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.
Check out these two trailers, they're both awesome! I haven't seen either of the films but I've got NIGHTMARE on Code Red's DVD, and I'll certainly check if CANNIBAL GIRLS is out on a proper (or even not so proper) DVD.
EDIT: CANNIBAL GIRLS is out on DVD from both Shout! Factory in the US and Nucleus Films in the UK. They both seem to carry the same extras except the UK disc has additional subtitles.
Here's the trailer for the upcoming film about ALFRED HITCHCOCK. Maybe it'll suck, maybe it'll be great, but in any case hopefully it'll get Alfred back into the limelight. Cinemas ought to run his films again, and why not; they're better than most of the drek in cinemas today. I read somewhere that new film fans don't even watch Hitchcock films anymore which is, needless to say, a great pity. They ought to. Everybody ought to. Hell, I think I'll go a watch one now!
I found DAY OF THE ANIMALS (aka "Dyrene hævner") on Danish ex-rental VHS at last week's Bloody Weekend festival in Copenhagen. The fullscreen release from Warner is quite rare (I've never seen a copy before) so I grabbed it right away. The guy asked $17 for it which could have got me the DVD but, hey, the VHS is more collectable!!
The plot is something we've seen before, our feathered/furry/fourlegged friends have finally had it with humanity and decide to do something about it. And all this while a group of city-slickers decide to go for an extended walk in the mountains. Chaos, death and bloody carnage follow. And funny guy Leslie Nielsen gets less funny when he kills a young guy with a spear and sets out to rape the dead guy's girlfriend. Oh, AND SEE HIM WRESTLE A BEAR!!
Like I said we've seen it all before but DAY OF THE ANIMALS is well made and entertaining. Good performances all round, even the kids are good. Having said that, there was one dog that couldn't act his way out of a beer bottle. Christ, he was bad! But, hey, I forgive him, he probably had a bad day on the set.
Scandinavians ought to check out the release from AWE.
Yes, it's true. I was handed an invite to that exclusive Hong Kong film den entitled A HERO NEVER DIES. Every celeb in the HK film blog world is there with their Top 10 - and so am I (needless to say in grand tradition with my ol'e self I was later than late and it's only thanks to Mr Heroneverdies that I actually made it in before the doors shut. LMAO). For my list go here and click the label at the bottom of the post to see everyone else's lists.
This isn't a review but simply a very cool teaser trailer for Hitchock's PSYCHO from 1960. The cool thing about it that it's a little film on its own - and it's presented by Alfred himself! That's not something you see anymore. Nowadays teaser trailers are simply slightly shorter versions of the trailers. It's been many years since I watched PSYCHO the last time but I really ought to re-watch it soon.
