New Zeal and Ardor dropped today! Six songs and Manuel Gagneux continues to evolve this project in ways that keep it feeling anything but stagnant or gimmicky. Love this band. Buy HERE.
31 Days of Halloween:
Last night I went up to Hollywood and visited my friend Keller for the first time since early March. Hollyweird is not exactly a place I want to be at the moment, but tucked away in his apartment, the petri dish of the streets is far removed, so it at least felt safe. We talked, played each other a bunch of music we'd been into or found since our last palaver, and then rounded out the night with my DVD copy of Filmrise's Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Family Portrait. Keller had never seen this, didn't even know it existed, and what's more, he had only days before just watched the original TCM for the first time. He's a brave man, and a student of film, so he did the scholarly thing and watched the original with the 2003 remake. Full disclosure: While there are a few small things I liked about that remake, it is a film I abhor. I hate Jessica Biel's 'acting' and the film's and its denouement's insistent on plying her character with enough water to soak her white shirt to her flesh. I hate the way the extremely impressive scene that follows the bullet through the hitchhiker's head and out the back becomes transparent in the final frame and you can clearly see the actor has been replaced with a dummy (otherwise, it's an awesome shot). I know there's more I hate about the film, but that's what I remember and I've thankfully put the rest out of my mind.
But I digress. The original TCM is a classic, and we spent a good deal of time talking about its charms and strengths, then I showed him A Family Portrait - all in-depth interviews with the primary film's villains - Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, John Dugan, and of course, Gunnar Hansen. They tell stories about the film's set, and the absolute insanity director Tobe Hooper used to sculpt the set, mood, and performances of the cast.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Family Portrait will blow your mind, and it is definitely the film that helped grow my appreciation of the original film into the holy reverence I hold it in (it's not a film I watch often, and I'm not a card-carrying, memorabilia-collecting fan, but when I do find myself in the mood to watch it, I do so in quiet reverence every time). I consider A Family Portrait and essential companion piece to the original film, and lo and behold, the entire thing is on youtube:
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
23) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Family Portrait/Masters of Horror: "Sick Girl" (Lucky McKee)
New Creepshow animated special hits Shudder THIS Thursday, 10/29 - just in time for Halloween!
While season on of Shudder's Creepshow started out with a bang but kind of became a series of diminishing returns, I'm still of the opinion that any Creepshow is better than no Creepshow. Can't wait!
Playlist:
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Confessions of a Knife
Ministry - The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste
Joy Division - Still
16 Horsepower - Low Estate
Crystal Castles - II
Miranda Sex Garden - Fairytales of Slavery
The Misfits - Earth A.D.
The Rollins Stones - Hot Rocks 2Card:
Grandiose ideas and the Will to transmute them from intangible to palpable.
