I've ordered Steven Puchalski's SLIMETIME (which is a collection of reviews from his old zine by the same name). Needless to say Puchalski later started publishing his renowned zine SHOCK CINEMA. I've known about the book for years and years but you can't have everything at once so that's why it's taken me this long to finally get onto it. And of course it's OOP now. LOL.
This is the first edition from 1996. Amazon also has the reprint from 2002 but I thought this cover was better! I ordered a second-hand copy at £4.99. Unfortunately, Amazon is inconsistent with the page number info in reg. to the reprint. I checked with Amazon.com that says it has only under 30 extra pages but now I've just seen Amazon UK lists almost twice as many pages as the first edition has. Hmm, still a better cover!! (but I'll probably end up getting the reprint as well then).
I watched DETOUR last night. It's regarded as one of the best film noir movies and yeah I must admit it was really good. Basically it's a roadmovie about this guy who's down on his luck. At the start of the film all he has got is a suitcase, 10 bucks, and a girlfriend in another town. And it never gets that good again. So, with aforementioned 10 bucks in his pocket he decides to hitch-hike to the other end of the USA to hook up with his girlfriend. He gets a ride from a friendly guy. He offs the guy accidentally. Gets paranoid. Steals the guy's car, clothes, dough, driver's licence. Ditches the dead body. Drives off. Decides to ditch the car too - but before he gets a chance to do so he comes across a skirt. Trouble obviously. From then on his luck really "goes into the fucken toilet" to quote a James Ellroy line from that old Austrian documentary film DEMON DOG OF AMERICAN CRIME FICTION (1993, not '98 as listed on the eternally shitty IMDb).
DETOUR is great and I already wanna watch it again. Its short running time of around 70 minutes leaves you with a lean piece of film steak. No fat. No chewy bits. No boring moments. And all this even tho the film was shot in only 7 days and on a very small budget. MARTIN SCORSESE talks about it in the 4½ hour BBC documentaryA PERSONAL JOURNEY WITH MARTIN SCORSESE THROUGH AMERICAN MOVIES (1995).
The DVD I got is from Image Entertainment and altho it's barebone it's probably the best release there is. The cover states it taken directly from a 35mm print and it certainly looks alright. There's a bit of scratches around reel edges but nothing that'll make you scratch your eyes out of their sockets. Not unless you're one of those format fans (in contradiction to FILM fans) that populate many a film message board. According to dvdcompare.net the French DVD has a documentary film about Ulmer, EDGAR G ULMER: THE MAN OFF SCREEN, but the print (of DETOUR) is shitty. I got the Image Entertainment DVD as I wanted the better print. And besides, the doc has its own release anyway so I'll probably order that one at some point.
DETOUR was remade in 1992 by Wade Williams but I can only find ONE release on VHS in the States and that tape is more difficult to get hold of than to get laid at a dike slumber party. I'll been trawling Cyberspace for months on end and I can't find it anywhere! Not even from the usual bootleggers or at iOffer!! Anyhoo, I highly recommend the original film!
PS: There's a bit of a bizarre twist to the story but it contains a SPOILER; in the film the main character, played by TOM NEAL, accidentally kills a woman. In real life Neal did the same 20 years later. He accidentally shot his wife in the back of the head and was sentenced to 10 years in jail (he got out after 6). He was originally tried for murder.
And how's this for weirdness; in the remake from 1992 it's his real life son, TOM NEAL JR., who plays the same character as his dad did in the original.
Finally a bit of a breakthrough!! Not the video-cd I've been trying to hunt down for the past 2 years but the Thai poster for the film!!! I found it on eBay and scooped it up right away. This is the mythical sequel to CANNIBAL MERCENARY aka THE MERCENARY aka EMPLOY FOR DIE. One of the rarest fun and trashy war video nasties from Asia (i.e. Thailand). It seems nobody has this sequel!! As far as I know it's only ever been released on a Thai VCD. This poster reveals three gwailo names that aren't mentioned on the VCD cover (which I have a mere scan of from a Thai film site): Black Direct, Williams Summer, Audrey Laurie (if I'm reading them right that is).
The first CANNIBAL MERCENARY is only released uncut on VHS in the States (a very rare tape by now). There's a German DVD but I'd stay away from that if I were you. The Germans licensed the Hong Kong version that has been given the Tomas Tang treatment, i.e. they cut out a lot of gore and dialogue scenes, and added crappy new footage of Westerners and changed the dialogue. Screw the German DVD and get a bootleg DVD-R of the US tape instead! The original VHS is close to impossible to find nowadays. I had to pay thru the nose to get my own copy.
My... gawd!! I have somehow completely overlooked the brilliant piece of news that the American branch of RARO (Italy) is going to release NIGHT OF THE DEVILS (aka La Notte dei Diavoli) on DVD and blu-ray in a few days!!!
A few of us oldtimers in the field of horror film collecting know the film as Demonen der nacht as that's the title of the old uncut Dutch VHS but regardless of whatever title is used this is certainly splendid news!!!
NIGHT OF THE DEVILS has never been released on DVD before and the old VHS releases are all few and far between. The film is directed by Giorgio Ferroni and it's based on the same story as Mario Bava'sBLACK SABBATH.
The DVD is going to carry both the Italian and English dubs, and it'll have subs in English and German. Oh, and restored print too! NIGHT OF THE DEVILS is the best film you'll ever see! So see it!!
For more info go to RARO US's site here and go here for Richard Schmidt's (from dvdmaniacs aka Richard of DM) great review.
The Dutch cover isn't from my own tape but from Horror CK's blog. Cheers, mate.
I finally watched León Klimovsky'sTHE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK last night. I'd kept off buying the Code Red DVD till the very last minute and, like, 7 seconds after I clicked the "buy now" button the DVD was sold out. Right on time I'd say. Som på et kussehår, haha. A group of upper-class deadbeats have gone to the countryside to revel in a weekend of sexual depravity and pigsty behaviour. But before anyone can say oink a nuclear bomb of some sort goes off and everyone else is hit by the blast - but not our main characters as they were oinking around in the basement.
Too bad for the survivors the people hit by nuclear blast weren't killed like in the old days but are blinded and become revengeful killer zombies. Or some such. When I watched the film I remember thinking, "Hmm, this being a Spanish horror movie I bet it's gonna end in a bad way". I wasn't disappointed. Read Fred's review here if you must know more.
trailer:
If you've bought into the whole grindhouse style thang you're gonna love Code Red's print as it's an old beat up 35mm print which is scratched beyond belief. Heaps of frames are missing everywhere. The audio track is hissing away. An entire bird shooting scene is missing at the beginning. It's easy to know what's missing as Bill Olsen was so nice as to include the old NTSC VHS version in the extras (not just a few scenes mind you but the entire film).
The VHS version looks good enough to watch (I plan on watching that version at the re-visit), the picture is fullscreen (the 35mm presentation is letterboxed) but the tape master was sourced from an unscratched print. There's no other extras apart from a few trailers. No Spanish audio, only the English dub. Highly recommended.
EDIT: How could I forget to mention El Hombre Lobo, Paul Naschy, is in the film as well!!
I bought the horror movie INSIDIOUS on DVD a while ago but ever since I mentioned the purchase to my friend Metin Vardar he's kept bugging me to watch it cos "it's really good, dude". So altho it was down at the bottom of the DVD pile I thought I'd watch it just to get him off my back. Haha. And, yes, I agree it's pretty good! INSIDIOUS is a haunted house movie - kinda without being a haunted house movie (because "it's not the house that's haunted").
Just HOW MUCH can you do with haunted house moves that hasn't been done to death? Well, if you do it right you do it right in which case it does get creepy. And I reckon INSIDIOUS (directed and produced by Aussies) was pretty creepy. No, it's not up there with THE EXORCIST but then again nothing is - not in my book anyway. I got the UK DVD which has decent extras (at least there's no 10 fucking 25 second interview bits which I hate to death! Which everybody and his mum hates to death!!). Recommended.
MOTÖRHEAD doing "Breaking the Law" (originally by JUDAS PRIEST)
"When Lemmy does a cover of your song - it's not your song anymore" - as someone said on YouTube. Yeah!! (and about 6000 times better than that dreadful cover by Doro Pesch).
Octopus Books (UK), first edition (1982), hardcover, A3, 324 pp
I received this today. It's huge as a motherfucker! Almost 2 kilos. It's got 324 pages and contains descriptions of every film ever made at RKO! According to the cover info that's 1051 films! RKO made lots of horror films. The book was published in 1982 and it's not one you get for a few bucks. I paid £20 + postage for this second-hand copy from Amazon UK (cover in fair condition, pages look mint).
Yep, that's him: KIM RUZZ (in the white shirt) the legendary original drummer of MERCYFUL FATE!!! He was featured in the local Danish paper UGENYT yesterday!! The other guys are members of his new band METALRUZZ (haha).
My scan of the picture is pretty crappy and the version in the online edition of the newspaper is much better. Go here (it should take you directly to the page but if it doesn't it's on page 30).
The journalist wrote about Kim's new band, about his (bad) childhood, and that he had "played metal music before". Mercyful Fate wasn't mentioned one single time, hahahahaha. That's like close to being the biggest fuck up of a scoop that I've ever seen!!!!!
Like, MERCYFUL FATE fans in the entire world have tried to find out what became of KIM RUZZ and then when he's finally covered by the mainstream press instead of publishing a double-spread on this original drummer from this cult band they just state he's played metal music before. I'm scratching my head in disbelief here!!! The worst part is they probably don't even fucking realise what a scoop they had on their hands.
A lot of MERCYFUL FATE fans stil think Kim is a mailman but he quit that job a long time ago. Now he's an unemployment consultant of some kind. And last year he was unemployed. We did the same unemployment course for three weeks, haha. A big secret for many years was his real name but you can see it in the notes to the picure, Kim Thyge Jensen.
Here's a picture of him and Lemmy from 1984:
And here's an old MERCYFUL FATE live video. The quality isn't very good and there are better ones on YouTube but I've chosen this one as there's good close-ups of Kim.
And finally a photo of Kim that I copied from Photobucket. Probably from a live video:
I got this way cool book a couple days ago. It's a 384 page encyclopaedia that contains over 200 writers - the kind of writers who festered in the world of quickly written, quickly disposed of, and quickly forgotten fiction. Yes, the pulp fiction writers (of course many of them have since then been rediscovered and received their fame). Some of them I knew already and many I didn't (don't). The pieces on each writer are well written and interesting so it's not just a book for looking up specific authors; You can start from one end and work your way thru to the other end. It's a good read. I've already started. ^_^
I got the book from Amazon UK and altho it was a second-hand copy it was in absolute mint condition. Maybe it was a gift to someone who didn't care for it and put it away right away. I paid £2.74 for it!! That's 4 dollars 40!! The postage was more than the book. LOL. If you want a copy you might like to know there's also a hardcore edition (but the cover is a lot less cool than this one!).
Someone (I think it was in the customers' section on Amazon) mentioned the book was good when it came out but now it's made redundant by the internet now. What a lot of bollox! 75% of all information on the internet is written by morons who don't know shit, and it's practically worthless drivel. Nah, I'll take a book over fucken Wiki any day.
I received the complete "Tales of the Unexpected" DVD box set today. The show ran for 9 years on TV in the UK and was based on horror/thriller stories by Roald Dahl. A friend gave me an early box of selected episodes years ago but this is the complete thing. The other set also cut off the intro's if I remember correctly.
I watched the early seasons on local TV in the early 80s and remember them fondly. If you don't remember the show it's the one that starts with a nude woman dancing in flames and every episode had an intro by Roald Dahl.
I'm pretty sure Danish TV didn't run all seasons, probably only the early ones. The Danish title was "Skæbnefortællinger". People here sometimes confuse it with "Ray Bradbury Theater" which ran here as "Tusmørkehistorier" but they're entirely different and besides "Ray Bradbury Theater" was an American production.
The box is usually expensive but I've been sitting out here in the dark waiting for a cheap(ish) one to turn up on eBay. And last week it did. Muhahaha. 19 discs, 112 episodes.
The dancing-nude-woman-in-the-flames-of-Hell intro and end credits
I can't figure out if I think it's a good thing THE NEW YORK DOLLS exist again or not. I mean almost 40 years on and only David Johansen and whatshisface are left and their new material is pretty MELLOW ... but then again this fan recording of Vietnamese Baby is fucken great. The camera is all over the place, the sound goes murky, you hear the camera guy singing along, haha. This is more than crude filming but pretty great in my book. xD xD xD
They can send a man to the moon. They can fill a complete library onto a wee chippie thingy. They can create a celeb world where Oprah is king. And yet they can't come up with a proper cure for migraines. FAIL!
After three and a half days in agonizing pain it finally seems I'm getting better. But it's not over till it's over and I know my fiend all too well so I'm not celebrating yet. Boo-hoo. Four days not being online means tons of unanswered emails, pm's, what have you. Hey, maybe I even won something on eBay. I'll check in a couple of days (maybe).
Yesterday (Saturday), the postman banged on the door. He wore a big crash-helmet and had a pile of pop culture products in different formats; CD, DVD, VHS, LP and a book even. From underneath the raging migraine I managed to utter a "fabulous, cheers mate" and moved back into the flat. As I was about to close the door I saw him from behind as he was standing at the top of the staircase. He paused and mumbled something to himself. Maybe he cursed the day he decided to become a postman or maybe he started counting the steps backwards.
Oh, and let's be international for a moment shall we: I live in Scandinavia. The LP* that I received came from a shop in Austria. I had ordered it via a store in the UK. The record featured an American band. The recording was done in France - by a radio station in Luxembourg. The record was released in Russia.
*New York Dolls live at Radio Luxembourg December 1973 (180g LP, Lilith Records)
