31 Days Of Horror Movies (2013 Edition), Part II

9. THE HUNGER (1983): Tony Scott's first feature is a super-stylish, super-weird, ultra-modern (well, in 1983, anyway) riff on vampires. The opening credits sequence has Bauhaus singing "Bela Lugosi's Dead", which is a good way to announce that this isn't going to be your father's bloodsucker film. Catherine Deneuve plays a centuries-old Egyptian succubus, David Bowie is her rapidly-aging stud, and Susan Sarandon stars as a scientist who is in line to be his replacement. There's a lot more style than substance going on here--it's ultimately pretty boring, but every time my attention wandered elsewhere, Scott would come in with the quick cuts and I'd miss something. Doesn't matter, I think the only reason anyone really remembers this movie is the sex scene between Deneuve and Sarandon anyway.

10. THE OMEN (1976): To this day, I've still never seen the 2006 remake of the classic Richard Donner Antichrist movie, and why would I? Everyone says it's a shot-for-shot remake, and I can't imagine a better take on this material--certainly considering the A-list cast of Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, and David Warner (the subject of what might be the greatest decapitation scene in film history), the striking cinematography of Geoffrey Unsworth (who was the DP on 2001: A Space Odyssey), and the pulse-pounding score courtesy of Jerry Goldsmith. The movie is a bit silly and overlong, but it makes for an apocalyptic good time anyway. I've still never seen the two follow-up films--maybe next year?

11. THE MIST (2007): Hands-down my favourite American horror film of the last 10-15 years, and certainly one of my favourite Stephen King adaptations as well. When a mysterious mist drifts into a small town in Maine (where else?) and traps a group of shoppers in a supermarket surrounded by Lovecraftian horrors, the human monsters inside (embodied by religious wacko Marcia Gay Harden, because it wouldn't be a King story without a religious wacko), may be worse the inhuman ones outside. Frank Darabont (who certainly knows his way around adapting King) takes the novella's ambiguous ending and gives it a heart-wrenching twist that qualifies as one of the most bleak conclusions to any movie ever made. Some of the on-the-cheap effects are a bit dodgy, but the icky monster designs (particularly the terrifyingly human-faced giant spiders hanging out in the pharmacy next door) are a gruesome delight.

12. DERANGED (1974): This oddball Canadian take on the murder spree of farmer/cannibal Ed Gein is fairly inept on most levels, but it manages to be an unsettling experience anyway. It plays like a TV special reenactment, narrated by a sober, bespectacled host who sometimes appears in the scenes alongside a creepy hayseed (Roberts Blossom, best known as the old man next door in HOME ALONE, and the "Stop And Be Friendly" guy in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND) who digs up his dead mother and starts stealing corpses to maintain her structural integrity. The super-cheap look of the sets and the gore makeup, combined with Blossom's pathetic character and the creepy organ music that plays throughout makes for a truly unnerving experience.

13. THE PROWLER (1981): I find I usually like the FRIDAY THE 13TH knockoffs better than FRIDAY THE 13TH itself (see: SLEEPAWAY CAMP, THE BURNING), but not this time, not even with the wildly nasty Tom Savini special effects. IN a 1945 prologue, a returning soldier is jilted by his girlfriend back home, and she and her new beau suffer a grisly fate at a homecoming dance. Thirty-five years later, at another dance, a killer in military gear starts bumping off a new crop of partygoers. Mostly, THE PROWLER is just boring--the identity of the murderer is immediately obvious, and his army-guy-with-a-pitchfork motif is just confusing (wouldn't a bayonet have been more appropriate?). Great exploding head at the end, at least.

14. PATRICK (1978): Quentin Tarantino cited this Australian thriller as a favourite in the terrific documentary NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, and it definitely has its charms--mostly courtesy of Robert Thompson's wide-eyed, unibrowed performance in the title role. But this story of a traumatized, comatose teen with psychic powers is pretty slow going. The opening is promising, and the freaked-out payoff is worth the wait, but there is a lot of sludgy middle to get through before you get there. I've heard good things about the recent remake starring YOU'RE NEXT's Sharni Vinson, so maybe the modern filmmakers have smoothed over PATRICK'S rough patches.

15. SHOCK WAVES (1977): The cool-as-hell video box art for this story of sea travellers besieged by a lost squadron of Nazi zombies is probably the best thing about this film. Peter Cushing is cool as the mad scientist responsible for the creation of the so-called "Death Corps", as is John Carradine as the crusty captain of the doomed ship, but neither of them is in it for much screen time. Worth watching for frequent scenes of Brooke Adams in a bikini, though.

16. SQUIRM (1976): I've always had a soft spot for this ridiculous tale of bloodworms driven into a frenzy by a freak electrical storm, and I can't really say why. It's not all that scary, it's kinda boring, the performances are largely lame, but...it's got something going for it. The use of a weird kids' song in the opening and closing is the kind of thing that is usually handled badly, but in SQUIRM it definitely adds a strange dimension to things. The secondary characters, backwoods hillbillies under siege by the hordes of carnivorous worms, kind of seem like they're playing themselves. The poster, pictured above, by the great Drew Struzan, is fantastic. And here's a piece of useless trivia--star Don Scardino went on to direct the recent Steve Carell-Jim Carrey dud THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE.

31 Days Of Horror--2013 Edition!

It's one of my favourite times of the year--the run-up to Halloween, which, as always, sees me watching 31 horror movies over the course of the month. At least 16 of them have to be new to me, if for no other reason than it gives me a chance to cross some movies that I should have seen already off some invisible list. My friend (and a fellow horror nut for as long as I can remember) Scott Rogers got me started doing this marathon four years ago now, and I look forward to it every year (check out Scott's Letterboxd page for updates on his progress!). Anyway, I am usually way more diligent about blogging my own progress (blogress?), but this year I started a new side project to this whole endeavour. I've been drawing some of favourite horror monsters and maniacs and posting one a day throughout the week over at my Tumblr, so if you've got a taste for more creeps & critters, go check 'em out. Doing those alongside my usual 31 Days program has slowed things down somewhat on the blogging end of things, but better late than never, I guess. Here are my thoughts on what I've watched so far.

1. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999): People turned on this one pretty quickly in the wake of its initial theatrical success, but I've always defended it. It's a great example of low-budget ingenuity--one where the nonexistent budget and DIY approach are all part and parcel of the concept. It's also a terrific case of horrors that are implied rather than overtly shown, which can be much scarier when done properly. I saw this one on opening night back in '99 and it absolutely terrified me--I'm actually pretty sure I haven't been camping since! This was the first time I'd gone back to BLAIR WITCH in over a decade and, while its impact may have been a bit blunted by all the found-footage knockoffs in its wake, it's still a pretty unnerving film and a very clever exercise in making scares on the cheap.

2. CARRIE (1976): I covered this one last year, but we were showing it at The Thrillema (a cult movie night I help curate with my pals Lauren and Jess) and I figured I could get away with dropping it into my list again. I wanted to revisit it in anticipation of the Kimberly Peirce remake anyway, and now, having watched Brian DePalma's version twice in as many years, I've lost interest in seeing a new filmed adaptation of Stephen King's first novel. I mean, what could a new filmmaking team, no matter how talented, possibly bring to the table? Every time I watch this movie I find myself hoping things will turn out better for poor Carrie White--that she'll make some friends, move out of her crazy mother's house, and go join the X-Men or something. Sadly, it never quite seems to work out that way.

3. IT LIVES AGAIN (1978): Larry Cohen's sequel to his own 1974 killer baby flick IT'S ALIVE picks up where the last movie left off. The mutant Davis baby may have gone done in a hail of bullets last time, but the first movie ended with a report of another killer tyke being born. This sequel ups the ante by letting loose THREE of the monstrous children. John P. Ryan reprises his role as the dad from the first film, while APOCALYPSE NOW's Frederic Forrest plays a not-so-proud papa this time around. This sequel is pretty dull, focusing mostly on the government's efforts to isolate and kill the babies at birth, while Ryan tries to save them and...I dunno, civilize them somehow? Maybe next year I'll get around to Cohen's three-quel, the awkwardly-titled ISLAND OF THE ALIVE.

4. ALLIGATOR (1980): Robert Forster's appearance in the penultimate episode of BREAKING BAD inspired me to revisit this monster mash, which logically follows up on those old rumours of kids flushing baby gators down the sewers when they get bored of them. Medical waste from a sinister research corporation causes one such lizard to grow to enormous size under the streets of Chicago. Forster plays a disgraced cop investigating the body parts that are turning up at sewage treatment plants. The movie really gets going when the title beast busts loose, culminating in a wedding massacre that has to be seen to be believed. John Sayles' tongue-in-cheek script keeps it light (an early sewer-worker victim is named Ed Norton in a tip of the hat to The Honeymooners), and the monster effects are a lot of fun (even if the miniature sets built for the regular-sized gator to crawl around in aren't always entirely convincing).

5. THE BURROWERS (2008): In this horror-western, a frontier family is kidnapped--presumably by marauding natives--and a posse goes on the hunt to get them back, only to learn that the real culprits are a nasty breed of pioneer predator that likes to bury its prey alive and feast on them at their leisure. A movie that's kind of a mix of THE SEARCHERS and TREMORS should be more up my alley, but THE BURROWERS lurches along slowly to a deflating, unsatisfying conclusion. Not even a terrific cast that includes Clancy Brown, Doug Hutchison, and HOUSE OF THE DEVIL's Jocelin Donahue could save it for me.

6. EXORCIST III (1990): This is one of my all-time favourite horror movies, an underrated gem that was unfairly dismissed at the time as an inferior sequel. In reality, it's a quietly disturbing slow burn of a supernatural detective story with tangential ties to the 1973 original (although to be fair, the studio did play these connections up as much as possible, even shoehorning in a late-game exorcism--William Peter Blatty's novel was actually titled LEGION, but 20th Century Fox wanted that name recognition in there). EXORCIST III is a body-swapping tale of serial killings in and around a catatonia ward, investigated by the first film's Lieutenant Kinderman (George C. Scott, taking over from the late Lee J. Cobb). Few scenes have ever scared the living crap out of me like the one with a sheet-covered killer, armed with a giant pair of shears, stalking a late-shift nurse). Highest possible recommendation.

7. THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE (1973): This haunted house flick, based on a story by Richard Matheson, is clearly the inspiration for the DON'T trailer, Edgar Wright's contribution to 2007's GRINDHOUSE. A group of paranormal researchers investigates the sinister manifestations at the Belasco estate, which drove a previous research team to madness and death (Roddy MacDowall plays the only survivor of the initial investigation). Everyone in this movie is magnificently sideburned and turtlenecked, and director John Hough (THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS) keeps everything suitably warped with a never-ending array of oddball perspectives and crazy camera angles.

8. GHOSTBUSTERS (1984): Honestly, what can I say about this one that everyone doesn't already know? Like many a Shakespeare play, almost every line in this movie is a classic. Bill Murray is still the quintessential '80s wiseass, Sigourney Weaver is still the quintessential '80s babe, Rick Moranis is still the quintessential '80s dork, and the whole movie is still hilarious from start to finish. The Richard Edlund effects are terrific, Elmer Bernstein's score is perfect (and contains the most romantic use of the theremin in cinema history), and Ray Parker Jr.'s theme song is as catchy as it ever was. Surprisingly, I'm not opposed to the possibility of a GHOSTBUSTERS reboot--I just think whoever does it needs to start fresh with a new cast of the funniest people in Hollywood and go for the same tone Ivan Reitman nailed this time around. Hey, it might work! Maybe...? New to me: IT LIVES AGAIN, THE BURROWERS, THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE 31 Days: 2010 Edition 31 Daya: 2011 Edition 31 Days: 2012 Edition

Big Day Downtown--2013 Edition

Back in 2011, I was asked to participate in the Downtown Halifax Business Commission’s Big Day Downtown event, wherein several local bloggers and social-media types were given $100 to spend in downtown Halifax--specifically, the area between Brunswick Street and the waterfront--and asked to write about how they spent the money. At the time, I was contributing to my friend Rachelle Goguen’s comic blog Living Between Wednesdays, so that’s where I posted about my outing. Due to a change in email address, I missed out on being involved in the 2012 event--I found my invitation in the inbox of a dormant email account several months later--but was lucky enough to be invited to participate in the 2013 incarnation.

As anyone who lives in Halifax knows, the area with which the DHBC concerns itself is something of a ghost town these days. Barrington Street used to be a bustling, thriving hub of commerce (one that, in the 1980s, was able to support not one but TWO giant record stores operating across the street from each other, Sam The Record Man and A & A’s). These days, it’s home to empty storefronts and a few businesses struggling to lure the commuters who only visit the street to take advantage of its many bus stops. There are still some great businesses along Barrington--Freak Lunchbox, Little Mysteries, and United Bookstore immediately come to mind--but they’re often surrounded by “FOR LEASE” signs. It breaks my heart to see the downtown area gutted like that, which makes this initiative by the DHBC more important than ever. My involvement this year posed a few challenges. For one thing, I hadn’t really been blogging for a while, but being asked to participate did give me the incentive to fold all my other blogs into this one all-purpose pop culture repository. For another, one of the requirements of this year’s Big Day Downtown involved the choosing of three cards, each with a random word that was meant to help shape our spending choices. For mine, I received “DRAMATIC”, “CREATIVE”, and “INSPIRATIONAL”.

Now obviously, as a sometime comic book creator, DeSerres Art Store at 1546 Barrington Street seemed an obvious choice for a place to spend money “CREATIVEly”. But I’m pretty well stocked on creative materials at the present time, so this forced me to be a bit more “CREATIVE” in my choices. As it happens, the encroaching deadline for my blog entry coincided with the birthday of my girlfriend, Hillary Titley, so I decided to get “CREATIVE” with my spending choices and blow the entirety of my budget (expanded from $100 to $150 this year!) celebrating the birthday of the lady who “INSPIRES” me on a daily basis. See what I did there? Now, Hillary is a pop-culture junkie like myself, which makes shopping for her a fun experience. She is a true partner in pop obsession, and one of the cultural events that we both are currently consumed with is the AMC crime drama Breaking Bad, now in its final season. Hillary collects bobble heads (sometimes called head knockers) of characters from several of her favourite TV shows and films, and her “Rogues’ Gallery” includes Kenny Powers from Eastbound & Down, Bane from The Dark Knight Rises, and the entire cast of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. I had hoped to include the new bobble head of BB star Walter White, but it’s not actually out yet--Strange Adventures, now ensconced in its new home at 5110 Prince Street (at the corner of Prince and Lower Water), will have them in stock soon, so I set aside a bit of my budget and gave Hillary the following IOU instead.

Breaking Bad was created by Vince Gilligan, who was part of the braintrust of another one of Hillary’s all-time favourite TV shows--The X-Files. Strange Adventures carries the new “Season 10” comic book from IDW Publishing, which picks up where the TV series left off, as well as the first of a new line of hardcover compilations of the 1990s comic books published by Topps Comics. Even though Hillary has all of the single issues of this series, I figured she’d enjoy a new deluxe edition for her bookshelf. I figured right.

Also from Strange Adventures, I bought her a new mini-comic called The Kate Effect by local creator Susan MacLeod. It deals with the phenomenon of Royal-watchers and Kate Middleton obsessives in a funny, self-deprecating, and self-contained read. Hillary took the morning off work to watch Kate get hitched to Prince William, so it’s safe to say she’s in the key demographic for this charming minicomic.

Strange Adventures isn’t the only downtown fixture to move to a new location recently (one that thankfully still falls within the guidelines of the Big Day Downtown event). Taz Records, previously located on Market Street, has a new home 1521 Grafton Street, right around the corner from Maritime Hobbies & Crafts. I hit them up hoping to find Hillary a Don Rickles or Henny Youngman compilation, but there were none to be found. Instead, I grabbed her a Weird Al Yankovic 12-inch single for his contribution to the Johnny Dangerously soundtrack, “This Is The Life” (the flipside features Al’s reggae spoof “Buy Me A Condo”). I also scored her a copy of Prince’s 1985 album Around The World In A Day, featuring the hit “Raspberry Beret”. We were lucky enough to catch Prince’s show at the Metro Centre in 2011, and we hope to see Weird Al perform live one day as well. Dare to dream...

Now, onto the “DRAMATIC” portion of our Big Day Downtown: the Atlantic Fringe Festival is in full swing right now, and we used our BDD cash to buy tickets to Love In The Time Of Time Machines, a comedic play starring Ned Petrie, Brian MacQuarrie, and Hillary’s friend Gillian English. We caught a Saturday night performance of this hour-long brain-twister, featuring a guy who uses a time machine to try and salvage (and occasionally sabotage) his troubled relationship. It plays like a Douglas Adams revision of Back To The Future, and if you’ve got a taste for zany SF and relationship angst, you should make time for it (we caught it at Danspace at 1531 Grafton, only seconds away from the new Taz location).

Once the play was wrapped up, we made tracks for Obladee Wine Bar, a classy spot located on the corner of Barrington and Sackville (right across from the Discovery Centre). We split a bottle of Nova 7, a delicious, locally-produced red wine. I’m not the kind of wine connoisseur who can properly wax on oaky aftertastes and fruity, aromatic flavouring, but I can tell you that we made short work of it (not to mention the chocolate board we ordered to go along with it). If you’re looking for a respite from the city’s dearth of pubs and you want to at least give the impression of class, Obladee is just the spot.

With just a few bucks left on our DHBC Visa gift card, we strolled a few blocks over to Tempo, a new-ish restaurant located across from Scotia Square at the corner of Duke and Barrington. A quick word of explanation--every January, Hillary and I make a point of watching the entire Rocky series from beginning to end, and we always chuckle at Rocky’s multiple appearances on the cover of a fictional magazine called Tempo (presumably the equivalent of Time in the Balboaverse). When Tempo opened last year, we began to joke about dropping by there to eat sometime. But when Hillary took a look at their dessert menu, she stopped laughing--she indulged in some chocolate pudding and I had some kind of cheesecake construction that was so ornate and well-designed, I felt kind of bad about eating it. That didn’t stop me, though.

So that was our Big Day Downtown. As I said previously, I wish there were even more businesses in the area to compete over my not-exactly-hard-earned money, but I think we did okay regardless. I hope that if I’m invited to participate in a similar event in 2014, I’m torn between too many choices. Those are the kind of problems you wanna have. PS--Happy Birthday Hillary!

Welcome To Cobra Island (and Pasketti Western, For That Matter)

So here we go again. Believe me, I'm all too aware that I leave a trail of dead blogs in my wake as though I were some sort of blood-crazed barbarian and the blogs were the savaged corpses of helpless peasants unlucky enough to cross my path. Years ago it was my comics blog All This And Earth-2, then I contributed regularly to my pal Rachelle Goguen's Living Between Wednesdays, with a side helping of my horror blog, House Of Haunts...along the way I contributed to the website NerdSpan, and even tried to start a podcast on this very spot, getting as far as recording four episodes (which seem to have somehow disappeared into the internet ether) before getting distracted by other business. So it goes. The idea now, in resurrecting this as a straight-up blog, is that I can hopefully fold all of my interests--comics, movies (scary ones and otherwise), books, TV shows, art, and general foolishness--into one occasionally updated (let's face it, in all likelihood, very occasionally) pop culture blog. See, I agreed to participate in my local (Halifax, Nova Scotia, that is) Downtown Business Commission's "Big Day Downtown" event, as I did a few years back, and I realized I should probably have some kind of blog type thing if I did plan to actually, y'know, blog about it. Not to mention, one of my favourite stretches of marathon blogging is just around the corner--every year I watch 31 horror movies (at least 16 of which, by some cockamamie rule, must be new to me), and blog about it. I did this in 2010 (for my friend Carsten Knox's movie blog, Flaw In The Iris--see? Another one!), then again for my House Of Haunts blog in 2011, and then again in 2012. This newly-relaunched blog might be a good venue for that. Also, every once in awhile I like to ramble at the internets, in more detail than 140 characters or a Facebook status update might allow. Hence this. Case in point: my buddy Sean Jordan is a bona fide recording artist, performing under the nom du rap Wordburglar. His latest album, Welcome To Cobra Island, is a concept album about G.I. Joe. Not either of the recent live-action motion pictures, nor the 12-inch action figures with realistic facial hair, but the 1980s, 3.75 inch toy line/cartoon/Marvel comic about America's Daring, Highly Trained Special Missions Force and their ongoing struggle against Cobra, A Ruthless Terrorist Organization Determined To Rule The World. You know the one. Anyway, after having worked with SJ at Strange Adventures Comix & Curiosities for several years, and continuing to be friends with him for several more after he moved to Toronto, I can safely say that there is no one on this planet who is more obsessed with Snake Eyes, Duke, The Baroness, Destro, Scarlett, Storm Shadow, Zartan, and friends than this guy. He eats, sleeps, and breathes this stuff. And now he's created an entire hip-hop album devoted to it, and it's outstanding.

Every track on Welcome To Cobra Island is told from the point of view of a G.I. Joe character. "Venomous Ideology" outlines the origin and philosophy of Cobra Commander, "Call Destro" is an introduction to the steel-headed arms dealer, "Chuckles (The Last Laugh)" is delivered by the Joe Team's Hawaiian-shirt-wearing undercover agent, and the most popular Joe member, Snake Eyes, gets three whole tracks to himself--"Letter From Snake Eyes" parts 1, 2, and 3--in which he details his transformation from Vietnam veteran to ninja master to silent commando. If you're of a certain age and well-versed enough in Joe lore, you'll be endlessly delighted by Destro claiming to have "invented puttin' snakes on a plane" and being "the only man to have Zarana AND the Baroness", or Snake-Eyes pleading to have the lips kept off his balaclava (in reference to the bizarro costume design featured in G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra). "I Don't Want To Go To Cobra-La" is a tour de force ode to the mythical reptile homeland featured prominently in the animated G.I. Joe: The Movie from 1986. Even if you didn't "once get busy in the back of a Buzz-Boar" (as the title character of "Rap Viper" claims to have), you'll still be amused and amazed at the scope of Welcome To Cobra Island's sense of goofy fun. You can get a taste of three tracks on a pay-what-you-want basis here, and the full, limited-edition album is available in limited release at select outlets, like the aforementioned Strange Adventures. Now you know, and knowing is...ah, you know the rest. And if you need further convincing of SJ's skills--and his geek cred--check out the video for his loving tribute to comic books, "Drawings With Words", shot at the 2012 Fan Expo convention in Toronto. You will not regret it.

Pasketti Western #4: Watching BEFORE WATCHMEN With Ben Jeddrie!

In the wake of last week's bombshell announcement that DC Comics would be publishing a series of WATCHMEN prequel miniseries this summer (without the involvement of either Alan Moore or Dave Gibbons), local favourite Ben Jeddrie and I discuss the ethics of the project, the array of creators involved, and the changes in creators' rights between now and WATCHMEN's original publication date. Ben also provided the nifty title card seen above. Check out more of his work here and here, and listen to the new episode by clicking HERE!

Podcast #3 With Kate Leth!

This week's guest is cartoonist (and my Strange Adventures co-worker Kate Leth, whose work can be found here, as well as in this week's issues of LOCKE & KEY and THE STRANGE TALENT OF LUTHER STRODE. Thrill as we discuss the perils of commissioned sketches, comics retail, internet haters, and, of course, the Oscar nominations. Click HERE to listen!

Podcast #2 With Mike Holmes!

Click here to listen to the second PASKETTI WESTERN interview, this time with the lovely and talented Mike Holmes! You can find Mike's work (including his incredible MIKENESSES self-portrait series, like the bang-on Chris Ware tribute above) at mikeholmesdraws.com. This interview is a bit sloppy and unfocused, which is entirely my fault--I probably could have prepared a bit better, so that's on me. However, I think we still cover some cool topics, like dueling (and very different) espionage movies at the box office, superhero movies, how to break into the comics biz, and why audiences should demand to be challenged by their entertainment.