Zombie Logic Press Productions VHS Intro Animation

Growing up as a teen in the 80's the video store was a sacred place in my life. And the animations for a hundred different horror movie distribution companies still elicit a Pavlovian response from me. There's still a void in my life sometimes on Friday night when I feel this irresistable draw towards the video store, but there isn't one around.

Hearing of my longing for those days, and knowing I wanted nothing more in this life than an animation for my own production company, Zombie Logic Press, my workout partner and long-time friend Tim Stotz set out to work.

And today after our workout at the Y, instead of doing cardio, we decided to finish this...

Or rather, he decided to finish it while I sat there and drank a Candian Club on the rocks. 

Well, I did help a little, by providing the sound effects. And now forever after I have my own animation for my production company. Now we just have to finish my movie Dead Drunk. 

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I Was Here

Going to spend the night here at Zombie Logic Press headquarters on the Holmes Block. Just rented Enter the Devil on Amazon video. Haven't written a word here in two months. Not a damn thing to say about anything going on. I play Dungeons and Dragons on Tuesdays, and nothing that happens in those sessions strikes me as any more bizarre and surreal that was has happened around me this year.

We got a piano this week. And a roll top desk much like the one my parents had in their home. Nothing fancy, just a department store style roll top desk, but when I saw it at the thrift store I knew I had to have it. Been looking for five years now, and this one just appeared when we were trying to waste a few minutes browsing on our way to something else. I bought her a piano and she bought me a desk.

Night of the Living Dead has been on a constant loop on the VHS lately when I'm here at the apartment. 

recently I stopped collecting vinyl records and started collecting cassette tapes instead, for a couple of reasons. First, vinyl records are just too expensive, and I never really liked them in the first place. I was happy when cassettes, then compact disks came along. I just wanted listening to the records at all, but I have no fear about putting a five dollar cassette in my boombox and listening to something like Van Halen or Tom Petty.

Enter the Devil is a really effective and unique low budget horror movie shot in Texas in the early 70's. A nice addition to the Satanic cult genre that was so en vogue then. And a unique take on it. 

I was here.

P.S. The Devil never does enter Pin It

Kolchak: The Night Stalker: They Are, They Have Been, They Will Be...

Received these wonderful, untouched VHS tapes in the mail Saturday. Got them for the price of postage. All twenty episodes of one of my favorite television shows of all time: Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Plus the televions movies that preceded the television show, The Night Stalker, and The Night Strangler. 

I decided to start my watching party tonight with "They Are, They Have Been, They Will Be...", and episode that aired on September 27, 1974. It's about aliens, but it's also intermingled with a story of Kolchak desperately trying to finish his reportig so he can get to the Cubs' World Series game, which he has tickets for.

Few television characters, maybe even only Hawkeye Pierce, are more beloved to me than Carl Kolchak. It is a shame there were only twenty episodes, but it's also a mini miracle there were twenty episodes. The special effects are never much more than comical, and intentionally so, but it all works in ways movies that have spent 100 million dollars on special effects never did. 

Dan Curtis, of Dark Shadows, had either produced or directed the two television movies that preceded the series, but was neither producer or director of any of the television episodes. 

It may take me several months to get through these with fantasy football season upon us, but hopefully I'll have time.  Pin It

Elvira Thriller Video Standee

I feel like this item might just be a myth, like the Monster's Genealogical Chart. 

Elvira Thriller Video Standee

"It was in an estate we bought out. He was a paper collector and had tons of movie, video posters, standees and magazines. He had video store and movie house connections and his son worked for Peaches record stores in the 70s and early 80s. That's about all I know on this item.

That's all I need to know. Maybe there's not another one of these in tact in the whole Universe.

If you don't own a video store in 1985 where the hell do you put something like this?

What lies behind the Elvira Thriller Video Standee? 

2026 Update: I sold this and my complete Thriller Video collection on Ebay a few years ago when I became a Zen Buddhist. I hope it all brings whoever bought it as much happiness as it brought me. But also that when the time is right they'll let it go and find its next destination. 

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Thriller Video Hosted By Elvira, Mistress of the Dark: Alabama's Ghost

Alabama's Ghost is one of the Thriller Video releases that was not also an episode of Elvira's Movie Macabre. Although I have the movie on both VHS and Beta, I've never seen it before, so I found it on You Tube and am about ten minutes into watching it right now. And I don't have one damn idea or another what is happening. Like all the Thriller Videos, Elvira does do an into and outro but does not appear to comment during the movie, unfortunately.

"And it's me again, the video beauty with the cute little booty, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. And I'm just the gal who can't say no. Well, actually, I did say no once, but only when asked if I had said no before. Oh, golly. How do you like my outfit? (Voices off) Shut up, sister. If I want your opinion I'll beat it out of you. She's just jealous because she's always trying to impersonate me. Nice try, sister. You can pad the bra all you want, but you'll never get your hair as high as mine. So, there, nnn. Well, I've got a great movie for you tonight. I mean, great that is if you're into Surrealism. I tell you, it has got everything. Ghosts, robots, vampires, voodoo, and vanishing elephants. Not to mention drooling idiots. Tonight's movie is called Alabama's Ghost. No, no, no, it's not about some cotton picking poltergeist, it's about this guy who's name is Alabama, which makes a lot of sense because his sister's names are Virginia, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Anyway, don't let this scare you, but Alabama is being haunted by a ghost. Well, if you're ready, I'm ready. And it looks like Alabama's just itching to begin. Enjoy the movie, and I'll see you at intermission."

It's entirely possible there's some sort of plausible plot to this movie, which I entirely missed while I was typing out Elvira's introduction. Perhaps something like an aspiring jazz musician/forklift driver mistakenly drives his forklift through a wall and finds the secret stash of a dead magician, who shares the secret of his magic, asking only that Alabama doesn't reveal any of the secrets he has learned. Does he? No idea yet. 

After meeting this groovy promoter who's mind is blown by his act, Alabama takes it on the road, all leading up to a final performance where he will perform Carter The Great's most famous trick: a disappearing elephant. There are long scenes of dancing Hippies. I'm actually watching Night of the Comet on another screen and have only looked over three or four times and it all seems like a weird mess. 

Then another musical number with go-go dancers. This is actually a pretty good musical number reminiscent of Sly and the Family Stone, then Alabama takes the stage with his overblown voice. 

But all arcane secrets come with a steep price, and soon Carter the Great begins to haunt Alabama. "I am the spirit of Carter the Great. And I come to warn you. Heed my warning before you die." Then something about robots and vampires. "I just met an old white racist ghost." Whoa, the woman he was in bed with just turned into a vampire. He's making a run for it. Then there's a scene where the vampire chick chases him through an abandoned little village in makeup reminiscent of Demons and he somehow comes to a door where his mother takes him in. 

You were promised voodoo, and Alabama's Ghost delivers. Rejuvenated after a voodoo ceremony, Alabama is back on the road. What, what? What the hell was that scene about? His promoter is striking a deal with a futuristic media conglomerate type who wants to use the vanishing elephant act as a springboard for his mind control network. Or something like that might have happened. With a little more effort this movie could have been really bonkers. 

In this scene the voodoo priest has returned to save Alabama from the ghost of Carter the Great, to which Alabama says "He's a racist. Tell him to go away." Then everything goes a little apeshit and there's a Dr. Caligula and a conveyor belt of chicks that vampires in dark hoods are feeding on and some mumbo jumbo about converting the whole thing into some sort of digital broadcast that can be used to control the minds of the world's population. 

"He's got twin Frankensteins, and they're trying to kill Alabama." This movie has officially crossed over into WTF land. 

"This is an out of sight experience."

Sort of.

For some reason that makes no sense, this movie reminds me of Phantom of the Paradise, a movie that was released a year later. 

I'm about ten minutes away from the end of this film when i realize I'm watching something truly unusual and completely idiosyncratic, and apparently that was evident in all four films by director Frederic Hobbs. Hobbs wrote, directed, and/or produced four highly distinctive and idiosyncratic films: Troika (1969), Roseland (1971), Alabama's Ghost (1973), and Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973), none of which I have ever seen before, and all of which I will soon be watching. I don't do reviews, per se, I just do reactions, and one of my favorite reactions when I encounter a piece of art is "What the fuck did I just see." 

What the fuck did I just see?

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Elvira's Movie Macabre Season 2, Episode 19: Craze, Starring Jack Palance

On the evening of January 29, 1983, exactly one week before The Monster Club, the movie Craze aired as Episode 19 of season 2 of Elvira's Movie Macabre. I do not remember seeing this movie, so I will be watching it and live blogging it tonight after I hear the voices upstairs subside so I can put on the earphones. 

Before I even begin watching Craze I notice the director, Freddie Francis, had directed many horror movies I am quite fond of, including Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, Torture Garden, Tales From the Crypt, Tales That Witness Madness, and The Ghoul. He came up through the ranks working as a clapper boy then making films during his WWII deployment. He got his break directing in 1962 at Hammer, and like many classic horror directors and actors, spent the rest of his career being typecast in the genre. It is sad to hear that story over and over when the movies these people made endure, and have made so many people happy. 

The movie opens with Jack Palance and group of worshippers sacrificing a woman to C3PO. I bet they got a cease and desist letter from George Lucas before the end of shooting this scene.

There's a a lot of nudity in this scene, and Jenny said I should start doing warnings about how much violence or nudity are in these movies, so warning, warning, boobs. And violence.

Jack Palance plays an off-center antique dealer who holds nightly rituals in his basement trying to curry favor from the African demigod Chuku. 

After the first nightly ritual where the Black woman offers her blood, everyone goes upstairs, then this older woman comes down and says "That's my Chuku" and insists the idol is hers and tries to take it back. It goes badly for her. C3PO is apparently pleased, spurring Palance on to even more and more creative and grisly sacrifices (probably, I haven't actually seen the movie yet, but I'll give you a dog biscuit if that's not what happens).

Chuku was a creator deity of the Ibo people of Nigeria.

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Readers of this blog will no doubt remember Julie Ege from The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula and The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, which are the same movie. In this scene Palance is no doubt about to sacrifice Ege to Chuku. But first some casual drug use and a romp. This movie was listed in Britain's infamous Video Nasties. 

Dance for Chuku, dammit. Dance.

That's no way to treat Julie Ege.

Let's see what Neal Mottram gets from Chuku for Julie Ege. He got a drawer full of gold coins for the old bat.

A: Ming vases

Then he scares an old lady with this mask and I have to be honest I lost interest and went to bid on a Hot Wheel on Ebay. If Chuku is paying out Ming vases for Julie Ege maybe just a subscription to National Geographic for scaring old ladies with a kook mask? Got about forty minutes to ride out with this one and I have to say I'm not into it. I feel like I've started this movie before in the past and not been able to get through it. Just not my cup of tea, but maybe other horror fans will like it.

There a couple of musical numbers in subterranean English pubs that are reminiscent of The Amen Corner in Scream and Scream Again. 

Not sure what happened with the Diana Dors story arc. I wanted to talk about seeing her in The Alfred Hithcock Hour episode "Run For Doom" and then later in From Beyond the Grave. But now there's only a few minutes left and for some reason he has scheduled an appointment with a massage therapist/dominatrix and I have no idea how any of this fits into the story, but I did admittedly just skip past a half hour of dialogue.

With eight minutes left in the movie Palance schedules a massage with dominatrix Suzy Kendall. Somebody definitely isn't in for a happy ending. Mostly at this point it's me because I just want to go to bed. 

Eventually the movie ends and there are credits. By modern standards the sex, nudity, drug use, and violence are comparatively tame, so I don't know about being a Video Nasty, but maybe a video meh. 







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Thriller Video, Hosted By Elvira: The Turn of the Screw

Thriller Video was a short-lived distributor of VHS and Beta tapes who began releasing tapes in February 1985, and released tapes through 1989. They were notable for their big box format, and securing the rights to distribute what are now considered classic horror movies, such as: zombie master Lucio Fulci's Seven Doors of Death and the cannibal classic Make Them Die Slowly. Perhaps their greatest coup was securing horror movie host Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, to present 24 tapes that they would begin releasing bi-monthly at the beginning of 1985. Unlike the aforementioned gory movies, Elvira refused to do hardcore horror movie, cruelty to animals, or gore for the sake of gore, so it was perfect that she would introduce the 24 Thriller Videos she did that were mostly episodes of a British series titled Hammer House of Horrors, with some B movies thrown in.

As I get closer to finishing my collection of Thriller Videos hosted by Elvira I have learned some of the titles are much more difficult to find than others. For instance, in over five years of active collecting, I have only seen titles like The Turn of the Screw, NATAS: The Reflection, The Human Duplicators, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde les than three times, usually only once, and I unfortunately was not able to secure them for my collection when I saw them. But I can do the next best thing: write about them.

Turn of the Screw Thriller Video

Turn of the Screw is a tape I have seen listed for sale one time in five years. I did not win that auction, so I'm still waiting for it to come up again. 

I also haven't seen the 1974 made for tv movie, but after watching a Kolchak: The Night Stalker a thon a few nights ago, and being a big fan of Trilogy of Terror and Dark Shadows, I'm always happy to watch a Dan Curtis production. 

In the 1898 novella written by Henry James an unnamed narrator listens to Douglas, a friend, read a manuscript written by a former governess whom Douglas claims to have known and who is now dead. The manuscript tells the story of how the young governess is hired by a man who has become responsible for his young nephew and niece after the deaths of their parents. He lives mainly in London and is uninterested in raising the children. The two children turn out to not be exactly what they appear.

This production starts Lynn Redgrave as the governess, Miss Jane Cubberly, oh, I'm just discovering this as I type, James "Shadmock" Laurenson as Peter Quint. Thriller Video fans will of course remember Laurenson as the tender-hearted Shadmock in Thriller Video's The Monster Club

There's almost no chance I'll take the risk of putting this tape in a VCR when I eventually do get it, so if I ever watch it most likely I'll do it on YouTube. 

Good luck with your own Thriller Video collection, and good luck next time this one comes up for auction on Ebay.

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Thriller Video: The Human Duplicators

The Human Duplicators is on Ebay for the first time in the four years that I have collected Thriller Videos hosted by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. I have never seen the movie, and it's unlikely I'll watch it on this tape as the bidding is already at $76.00 with an entire week left in the auction.

The box design of the Human Duplicators is one of twoI know of that differ from the other 21 boxes in the series. The other is Natas:The Reflection. 

The back of the box isn't much different from the other videos in the series. This copy, the only one I've ever seen, appears to be in good shape. The movie is about an alien from a distant galaxy who comes to Earth to take over by creating an army of zombies shaped like pottery. I guess that description sounds kind of interesting, but I doubt I'll rush out and try to find a way to watch it after this. 

The movie was released in 1965, and I see Hugh Beaumont is in the cast. How awesome is that? Probably not 150-250 dollars worth, which is what I estimate this video will go for. 

The Human Duplicators on VHS

Between VHS and Beta versions, I have 21 of the 46 movies released on Thriller Video and hosted by Elvira. My favorites are The Monster Club and The Silent Scream. Many of them come from episodes of Hammer House of Horrors, which was a one hour television series, so they had to pad those with additional footage. The Silent Scream was actually one of those episodes, as well as The Thirteenth Reunion and Guardian of the Abyss. These are generally high quality stories and well-written and acted. 

Almost all the movies in this series are PG13 or tamer, and Elvira refused to host any movies that had graphic violence or animal cruelty, but as I type that I realize the topic of The Silent Scream was animal cruelty. Nonetheless, the movies are all rather harmless and good fun. The Monster Club is no doubt the most fun movie in the series. I'll write an update about this video in seven days.

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The Halloween III Of Outsider Poetry

I resisted the urge to buy a VHS copy of the original MCA Rainbow release of Halloween III and the 1987 re-release. It was a nice deal, and I'd really like these tapes, but they fall into an odd category as far as collecting or just having to watch. They're not collectible grade, per se, but they're too expensive to feel good about putting into a VCR I bought for $4.99 at Goodwill.

                Halloween 3, the only good Halloween movie.


Also, I'm never sure why anyone who talks about Halloween III has to explain that Michael Myers is not in the movie. For me it's the best Halloween movie of the series. Actually, it's the only one I've ever seen, or will see, because slasher movies don't appeal to me in the least.

This afternoon I'm trying to do a self-install of my ATT equipment so I can switch my internet over from Comcast, which I am ambivalent about because Comcast is one of the few services in my life that actually works for me, but they insist on charging me too much, and trying to creep that charge up to nearly $100/month every time I take my eyes off them. Still waiting for the lights to go green on my ATT router.

Jenny gave me a cone-shaped vacuum, and when I look at it charging it looks like a witch's hat.

I have two different brands of computers, and they have the delete button in different places, which causes me more trouble than it should any rational person who is able to adjust to his surroundings.

I have watched The Beast Must Die over twenty times in September, and I still can't tell you who the werewolf is. Last night I watched All the Colors of the Dark and Daughters of Satan and found both entertaining with the sound off. 

I organized all my outsider poems for the next book last week. It turns out I've only written about 75 poems in ten years. Most of them I didn't consider very good.

Several of my wide receivers in fantasy football have turned up lame this week. You never have enough wide receivers in fantasy football these days. I went with the wide receivers in early rounds strategy, and still they are dropping like flies and I get beaten by Marvin Jones. 

That's the way it is.

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NATAS: The Reflection On Thriller Video

Sort of a bummer of a night compared to expectations. Duke winning another NCAA championship is like the jockos winning in every 80's movie. Then I was slightly disappointed in the season finale of Better Call Saul. To make things worse, I lost out on an Ebay auction for the only copy of Thriller Video The Human Duplicators I've seen available in over a year. I actually came in just two seconds too early because I thought $105 would be enough to buy a VHS tape of a movie no one has ever seen or cared about. It wasn't. But it's not much fun even if you do win one of those auctions when you have to pay top of the line prices. Most of the fun of assembling my Thriller Video collection is the hunt, and I know I'll see this tape again, and probably not have to pay $105. Anyway, as soon as I lost that auction I had a feeling if I looked immediately I would find a previously unseen Thriller Video for sale. And I did. I found a copy of NATAS: The Reflection, a Thriller Video I haven't seen up for auction at all in the year I've been looking. The seller's pictures and description were vague, but it was only $18, and I knew if I didn't press the buy it now button immediately I'd regret it. So I took a chance at $18 without any real pictures or description that this could be a solid copy of...

Natas: The Reflection

It's one of two of the 24 Thriller Videos hosted by Elvira that don't have her prominently featured on the cover. The other one, ironically, is...

The Human Duplicators

So, maybe in a week or so when I get NATAS: The Reflection, I'll be pleasantly surprised that I scooped up one of the rarest Thriller Videos for a great price, but I don't expect that. Either way, I can use it as a placeholder until I get a stellar copy. Eventually, my ridiculous plan to collect all 24 Thriller Videos in both Beta and VHS will come to fruition, then I'll have to come up with some other idiotic way to waste my money and time. 

I'll post a picture of NATAS: The Reflection when I get it. 

Thriller Video ad circa 1985

April 23, 2015: It turns out the tape was a later release by Avid Video. Completely worthless, but in very nice condition. Mostly because no one has ever actually watched this movie. The hunt continues.

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Magnetic Video and the Birth of the Video Store

In a 1970 piece written for the New Yorker, Lillian Ross spotlighted executive Samuel Gelfman, and the new invention he would soon offer to the world: Cartrivision. What is Cartrivision, you might ask? Well, it's two things, really. It's the precursor to both commercially available VHS and Beta tapes, and it's also a color television and subscription service ala Netflix. The plan was to sell the Cartrivision set, which retailed for $1350, in stores such as Macy's, Montgomery Ward, and Sears.

Cartrivision 1970

The square Cartrivision cassettes had two half inch reels and could record 114 minutes. Initially 200 movies were offered for rental, including Dr. Strangelove, High Noon, and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. They could be played, but had to be returned to the retailer to be rewound. The cost of the Cartrivision television and rentals made it cost-prohibitive, and after 13 months Cartrivion went out of business in 1973. It is reported most of their movies had disintegrated in an insufficiently cooled warehouse. 

It wasn't until 1977 when Magnetic Video Corporation began releasing recorded motion pictures for personal use on both the Beta and VHS format. Magnetic Video founder Andre Blay approached cash-strapped 20th Century Fox and convinced them to allow him to release fifty of their titles, which Blay sold via his Video Club of America where he didn't rent, but sold his titles by catalogue. 

That same year an entrepreneur named George Atkison opened the first "video store" in America by purchasing one copy each of all of Video Club of America's titles in both the VHS and Beta format and renting them from his storefront in Los Angeles to members of his Video Station rental company who paid either a $50 yearly fee or $100 lifetime membership. A membership allowed a member to rent any of the titles for $10 a day. 

Over the next four years Magnetic Video added titles from Viacom, Embassy, ABC, and finally Warner Brothers and United Artists. Eventually 20th Century Fox purchased Magnetic Video, and it was eventually renamed 20th Century Fox Video.

By mid 1985 the United States had gone from that one video store location at 12011 Wilshire Blvd. to 15,000 locations, which seemed to be everywhere, including supermarkets, gas stations, and laundromats.  Pin It

Porky's II: The Next Day

I spent the first three hours of my birthday watching Porky's and Porky's II: The Next Day on VHS. Had a few Tab Colas, and a sleeve of snack-size Milky Way bars. It's hard for me to understand why these two movies have been relegated to the cultural dustbin of sleezy teenage comedies that became such a category in the 1980's. These might have been early examples of that supposed genre, but they certainly aren't encapsulated by it, and anyone who dismisses them as such is doing the movies, and themselves as a viewer, an injustice. Granted, the raunch flows freely, and is done deftly in these movies. But it's never the central focus of what is happening. These are movies about a time (the late 50's) and a place (Southern Florida) that the writers grew up in and knew very well. There's nothing generic, unlike most teenage sex comedies, about the place, the time, or the characters. These are teenagers who talk and think about sex because, that's what teenagers do. But they do other things. They encounter serious issues such as racism, anti-Semitic rednecks, sexism, and censorship in a place that was very much pre-civil rights. The language is salty and authentic. They say in what my opinion teenagers might have said at that time in that place. So, to see the movie dismissed by so many reviewers and remembered by many others for a few scenes that are funny, and iconic, but not representative of the movies altogether. I love these two movies.

Porky's and Porky's II: The Next Day on splendid VHS

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Oasis of the Zombies and Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies Are the Same Movie

It took me two years to figure out Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies and Oasis of the Zombies are the same movie. You might ask, how the hell does such a thing happen. You probably wouldn't ask, but for the sake of this ersatz blog entry some hypothetical person must ask, so let's assume you did. But first I have to go to Google and get pictures of Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies and Oasis of the Zombies, which are the same movie. Here's some of the stuff that might have happened in the movie.

Two chicks at the Oasis

These two chicks really like each other. So they decide to head to a remote oasis in the middle of the desert and do whatever it is they're about to do.

This guy sees what they're doing, and it causes his eyes to bug out. I call this zombie Bugeye Johnson. Inexplicably throughout the movie people keep showing up at this oasis that has been forgotten since an ambush planted a squad of Nazis there during WWII. If you decide to watch it with the sound on you'll discover there is some plot. I never have, so I'm not sure what the plot is. And that's part and parcel of the explanation as to why it took me two years to figure out Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies and Oasis of the Zombies are the same movie. More than that, they're really neither one, because the movie is actually titled Treasure of the Living Dead, but don't tell every video store in the history of video stores that.

In the 1990's and in the early part of this Millennium there used to be this thing called a video rental store, where you could go rent Beta or VHS tapes and go home and put them in your Betamax or VHS player. Near the advent of the 3rd Millennium they decided only DVD copies would be available, then most of the movies disappeared altogether. 

Now they had these video stores everywhere. Gas stations, laundromats, supermarkets. Video stores. And each one had a slightly different selection, so it was incumbent upon one who wanted to see new movies to travel around outside of the house (I know, crazy) in search of these new videos. But movie distributors were tricky. They knew you didn't know Zombie2 was actually the Fulci classic Zombie, but packaged as Zombie 2 because in Italy Dawn of the Dead was packaged as Zombie so the real Zombie couldn't be titled Zombie it had to be titled Zombie 2. Here's another picture from Treasure of the Living Dead for no good reason.

What do the zombies do in Treasure of the Living Dead in between bands of tourists and treasure hunters showing up to be eaten? Maybe they have a band. I don't know. This is actually a really nice shot from Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies, err, Oasis of the Dead.

In closing I'd like to say the reason it took me two years to figure out Oasis of the Dead and Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies are really the same movie, and that movie is actually titled Treasure of the Living Dead is that I never watched it. I literally rented it almost a dozen times before I turned the sound on. I blame the patriarchy. Misogynist filmmakers like Jess Franco made so many movies that all looked the same that it was years before I looked up enough from my reading to see that these were the same two women in the opening scene being eaten over and over and over. 

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The Wailing aka Murder Syndrome aka Fear aka Delrium aka Satan's Alter

I really love the compilation movie Zombiethon. Probably far more than I should, but there are sentimental reasons involved. In the late 80's and early 90's I used to rent the Wizard Video big box VHS version of Zombiethon every six months from the Dollar Video. These were the days when the video store was a destination. You got your snacks, you got an armload of videos, and maybe you didn't leave the apartment for a few days. Later I found out maybe you also had a personality disorder, but if you've got to have something, having a disorder that leads you to hole up in your dark apartment for four days eating instant Won Ton soup, drinking Tab Cola, and watching zombie movies on VHS doesn't seem like the worst thing that could happen. 

There are seven or eight zombie movies Zombiethon draws clips from. I can't name them all off hand right now. I actually probably can... Zombie Lake, A Virgin Among the Living Dead, Oasis of the Zombies, The Invisible Dead, The Alien Dead, Zombie, and the movie I'm watching tonight (if it ever loads on the Amazon player, that is) for the first time. It's called Murder Syndrome. And it's called Fear. And it's called Delirium. And it's called Satan's Alter. And ultimately they decided to title it The Wailing for worldwide English-language release. 

There's really no good reason for me to have rented it at one in the morning, but nonetheless, here we go. 

I guess seeing that box with the Wizard Video logo I'd probably like to find a copy of this on VHS. Pretty standard opening. Actor gets overwrought, tries to strangle and actress during filming of a movie, decides he needs a vacation, so retreats to an eerie family estate to relax. And it is is eerie. The actor's mother, who is supposedly dying, but still looks pretty dang good, seems really happy to see her son. Uncomfortably happy, and is terribly disappointed to see her son has brought along his girlfriend. I wonder what's going to happen. 

Methinks Anita Strindberg is a little too hot to have a strapping thirty year old actor son. But nudity to the rescue. What next? Are you going to tell me the actor's friends start showing up and putting themselves in precarious positions where they could easily be knocked off in gruesome ways by someone, or some thing, that inhabits the estate?

Listen, I'm just going to have a quick shag with Laura Gemser, you know, the chick who played one of the Emmanuels. What could go wrong? 

Ahhhhhh. Shit, I hope nobody saw that. They'll put her spleen back in, right? This is turning out to be a very bad weekend. What else could even possibly go wrong?

Son of a bitch. Listen, I'm going to go watch the final 57 minutes of this movie and have a cup of tea. If you want to know what happens, you go ahead and rent The Wailing on Amazon, or wait for Netflix to add it, which, let me look at my watch, ain't never going to happen. Seems pretty good from the bit I was able to watch between typing this and having only bar of connectivity right now. 

I lied, I'm back. Because this chick goes down the stairs, runs into the spider, decides to run through the woods, then ends up back in the basement, where these two figures are waiting for her as Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" plays. And that's pretty more than ok for two a.m. I'll let you know if anything equally that good happens in the last thirty minutes. 








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Tuesday Is Soylent Green Day

I re-watched Soylent Green on a VHS tape last night, as the gods intended. Seems like with this movie, The Omega Man, and Planet of the Apes, Charlton Heston was one of the great science fiction actors of all time. There's a scene in Soylent Green where Heston, who portrays a cop, plunders the apartment of a homicide victim for a slice of beef and some apples, delicacies in this bleak future, and he and Edward G. Robinson eat them in a scene celebrating the miracle of food. It's a scene that is hard to watch without wanting to go to the kitchen and just revel in all the variety of fresh foods we have available to us in America.

The joy of something we take for granted, like an apple, is conveyed with some good acting in this scene from Soylent Green. I paused the tape at this point, suddenly overtaken with an overwhelming desire for a piece of fresh fruit. I live in a food desert here in the fifth most dangerous neighborhood in America, but fortunately there is one convenience store that puts out a few pieces of fruit each day. Bananas, apples, and oranges. It was only 9:13, and since they are open until ten I set out. It was a nice night, and I don't pay too much attention to the crime statistics, as I have been walking this neighborhood for the five years I've lived here now without any problems. But when I got to convenience store I was disappointed to see they had closed early, as they commonly do. The next closest piece of fruit was over an hour away on foot, so I abandoned my quest for fruit and went back to my apartment dejectidly. 

I wanted to mope. I really, really wanted a piece of fruit, and most of the food choices I had left at my apartment looked like Soylent Green. But I cheered up when I saw them make a fuss over a real egg in the movie. I had eggs. In this future a jar of strawberry jam was so scarce it sold for $150. I happened to have a small jar of strawberry jam I had been ignoring for over a year. I got out my eggs, my small jar of strawberry jam, grabbed a hunk of cabbage that was leftover from the last time I made a corned beef, and I had a feast. I also had milk and peanut butter. I ate it all. I made a glutton of myself. And I was grateful for every ounce of it. 

Water flowed from the faucets, uninterrupted electricity powered my utilities, a nice breeze flowed through the window. Thank you, science fiction, for creating a scenario of the future so bleak that even my modest accomodations here in this real present seem even that much better. If you're having trouble appreciating what little you have in this life, watch this movie. You'll cheer up. 

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Screamtime (1983)

A couple of jabronis steal a bunch of VHS tapes from a video store and beat it to this chick's apartment, where she just conveniently happens to be taking a shower. Jabroni number 1 informs her they will be watching the purloined videos at her place, then raids her refrigerator for some chicken and Budweiser. All three sit down on the couch and he puts in the video tape, which goes right into story number one, which involves...

A henpecked children's entertainer who is bullied by everyone, including his punk-ass stepson and his gang of droogies, is pushed too far when they destroy the puppets he loves. It's hard not to hope he won't use his puppets to get revenge on the lot of them. Is he crushed by a garbage truck because he's kind of a ninny and gets bitch-slapped by his stepson's girlfriend? Probably.

Let's face it, the only thing you're going to remember from the second story is this woman's awful glasses. We all know why you're here, anyway. The garden gnome story. So, go ahead and fast forward through story number two, a snoozer about an apparition on a bicycle, and let's get to story number 3. 

Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes!

Don't mess with little old English ladies' garden gnomes, if you know what's good for you. Screamtime. An interesting aspect of this movie is the three shorts are all British, while the wrap-around story is shot in New York. Good ending. You won't hate me for recommending this if you're a horror fan.




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