Fans of Italian horror films were distraught when Anchor Bay unceremoniously sold out to Starz and entered the bleak world of crappy Direct To DVD shelf filler. All was not lost,however, as the baton was quickly picked up by none other than Grindhouse auteur William Lustig. Having transferred most of Anchor Bay's genre movies (as well as a treasure trove of movies that hadn't even been released on VHS) to his Blue Underground label, gore hounds had found their new Messiah, and the 'Bay became a hazy memory.
Blue Underground also has the distinction of being one of the first niche companies to enter the BluRay field. I for one questioned the purpose of releasing these movies on such a format; most of them had been passed from venue to venue like a cheap prostitute and were in pretty sad shape even when they were brand new.
It turns out that my fears were unfounded, as the BluRay releases of the Maestro's classics City of the Living Dead (A.K.A. The Gates of Hell; 1980) and House By the Cemetery lose none of their low budget ambience in the transfer.
City...is an ultra gory mood piece concerning the opening of one of the seven gates of hell in Dunwich, a town somewhere (one would assume) in the Northeast. The story could have used some fact checking (witches in Salem were executed by hanging rather than burning), but fans realize that such things are not really the point of Fulci's work. What stays with you is the sense that you are watching someone else's fever dream; a nightmare that you fear you may never wake up from. A lot of the scenes do not progress the way a mainstream story would, so they take on a creepy, surrealistic quality.
Whether or not this was Fulci's intention has been the subject of much debate (saddled as he was with pitiful budgets and a lack of comprehension of the english language). whether or not it was intentional ,it worked.
The movie is mainly known nowadays for it's gruesome F/X work, courtesy of Gino De Rossi. The drill, the maggot storm, the infamous vomiting scene (which actually made me sick the first time I saw it) are rendered in gruesome detail, leaving almost nothing to the imagination. The pizza faced zombies are pretty ghastly, too; no longer content to do the George Romero shuffle. The Undead have mastered such useful skills as teleportation and the ability to jump from treacherous heights without incident.
There is also a wealth of bonus material; this was a Godsend for me after having scoured the Internet for years without uncovering one usable factoid. The special effects featurette is quite enlightening (yogurt and blueberries make convincing brain matter), and the cast interviews are charming. The best part though is the fact that the print still has a few scratches, but it no longer looks like the distributor picked his teeth with it.
An even more obscure title, House by the Cemetery languished in the no man's land of the public domain for two decades, usually turning up in those ten movie value packs alongside stuff like Dwain Esper's 'Maniac'. Now it finally gets the treatment it deserves. The story, as it were, concerns a doomed family that moves into a house inhabited by one Dr. Jacob Freudstein. The mad doctor resides in the basement of the house, periodically surfacing to kill locals to use in the gene reconstruction process that has kept him alive since the late 1800's (though once viewers get a look at the guy they may question whether or not it's actually working). The bare bones plot is merely a jumping off point for one of the most bat shit crazy movies in horror movie history. It's even more surreal than City, but it is also unbearably tense, leading to a very nasty showdown in that basement.
So to summarize, the BluRay format turns out to be a great medium for these fine films. You would be well advised to delay eating until the movie is over...provided you still can-G.P.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Wow; I've Sold Out Already!
Is anyone else doing this AdSense thing? I heard that it lets you put ads on your blog, but it uses the content of the blog so that it can advertise products pertaining to your...uh, blog. I'm not entirely sure how this works, but I'll give it a shot:
I'm a big fan of horror movies, but I don't really care for the newer stuff. That's why I like BLUE UNDERGROUND. BLUE UNDERGROUND is a company that specializes in obscure, cultish movies. Some of these movies were directed by the owner of thew company, William Lustig (who directed some of the greatest movies EVER like MANIAC COP and MANIAC COP II, both of which have been issued by BLUE UNDERGROUND). BLUE UNDERGROUND is way better than his old company Anchor Bay, which sucks ass!
It must be noted that I'm also a big fan of the art house movies issued by CRITERION, and if CRITERIONwould pay me for advertising their product, then I could afford to buy the ridiculously overpriced CRITERIONeditions of such important films as Luis Bunuel's Simon of the Desert and....uh, Armageddon (wait, I didn't type that, did I).
I'm a big fan of horror movies, but I don't really care for the newer stuff. That's why I like BLUE UNDERGROUND. BLUE UNDERGROUND is a company that specializes in obscure, cultish movies. Some of these movies were directed by the owner of thew company, William Lustig (who directed some of the greatest movies EVER like MANIAC COP and MANIAC COP II, both of which have been issued by BLUE UNDERGROUND). BLUE UNDERGROUND is way better than his old company Anchor Bay, which sucks ass!
It must be noted that I'm also a big fan of the art house movies issued by CRITERION, and if CRITERIONwould pay me for advertising their product, then I could afford to buy the ridiculously overpriced CRITERIONeditions of such important films as Luis Bunuel's Simon of the Desert and....uh, Armageddon (wait, I didn't type that, did I).
The F@#$%&g Dishwasher Story Again
Here's the dishwasher story...again. This is going to be my 'Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer'...
My wife Susan and I have been very lucky in that we've been married for almost six years and we still actually like each other. We're very open in our marriage. I should probably stress that I don't mean this in the Gene Simmons 'I Love You, But I'm Still Gonna Have Sex With Other People' sense of the word; rather, we feel that we can discuss differences of opinion with each other in a rational, mature manner. Take this loving exchange from last week:
Sue: You stink!
Gary: No, you stink!
The matter in question was our dishwasher. Ever since we started dating, this matter has aroused more passionate debate than, for example, the war in Iraq. I realize that most of my female readers (if not both of them) may jump to the conclusion that I, representing the stereotypical male, was probably asked to load the dishwasher and declined because I was busy watching football or crushing beer cans on my forehead or whatever. But the catalyst for this argument was my strict policy of rinsing the dishes before I load the dishwasher. I learned this on (since we're talking about male stereotypes) Home Improvement.
Sue's argument is that A). It takes too long, and B). it's like washing the same dishes twice. My argument basically amounts to the fact that 1). She's forgetting that I'm actually washing the dishes, and 2). I should be recognized as a pioneer because I may be the first male in history to voluntarily do a domestic chore.
Perhaps I am in the wrong here (as I often am; she is quite a bit more intelligent than I am), but I actually have another theory about this. I'll bet that at some point in her life she had access to a dishwasher that actually worked. It probably wasn't in college; there isn't a dorm in this country that has enough area for even a decent sized sink, and most colleges don't like to just hand out luxury items like dishwashers (or post Eisenhower era heating systems, but I digress). It was probably at home. Perhaps her memories of Mom Karen's trusty Hotpoint blasting the paisley prints off the coffee cups gives her a vague sense of hope, like a heroin addict during their umpteenth fix, hoping to reexperience that first cherry rush.
Or perhaps not; it's a dishwasher, for god's sake.
I have had access to maybe six dishwashers in my entire life, none of which I would trust to launder old baseball caps. Hell, I didn't even know dishwashers were suppoused to work. I thought people just bought them because they matched other appliances, like they were really expensive window treatments. Sue claims that some of them do work. For some reason, she has unrelenting faith in ours, despite the fact that the dishes seem to come out dirtier than they went in.
And so, I reluctantly believe her. After all, her unrelenting faith in me has done a lot of good.
I was hoping to write a lengthy discourse on the differences between men and women (leaving the toilet seat up, how Porky's will outlast Steel Magnolias, etc.), but Sue loaded the dishwasher last and I have to get back to scraping the plates.
Thanks For Listening-G.P.
My wife Susan and I have been very lucky in that we've been married for almost six years and we still actually like each other. We're very open in our marriage. I should probably stress that I don't mean this in the Gene Simmons 'I Love You, But I'm Still Gonna Have Sex With Other People' sense of the word; rather, we feel that we can discuss differences of opinion with each other in a rational, mature manner. Take this loving exchange from last week:
Sue: You stink!
Gary: No, you stink!
The matter in question was our dishwasher. Ever since we started dating, this matter has aroused more passionate debate than, for example, the war in Iraq. I realize that most of my female readers (if not both of them) may jump to the conclusion that I, representing the stereotypical male, was probably asked to load the dishwasher and declined because I was busy watching football or crushing beer cans on my forehead or whatever. But the catalyst for this argument was my strict policy of rinsing the dishes before I load the dishwasher. I learned this on (since we're talking about male stereotypes) Home Improvement.
Sue's argument is that A). It takes too long, and B). it's like washing the same dishes twice. My argument basically amounts to the fact that 1). She's forgetting that I'm actually washing the dishes, and 2). I should be recognized as a pioneer because I may be the first male in history to voluntarily do a domestic chore.
Perhaps I am in the wrong here (as I often am; she is quite a bit more intelligent than I am), but I actually have another theory about this. I'll bet that at some point in her life she had access to a dishwasher that actually worked. It probably wasn't in college; there isn't a dorm in this country that has enough area for even a decent sized sink, and most colleges don't like to just hand out luxury items like dishwashers (or post Eisenhower era heating systems, but I digress). It was probably at home. Perhaps her memories of Mom Karen's trusty Hotpoint blasting the paisley prints off the coffee cups gives her a vague sense of hope, like a heroin addict during their umpteenth fix, hoping to reexperience that first cherry rush.
Or perhaps not; it's a dishwasher, for god's sake.
I have had access to maybe six dishwashers in my entire life, none of which I would trust to launder old baseball caps. Hell, I didn't even know dishwashers were suppoused to work. I thought people just bought them because they matched other appliances, like they were really expensive window treatments. Sue claims that some of them do work. For some reason, she has unrelenting faith in ours, despite the fact that the dishes seem to come out dirtier than they went in.
And so, I reluctantly believe her. After all, her unrelenting faith in me has done a lot of good.
I was hoping to write a lengthy discourse on the differences between men and women (leaving the toilet seat up, how Porky's will outlast Steel Magnolias, etc.), but Sue loaded the dishwasher last and I have to get back to scraping the plates.
Thanks For Listening-G.P.
What The Hell Am I Going To Write About?!
Well, after countless hours of meditating on the subject, writing down little notes in various notebooks, and having my wife Susan roll her eyes every time I talk about my ideas without actually writing anything, I've decided to start a blog. The only problem is that my mind usually runs a mile a minute when I'm away from the computer, but as soon as I sit down it all goes blank. I've got a really good story idea that I've been sitting on for about nine years....well, I've actually written a few chapters; the rest is scattered amongst the 187,264 spiral notebooks I've accumulated.
I don't really do any political stuff, since I have friends on both sides and any mention either way seems to spark a debate that I really don't want to participate in. My own politics are a strange mix of both sides, so I worry that I really don't agree with anybody. I also don't like sappy stuff. What I do have is an innate knowledge of popular culture...
...of course, since the early Nineties everyone has. The only difference between me and the slackers of old is that the references that I make go to a deeper and more irritating level; that, and the fact that I've always had a job over the past twenty years. Whenever the Eighties revival came around, it's almost as if the powers that be had earmarked certain songs for immortality (Tainted Love comes to mind). But one of my favorite 80's songs was Sweetheart by Franke and the Knockouts. It took me EIGHT YEARS to find a copy of this song that didn't require that little round spacer that goes on the record player spindle.
Something else about those days that I hate was that stupid yellow book that they had in all the record stores (this was pre-Internet, of course). How it worked was you would walk up to the clerk and tell him you wanted to order a copy of 'Tommy Tutone 2'. Then the guy would repeat your order: "Did you say 'Tommy Tune?". Then you would correct him: "Tommy Tune?! Look, If I listened to show tunes, do you think I'd be dressed like this?". Then he would find your album in the yellow book and mail off your order and you would receive your album before the music formats changed again, if you were lucky.
That's another problem: I tend to go off on tangents.
Anyway, the point is that I know about pretty much everything that doesn't matter. Knowing that director Lucio Fulci's first wife committed suicide isn't going to benefit me in the job that I do. The fact that I know that Thora Birch's mother was in Deep Throat isn't going to help me if I put it on my resume. So I guess I'll just write about all of that stuff so that everyone else can learn it, if they're still reading.
I don't really do any political stuff, since I have friends on both sides and any mention either way seems to spark a debate that I really don't want to participate in. My own politics are a strange mix of both sides, so I worry that I really don't agree with anybody. I also don't like sappy stuff. What I do have is an innate knowledge of popular culture...
...of course, since the early Nineties everyone has. The only difference between me and the slackers of old is that the references that I make go to a deeper and more irritating level; that, and the fact that I've always had a job over the past twenty years. Whenever the Eighties revival came around, it's almost as if the powers that be had earmarked certain songs for immortality (Tainted Love comes to mind). But one of my favorite 80's songs was Sweetheart by Franke and the Knockouts. It took me EIGHT YEARS to find a copy of this song that didn't require that little round spacer that goes on the record player spindle.
Something else about those days that I hate was that stupid yellow book that they had in all the record stores (this was pre-Internet, of course). How it worked was you would walk up to the clerk and tell him you wanted to order a copy of 'Tommy Tutone 2'. Then the guy would repeat your order: "Did you say 'Tommy Tune?". Then you would correct him: "Tommy Tune?! Look, If I listened to show tunes, do you think I'd be dressed like this?". Then he would find your album in the yellow book and mail off your order and you would receive your album before the music formats changed again, if you were lucky.
That's another problem: I tend to go off on tangents.
Anyway, the point is that I know about pretty much everything that doesn't matter. Knowing that director Lucio Fulci's first wife committed suicide isn't going to benefit me in the job that I do. The fact that I know that Thora Birch's mother was in Deep Throat isn't going to help me if I put it on my resume. So I guess I'll just write about all of that stuff so that everyone else can learn it, if they're still reading.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)