Showing posts with label Joe Begos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe Begos. Show all posts

Saturday, September 14, 2024

Mastodon, Lamb of God - Floods of Triton

I know nothing about Lamb of God, but this collaboration with Mastodon is pretty bad ass. Not sure if this heralds a split E.P. or something bigger, but this is pretty cool. Fantastic cover art, as well.  




Watch:

I am having a very hard time accepting that I might not be going to L.A. for Beyondfest this year, especially since I didn't even realize that Joe Begos had a new movie that is premiering at the Egyptian! There's no trailer for Jimmy and the Stiggs yet, no nothing except this image posted yesterday on the Beyondfest schedule:


I'm not certain I will be able to accept not going. We'll see. 




Playlist:

Mastodon, Lamb of God - Floods of Triton (single)
Pallbearer - Foundations of Burden
Danzig - Black Hell (single)
Spotlights - Seance E.P.
NIN - Year Zero
††† - Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete
Your Black Star - Sound From the Ground
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
Crystal Castles - II
Crystal Castles - Eponymous
Gourdon Banks - Keep You In Mind (single)
Ghost Cop - Problems (single)
A Place Both Wonderful and Strange - Sorry For Your Loss
In Slaughter Natives - Sancrosancts Bleed




Card:

Today's card for study is the Two of Swords - Peace:


Rest and recuperate. Perspective. 

Sunday, October 8, 2023

Deth Crux - Phantom Blood

 
I'll be leaving L.A. later today, and I take that leave with a heavy heart. Not sure when or if I'll be back. My company is moving our department to Arizona, so I won't have a free ride out anymore. Because of this, I wanted to post an L.A. band that brings out the best of the city's vibes, and that band is definitely Deth Crux. I found these guys through Joe Begos, who used them first in Bliss, and then again for the soundtrack to Christmas Bloody Christmas. I tracked down a vinyl copy of their debut album Mutant Flesh and just love it from start to finish. Hoping we'll hear more new music from them at some point. In the meantime, it's in this band's grimy post-punk that I find the perfect balance for my love/Hate relationship with the City of Angeles.



31 Days of Halloween:

1) When Evil Lurks/VHS 85/Adam Chaplin
2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 6 "Collection Complete"
3) VHS
4) All You Need is Death
5) Slashers (2001)
6) The Beyond/Phenomena
7) The Convent
8) Evil Dead 2



Watch:

Kids show or not, you tell me Boys in Trees director Nicholas Verso has a new show on HULU, and I'm watching it. 
 
I'm not even going to bother watching the trailer or reading about Crazy Fun Park, as I want to go in blind and hope that, if this is a success, we might finally get a Bluray release of Boys in Trees, which I feel should be in most Horror fans annual October viewing schedule.



Playlist:

Sylvaine - Nova
Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh



Card:


I keep seeing this Defeat Five of Swords card. This coupled with the Queen and Three of Cups leads me to believe this is a picture-perfect snapshot of my emotional state at the moment - I am ready to be home and feel like the longer I'm here in L.A., I'm undoing or defeating all the progress I've made in the last year.

Friday, December 9, 2022

New Zeal & Ardor!!!

 

Excited to see that, apparently, Zeal and Ardor are now on Sub Pop Records. With this kind of state-side distribution, it should no longer cost an arm and leg in shipping to order their records! Perhaps it was to celebrate that contract, the band just released a two-song single!

What a great day to wake up to! Last few days, no lie, my stress level has had me hovering at the "punch a hole in the window" stage. But I woke up a little while ago feeling fairly refreshed, and now I'm putting the finishing touches on this post, drinking coffee and listening to the new ††† EP, PERMANENT.RADIANT that dropped, counting the hours until I can hit play on Joe Begos' new flick, Christmas Bloody Christmas, now probably my most anticipated film of the year. I'd wanted to drive to Chicago to see it, but after spending $500 at the dentist over the last week, there's just no feasible way to swing that. My hope, though, is that, like Terrifier 2, it makes enough $$$ at the box office this week to see a bigger roll-out next week. If that happens, it's bound to end up here. 

If you need help figuring if Christmas Bloody Christmas is playing by you, here's the link Begos put on his IG - it literally lists every theatre the film is playing. So crazy that, with all the smaller cities its rolling out to, it didn't come to Clarksville. Our Regal, which is pretty good and had Terrifier 2 for almost a month, had the new Martin McDonough and the George A. Romero Dawn of the Dead 3D, but instead of lining CBC up, they still have Prey for the Devil? WTF?

Life is good. If you're having a tough time at any point today, stop and think about the people and the stuff you love. It will HELP!




Watch:

New Brandon Cronenberg film? Sign me up.

 

I cannot overstate how unbelievably happy I am that we only had to wait about three years for the third film from Brandon Cronenberg. Possessor is still one of my all-time favorites, and with this cast and premise - what little of it may or may not be clear from this trailer - Infinity Pool looks likely to rank pretty high with me as well. Out January 27.

Neon is just a fabulous company, isn't it?




Playlist:

Fvnerals - Let the Earth be Silent (pre-release singles)
Fvnerals - The Light
Final Light - Eponymous
Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell
Federale - No Justice
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
The Mysterines - Reeling
H6LLB6ND6R - Side A
Metallica - Hardwired... To Self-Destruct
Metallica - Kill 'em All




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.


Ask and ye shall receive your answer: I usually don't specify when I pull, but today I focused on my recent re-engagement with Shadow Play Book 2. The writing comes and goes, mostly rewarding while I'm doing it, then frustrating after. But I keep wondering if this is actually going to work. Well, apparently, if I am strong enough to persevere, I will get my outcome.

Tuesday, December 6, 2022

Spooky Action At A Distance

 
In preparation for the recording of the first episode of our new spin-off podcast, The Horror Vision Presents: Elements of Horror, I rewatched Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive last night. I have to say, not only do I think this is one of the coolest films ever made, but I think about it almost every day. There is not a lot that moves the needle as far as inspiring me to make music again, but watching or thinking about this film does in a BIG way.




Watch:

THIS will be in theatres? I won't hold my breath for it to come to Clarksville, however, I'm not averse to planning a trip to Chicago for this (if it even plays there).

 

This might tie Barbarian for the best trailer I've seen all year. Whether the movie lives up to the absolute lo-fi DREAD displayed here will remain to be seen. Below I've posted Skinamarink's summary, courtesy of the mighty Bloody Disgusting, whose article on the film is HERE

“Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished. To cope with the strange situation, the two bring pillows and blankets to the living room and settle into a quiet slumber party situation. They play well-worn videotapes of cartoons to fill the silence of the house and distract from the frightening and inexplicable situation. All the while in the hopes that eventually some grown-ups will come to rescue them. However, after a while, it becomes clear that something is watching over them.”

If, like Christmas Bloody Christmas, which I had also planned to travel for, I can't make the trip north for Skinamarink, then the good news that, also like Joe Begos' new film, this will be released on Shudder is a welcome balm. I would drive back and forth twice a month if I could, but the logistics of life do have a habit of getting in the way of plans like that.

Really looking forward to seeing this, the first feature from Kyle Edward Bell.




Read:

Last year at Severin Films' Black Friday sale, I picked up the Night of the Demon restored Blu-Ray and, perhaps more excitedly, Brad Carter's novelization that Severin commissioned in their possibly over-zealous roll-out for this widely unknown regional Horror film from 1980. 

After finishing Barry Adamson's Up Above the City, Down Below the Stars I was tempted to jump into David Lynch's biography, Room to Dream. I figured I could use a palate cleanser though; Adamson's book was the best book I read all year - or at least my favorite - and I need to put something genre between it and the story of another creator I adore. So I cracked open Brad Carter's translation of this bizarre little Bigfoot tale...


Confession: I've yet to watch the Blu-Ray. I'd seen a good deal of scenes from Night of the Demon a while back on youtube; not a place I generally go to watch movies, but before Severin's remaster, this film was almost as much a legend as Bigfoot itself. Now forty or so pages into the book, I have to say, it is quite well-written. I know the basic story here and it feels quite a bit more substantial as prose than film. Some of that is obviously the hindsight employed, but also I think it speaks to Carter as a writer, and I quickly cued up a few of his novels for future reading, in particular the novel Saturday Night of the Living Dead. 

As for Night of the Demon, I'm particularly interested in how the novel handles the "cult" subplot of the story, which didn't really get the treatment it deserved in what I saw of the film, which admittedly was not the whole thing. Carter gives all the characters involved extra development, which in some cases may have been a thankless task. Being asked to novelize a forty-something-year-old regional Horror film must be comparable to being asked to take agent listings of a house in need of updating. However, where someone else might have been happy to just recreate the schlock seen on the screen, Carter's extra level of care and attention really make this feel like it's going to be a far superior vehicle for the story.




Playlist:

Beach House - Depression Cherry
Pete Shelley - Homosapien
Uriah Heep - Abominog
Metallica - Lux Æturna (pre-release single)
Revocation - Netherhaven
Tyler Bates - The Punisher OST
Fvnerals - For Horror Eats the Light
Fvnerals - Wounds




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.


Previous issues with my finances (intermittent but seemingly unending fallout from identity theft) will come to a resolution. 

Thursday, November 10, 2022

Christmas Bloody Christmas!

 

I think I'm going to need a heaping dose of sonic autopsy from Electric Wizard to wake my ass up today. K and I went and got our Boosters yesterday, and in line with all the other iterations of this, it knocked me on my ass, so I didn't sleep all that well, and I'm struggling to get through work today.

Any band that names a song (or part of a song) after Weird Tales are gods in my book. 




Watch:

That which I have been waiting for has finally arrived:

 

Since Heavenisanincubator turned me on to Joe Begos' ultra-violent SciFi mind-fuck Almost Human many years ago, I've been a fan. I corralled a bunch of friends to go see Begos' follow-up Mind's Eye at Beyondfest in 2015 and repeated that in 2019 for the Bliss/VFW double-header. Knowing Christmas Bloody Christmas would land this year, it reigned as my #1 "Gotta get tickets" film for this year's Beyondfest, but Murphy's Law dictated that the viewing occurred on the same night I'd bought tickets to see Zeal and Ardor. I don't regret the choice, however, it's been ribbing me ever since. Now that the trailer is here, I'm even more excited to see Begos' latest film. He just delivers the kind of violent trash (I mean that as a compliment, of course) that puts me back to the world of my childhood, and his visual and musical aesthetic aligns very much with my own. 

With the line "in theatres everywhere" attached to the film and the fact that I just saw Damien Leone's Terrifier 2 at the Regal in town, I'm hoping CBC lands here, too. If not, I've been plotting where I might have to drive to see it. Because oh yes, I will drive to see this.




Read:

Here's another NCBD addendum. On a lark, I picked up the first issue of Specs, published by BOOM studios, created by David M. Booher and Chris Shehan.


Very solid first issue. Obviously, the cover gives off They Live vibes, but that's not really the case. The set-up is the two main characters get a hold of wish-granting Specs that turn their life upside down and by the looks of it, there will be fallout. I dug this issue enough that I'll definitely be coming back for more.




Playlist:

Opeth - Watershed
Electric Wizard - Dopethrone
The Neverly Boys - The Dark Side of Everything




Card:



From the Grimoire: "Let things develop before making another move." Loud and clear. 

Thursday, October 27, 2022

Antonio Sánchez feating Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross


New music from world-renowned drummer Antonio Sanchez. This is the first single off his upcoming Shift (Bad Hombre, Vol. 2) album, and it features Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. You can order the new album  HERE.




31 Days of Halloween:

10/1 - Trick 'r Treat
10/2 - Barbarian
10/3 - Hellraiser ('84)
10/4 - Phenomena
10/5 - Hellraiser (2022)
10/6 - The Dark Backward
10/7 - Sick/The Beyond
10/8 - Werewolf By Night
10/9 - Something in the Dirt
10/10 - Let the Right One In Episode 1/Lux Aeterna
10/11 - My Best Friend's Exorcism/Grimcutty
10/12 - Smile
10/13 - Monstrous/VHS (Amateur Night segment)
10/14 - Halloween Kills
10/15 - Halloween Ends/Ed Wood/Plan 9 From Outer Space
10/16 - Spider Baby/101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments/Night's End/Behemoth
10/17 - Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/18 - Random Acts of Violence/Two Witches/Let the Right One In Episode 2
10/19 - 976-EVIL
10/20 - Alison's Birthday/Tone Deaf
10/21 - Elviria's Haunted Hills/Popcorn
10/22 - Resolution
10/23 - The Endless
10/24 - VHS 99
10/25 - Tigers Are Not Afraid
10/26 - Bliss

No matter how many times I watch Joe Begos' Bliss, it just gets better and more inspiring. 


There are ideas in this film that I think rank among the greatest contributions to the modern Vampire myth, and the execution only helps seal that. My big regret from this year's Beyondfest was that I already had tickets to see Zeal and Ardor at the Echoplex when Begos' new film Christmas, Bloody Christmas screened. That's the first of his films I haven't seen on the big screen at Beyondfest since a bunch of friends and I saw Mind's Eye, which sealed my love of his aesthetic.




Watch:

I finally got to see Moonage Daydream on the big screen. This was one I almost missed, but with my good friend Grez in town, we headed into Nashville to the wonderful Belcourt Theatre and saw a late showing. 


So how is it? Fantastic. Not a documentary with a narrative so much as it is a constantly evolving series of clips - interviews, performances, personal journal stuff - a slightly linear trajectory through David Bowie's life as an artist, or perhaps rather, a series of artists, dappled with some intimate peaks behind the thin, white curtain at the man behind those personas. Built for the big screen.




Playlist:

King Woman - I Wanna Be Adored (single)
The Stone Roses - I Wanna Be Adored (single)
Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years
Type O Negative - Dead Again
Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws
David Bowie - The Next Day




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.


Pretty straightforward. 

Only five days left to get in on Grimm's Kickstarter for The Art of the Bound Tarot hardcover art book. I'm throwing down today, you should too if you dig the art on these glorious cards. Back the project HERE.

Friday, March 25, 2022

A Blasphemous Nun Massacre at the Hexie Mountains!

 

A new video from Orville Peck's recently released Bronco, Chapter 1. I can't wait for the entire album to land and my vinyl to arrive. If you haven't already, you can scoot on over HERE to pick one up for yourself.




Watch:

Despite working slightly more than a full day yesterday, I had a pretty damn good 46th birthday. Nothing fancy. Homemade burgers and Demons 2 kicked things off, as I picked up that stunning Synapse Films double feature of Lamberto Bava's two Demons films back when it came out a year or two ago, and still hadn't set eyes on their transfer of the sequel.

 

Ironic that I could only find Arrow Video's trailer for their restoration of the film, but whatever. The Synapse transfer is gorgeous, and I'm quite happy with everything about it.

Later, to end my night, I threw on one of my recent favorites - Joe Begos' VFW. It'd been a minute since I'd seen this one, but I feel like all the beats are seared into my head thanks to that one magnificent Beyondfest double feature back in 2019. 


I love this flick so damn much. Both this and Begos' Bliss are films I feel like I could watch every day. In lieu of that, I tend to just toss them on when I can, to re-experience not just the film, but that glorious final Beyondfest at the Egyptian, my favorite place in LaLaLand, now owned by Netflix.




Play:

Not only did my Nintendo Switch arrive yesterday, but I was able to pick up Puppet Combo's Nun Massacre from the online game store!

 

The game, like Glass Staircase before it - which I'd bought on my Mac a few years ago and quickly gave up on without a controller - is a bit difficult to get used to for someone who hasn't ever really played 360, immersive games, but very well worth the pangs of the learning curve. The atmosphere is stellar, and when the titular Nun takes to stabbing you to death, things get pretty intense. Definitely recommended for anyone who digs Horror and Games. Reminds me a bit of my all-time favorite Video Game, Shadow Gate, which still influences my personality endlessly, despite not having played it in decades at this point.

Despite all this love I'm heaping on Nun Massacre, however, it was another game I picked up at the same time that I spent the most time with. Thanks to a recommendation by my Horror Vision cohost King Butcher, I grabbed Game Kitchen's Blasphemous:


The image of that giant baby with its eyes stabbed out, held by a monster as it tears a person limb from limb sealed the deal. This is some insane shit, and I'm absolutely in love with this game, which was obviously designed by a bunch of Metal Head Stoners (my people) who were very much influenced by the Castlevania series, which, back when I played video games on the original NES system, was a favorite (especially part 2: Simon's Quest).




Playlist:

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Blut Aus Nord - That Cannot Be Dreamed
Drug Church - Hygiene
Quicksand - Slip 
White Lung - Paradise
Every Day (is Halloween) Playlist (Reveal in upcoming April 4th Edition of the newsletter)




Card:

Back to my Thoth mini. My intention was a three-card spread, however, this card literally jumped out of the deck at me:


A solid foundation to build from takes good, strong effort and clear thinking. Pertinent, as we just had another phone conversation with our Tennessee realtor. Things are moving forward, and I'll post more about it here when our machinations fully lock into place.

Friday, April 17, 2020

Isolation - Day 36 Jawbox: Breathe



One of the things I really dig about Apple Music is the fact that I can see what my friends who have it are listening to (as long as their setting allow it). My good friend Jacob, back in my second favorite State of Ohio, has amazing taste and has turned me onto quite a few unbelievable records. He also, sometimes, reminds me of music that has spun so far out of my orbit there was little to no way I was coming back to it any time soon. Jawbox is such a band. When I think of era-defining 90s music, Jawbox is one of the bands that comes immediately to mind. And yet, unlike other groups from that era, there is nothing about Jawbox that sounds dated in any way. Maybe that because they helped inspire pretty much every new generation of "Post Punk," or maybe it's just because they are transcendently fantastic. Whatever the case, it's been a very long time since I'd heard this record, and it feels oh so good to have it back in my ears.

Thanks, Jacob!

**

My Blu Ray copy of Joe Begos' VFW arrived in the mail yesterday, and I'm hoping to get a chance to watch it this weekend. I caught this one at Beyondfest last year (talked about it on The Horror Vision HERE), and it's fantastic. If you haven't seen VFW and you dig old school Carpenter, Siege Horror, or bad ass old dude flicks, I would consider this one a must. Here's the trailer:



**

Firmly entrenched in William Gibson's The Peripheral. I have only the very vaguest sense of what the hell is happening, but I'm hooked.


No one writes the future like Mr. Gibson, it's a proven fact.

**

Playlist:

Nirvana - Bleach
Dee Lite - Sampladelic Relics and Dancefloor Oddities
Willie Nelson and Leon Russell - One For the Road
White Lung - Paradise
Code Orange - Underneath
Steve Moore - VFW OST
Carpenter Brut - Blood Machines OST
Jawbox - For Your Own Special Sweetheart
FMLYBND - Letting Go (Single)
Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
Old Man Gloom - Seminar IX: Darkness of Being
White Lung - Eponymous
White Lung - Sorry
Tub Ring - Zoo Hypothesis
Doves - Lost Soul
Brand New - God and the Devil are Raging Inside Me

**

Card:


Emerging from cloudy skies about troubled waters. Clarity lies not too far in the distance.

Saturday, November 23, 2019

Writing Chamber 11.23.19



Because I'm spending the day with my phone in airplane mode so I can finally finish another of these short stories that have been haunting me for months, I'm revisiting a lot of the stuff that's trapped on my old iPod. Which, as it turns out, is extremely inspiring. Telephone Tel Aviv's album Immolate Yourself was an album I came to unexpectedly: sometime in the mid-00s a friend had given me a bunch of albums in MP3 form, so many in fact that it took me quite some time to work my way around to all of them. One day after work at the bookstore, I came home and hit "Shuffle" on the desktop computer before lying down for a nap. I woke up at some point with this album on, but the wake-up was half-hearted, and as I lie there drifting in and out of sleep, this record slowly endeared itself to me. It has, since then, been a portal back to the weird, twilight mindset of that experience.

**

Along with the old iPod selections, I'm playing a couple movies on silent in the background while I write. Today's choices:






**

With Tasmyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth winding down (it's SO freakin' good), I purchased and loaded Autumn Christian's Girl Like A Bomb in my 'on-deck' reading circle. I don't know much about the book or the author, but I LOVED Shadowmachine, Christian's entry into Robert S. Wilson's Ashes and Entropy anthology earlier in the year, and am excited to read more of her work.



What a cover. The font alone sells it.

**

Playlist:

Blackstar - David Bowie
A Storm in Heaven - The Verve
David Bowie - Diamond Dogs
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Ministry - Psalm 69
Bohren and der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission
Bohren and der Club of Gore - Gore Motel

Friday, November 15, 2019

New Grimes and Release Date!



We now have a release date for the long-awaited next Grimes album. Miss Anthropocene will be out February 21st, and you can pre-order it HERE.

Being that I'm relatively new to her music - having really only been converted about four or five years ago - this will be the first new record Grimes has released that I've waited for. And I feel as though it has been a long wait.

**

Joe Begos' new film Bliss came out on Blu Ray/DVD this past Tuesday and I highly recommend you go out and pick this one up. I saw this at Beyondfest back in September and loved it, and upon re-watching it last night on Blu Ray, I found I enjoyed it, even more, a second time. Easily in my top top if not top five of the year:



And here's the awesome Spotify Soundtrack Mr. Begos put up to coincide with the release of the film.




**

Lo and behold, NCBD this week turned out to be a pretty big deal for me. It's been a while, but I left the shop with a couple new titles that I'm excited about supporting. I'm not thinking of backpaddling on easing off monthlies, but there were a few that were small press, so I'm paying it forward, in a manner of speaking.



And I'd completely forgotten there was a new Terry Moore series on the stands!



I don't really know anything about Five Years, but I'm fairly certain there are a couple of familiar faces on the cover to Issue #1.

**

This week's playlist:

Flying Lotus - You're Dead
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Timber Timbre - Eponymous
Snatch OST (playlist)
James Browns's Funky People Vol. 1
The Edgar Winter Group - Shock Treatment
Return of the Mack - Mark Morrison (single)
Revocation - The Outer Ones
Revocation - Teratogenesis EP
Final - Solaris
Arthur Ahbez - Gold
Barry Adamson - Stranger on the Sofa
Me and That Man - Songs of Love and Death
Flipper - Album
Hall and Oats - Greatest Hits
The Knife - Silent Shout
Billy Idol - Greatest Hits
Megadeth - Rust in Peace
Tyler Childers - Purgatory
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
The Nukes - Why Things Burn
Fields of the Nephilim - The Nephilim
Barry Adamson - As Above So Below
Tamaryn - The Waves
The Sword - Age of Winters
Sunn O))) - Life Metal
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Kode9 - Nothing

**

Card of the day:


Hoping this is good news pertaining to the submission I sent out yesterday afternoon.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Doomriders - The Chase



The Playlist for Joe Begos' new film Bliss has turned out to be the gift that keeps on giving! I've spent the last twenty-four alternating between Deth Crux's Mutant Flesh album and Doomriders' Black Thunder. Both these records are start-to-finish fantastic, and I haven't even had time to dig into some of the other bands with killer tracks on it. Here's the embedded full playlist - if you dig it, follow some of these folks on BandinTown, Spotify, Bandcamp or Apple Music.



**

31 Days of Horror:

10/01: House of 1000 Corpses/31
10/02: Lords of Chaos
10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1
10/04: IT Chapter 2, AHS 1984 Ep. 3
10/05: Bliss/VFW
10/06: Halloween III: Season of the Witch/Night of the Creeps/The Fog
10/07: Halloween 2018
10/08: Hell House, LLC
10/09: Dance of the Dead (Tobe Hooper; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 3)

Wow. When Masters of Horror aired back in the mid-'00s, I cursed not having cable. I looked forward to the inevitable DVD releases with a sort of frantic fan devotion. I mean, here was a series that assembled most of the greatest living horror auteurs, new and old, in one place. How could that be bad?

When all was said and done, I enjoyed the few I saw (Carpenter's Cigarette Burns, Coscarelli's Incident On and Off a Mountain Road, and Stuart Gordon's Lovecraft adaptation Dreams in the Witch House) but somehow never got around to the rest.

It's as if I knew.

Last year, I went back to the series for the first time in forever, primarily because at ~an hour each, MOH provides a great way to check a box for 31 Days of Horror on a work night. Yesterday, with a late start and an early wake-up time, I sought the series out again, opting to buy the first season digitally on Prime. Once acquired, K and I settled in for one of the episodes I had always anticipated but never got around to: Tobe Hooper's Dance of the Dead.

Dance is an adaptation of an old Richard Matheson short story of the same name that I first read in the early 90s; in fact, Matheson wrote the teleplay to adapt the story for Hooper, so everyone involved with this film is in my 'good book.' That makes it even stranger that I absolutely hated the finished product.

I didn't hate the way the story was adapted. No, what I disliked, and what I now wonder might hold true for more of the MOH series - and maybe even a lot of Mid-'00s, big-name Horror in general - is the aesthetic. I can't speak to that broader picture yet, but let's take a look at Dance of the Dead as a possible microcosm of the overall macrocosm of 2000s Horror.

Dance of the Dead suffers from an extremely dated adherence to mid-'00s culture: the guys in DOD all look like Bros, the attitude of everyone seems an extrapolation and acknowledgment of 'extreme' culture - something horror was DEFINITELY guilty of trafficking in; remember the Dimension: Extreme imprint? - and their messy hair, mountain dew attire, piercings, tattoos, etc. really just look embarrassing for the costume designer and producers. After a similar cultural rift, a lot of us look back on this same broad-stroke cluelessness on 80s youth culture as endearing (bandanas, shoulder-hoisted ghetto blasters, switchblades, etc), so maybe that will happen with the 2000s as well.

Though I doubt it. The schism is a little hard to explain, but if you were socially cognizant during the 00s, you'll know what I mean.

Along with the above, DoD sports an overly enthusiastic reliance on digital effects and awkward, heavily effected camera work that manifests as constant shaking-and-trailing of the picture frame, superimposed imagery, and a general frenetic editing pace that directly detracts from the film's visual exposition, in my opinion. During this period, I remember having a theory that everyone in Hollywood thought the entirety of youth culture suffered from ADD.

Finally, this befuddlement of youthful values and mores leads to a palpable and frankly ugly mean streak, especially when looking back from higher ground. Horror is horror, but in my experience, 'mean' generally doesn't hold up in the light of hindsight.

I fully intend to watch more of the first season of Masters of Horror, so I can only hope some of the other films contained therein prove me wrong.

**

Playlist from 10/09:

Tones of Tail - Everything
Various - Bliss Soundtrack Playlist
Bauhaus - In the Flat Field
Doomriders - Black Thunder
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Twin Tribes - Shadows
Ritual Howls - Into the Water

**

No card today.




Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Playlist to Joe Begos' Bliss



From the soundtrack to Joe Begos' Bliss, a film that I absolutely had a blast with on the big screen at the Egyptian last Saturday night. Producer/Editor/Actor Josh Ethier posted a link to the Spotify playlist, and various tracks from that will probably be popping up here for the next few days because it is loaded with great stuff that really fleshed out the aesthetic of the film and helps re-live it.

**

31 Days of Horror:

10/01: House of 1000 Corpses/31
10/02: Lords of Chaos
10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1
10/04: IT Chapter 2, AHS 1984 Ep. 3
10/05: Bliss/VFW
10/06: Halloween III: Season of the Witch/Night of the Creeps/The Fog
10/07: Halloween 2018
10/08: Hell House, LLC

Hell House, LLC was a very nice surprise. I really dug this one; while K liked it but feels most found footage movies feel like re-treads because the original Blair Witch did it already and did it better. I agree to a point, but there's something about the MO of a found footage flick that seems to lend itself to making genuinely scary moments - when handled correctly. Hell House, LLC has a couple of deep, sustained moments of, "What the fuck, ah!" horror, my favorite of which became hard to watch as one of the characters, when faced with inexplicable entities directly in front of their face, chose to pull the covers over their heads and, I guess, hope for it to go away.

I would post the trailer, but it really doesn't do it justice. My advice? If you're interested, turn off all the lights in your home and watch in the dark.

**

Playlist from 10/08:

Type  Negative - Life is Killing Me
Various - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST
Perturbator - New Model
Dr. John - Gris Gris
How to Destroy Angels - Welcome to Oblivion
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
John Carpenter - Lost Theme II
John Carpenter - Prince of Darkness OST

**

Card of the day:


Change is a'coming. Isn't that always the case? I'm reading this more as the thirteen and reference to Thanatos Energy, Death Energy, which is to say transformative energy.

Sunday, October 6, 2019

Joe Begos Double Feature at Beyondfest!



Let's start the day with something from Chris Connelly's pre-Ministry project Finitribe, from his Edinburgh days. I dug out an old single I have on vinyl yesterday and enjoyed the hell out of it, and was super pleased to see some of their stuff up on Apple Music.

**

Another wonderful evening at Beyondfest last night, where we saw a double feature of Joe Begos' two new films, Bliss and VFW. Both are FANTASTIC! Bliss is on VOD right now and I urge you to support it; VFW is slated to drop sometime around the end of the year; I'm sure I will post about it again then.



We were able to record a quick-take review of both of these, plus Joe Bob Briggs' How Rednecks Saved Hollywood and Stewart Raffill's Tammy and the T-Rex for The Horror Vision - check it out!

The Horror Vision on Apple

The Horror Vision on Spotify

The Horror Vision on Google Play

**

31 Days of Horror:

10/01: House of 1000 Corpses/31
10/02: Lords of Chaos
10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1
10/04: IT Chapter 2, AHS 1984 Ep. 3
10/05: Bliss/VFW

**

Playlist from 10/05:

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Digipak)
Testament - Souls of Black
Steve Moore - The Mind's Eye OST


**

No card today - it's late, I've been up for closing in on twenty-four hours, and I have a Tom Atkins triple feature to be at in Hollywood at 11:00 AM tomorrow. And hey, Tom Atkins will be there in person! How's that for a thrill, eh?




Tuesday, January 15, 2019

2019: January 15th



I discovered The Blueflowers yesterday on KXLU. Wow. Love this band. They have several albums available through their bandcamp HERE, and most if not all of those are on Apple Music. I'm digging into 2018's Circus on Fire this morning, and it's taking me places both familiar and strange.

I forgot to mention that last Friday I watched Pod, a film from 2015 directed by Mickey Keating. I'd seen the thumbnail for this one for years. I've also started to see discussion among a fairly rabid Keating fanbase I never realized existed, and after just this one flick I can see why some would rabidly endorse his movies. Pod is fantastic; Larry Fessenden's in it, and that's almost always a great sign; based on the simple, no-nonsense execution of a straight forward horror/sci fi concept, I'm guessing Mickey Keating's work will fit in nicely alongside Ti West and Joe Begos. In fact, Pod and Begos' The Mind's Eye would make an Excellent double feature.



Playlist from 1/14:

Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis
Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - Concerning the White Horse (pre-release single)
Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - Concerning the Entrance into Eternity
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada
David Zinman, Dawn Upshaw & London Sinfonietta - Gorecki: Symphony No. 3

Card of the day:

Second day in a row for this one. And that's probably because my interpretation yesterday was correct; I came SO close to finishing the book. So this card reappears today, because Today is the day.


Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Steve Moore's ST for Joe Bego's The Mind's Eye...


... is being released on December 2nd by Relapse Records! I am PSYCHED! Just received my copy of the Blu Ray for The Mind's Eye, one of my favorite flicks from last year and one that I saw premiere last October at the 2015 Beyond Fest. Now, almost a year later to the day, I get news of the awesome, synth-ridden nightmare score from Zombi's Steve Moore as well!

The final months of 2016 are proving to be ripe with awesomeness! (and bloody expensive).

Thanks be to Heavenisanincubator for turning me onto Begos in the first place with this write-up of his first film, Almost Human, on Joup!



Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Anticipation: Tales of Halloween


I realize I'm jumping the gun a bit, after all it is only March. However, after just now stumbling upon this impending release I find myself chomping at the bit for October! Lucky McKee? Neil Marshall? Joe Begos? Darren Lynn Bousman? And the topper - Mike Mendez? Auteur of The Convent, my all-time favorite indie horror flick and one of my favorite movies ever, period? SOLD! And when you consider that, holy crap, it's already March and the first three months of 2015 have already flown by, well then, I guess it's just as good as June then too. And if it's just as good as June, then we might as well call it September, and if it's September, October's right around the corner! Depressing that time flies that fast yes, but at least now we have something to salivate for in the meantime as life hits warp speed on another year. And while I didn't find anything cinches October as the month of release, chances are it's a safe bet.




Sunday, March 1, 2015

Adam Green's Digging up the Marrow & Joe Begos's Almost Human



Not only does Thomas Williams run the best damn music blog around, but he contributes A LOT to Joup, the online magazine my good friend Grez started a few years ago and I help run. One of Tommy's columns is Thank God for VOD, where he begins every entry with the acknowledgement that he isn't able to go to the theatre as much as he would like (same here) but VOD helps him see most of what he wants to. Of course, coupled with the difficulty heading out to the movies these days is the fact that a lot of the movies guys like Tommy and I want to see don't even open in more than one theatre in any given major population center, for a weekend at best, so VOD is a godsend. But I'm behind in my movies and I finally made it around to one Tommy wrote about last june, Joe Begos's directorial debut, Almost Human. I liked it a lot, it was a great nod to 80s sci fi horror, specifically as Tommy points out early Carpenter, and Begos crafted a very specific late night UPN tone - also as Tommy points out. I love the nostalgic approach when it's done right. And Almost Human is - there's definitely room for him to grow, but I got the same vibe from Almost Human as I did from Ti West's The Roost when it first came out, and if that's any indication, there's sure to be some great stuff following this debut.

Afterward watching the film, while researching Begos and the cast on IMDB, I stumbled across the trailer for Adam Green's new film Digging up the Marrow, and after watching it I am VERY interested. First, you had me at Ray Wise. Second, Green will forever get the benefit of the doubt from me because of Frozen. No, not the disney movie. I'm talking about the film where three college kids get stranded on a ski lift over a long weekend. Can you say traumatic?

Anyway, looking forward to seeing this quite a bit. And if you haven't given Almost Human a chance yet, you should. It's streaming on Netflix so that makes it even more accessible to most. Also, directly after I posted this I flipped over to Bloody Disgusting and found an article and pictures of Looper star Noah Segan on the set of Begos's follow-up to Almost Human, The Mind's Eye. Excited!