1 More Day 'til Halloween

Chock this up to unexpected. I finished my movie last night and sat down at my computer, only to stumble into a premiere for the first single from the upcoming first Remix album from Deftones - Black Pony. This is for the 20th Anniversary of their seminal album White Pony, which will always be special to me because it's where I began following the band. I'm not really one for remix albums, but this version of Knife Party - done by Purity Ring no less, a group I was briefly obsessed with during the later half of the 00s - is pretty fantastic on headphones. I'll definitely be giving the entire Black Pony a spin when it drops.

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31 Days of Halloween:

I had my second viewing of Rob Zombie's 2012 film Lords of Salem. The first time I watched this, back when it originally hit VOD, I have to say, I was not impressed. Now, however, I'm not sure how that was possible. This is easily my second favorite Zombie flick after House of 1000 Corpses. It's a slow burn - maybe a crawl really - but it's essentially Zombie doing Argento, and it really works well. Very few of the tropes RZ usually painfully adheres to are present (clowns, midget nazis, white trash, etc.), and everything about the film is breathtaking, especially Brandon Trost's cinematography and his ability to translate the genius of RZ's shots and composition. 

1) Tales of Halloween: Sweet Tooth/The Wolf Man (1941)

2) From Beyond/Monsterland: "Port Fourchon, Louisiana"/Tales of Halloween: "The Night Billy Raised Hell" & "Trick"

3) Mulholland Drive/Creepshow (1982): "The Crate"

4) Waxwork

5) Synchronic/Bad Hair

6) Dolls

7) Lovecraft Country Ep. 8/Tales of Halloween: "The Weak and the Wicked" & "The Grim Grinning Ghost"

8) 976-Evil

9) Repo! The Genetic Opera

10) Firestarter/George A. Romero's Bruiser

11) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 1 & 2/Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

12) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 3, 4, and 5/House of 1000 Corpses

13) Masque of the Red Death/Creepshow (2019) Episode 7/Creepshow (1982)

14) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 6 and 7

15) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 8 and 9/Roseanne (88) season 2 and 3 Halloween Episodes

16) The Mortuary Collection/Roseanne (88) season 4 Halloween Episode

17) Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning

18) Lovecraft Country episode 9/The Haunting/Roseanne (88) season 5 Halloween Episode

19) Lovecraft Country episode 10/Tales From the Crypt season 1 ep. 5 "Lover Come Hack to Me"

20) George A. Romero's Season of the Witch

21) The Omen

22) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Family Portrait/Masters of Horror: "Sick Girl" (Lucky McKee)

23) Joe Bob's Halloween Hideaway: Haunt/Hack-O-Lantern

24) Eight Legged Freaks/What We Do in the Shadows season 1 episode 1/Night of the Demons

25) 10/31 - "The Old Hag"/Absentia

26) Prince of Darkness/Tales of Halloween (remainder)

27) Joe Bob's Haunted Drive-In - Nine short films

28) Halloween III: Season of the Witch

29) Lords of Salem/The Connors 2020 Halloween episode

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NCBD

I totally forgot to post my picks for NCBD this week. Some great stuff, but one above all else I've been chomping at the bit for:

One Turtle left in the not-so-distant future and he carries all of his brothers' (and sister's) weapons, so that we don't know which one it is? Wow. Haven't read it yet, but it's here by my side and I can't wait!

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Playlist:

Meg Myers - Sorry

Danzig - Danzig II: Lucifuge

Joy Division - Still

The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground and Nico

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Card:

Fairness and mindfulness can eliminate unnecessary restrictions and problems down the road.

14 Days 'till Halloween: New All Them Witches

 

An absolute stunner! This new All The Witches video released yesterday does that rare thing, it takes a strong emotional song and marries equally strong emotional imagery to it. These guys are truly a level above.

"Rats in Ruin" is taken from the album Nothing is Ideal, which is available for purchase HERE.

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31 Days of Halloween:

Thursday Shudder dropped the new film The Mortuary Collection by Ryan Spindell. I wasn't expecting this one to be what it was at all. The Mortuary Collection is very much cut from the same cloth as Trick r' Treat, with a healthy dose of classic Spielberg. The music is swelling, majestic, and sometimes hammy, but only in the right places. Same with the story and acting, all around a knock out. If you're a Tim Burton fan, a Michael Dougherty fan, or a Neil Gaiman fan, this is for you:

1) Tales of Halloween: Sweet Tooth/The Wolf Man (1941)

2) From Beyond/Monsterland: Port Fourchon, Louisiana/Tales of Halloween: The Night Billy Raised Hell/Tales of Halloween: Trick

3) Mulholland Drive/Creepshow (1982): The Crate

4) Waxwork

5) Synchronic/Bad Hair

6) Dolls

7) Lovecraft Country Ep. 8/Tales of Halloween: The Weak and the Wicken/Tales of Halloween: The Grim Grinning Ghost

8) 976-Evil

9) Repo! The Genetic Opera

10) Firestarter/George A. Romero's Bruiser

11) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 1 & 2/Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

12) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 3, 4, and 5/House of 1000 Corpses

13) Masque of the Red Death/Creepshow (2019) Episode 7/Creepshow (1982)

14) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 6 and 7

15) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 8 and 9/Roseanne (88) season 2 and 3 Halloween Episodes

16) The Mortuary Collection/Roseanne (88) season 4 Halloween Episode

Also, yes, I am most definitely aware Roseanne is not a Horror film, however, their classic Halloween episodes from my youth fit perfectly into my 31 Days of Halloween, another reason I'm glad I modified the name and nature of this annual section. That season two Halloween special - the first the show did - is still a damn knock out, and I had not seen in since it aired in syndication way back in those original few years of the original show.

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Playlist:

Type O Negative - October Rust

Mastodon - Once More 'Round The Sun

Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets

The Misfits - Static Age

The Misfits - Earth A.D.

Mastodon - Medium Rarities

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Card:

Reminding me to take care of the trademark proceedings I began recently for The Horror Vision after finding out someone else started a podcast of the same name a year after we did.

King Volcano is Here

 

It's about time I brought out the Bauhaus. Of course, it hasn't been easy getting into a Halloween state of mind with the heat wave in LA, however, it appears *fingercrossedfingerscrossed* to have broken. 80? 75? I'll take it. Especially with the sun setting noticeably earlier now. So yeah, King Volcano is here...

In the course of posting this song, I came to realize that neither Burning From the Inside, nor The Sky's Gone Out are on streaming platforms at the moment. This leads me to believe there may be a rights struggle between Murphy and the rest of the band. Interesting...

Also of interest, I randomly found that two days ago, Crippled Black Phoenix released a cover version of "She's in Parties", the first Bauhaus song I ever heard and the one that made me an immediate fan.

 

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31 Days of Halloween:

Last night's viewing was a classic, 80s Horror flick:

Well, classic to me. I'm not sure why I have such a soft spot for this one. I definitely love the set design and the lighting. I especially love the outdoor sets, like the cinema and it's "Continuous Horror Marathon All Seats $1.99" marquee, or the street in front of Dante's Shuffleboard and the pay phone next to it. Hell, I just love that there's a business called Dante's Shuffleboard. Also, being that Robert Englund made his directorial debut here, the movie definitely borrows from A Nightmare on Elm Street's dream sequences. The scene where Hoax confronts Spike in the boys locker room looks awesome with its bluish-green fog. Ridiculous for a locker room, but cool nonetheless. 

So, after watching the original 976-Evil for the umpteenth time, I checked around and found that the sequel from 1992 is currently free with Prime. I've never seen this, and was delighted to find that with Englund gone, the studio hired Jim Wynorski of Chopping Mall fame to helm the continuation of the story. Alas, I was only able to watch the first fifteen minutes or so before falling asleep, however, I'll definitely be revisiting this one over the weekend.

1) Tales of Halloween: Sweet Tooth/The Wolf Man (1941)

2) From Beyond/Monsterland: Port Fourchon, Louisiana/Tales of Halloween: The Night Billy Raised Hell/Tales of Halloween: Trick

3) Mulholland Drive/Creepshow (1982): The Crate

4) Waxwork

5) Synchronic/Bad Hair

6) Dolls

7) Lovecraft Country Ep. 8/Tales of Halloween: The Weak and the Wicken/Tales of Halloween: The Grim Grinning Ghost

8) 976-Evil

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Playlist:

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper

Dance with the Dead - Loved to Death

Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets

Joy Division - Still

Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark

NIN - Pretty Hate Machine

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Card:

Hmmm... my previous pull from this deck came back with the same card. 

RIP Eddie Van Halen

 

I'm not really a Van Halen fan, and as revolutionary as Eddie Van Halen's guitar style was at the time Van Halen's eponymous debut hit the world, he really just played 'Eruption' over and over for the rest of his career. That's not exactly true, but it's not exactly wrong, either. Doesn't matter: first rock album I ever owned was 1984, and I've loved it ever since. The singles are all gold, but the deep cuts are infinitely better, imo. I almost posted Drop Dead Legs here, but instead I went with Top Jimmy just because I think the intro guitar is some of the most under-stated playing EVH ever did, and that makes it even more awesome. If there's a stage in Heaven, Eddie's gonna take a turn.

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31 Days of Halloween:

I've been flim-flamming between calling this segment "31 Days of Horror" and "31 Days of Halloween," but I think I'm going to finally settle on the latter, simply because my activities of the last few days have put me in situations where my entries for the day skew outside the realm of Horror. My definition Horror is definitely open to a lot of interpretation, but I feel like I'm really pushing the envelope including Mulholland Drive and Synchronic. So Halloween works a lot better this year.

Monday night, my Horror Vision co-host Ray and I hit our final night of Beyondfest 2020 programming at the Mission Tiki Drive-In with the West Coast Premiere of the looong-awaited new film from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Synchronic is everything I thought it would be and more, but it also surprised me. These guys are great filmmakers who will no doubt become Nolan-level in time, and I feel privileged to have now seen the film that I believe will bridge the 'Independent' era of their career with what comes next.

 

 

Also, Monday night was a double-feature, and Ray and I were also lucky enough to catch the premiere of Justin Simien's new film Bad Hair:       

Bad Hair premieres on HULU on October 23rd, and it's a damn good time. If you look up in the right hand corner of this page, you'll see my little Spotify widget has updated with our quick-take, spoiler-free review of both these films.

Finally, last night K and I sat down to watch a flick she's been wanting me to see for a few months now, ever since it popped up on Prime. And what I realized once the film began is, even though I'd been seeing the VHS cover art since I was a little kid, I had completely missed or forgotten that Dolls is a Stuart Gordon film! This, of course, won me over immediately, as did the film, which is excellent in that 'the storm forced us to knock on the door of the creepy old mansion and now we're all being picked off one by one' way that keeps coming up lately, whether it be in Dolls, April Fool's Day, or Clue, all excellent films in my humble opinion. Also, I'm really making an attempt to watch some new stuff this year, instead of just filling the month with my standard October films. This and The Wolf Man were good starts in that direction.

1) The Wolf Man

2) From Beyond/Monsterland: Port Fourchon, Louisiana

3) Mulholland Drive/Creepshow (1982): The Crate

4) Waxwork

5) Synchronic/Bad Hair

6) Dolls

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Playlist:

Deftones - Ohms

The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once

Mastodon - Leviathan

Ainoma - Necropolis

Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me

Van Halen - 1984

Mastodon - Medium Rarities

Fear Factory - Demanufacture

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Card:

Cause and Effect: I've been unable to right for about a week, and my self-esteem is in the toilet. Go figure.

Isolation: Day 186

Musick

I've been in an Electric Wizard mood lately. Here's one of my favorites from 2011's Black Mass, probably my favorite of the group's. 

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Mindful Habitation:

The last few days have been a bit of a blank slate. Submerged in the same, endless routine of days didn't bother me at all. Until it did. I've experienced a sudden and overpowering loneliness that came on from out of nowhere. I need a pattern interrupt, but I'm not sure exactly how to do that. I would kill to go sit at the crappy BWW's in Hollywood by my friend's apartment and sit with him, have a burger and a few beers. Just typing that makes me feel like I want to cry. This is crazy. I'm not sure where this overwrought deluge of emotion has come from, but it's almost crippling. The workweek feels like one endless day, and the pattern at home has disintegrated my sleep patterns so that I'm always tired when I'm there during the week. I find joy in consumerism and food, a slippery slope. I'm not gaining weight, but the extra I have is setting up shop right in my stomach. 

Okay, now that that's hopefully been expunged, I can maybe get on with my day. Everything I said above is true, but it's also exaggerated from my perspective because everyone needs to feel a little goth/emo now and again. I'll continue to do what I do, however, I think K and I will maybe take a small weekend trip soon, and perhaps meet up with some friends this weekend, just to alter our landscape.

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Playlist:

Slipknot - Subliminal Verses

Electric Wizard - Black Mass

Code Orange - Underneath

 

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Card

Cause and Effect, eh? An interesting pull based on everything I wrote above. The emotional and psychological effects of this long-term isolation will most likely resound through our society for years, perhaps even after a vaccine.

Speaking of vaccines, I might as well put down my prediction here before it's too late, both as a warning and an 'I told you so,' because the frustration of the current socio-political landscape has made me into the kind of cunt that will say exactly that. Prediction: A 'vaccine' will appear shortly before the election, Trump will take credit, and it will then turn out to not work. Such is our world that even if he introduces a fake vaccine, his die-hard supporters will smile and champion its (and his) merits regardless of whether it's real or not. This MIGHT put him in enough favor to win.

I can see it clear as day: the CDC, FDA, AMA, can all shout at the top of their lungs that it's not thoroughly tested, or straight up doesn't work, and he will cry fake news and people will rally around him as a savior. Let's hope I'm wrong, let's hope there is some Justice served in November. But really, it wouldn't surprise me at this point if there wasn't.