Had to wake up early this morning to get to Forever 21 for Cub. The reason? They take the dresses off of the mannequin on Friday mornings and there was this modish black dress, the last one in stock, that Cub had to have. Unfortunately we were the 2nd ones there and almost did not get it, but fortunately it did not work for the girl who had first dibs. Cub scored! The weekend is not ruined!
I sent off a submission to The Horror Blog for their Horror Roundtable, but it was late. I think it's going to get published anyway, so check back with them. I wrote about The Gate II, a pretty disappointing movie for most fans. It comes across as a 90's movie, but it really was made in 1989 - same director, Tibor Takács, and everything. That guy seems to have slipped into obscurity, though he still is making direct-to-DVD and TV movies.
Hey look, the scenefashion.com school bus is on fire. All right, I admit, it never got to really blazing, but it really is burning if you look closely. Notice how I cropped the picture so you can see that puddle of dried splodge in the bottom right hand corner...
1. I've decided an upcoming feature in this blog is gonna be me reviewing recent DVDs that I have not seen. I am such a horror expert that I can review without even watching. Wow.
2. Many of Lawrence Klein's film school shorts are online now on his myspace!
3. "Bad pop on Myspace foretells some bleak days to come" - a column from a local free weekly.
4. Last night's double feature at The Egyptian, Corruption and The Skull, was very entertaining. Corruption (1967) started out as a pretty solid remake of Eyes Without a Face, then transformed into a "so bad I can't believe my eyes" type of mess. One of those that has to be seen to be believed. I'd have liked for the movie to have retained it's dignity, but at the same time must admit that the crazy twists and over acting were pretty spectacular. Before the movie a speaker from the theater mentioned that we would be seeing Peter Cushing as we never had before. I think he must be referring to the Cushing character losing his cool on screen and getting into some very physical fights where he gets tossed about. Then there are the murders as well, where Cushing works himself up into an active violent frenzy. It's all a great deal rougher than what I've seen in the Hammer movies and perhaps borderline disturbing, though quite a bit of silliness (cartoonish thugs, fairly bad FX, canned dialogue) takes away from the impact of it all. Still, the audience was into it. Not on DVD.
The Skull (1965, Freddie Francis) was an Amicus Studios gothic horror I'd never heard of, which is strange since I'd though I'd seen all of them by now. I'll have to say that it is my least favorite Amicus film. It is pretty hard to take seriously a battle between a man and a skull, even if the man is Peter Cushing and the skull once contained the brain of the Marquis de Sade. Don't get me wrong, there are some great scenes and psychedelic stuff, plus appearances by Patrick Magee and Christopher Lee, but on the whole you just have to see this if you are a horror dork like me. I should mention that they are people who think pretty highly of this film so I could have it all wrong. Not on DVD.
A few Amicus movies HAVE recently come out on DVD including the excellent, The Beast Must Die from 1974.
Thursday at The Egyptian, Stuart Gordon's Edmond. I can't make it. The preview looked pretty all right.
In July at The Egyptian and at The Aero, their very popular yearly Mods and Rockers film festival. The Mods and Rockers website does not have the dates posted, but I picked up a paper theater schedule that did have show dates. Oh well, I'm sure they will put them up soon enough. I wanna see the one called Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, from Italy, 1966.
I swear I do not work for The Egyptian Theater, I just really like to see movies on the big screen... yes, more than on DVD!
coffin cub!
I wrote a bit about Roberta Findlay and her late husband Michael, who was killed in a 1977 tragic helicopter accident, in this review of Roberta's Blood Sisters. Michael directed Shriek of the Mutilated. The Findlays as a pair directed Snuff. Like Blood Sisters, Lurkers was one of Roberta Findlay's last movies, directed more than ten years after her husband's death. I believe she retired soon after and is still living today, having recently been interviewed for extras on the Blood Sisters DVD.
Lurkers is a hell of a lot more fun to watch than the boring Blood Sisters, though Lurkers too is a very flawed film. Still, it's pretty fun to watch a picture that attempts to be a low budget version of some bigger supernatural pictures such as Rosemary's Baby, The Sentinel, and The Omen. The editing, done by Roberta herself, is some of the worst I've seen as is the acting. I got so used to scenes not fitting together, that when I from time to time so a single cut that actually worked well, it would distract me because it felt so out of place. One action sequence (for those who have seen the movie, I'm talking bout the sledgehammer chase) was so messy that I could not figure out what was going on at all. If it was disjointed deliberately in order to bring about a dreamlike feeling, then the attempt failed.
On the other hand, Lurkers has got a pretty fun plot and some bizarre sexual, drug-related, and religious imagery to keep the viewer interested. The movie looks ten years older than it is, perhaps because of all the similarities to the popular 70's and 60's movies I mentioned above. There are a ton of unintentional laughs, many involving the evil ghost child and the good ghost woman. All the scary parts are pretty funny, now that I think about it. Of course the last half hour of the movie is the best, when all the evil is revealed at a swanky New York City artist's party.
Judging by reviews on the imdb, this is one of those movies people either love or hate. The movie is available in Rhino's Horrible Horrors Collection Volume 1, which is a low priced DVD bundle. The VHS tape was from Media.
News: Disc Jockey and male groupie, Rodney Bingenheimer, is getting a star on the Walk of Fame here in Hollywood.
News: Aaron Spelling has died at age 83 from a stroke at his home in Los Angeles.
News: While having coffee this morning I read a very interesting story about a Russian DVD pirate whose office was located just blocks from my house.
Opinion: The latest issue of Fangoria sucks even more the usual.
News: Friends tell me that they predict Al Gore will be the next major Democratic presidential candidate. Will Al Gore tell us to go vegan? Here what the big hypocrite left out of his movie...
Animal Farm from the L.A. Weekly...
Al Gore’s riveting documentary An Inconvenient Truth has focused public attention on the looming disaster of global warming and the associated flooding of coastal communities, extreme weather conditions, and destruction of wildlife habitats [“The Tip of the Melting Iceberg,” May 26–June 1]. Global warming is brought on by emission of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide and the much more potent methane and nitrous oxide. These gases trap the sun’s heat in our atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect.
Most of us blame automotive and industrial emissions. But animal agriculture is a major culprit as well. It emits carbon dioxide from the burning of forests to create animal pastures and from combustion of fossil fuels to operate farm machinery, trucks, refrigeration equipment, factory farms, and slaughterhouses. It emits methane from the digestive tracts of cattle and nitrous oxide from animal-waste cesspools.
According to a recent University of Chicago study, a meat-free diet reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by the equivalent of 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide per year — as much as switching from an SUV to a hybrid car. Folks who care about the future of life on Earth would be well advised to consider switching to a meat-free diet even before they switch to a hybrid car.
and this on the internet...
"It's better to green your diet than your car"
17 December 2005
THINKING of helping the planet by buying an eco-friendly car? You could do more by going vegan, say Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin of the University of Chicago.
They compared the amount of fossil fuel needed to cultivate and process various foods, including running agricultural machinery, providing food for livestock and irrigating crops. They also factored in emissions of methane and nitrous oxide produced by cows, sheep and manure treatment.
The typical US diet, about 28 per cent of which comes from animal sources, generates the equivalent of nearly 1.5 tonnes more carbon dioxide per person per year than a vegan diet with the same number of calories, say the researchers, who presented their results at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco last week.
By comparison, the difference in annual emissions between driving a typical saloon car and a hybrid car, which runs off a rechargeable battery and gasoline, is just over 1 tonne. If you don't want to go vegan, choosing less-processed animal products and poultry instead of red meat can help reduce the greenhouse load.
From issue 2530 of New Scientist magazine, 17 December 2005, page 19
One link on the issue. I would have a "Hollywood Memories" for you here, but imageshack.us is not functioning at the moment.
Once again there is a new horror blog out there - The Full Moon Review - yup, all Full Moon movies. They don't link to me in the sidebar, but do have a link to my review of Doll Graveyard. From a quick glance, this person seems to have their Full Moon shit down. He grades hard, a bunch of the late 90's movies got ratings of "1 out of 5 full moons".
I took a look at old posts in the blog. I almost never do that. I'd like to delete a lot of them that I'm embarrassed about, but they will stay. I'm talking about some of the reviews, a weird thing to be embarrassed about, but in a few cases the writing makes me sick. I fix a couple of broken images and found a handful more to fix. Old posts are hard to read because they are in an even smaller font than this one now. Sorry about that.
The blog is still less than two years old.
I have the day off. Wow. This week has been very long with 2 summer school classes at Santa Monica College feeling like the equivalent of a full time job - cause the summer semester is condensed into a period of six weeks I have a quiz every single day! These are both level 1 classes, the equivalent of 100 level classes. Intro classes, so picture me in a room with a bunch of 18 year olds and worse, kids who are still in highschool. The history teacher told me their was no reason to get a job yet because once you enter the working world it is hard to get out. He thinks I'm one of the little kids too! It is because vegans do not show signs of aging.
I've mentioned before that myself and my old roommate had a website called scenefashion.com about Hollywood scene kids with pictures and profiles. It was very exciting for people to look at in a time before myspace and friendster. Our page differed from makeoutclub.com and its imitators in that we chose the people and we took the pictures. No one could submit a picture. We also wrote the comments. The whole site was intended to piss people off, but as for the kids in the actually profiles, we liked them. The site was meant to draw hatemail from bitter and miserable types, who really could not be as bitter and miserable as we were deep down inside.
This here is from the first day I went out and took pictures for the site as The Locust were playing a show across the street from my place. Personally I think The Locust is crap, but I cannot deny their fashion influence on the many chameleons in the hardcore scene. I mingled with crowd outside for a while, hoping to actually see Locust members whose pictures I could take, but either they were backstage with the deli trays or I just did not know what they looked like. I split and then...
comments: After leaving the Locust show I went to kick it with the neighbors who were out in front of the apartment drinking. The guy from across the street said we ought to spook some kids who for some reason or another had snuck down the drive way to his building. We went from our place to the Megadeth Mansion across the way. (where Dave Mustaine formed Megadeth) Down the little drive we found two youths who had fled the Locust show in order to find some quiet time on top of a dumpster. Truly I could not see a thing, as a wall blocked the lights of the street, but once I heard the sounds of a little keyboard, I knew the girl was scenefashion material. Sure, she could not play well, but if she really brings the keypad everywhere she will one day be good. Now that I can see her on my computer screen I'm glad to see she has her own style and is not doing the tired crust punk thing. Don't know what those red marks on her arm are. Like I said, it was pitch black.
Captain Ahab, whose outrageous Lawrence Klein directed videos can be seen here, have won a contest and earned a slot on the Snakes on a Plane soundtrack. Snakes on a Plane is allegedly the most blogged about movie of all time.
Yesterday I was running an errand with a friend, picking some stuff up, and was surprised to find myself in a Studio City office full of animatronic robot horses and goat men. Boy did these things look real, even upon super close inspection. I can't say what movie these were for, it's not out yet and my friend would get in trouble, but I bet they fuck the film up with lots of CGI and we get some wack videogame-type picture. Anyway, as awesome as these prosthetic creatures look, I'll take my flesh and blood bunnies over them any day. The littlest just had an operation yesterday and than God she is back to normal already.
Here is a kind of negative article from the LA Weekly about the British Horror film series playing at The Egyptian that I wrote of last post. It pissed me off at first, but whatever.
This car belonged to Lawrence Klein, director of the Captain Ahab videos. That's not him on the roof, I believe he was taking this picture. This car was banned from the parking garage in my building on North Sycamore because it leaked to much oil. Or it could have been another one of Larry's cars. I'm not sure.
The car was painted with the kind of paint you pain a house with, not spray paint. It had texture.
Not that anyone will go because I told them to, but there are two British horror movies staring Peter Cushing playing on Sunday the 25th at 7:30. The theater? American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. I'm told these double features are affordable. The movies, Corruption and The Skull are quite rare and not on DVD. There have been a few of these obscure pictures playing along with standard fair like Horror Express and The Gorgon.
I have a great idea, since I never throw anything away, in real life or on the hardrive, I think I shall celebrate my return to the old neighborhood with a section called Hollywood Memories where I show you pics of what went down three or four years ago. You know how recently I posted of the street performers outside the Chinese Theater? Well for a time we had a nonpaying roommate who lived on our studio apartment floor between the two of us. One plan he had was to take pictures of all the characters outside the theater and send them to Marvel and DC and Disney and the like to get them busted. Don't think he ever sent the photos, but he sure took a lot. Here is the stormtrooper in the thousand dollar costume along one of several Spidermans who all wear costumes that must have cost considerably less.
ve got a class in Santa Monica tomorrow night so I'll miss the showing of Dolls and Charles Band's Crash. Stuart Gordon and Charles Band are expected to be on hand as is a puppet from one of Charles Band's movies. No shit. I'll try to catch the end of Crash.
Tomorrow night at the New Beverly Cinema.
Here is a vegan blog for the vegans and future vegans - I guess her name is Kiki, I have not read it in depth yet.
There is also the livejournal of the girl who has been prank calling me for about 4 years now - I'll throw you a link soon, but I don't want it to be a click-through link because then should could find this blog (through statcounter) and interact with me that way. The less interaction the better.I will post her myspace and livejournal soon.
Thanks to The Horror Blog for finding a very in-depth article on Victor Salva whose real life exploits are far more shocking than his horror movies except when they mirror each other, as was the case during the making of Clownhouse (1989) when director Salva had oral sex with the then 12-year-old star, Nathan Forrest Winters.
(Incidentally, a google search for Clownhouse images pulled up a page of stills of Nathan Forrest Winters from that movie - I can only hope the webmaster of that page does not know the backstory behind that movie because that would be a very creepy page indeed!)
Victor Salva discovered the story for Way of the Peaceful Warrior (a mainstream sports drama that is only playing in select theaters - I wonder why?) while serving his 15 month prison sentence on the child molesting conviction. "Here was this book that says you must take responsibility for your choices, learn from your mistakes and never live in the regrets of the past or the worries of the future. Its message was the total opposite of what I was feeling when I read it." says Salva. Imdb comments on the movie describe the story as being a lesson for living for the moment.
"How would you like to be defined for the rest of your life for one bad thing you did 20 years ago?" is what Salva tells people who bring up his past.
Some readers of the Los Angeles Times article may think Salva has some nerve to make a movie that reflects the pains he went through after being caught for molesting the boy, but Salva has never shied away from controversy before. How about the high school boys taking a group piss together in Jeepers Creepers 2? How about the age old Creeper pointing to one of the boys and making a licking gesture? It's pretty obvious that Powder is bizarre as well. I have not seen it, but seeing one clip was enough. To be fair, it can also be read as a take on homophobia in the schools. The message is not evil, but coming from Salva it may not be in good taste.
Can I make something of the relationship between the "grizzled" mentor and the young athlete in Peaceful Warrior? I think I can, but I'll wait until I see the movie. It is playing at the Laemmle Sunset 5 and I hopefully will catch it before it is gone.
So it is official, the name of the blog is now 150 Days of Sodom, so next time you update your sidebar, maybe you could change the name on your link to this site - the web address is the same. If not, well that is ok too, the blog always had two names, Bloodbath Horror Blog, and Warrenzone, which I took from a website warrenzone.net where I used to showcase my web design. I no longer pay for that domain name, so that site is dead. 150 Days of Sodom is anything but dead. I will continue to cut through the shit and tell it like it is in the horror scene and I'll keep reviewing those not-on-DVD dusty, obscure, VHS tapes.
Check out this graphic my friend Annie toyrobot made for me! Her artwork here.
sites/blogs to check:
The Horror Blog - updates frequently, move over bloody-disguting!
this Larry Klein directed video - I mentioned it last post!
pictures of Zoey - in her blog Chronicle
mollybrenner.com - would you I beleive I used to do a website for her? Now she made this all by herself!
Fatally*Yours - we like this horror blog from Orange County, but don't really like much else that comes from there.
I've been struggling with the updates, lately, writing stuff and not posting them - this post will be a combination of two cut posts. I write about costumed out of work actors in this post and I should note that I saw a Spiderman with a fanny pack crossing Hollywood Boulevard about an hour ago. It is easy to take a dig at someone in a fanny pack, so I'll just say that I hope the pack was only full of $15 or $20 dollars earned from a days work with the tourists. I also saw more of these guys taking off their costume heads in public. Sure it's hot, but stay in character!
a great new blog discovered: the badly named The Horror Blog has covered some stories I'd like to cover myself and hopefully will with credit to The Horror Blog for finding great topical articles.
From my window you can see a huge Superman Returns advertisement that covers one side of the TV Guide building. As you know this is the new gay Superman movie from X-Men and Apt Pupil director Bryan Singer. The X-men movies featured gay values such as acceptance and tolerance for those who are different, while featuring no red state values like marriage being exclusively between a man and a woman. Singer is really pushing the gayness with his Superman, though he insists Superman is straight. The size of the bulge in Superman's tights tells otherwise, or in my opinion, the fact that he is showing this bulge off, proves that he is a gay. Warner Brothers is covering the bulge with digital effects in the movie. You see, in the red states, men get very upset at the thought of other guys' dicks, let alone other guys' bigger dicks. That is why the urinals there have walls between them that run from the floor to the ceiling, in order to prevent accidental wang gazing.
I gotta say, their is a secret local hate here in Hollywood for the street performers outside of the Chinese Theater and Kodak Theater. I know this is not fair, since they make about $8 every three hours (according to a local article I read about the Storm Trooper "performer"), but they are so hateable. The deal is that they are free agents in unliscensed costumes (quality varies) who will pose with tourists and hopefully get tipped a buck per picture. Some idiots say that they work for the Chinese Theater, but it is obvious to anyone with a brain that no establishment with a reputation to uphold would present such shabby entertainment. What we've got is a band of superheroes in outfits you can buy at the Halloween store. I've seen even worse homemade atrocities and I've seen a Batman in spandex without a codpiece - and I've never been ok since, does this mean I'm a red state guy at heart? The best is when their are two Spidermans out there - I read in the article that tensions can run high between performers.
Horror fans, there is a Freddy and their is a Jason working the street quite regularly. Word is that the Freddy attacked a man who mocked his "costume", which is of course a $15 rubber mask. By the way, in Hollywood and much of Southern California you can buy Halloween costumes all year long at costume stores or the Halloween warehouses, so these costumes are even less impressive as they are extremely easy to acquire.
Anchor Bay is releasing a movie that looks very interesting to me, The Garden, with Lance Henriksen (Aliens, Pumpkinhead) and the beautiful Sean Young (Blade Runner, Stripes). I did not watch the whole trailer because I did not wish to spoil the movie for myself, but the glimpse I had of it showed professional filmaking with good costumes and FX - what I'm saying is that this is not some shot-on-video crap. The synopsis? A little boy has vivid fantastical nightmares that drive him to cut himself. A stay at stranger Herniksen's ranch brings him close to some of the horrors that he has witnessed in his visions. Is this the apocalypse?
a still from The Garden - from Anchor Bay - Street Date: July 11, 2006 - available in 16 x 9, Not Rated, Audio Commentary with Director Don Michael PaulIf you have not watched the Larry Klein video for Captain Ahab's "U Want Me", check out this fast loading version on youtube.
I feel good today, but that title is for most of my readers who I'm sure are not the sunshiny type.
Ok, we are back in Hollywood. I wrote up something already about our triumphant return, but neglected to post it. I've been very busy (Hawaii trip, registration, a huge move, a new rabbit rescued) but we are not living out of quite as many boxes as a week ago - things are getting settled and regular posting will resume soon.
Lots of horror screening in Los Angeles this month. British horror at the Egyptian on Hollywood Boulevard. A Cannibal Ferox / Gates of Hill double bill at The New Beverly Cinema on Friday and Saturday and then this month's Grindhouse (Dolls and Charles Band's Crash) on the 20th at the same theater.
By the way, I'm going to be selling a ton of rare horror tapes, my duplicates, but it will be a Los Angeles only fire sale - I mean to say I'll be outside of horror screenings with a box. Most tapes $1, max price, $3.
Read the Defamer about Superman Returns being gay cinema - they post about it every single day.
