip in her hand, and in one session she was spread-eagled between two trees, her feet dangling.
"I thought my arms and legs would come out of their sockets," she said later.
Moralists denounced the photos as perversion, and Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Page's home state, launched a congressional investigation.
Page quickly retreated from public view, later saying she was hounded by federal agents who waved her nude photos in her face. She also said she believed that, at age 34, her days as "the girl with the perfect figure" were nearly over.
She moved to Florida in 1957 and married a much younger man, as an early marriage to her high school sweetheart had ended in divorce.
Her second marriage also failed, as did a third, and she suffered a nervous breakdown.
In 1959, she was lying on a sea wall in Key West when she saw a church with a white neon cross on top. She walked inside and became a born-again Christian.
After attending Bible school, she wanted to serve as a missionary but was turned down because she had been divorced. Instead, she worked full-time for evangelist Billy Graham's ministry.
A move to Southern California in 1979 brought more troubles.
She was arrested after an altercation with her landlady, and doctors who examined her determined she had acute schizophrenia. She spent 20 months in a state mental hospital in San Bernardino.
A fight with another landlord resulted in her arrest, but she was found not guilty because of insanity. She was placed under state supervision for eight years.
"She had a very turbulent life," Todd Mueller, a family friend and autograph seller, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She had a temper to her. "
Mueller said he first met Page after tracking her down in the 1990s and persuaded her to do an autograph signing event.
He said she was a hit and sold about 3,000 autographs, usually for $200 to $300 each.
"Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40 to $50. ... Bettie Page outsells them all," he told The AP last week.
Born April 22, 1923, in Nashville, Tenn., Page said she grew up in a family so poor "we were lucky to get an orange in our Christmas stockings. "
The family included three boys and three girls, and Page said her father molested all of the girls.
After the Pages moved to Houston, her father decided to return to Tennessee and stole a police car for the trip. He was sent to prison, and for a time Betty lived in an orphanage.
In her teens she acted in high school plays, going on to study drama in New York and win a screen test from 20th Century Fox before her modeling career took off.
After being in the hospital for pneumonia the past couple weeks, Pinup Queen Betty Page has had a heart attack and is currently comatose and listed as in critical condition. Please include her in your prayers tonight.
Forrest J. Ackerman, the creator of Famous Monsters Of Filmland Magazine, collector and archivist of the history of fantastic films, creator of the comics character Vampirella, inspiration to such people as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Stephen King, and a personal friend to every fan of horror and science fiction whether you have met him or not, has passed away. He has spent his last few weeks bedridden at home, refusing pain medication so he could be lucid enough to respond to fan emails, and to be able to say goodbye to as many of his "nieces and nephews" as he could. No one can ever replace him, and he will always be missed.
Here's a listing of genre related titles coming out on DVD for December 2nd! My personal pick of the week is Wanted, extremely loosely based on the incredible comic series by mark Millar, this movie takes the story in a much different direction (not a mention of superheroes or supervillains) yet maintains the same level of thought provoking originality. This was a must see on the big screen and if you've waited till now to see it you'll be kicking yourself that you didn't go.
I just wanted to post SOMETHING on here tonight after spending the last couple hours playing around with the various widgets and fonts and other blog programming thingamajiggers.
Hopefully this will be something I really get into and will be adding to all the time. My goal is to make this a place for friends to come and read reviews and thoughts on B-movies and to contribute with similar ideas and thoughts.
I also will be partnering with Amazon.com in their associates program. What's that mean you ask? Well over to your right...no, your other right. ye- uh back...THERE on your right is an example of a handy Amazon widgit that will have reccomended titles and such. Any time you click on any of my links to the page, I get a small cut of everything that is purchased on the website that day. That being said, if anyone that regularly comes here and enjoys my page, would be kind enough to use it I would be greatly pleased.
I will be playing around with things here for a little while until I get the hang of how to operate everything and then hopefully start adding material soon.
loving life in Humboldt County! I've been interested in and collecting toys, comics, and most importantly horror movies for most of my life. I am obsessed with my DVD collection
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