Not one, not two, not even three... but FOUR hours!!!

Holy fuck! Diabolik from Cinehound forum rang me and we spoke for four hours!!! Oh man, than guy surely can talk. Han kan virkelig snakke Fanden et øre af! We got thru everything from ex-rental tapes to, well, everything conserning the VHS collector scene really. And everyone connected with that scene, LOL. End-result: we're hooking up next Sunday at his pad. Apparently (according to my mate Nils Markvardsen) he's got thee biggest mouthwatering ex-rental collection ever. Oh well, as Diabolik said, that doesn't really matter, what matters is talking to nice collectors. I can subscribe to that.

Exciting!

As I mentioned in an earlier post I'm staying home from work due to a ruptured muscle in my right thigh. It's getting better but it still hurts like hell, however, the worst part (no, not really) is not knowing why at all it began. I just have no idea! Anyway, my G.P. told me it would take at least a fortnight before I'd recover. Two bloody weeks! That may sound like heaven and all. You'd think it would be psychotronic movie overkill on my part but actually it isn't. Altho the pain is in my thigh it's almost as if I have the flu! I'm just not comfortable watching movies while being in so much pain. Yes, terrible!! As I've mentioned the last couple of days, I have watched a couple of movies but those did take twice as long to get thru due to my having to get up and stretch out due to the pain, or to go to the loo (due to having been in front of the tv set for so long) or whatever. Hopefully I'll be ready to go back to work on Saturday. Anyway, not all's totally horrible. I've got the fridge stocked up on lollies and I have enough coffee to survive any Italian post-apocalypse type third world war holocaust that may erupt!! Also, since there's only really two positions I can take without being in complete pain, one is lying down, it means I have to write this while being on my back (sure glad there's no web cams in the house). This is kinda okay... until you wanna I take a sip of your coffee and then spill it all over yourself! So what else happened today? Absolutely nothing. I exchanged a few text messages with my friend Heine and my almost-girlfriend Charlotte, I made a few posts at some film message boards, and my Dad rang but that was about it. No, wait, I also went out with the garbage and emptied the letter box. Exciting life when you're sick! To make myself feel a bit better I ordered the legendary Italo horror flick BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (by Mario Bava) from Amazon, altho my bank account is in the red. Oh well.

Karanlik Sular

Yesterday afternoon I also watched a pretty good Turkish horror film from Onar Films entitled Karanlik Sular aka The Serpent's Tale. I must admit quite a bit of it was so weird it bordered on being right our surreal, however, in my book that's nothing to frown at. I liked it quite a bit. An American in Istanbul meets a guy who apparently, in reality, is dead. And he meets the guy's mum, and there's a vampire girl, and stuff. Yes, I'm rambling but it was pretty good never the less. The DVD release from Onar was of Onar's usual good quality in the extra material department, however, unfortunately, the print wasn't as good as one could have expected from a pretty recent movie like this. And it had burnt-in English subs which I'd be pretty annoyed about if I were Greek (cos the DVD has optional Greek subs which means you have two on-screen sets of subs if you go for the Greek option). Otherwise a good release and, oh yeah, there's also an interview with the director (who says he's tired of the film, ha ha). Only, it's a little sad to see the interview now as it was conducted by Metin Demirhan who died recently way too young. My mate Ayman Kole (in Sydney and of Cinehound) was friends with him and from what I can gather he was the biggest expert on Turkish fantastic cinema. and he co-wrote the book 'Fantastik Turk Sinemasý' [Turkish Fantastic Cinema]. He was only 42.

Gong Tau

This afternoon I watched Herman Yau's latest film, GONG TAU - An Oriental Black Magic, which is sort of an updated take on Shaw Brother's BLACK MAGIC series (Black Magic 1+2, and the third entry Seeding of a Ghost). A policeman's wife is possessed by black magic, gong tau, and there's all kindsa stuff. Pretty gory, dark, and definitely one of the best Hong Kong horror flicks in a long time. Some Herman Yau fans have complained about it not being as extreme as EBOLA SYNDROME but fuck that I say! Not everything has to be EBOLA SYNDROME!! It's a different film ffs! Out on a pretty good HK DVD with decent subs.

No Time To Die

Alright, I was gonna write some more intro stuff about glorious meee but, ush, I couldn't be arsed tonight (no, not a very good start, ha ha). Anyway, I watched an entertaining (although not that good) Indo flick (i.e. Indonesian film) called NO TIME TO DIE. Actually it's a German Indonesian co-production filmed in Indonesia. It stars Barry Prima and Chris Mitchum. Advent Bangun (also an Indo film regular) was also in it. As I said, it was okay without being neither as wild nor crazy as the other Indo movies I've seen. It's very rare these days but I got hold of a Japanese VHS from a seller in Sweden who advertised for it at the Cinehound forum. Hmm, I guess I should tell you about Cinehound shouldn't I. But not tonight, baby, I'm tired!

Does the world really need another blog!!!

Hello unknown reader out there in Cyberspace,
So'eh... this is my first entry, on my first blog. Spiiiffyy! I could've sworn I'd never do a blog. Actually I've never wanted to do a blog! And seeing all those lame people with lame blogs that pop up like mushrooms everywhere always made me want to avoid becoming a blogger even more so!

So why a blog now you ask. Hmm, ehh, lemme just think about that for a while, LOL.

No, well, actually it makes me think of an old The Pretenders track where Chrissie Hynde sings: 'Circumstance beyond our control' - and I guess that's sort of what happened. Thing is I met this woman a little while back and, uh, fell in love but there was all this stuff about her that I wanted to ask my good friend Michelle in Melbourne about but I couldn't get hold of her, so I thought: 'Sod it, I'll just ask my mates at this horror movie forum I hang out at (yes, I know; ridiculous if not right out daft to ask members of a gore movie forum about relationships! Feel free to mock me, ha ha).

Anyway, to cut a long and excruciating story short; I wrote this forum piece about how much of a price you should pay (i.e. give up and stuff) for true love (she's a fantastic woman but also... problematic) and I got all these replies (both as forum posts and PMs). It was a total surprise. I had figured that if I got two answers I'd be happy. But I got a whole bunch of answers and pieces of good advise from these gore hounds (all male). So I guess never underestimate gore hounds' ability to think of romantic entanglements, ha ha. Actually they were all very good and thoughtful (well, except one from some 19 y.o. kid, LOL).

Anyway, apart from the replies on my love life, a few also commented on my writing skills (in a pleasant way I mean) and so... after a while I began to consider the possibility to do a blog. And, well, here it be! If you check the 'about me' thingy you'll see stuff about what I like and what not. In contradiction to many other blogs this one isn't going to be about just one subject like a special type of films or music or a diary or what have you. It'll just be about just anything I feel like writing about. It was kinda the same when I started to publish my first fanzine, Banned in Britain, back in '94. My initial idea was to do a full-on splatter movie mag but soon I got interested in other entertaining film genres than just gory horror movies. Not least cool movies from Hong Kong (or Hongkong if you will) and so eventually I began to include all kinds of weird and strange movies.

And so that's what this here blog's going to revolve around as well. All kindsa stuff. Whatever I think fit to include here. Anyway, it's late and I'll finish off here. It's been a long day, I'm tired, I still wanna watch another film (I'm staying home from work cos I've got a pulled muscle in my leg (veery painful) and altho I've already watched one movie tonight it was a crap one so I wanna end the day with a (hopefully) better one! Bye for now. Oh, and welcome y'all to this my new blog. Feel free to comment on whatever. Or to send me free money or lollies. Or something. Your friend, Jack J.