Yeah, Halloween lasts another week in this house!!
I've just watched THE NEST for the first time and totally loved it. One of the most fun killer insect flicks I've seen for a long time. And very cool old-skool gore too!! I watched the old New Concorde dvd which is fullscreen and looks alright, however I've just discovered there's gonna be a bluray/dvd from Shout next year! Can we get a Woo-woo!!
In the extras department there's three trailers and a cool 12 page booklet. Unfortunately, the trailer for the film is nowhere to be found despite it being listed on the cover.
Iggy not being very conservative while doing "I'm a conservative" in 1981.
As I reported here I bought CD re-releases of three old IGGY POP LP's recently and I've been playing them ever since. Don't get me wrong, I love THE STOOGES but these early 80s records are pretty fucken cool too. In the first post I posted a live version of "I'm a Conservative". I've later discovered that the entire gig is up on YouTube in a brilliant picture quality (good enough for fullscreen viewing). The concert from November 25, 1981 was originally released on a TARGET VIDEO vhs in 1986. Watch it in all it's full mini-skirt & stockings glory here.
So in my dream last night I’m trying to watch an old western on a new big tv but the picture is blurry so I try and adjust but nothing works. The good thing is that it’s a big screen and I can see the tv removes the black bars on the screen (in the dream it’s a video tape I’m trying to watch, obviously). After a while the tv screen is as big as a cinema screen and covers the entire wall. I get a great idea, why not tune the tv so I can actually watch tv programmes. So I start tuning but now I realise I ought to blow-dry the screen as that’s surely gonna help get rid of the blurry picture. I pull out a very weird blow-dryer with a kind of funnel at the end. I look into the funnel and see old food in there. Bummer, what if my dad sees I haven’t even cleaned it, he’ll think I’m crappy at living on my own. So I start digging old potatoes out of the funnel but suddenly I notice something else is in there: There’s a young caveman standing looking at the wall of the funnel (I’m now inside the funnel!) and then... zapp... he’s no longer standing but sitting on some big rocks that are also in there and next to him is a real Neanderthal man. This is too good to miss so I pull out my camera. “Stay there don’t move” I say and start taking photos of them. Suddenly something from behind grabs my attention and I turn around. The funnel entrance is now gone and there’s an open forest footpath and a naked young woman walks past. She's sporting a Brazilian wax and I’m wondering how I know that as I only see her from the side and behind. And with this bewilderment in my head I wake up. I have... no idea what it means.
My buddy Steve Nyland sent me this scan as a suggestion to what my dream was about. LOL.
Uhh, I'm kinda way behind if I wanna make it just CLOSE to 31 films, haha. Actually, I HAVE watched more than the 8 but I just haven't bothered to write about them. Oh well, maybe later. I watched GHOST SHIP a couple nights ago. I thought the first half was good but the second half was, well it's not so much that it wasn't good but it just wasn't a good horror movie! The second half was an okay action movie but it ought to have been more of a horror flick than what it turned out to be. I mean I felt it was almost a Terminator kinda film. That ghost guy even fucken LOOKED like the bad terminator from TERMINATOR 2! I got the reg. 1 DVD from Amazon UK at one penny and it has a cool hologram cover. Unfortunately the film had been changed to fullscreen (they even made a point out of pointing that out on both the cover and on the DVD!). The extras were okay. The film was okay, good enough to watch again but not to upgrade to a better DVD. ^_^
HERMAN YAU made the awesome horror flicks EBOLA SYNDROME and UNTOLD STORY that both star ANTHONY WONG. For some reason not a whole lot of fans of those films have watched TAXI HUNTER even tho that film is ALSO directed by Herman Yau and it ALSO stars Anthony Wong as a maniac on the loose. It's a pity cos it's a really good film. Gore fans who are only watching these films for the nasty scenes but don't give a fuck about characters or plot probably won't like TAXI HUNTER all that much as it's not as extreme and sick as the other two. But I'd recommend that everyone else watch it. I own it on HK video-cd and Malay DVD. The rest of you might find it a lot easier to just pick up the reg. 1 DVD (LOL). Here's the trailer:
Everybody talks about THE STOOGES and people forget the many good years IGGY had in-between. "I'm a Conservative" is an awesome track from his "Soldier" LP from the early 80s. The studio version is the top video and here's a brilliant live version of the same track. You'll be excused for wondering if he's really a conservative. That's is until three minutes into the video and you discover he's wearing nothing but women's underpants.
I bought "Soldier" and two other early IGGY POP LP's in a cool and cheap CD box set recently. The cool thing is not least that as far as I can tell it's not been remastered and thus doesn't suffer from the "loudness war" effect. The set is simply entitled "Original Album Classics" and the other two albums are "New Values" and "Party".
What a fershtunkener afternoon! Arr marone!!! I was gonna watch two poliziesco films of the finest calibre, VIOLENT NAPLES and VIOLENT ROME, both starring Italy's own Dirty Harry, Maurizio Merli. I'd pulled out the uncut, English dubbed, letterboxed Danish video tapes (released as "Helvedes Forgård" and "Rottereden"). I've got my coffee, I've got my lollies (which some of you call candy or sweets), I've got the blinds down, and I've got the phone off the hook. Perfect. Now, what I don't need is for the first tape to say, "Grrrrrrreeee". I try and fastforward and it sounds like one of those grindgore bands that some of you listen to. Major worry. So I try it on the other VCR. Same result. And now the tape won't even rewind. So I try the first VCR again. Now it rewinds but won't play at all.
I try 5 times. Same result. So I try it on the second VCR again, now the tape plays... and stops again after 10 seconds. I try 10 times. Same result. Major bummer. I consider to just skip it and watch the other film - but no, I'm like a spoilt brat now I W-A-N-T to watch that film. I'm about to have a hissy fit. I'm about to yell and throw things at the wall. So I do what I always do in those situations; have another cup of coffee and think rationally about the problematic situation! At this point I'm thinking I might as well skip the film viewing and try and repair the tape. I open the tape case and discover one teeny weeny little piece of plastic has come undone. I put it back and close the cassette again (which takes me 15-20 minutes cos those damn things are always a pest). Finally I put the screws back in, put the tape in the VCR, and it works like a charm. My gawd, it took like an hour to fix that tape. Anyhoo, fortunately the tape wasn't damaged and the picture is crisp clear and looks awesome. Brilliant! Halfway thru VIOLENT ROME I fall asleep. >_<
(i.e. during the second film and only because I'd been awake for 24 hours, certainly not because the film is boring cos none of them are!)
Diabolik's upload of the Danish trailer for VIOLENT ROME.
Very good news indeed! The two GATOR BAIT films are finally gonna get released on DVD!!! They're cool "woman takes revenge" films set in swamp land. I tracked them both down years ago on NTSC VHS and was surprised they weren't on DVD (I've later got hold of #1 on a Danish ex-rental as well). Thanks to Bruce Holecheck for the info!! The films were directed and produced by the couple Beverly and Ferd Sebastian, and they're also behind the upcoming DVD releases on Panama Films. Hopefully that means they'll be using proper prints. The DVD's are listed on Amazon here and here.
The cover for "Dig me a Grave" is awesome! It's a pity book publishing houses make shit covers nowadays (well, most of them anyway). "Grave" and "The Evil Star" are written by "John Spain" who was in reality CLEVE F. ADAMS. The "Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers" book calls him, "The missing link between Dashiell Hammett and James Ellroy"! Most of his books haven't been reprinted since the 1950s.
I got "Shock Cinema" #42 recently. It has an interview with BO HOPKINS. The article says one of his best films is THE NICKEL RIDE (underrated gangster film from 1974). I read the review and thought, "Man, I wish I had THE NICKEL RIDE!". Two days later I pull out a random DVD from my box of unwatched films (around 100 DVD's), I look at it and it's THE NICKEL RIDE!! Haha. I bought it 6 months ago on a hunch, "From Shout Factory, hmm, could be good". It turned out it was! JASON MILLER, the priest from THE EXORCIST, is also in it.
