Zombos' Closet

Zombie's Halloween II (2009) Michael Myers' Grudge Takes Shape

Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

I did not expect Rob Zombie to surprise me with Halloween II. Beyond his unavoidably repetitious metal-rockers, hippie-hillbillies, and tattoo-punkstering of Laurie Strode and Haddonfield Illinois' social set, miring Halloween II in a seedy glaze of grunge, strip joints, and Alice Cooper and Frank Zappa posters, he surprised me.

Probably many horror fans are surprised, too, and will be dismayed or downright violently annoyed with this bold mashing of J-horror's quintessential rage-filled imagery into Myers' endless angst-driven slashing ouevre.

In this brilliantly audacious diversion from John Carpenter's classic bogeyman, Michael Myers (the towering Tyler Mane) becomes a deadly juggernaut guided by a mysterious other embodied in the white gossamer spectre of his dead mother and her majestic white stallion. But to what purpose? Is she a vision of Shiva the Destroyer? Or is she a demonic chaos seeking succor? Or is she simply a confabulation in Myers' tortured mind? Zombie builds mystery by confounding us with this and an unexpected folly a deux between Myers and his sister, which now takes the Halloween franchise into a strikingly new direction.

Halloween 2009 Sighted: Witch, Mummy, Vampire Table Toppers

I found these irresistible table toppers at Dollar Tree for one dollar each (click the image to enlarge). A bargain indeed for these fairly large and stylish paper decorations that don't play it cuddly cute, yet don't overly traumatize with terror, either.

Just look at those faces! The witch actually leers like a creepy wicked witch should for Halloween. And both the mummy and the vampire look like they want to scare the hell out of you with their ominously gaping mouths filled with sharp teeth.

While perusing the slim offerings on the shelves (this year it looks like every store is cutting back on inventory), a little girl in the next isle over--I'd say no older than five--told her mommy to hurry up because she wanted "to see Halloween."

She ran over to the display of decorations, taking in everything with glee. She seemed most fascinated by the life-size, plastic, dismembered feet dangling in pairs from the hooks.

I was going to mention that they were fake, since her mother seemed not to think it important enough to tell her, and  I was afraid the girl might get the wrong impression, but decided not to after I saw she was not frightened at all. Just mesmerized.

I am sure most of you will recall that feeling. Why spoil it?

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Evil On Two Legs

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Corey at Evil On Two Legstalks about what makes his blog unique and fun to read as well as write.

I've always loved horror. My earliest memory is of the first day of pre-school and finding the 2-XL robot hidden behind the nap mats and Legos. One of the multiple choice 8-track quiz tapes dealt with vampires, werewolves and other classic monsters. I don't believe I ever put in the tapes on sports or history, but I must have played the monster one a 1000 times.

As soon as I could read I was lost in the public library searching out books on UFOs, Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster and horror story collections like "The Headless Roommate and Other Tales" and "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark." Early exposure to the films Halloween, An American Werewolf in London and The Prowler set me up for what's become a life-long love of the horror film genre. My happiest memories of childhood involve roaming the endless horror aisles of oversized VHS boxes at Encore Video (a local mom & pop video store), looking for something that sounded scary but whose name and cover would be acceptable to my parents... and dreaming of the day when I could have my own video card and would finally be able to rent some of the titles that featured really graphic cover art and enticing names like Faces of Death, I Spit On Your Grave and Slumber Party Massacre.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Slasher Speak

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, author, and League of Tana Tea Drinker's member, Vince Liaguno of Slasher Speak gives us good reason why the standards of normalcy are overrated.

Let’s get one thing out the way: I love slasher films and am unapologetic about it. There is no hanging my head or lowering my voice when someone asks me what the last film I saw was and the answer includes the words bloody or massacre and is either preceded or followed by the name of a holiday or power tool. Buckets of blood, guts, and gore…mass murder, misogyny, and madness – it’s all good.

With Intent to Blog

It's downright scary how many good horror bloggers are now blogging the horror. Here's another list of twenty... plus one other...

http://blog.starcostumes.com/horror-blogs.html

Beware the Moon Interview With Paul Davis

The following interview was conducted by Scott Essman, who we let out of the closet every now and then. But not too often.

 

Englishman Paul Davis was more than a fan of the classic 1981 Universal film, An American Werewolf in London; he was also an aspiring filmmaker. Yet with no credits to his name, undertaking a documentary about this property was a long shot in the minds of many, including Davis.

However, after nearly three years of work, his documentary, Beware the Moon: Remembering An American Werewolf in London, has found a home in, of all places, Universal Studios Home Entertainment’s September 15, 2009 Full Moon Edition 2-Disc DVD, and Blu-ray Hi-Def release of the film.

In this exclusive interview, he tells the entire story of creating the film, from conception through it’s now remarkably unlikely release.

What was the first impetus for starting this film?

It was my first film – I had never made anything before. The project officially began at the tail end of 2006 while writing a 25th anniversary article on An American Werewolf in London for HorrorHound Magazine. I've been a fan of in-depth, retrospective documentaries ever since I saw the BBC produced doc on the making of The Exorcist in 1998, and while writing the article, it struck me that there are so many classic horror movies that have had the documentary treatment, why not AWIL? In fact, AWIL hardly had anything done on it - yet in my opinion, it's more than deserving as some of those that had. I've always loved An American Werewolf in London; it was the first monster movie I ever saw, aged three, after realizing (through The Making of Thriller) that movies were well crafted works of fiction. People made these things. It was fascinating to me even at that young age.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Paradise of Horror

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Richard Peter from Paradise of Horror invites us to become castaways on his ideal isle where horror fans can get their geek on.

I have always been a huge fan of horror ever since me and my grandmother would watch Tales from the Crypt back when she got HBO for free. It was always my favorite show, but my parents would make me watch Goosebumps since it was a bit more toned down. Though, Goosebumps wasn’t scaring me the way I wanted it to, so I picked up two movies that would forever haunt me, and provided me a gateway into horror: The Thing and The Blob (1988).

With those movies burned into my skull and frightening me to no end, I had to turn it down and switch from Goosebumps to the sci-fi/horror show The X-Files. After that show I finally started watching good horror movies and it’s been history ever since.

I turned into a regular horror movie guru and now I want to be a filmmaker and movie editor.

LOTT D: Pick a Post Sensation 11

Beware! Once again, the archives have been unburied, and the hideous horrors unleashed! For your entertainment and edification pleasure, of course. Members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers dig six feet deep to find their past misdeeds...and reveal them to you, one favorite and notable post at a time!

 

Horrors Not Dead quenches our Thirst:

Thirst is the kind of film I don’t want to say anything about. I just want to point it out, say, “Yep, this is the one”, and move on until more people have an opportunity to see it. It’s the first time all year long at a theater that I’ve felt at the mercy of a filmmaker.

Slasher Speak remembers His Name Was Jason:

Produced by Anthony Masi and Thommy Hutson and directed by Daniel Farrands, His Name Was Jason is a love letter to fans of the hockey-masked, machete-wielding Jason Voorhees and his myriad victims.

Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat looks on the inhumanity in District 9 with horror:

But when you see just how bad things get, in a sequence that's like some nightmare cross between Hostel, Brazil, Starship Troopers, and (at least to me--it's something in Wikus's voice) the baseball bat scene in Casino...the audience on 34th St. gasped in horror, the couple in front of me clung to each other, and I literally fought back tears. Even though you've still got most of the movie to go before you reach the final shootouts, I think that sequence is where my patience with the explosions and derring-do at the end was earned.

An Eyeful of Hammer Glamour

I was going to re-size the book cover photo smaller to save storage space, but decided not to. I wonder why? Hey, I'm talking to you! Yes, that's right, over here. Now that I have your attention, let's get down to business...

...Titan Books, publishers of Lenore, Simon and Kirby, and Shootin the Sh*t With Kevin Smith, is bringing back the glamour.

Hammer glamour, that is. Here's the official description.

"Titan is celebrating the sexy sirens and distressed damsels of a cinematic institution this Fall in the gorgeous coffee-table collection HAMMER GLAMOUR.

"Over fifty years ago, with the release of The Curse of Frankenstein and Christopher Lee’s iconic performance in Dracula, Hammer ushered in a whole new era of horror, with blood and barely-restrained cleavage in glorious colour.

"Mixing sex and horror with a style and panache that made the small British company world famous and inspired a generation of Hollywood filmmakers including George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton, Hammer’s cast of gorgeous women were the crowning glory to any release.

"Authorized by Hammer and written by expert Hammer historian Marcus Hearn (The Hammer Story), this sumptuous hardback is bursting at the seams with rare and previously unpublished photographs, meticulously gathered from Hammer’s archive and private collections all around the globe.

"Also featuring many new interviews, this is a lavish, full-colour, all-encompassing celebration of Hammer’s female stars,including Ingrid Pitt, Martine Beswicke, Caroline Munro, Barbara Shelley, Joanna Lumley, Nastassja Kinski, and of course Raquel Welch (who can forget her fur bikini in One Million Years B. C.?)."

The book hits the shelves on September 29th.

Aliens, Apartheid, Aggression District 9 (2009)

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

The striking thing about District 9, the expanded version of Neill Blonkamp’s short science fiction movie Alive in Joburg, is how it reworks familiar plot elements from movies like Alien Nation, The Fly, and The Matrix, cements them together with tableaux of apartheid and Nazi-like genetic experimentation, and still gleefully gets away with blowing lots of things up with a popcorn movie zeal.

Important to both the incidental social commentary and the loud action is Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), who makes us first dislike him for what he blindly stands for, then like him for what he learns to stand for. All of this does not make District 9 a great film, just a very good one; lying somewhere between Armond White's energetically overreaching discontent with its "sloppiest and dopiest pop cinema" substance, and Roger Ebert's ultimate disappointment that it "remains space opera and avoids the higher realms of science-fiction."

It is to District 9's credit that it dares to place more emphasis on its pop cinema approach, and less on those higher realms, to deliver pulp science fiction that, blow for blow, gets its deeper message across without preachiness or prompting moral revelation above the basic template of blood splatter, bullets, and bombs. Social commentary has all been done effectively and artistically before, frankly, to the point where it no longer really matters it be spelled out for us yet again in a movie that flows much better without it. Sometimes a movie should be just that, a movie; and not held to a higher accountability.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Gospel of the Living Dead

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, author and horror blogger Kim Paffenroth of Gospel of the Living Dead talks about zombies and religion, and how the two meet to provide enlightening revelation.

I think, like many people, my first interest in horror goes back to adolescence, when I was fascinated with some horror movies (especially Romero's zombies), and with some written expressions of horror (especially Lovecraft). I thought gross, bleeding, oozing things were cool. I think it's pretty typical at that age. Then my mother died a slow, lingering death from cancer, and that made my interest a little less "cool" and a lot more brooding and sullen. I put some of my feelings into bad fiction writing and bad poetry at that age, I suppose as a kind of catharsis or self-therapy. It worked, for what it was, I guess.

But when I went off to college, that phase just stopped. It didn't trail off, it just stopped the day I got off the bus in front of Campbell Hall. Something about the place (St John's College, Annapolis, MD) just awed me with the ideas of dead guys who knew so much more than I did; I should stop and read every word I could and not interrupt with my sophomoric attempts to put angst or pain or rebellion into words. (I know, I wouldn't have articulated the feeling that way at the time, but in hindsight, that's what I was feeling at all the ivy-covered walls and dusty books and rather arcane, 19th century-looking lab apparatuses.)

Halloween 2009 Sighted: Boney Bunch At Yankee Candle

Can you smell it?

Even through this hot, sticky air of August I can smell Halloween approaching. It's even appearing here and there, in teasing bags of candy suddenly appearing on store shelves in preparation for the October rush of hungry, sweet-toothed, ghouls, and in store displays like Yankee Candle's exclusive Boney Bunch collection of candle holders. 

I picked up the Coffin Tea Light holder. It was the last one in stock. The cute Goth-looking girl in back of the counter told me it was popular. She wrapped it up for me, along with a box of black patchouli tea lights to go with it. Yes, I'm a softy when it comes to Halloween.

If you're in to Halloween and candles, check out the Boney Bunch at Yankee Candle (online or in the store).

Meet the Horror Bloggers: And Now the Screaming Starts

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, CRwM from And Now the Screaming Starts proves that horror fans do not need a lifetime of experience to share in the fun that comes from terror onscreen.

I'm a pretty lame horror fan. I say this because I lack the long involvement that is a hallmark of most fan bios.

I came late to the whole horror thing. Or, rather, I started out as a sort of "monster kid," fell out of love with the genre in the important teen years, and then returned after more than a decade of resistance.

It all started out classically enough. When I was a little kid, I had this pact with my pops. If I waited until my mom went to sleep, then I was unofficially approved to "sneak" out of my room and hang with him. We'd catch old monster movies on the local channel. I remember Tarantula specifically.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Fascination With Fear

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Christine Hadden of Fascination With Fear talks about her ominous Saturday night alone, and the ensuing damage it wrought. Lucky for us.

My obsession with horror came at a very young age. As a small child, my grandfather (a Methodist minister, no less) introduced me to The Wizard of Oz and Willy Wonka - both of which actually have horrifying undertones for kids. (Gene Wilder was seriously demented in that freaky psychedelic boat sequence!) To that effect, a lot of the better Disney features can be brutal as well. Exposing a child to Bambi at too young an age--and I'm telling you from experience--you'll scar them for life. My grandpap and I would also stay up late watching Bill Cardille ("Chilly Billy") on Chiller Theater (a Pittsburgh legend). My parents bought me all those crazy Disney ghost story records, I watched all the old Godzilla movies on Saturday afternoons, and, truth be told, I read every last Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mystery, okay? After school I rushed home to watch the iconic (?) Lost In Space...so there's my sci-fi link.

I can't recall how old I was when my parents left me alone for the first time on a Saturday night to go out. Was I ten yet? I should have been but I'm really not sure. But I was forever damaged (and enchanted) after turning on a movie called The Exorcist. And what was that movie doing on regular TV, anyway? Must've been around Halloween.

LOTT D: Pick a Post Sensation 10

Beware! The game's afoot. Once again, the archives have been unburied, and the hideous horrors unleashed! For your entertainment and edification pleasure, of course.

Members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers dig six feet deep to find their past misdeeds...and reveal them to you, one favorite and notable post at a time!

 

Classic-Horror dares to delve deeply into Blood for Dracula:

With all the revolutions in the film industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many of the older film monsters were starting to appear cliché, even trite. Dracula, long the enemy of Victorian standards, needed to be updated for a time when such standards had long passed. Leave it to pop artist/film producer Andy Warhol and director Paul Morrissey to do this by flipping the rules around and making Dracula the pathetic victim of permissive social mores.

Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat reviews Duncan Jones's indie sci-fi thriller Moon:

I finally saw Duncan Jones's science-fiction character-piece-cum-thriller Moon, and was glad I braved the sweat-soaked journey down to the Landmark Sunshine to do so. Moon is very, very much a creature of its own influences, and owns up to this repeatedly--and wisely, I think. If you're going to do a suspense story about a man stranded in a cabin-fever outer-space environment with a soft-spoken computer for company, what's the sense of playing cat and mouse with Kubrick?