Fri, 29 December 2006  I've brought up the movie nights my friend Kevin and I hold once a week a couple times here, so I decided to bring up a movie from another list we've done recently. The first list of flicks we came up with to watch was horror since Kevin hadn't seen any up until then. For our second list we decided to tackle a genre both of us were unfamiliar with, Westerns, for one so that we could both watch movies we'd never seen before, and two, to see if we could, since neither of us were fans.  Since I put together the first list for the most part, Kevin took the reins on the Westerns. We both felt it should be a little more in depth than the horror list (which in the end felt a little weak), so this one topped out at 48 flicks, in no particular order: Stagecoach, Red River, The Searchers, True Grit, High Noon, How the West Was Won, Vera Cruz, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Destry Rides Again, The Man From Laramie, My Darling Clementine, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Magnificent Seven, Westworld, El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Posse, The Outlaw, Lust in the Dust, Duel in the Sun, Tombstone, Young Guns, Young Guns II, Unforgiven, Django, Django Kill! If You Live, Shoot!, My Name is Trinity, Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Outlaw Josey Wales, High Plains Drifter, Shane, Dances With Wolves, Rio Bravo, The Wild Bunch, Blazing Saddles, City Slickers, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Maverick, Silverado, Shanghai Noon, Last Man Standing, and Dead Man. I'll be honest, I was not looking forward to most of those flicks. When I was growing up, securing television watching time on the weekends was hard because my dad got up at the crack of dawn and started watching westerns for hours on end. It got to the point where I hated them, thinking that for every second a western was on TV, there must be a much better cartoon on another channel. Anyway, we were both pleasantly surprised to discover that we actually really dug most of the flicks, the Spaghetti Westerns in particular. Well while we were making headway on the westerns list, I was putting together my Kill Bill reference list for us to watch at the same time to sort of break the westerns up a bit. It turned out that I had a western on it, Death Rides a Horse, and I was so happy to be contributing to our western experience beyond the list that was already made. The flick has a similar plot to Kill Bill, as well as shared Morricone music, and the quote about revenge being a dish best served cold. Well, before I had a chance to get to it, Kevin ended up sticking it on the Western list as a late comer when we found out how much we dug the Spaghetti Westerns we were watching. Out of all the Italian westerns we watched I think I dug Death Rides a Horse the most, mainly because Lee Van Cleef is awesome and there's a lot more humor in it than some of the Leone stuff. It's also got one hell of a fun plot and some of my favorite Morricone music as well. Unfortunately, all of the copies available in America are truly shit. When we watched the flick, it was a copy that we rented off of Netflix and I don't think I've ever seen poorer DVD quality ever. It was fullscreen, way too dark, scratchy, the sound was so garbled that it was inaudible, not to mention the fact that because the resolution was so bad you couldn't read the subtitles. What's funny is that beyond all of this, I still loved the film, which says a lot about it. I did a search on the interwebnets for a better copy of the flick and finally found one on eBay that was a bootleg of the Japanese release. I've picked up my fair share of bootlegs in the past, but this was the first time I ever found one that was so good that I would rather have it than an official release. It's widescreen, the print was color corrected and cleaned of scratches and stuff, the sound is phenomenal and there are even some special features (though they're in Japanese.) It seems to be available on Amazon right now too… Category: Buried in DVDs -- posted at: 12:51 PM Comments[0] |
Thu, 28 December 2006 I haven't talked much about any of the TV shows I own yet. I figured a good place to start would be Robotech since it's one of the few shows that I actually did actively collect before I became obsessed with DVD.  Robotech is one of those weird shows that I missed out on as a kid growing up in the 80s. I think I saw one episode at some point and was completely uninterested because for the entire 25 minutes all I saw were characters lounging around and talking. There were no fight scenes, planes, or giant robots drifting through space. When I see a show like this and the bumpers have a transforming jet getting ready to shoot its laser, then I expect a little of this in the show. At least throw me a bone and have the characters lounging around and talking by the giant robot jet things or something. I guess I picked a bad day to watch. Little did I know that while I avoided the show and the toys after that, that I was actually secretly playing with one of those giant robot jet things. See, I had no idea that Hasbro (or Takara in Japan) ripped off the Japanese version of this show (well kind of, that gets a little complicated, but I'll get to that in a minute) and used the Veritech fighter design for the Jetfire Transformer toy (even though the character in the show looked completely different.) What I find kind of funny (though I'm sure anyone reading this by now is putting a gun to their head) is that Jetfire was my poor-man's G.I. Joe Skystriker, since I was never able to acquire one of those. As for the rip-off, I'm not exactly sure about the back story of this. I assume (with the inane break down of that word intended) that Takara swiped the design of the veritech fighter for Jetfire because it looks exactly like one (though on the Transformers show it looked nothing like that.) Hell, for all I know it's all the same company in Japan. I guess it's just a really well designed airplane robot though because I think there is even a version in Battletech, so who knows. Anyway, years later when I was a junior in high school, my family moved from a house in the suburbs to an apartment in another city which moved me out of my current school district. Since I was pretty tight with my friends at the time and my mom and dad didn't want to stick me in a new school, they decided to lie to the school and drive me in every day. I'd take the bus to my friends houses and stay over there until my parents got off of work later that evening. I usually had about three hours to kill and often I'd end up at my friend Stephen's house, which was empty because both he and his mom were at work. So I'd spend the time watching videos and trying my best to tune in local channels on his old TV to get the afternoon cartoons. The only channel that I could usually get to come in was a UHF station, channel 69 Atlanta, and during the afternoon the only thing on cartoon-wise was Robotech. By some miracle I managed to catch the first series at the first episode and since anime was just starting to hit big in the 90's I figured I'd give it a chance. I was hooked from the first 15 minutes. Basically the show is just one big space soap opera with occasional giant robot battles and a ton of cheesy 70's style love songs, but like every other successful soap opera in history it manages to get into a person's system like heroin. You take your first hit out of curiosity and then find that you now need it just to feel normal. I spent a good part of my junior and senior years following the show before channel 69 finally went off the air. The first time through the series I managed to catch practically every episode of the first series (which I now know as Macross) before I was stunned to discover that the storyline then jumped to a different era with all new characters and surprisingly no giant robot jets. Now the characters had bland robot tanks and fought a completely different enemy, but the story was connected just enough to keep me hooked. Right when I was getting comfortable with the switch, the show changed yet again (from what I now know as the Southern Cross to the New Generation), and yet again it threw me for a loop. I really liked this third series because the story was linked much stronger with the first and resembled it by bringing back the jets and adding something awesome, the Cyclones (human sized battle armor that transformed into a motorcycle.) Just as I was getting used to this new series, channel 69 went off the air before the show had a chance to come to a conclusion. Though I'd managed to tape a good portion of the 1st series episodes, I couldn't believe that this was going to be all that I'd ever see of the show since no other stations had it and my local Blockbuster only had a few 1st series episodes for rent. I was saved though because that's when our local movie store in the mall, Suncoast, put up it's first VHS anime section, which was primarily made up of copies of Vampire Hunter D, Akira, and many, many tapes in the Robotech series. Though I didn't have a job, and as it was my lunch money went to supporting my comic book habit, my friend Jeremy did and he started buying the series, tape by tape. This is how I managed to finally watch the entire series from start to finish. When it was first released on DVD, it was very similar to the VHS release in that it came out in individual volumes with about six episodes per disc. So once again it became a long and expensive process to collect the series, but I did because even 10 years later I was hooked and needed my fix. Luckily a couple years ago the series was released in affordable series sets, so I snagged both the Macross and New Generation sets. I've never been a fan of the Southern Cross series, just too bland for my tastes. I think it's kind of funny though. Now that I have all the episodes that I want I find that I'm suffering from a weird syndrome of owning TV on DVD. Basically I find that when I own shows in season sets I end up never watching them. Like I feel that I can't just watch one episode here and there, but that I'd have to watch them all, and typically that'd take a week or two which I never seem to have to spare. Usually this is mostly for the non-comedy shows, since I can pretty easily pop in an episode of Family Guy or Kids in the Hall.  Category: Buried in DVDs -- posted at: 12:41 PM Comments[1] |
Thu, 28 December 2006 When I first started digging around on eBay looking for 80's stickers to rescue from trashcans and garage sales everywhere I had no idea what I would find. I expected to find a lot of Topps sticker card sets and subsets, and hopefully a few unused stickers here and there but I just had no idea what I'd find. A lot I'll tell you, in fact, enough that it's almost kind of scary.
Well, my fear is that a stigma that must come with collecting stickers is that somewhere deep inside you must be a six year-old girl. This is perfectly normal if you are a six year-old girl, but what about the six year-old boys, and god forbid, the 29 year-old men (gulp!) Is this a sign that I need therapy?
I wonder if there is a magazine for people obsessed with 80's nostalgia? I'd subscribe to that. Hey wait, I guess that's kind of what I'm doing, just in a non-print form. Does this mean that in 20 years some kid who grew up reading this silly website will look back and repost my posts? Aw man, if you could only hear me laughing... Category: Peel Here Volume 1 -- posted at: 11:50 AM Comments[12] |
Wed, 27 December 2006 It sort of felt like I was dwelling on a lot of the 80s flicks I own recently, so I thought I change things up a bit and talk about an older flick I picked up last year, Thriller: A Cruel Picture (or They Call Her One Eye, which I think was the title of the flick after it was edited and released in the US.)  I came across this film after doing a little bit of background research on Kill Bill. I've mentioned the Movie Nights my friend Kevin and I have (in the Two Thousand Maniacs post), and one of the recent lists of films we tackled were the flicks that influenced or were referenced in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. One of the things that we really dig about Tarantino is his penchant for making outstanding meatloaf films that directly draw on his favorite flicks of the 60s, 70s and 80s. The perfect example of this is Kill Bill which can be traced back to about 20 or 30 flicks that he wove together to make something both completely new, yet very true to its inspiration. Practically every character in the film is inspired by a character in another film, and one in particular, Elle Driver (played by Daryl Hannah), has a funny story about it. Tarantino wanted Elle to be a mix of a character named Patch from the film Switchblade Sisters and Frigga from Thriller, so he sat Hannah down and had her watch both films so she could get an idea of where he was coming from. What's kind of funny is that the version of Thriller that Tarantino had her watch was the unedited original print that contains about 15-20 minutes of seriously uncomfortable hardcore porn inserts. It's probably one of the first times in cinema history that a well known director asked one of his actresses to sit through hardcore porn to get a feel for a character and wasn't sued for sexual harassment. But that's Tarantino, and it's part of what I love about him (that he'd use a film like Thriller as reference, not that he forced an actress to sit through some hardcore.) Having heard this story on the special features of the first Kill Bill flick, I knew that Kevin and I were in for a bit of a problem as far as the flick was concerned. See, Kevin had just seen his first slew of horror flicks not long before and now I was going to ask him to sit through some hardcore porn. I ended up renting it first to try and gauge the uncomfortable-ness of the situation and was torn. On the one hand the hardcore scenes in the flick were pretty freaking uncomfortable from both a story aspect (the main character Frigga is forced by a pimp named Tony to become a prostitute and heroin addict) and a cinematography aspect (most of the hardcore scenes, at least the scenes with penetration are close-up inserts of separate actors going at it slowly and the camera always tends to linger, so it really is more porn than story.) On the other hand the film itself, outside of its more exploitative aspects, is both pretty darn cool and highly influential on modern filmmakers from Tarantino, to John Carpenter, to the Wachowskis and John Woo. It's truly an important film in this respect and something that we couldn't miss. I ended up suggesting that Kevin watch it separately so we could both get through it to talk about it, which worked pretty well. I bought the DVD after making this decision, mostly because I wanted to watch it again, but also so Kevin could watch it at his leisure and not have to put it on his Netflix queue if that bothered him. What's funny is that about six months after we finished the Kill Bill reference list, Synapse, the company that distributed Thriller, ended up releasing the US edited version. When I first sat down to watch this film I was pretty blown away. First of all, the main character, Frigga, played by the beautiful Christina Lindberg, is mute, so she has no lines in the entire film. Even though this flick, written and directed by Bo Arne Vinenius, was basically made to be as base and exploitative as he could to make up for the financial failure of his first film, it ends up providing a lot of artistic conventions that directors have been copying for years. Between Lindberg's vengeance costume, all black with a long black leather trench coat and matching eye patch (Snake Plissken anyone), to the almost agonizingly slow motion fight scenes (John Woo and the Matrix), and the mixture of ultra violence juxtaposed with slow conversation pieces (ala Tarantino in most of his films) this film feels like it was made last year as opposed to 30 years ago. I also respect the realism that Vinenius and Lindberg brought to the flick; even though it was not intended to be artistic, it's truly one of the best examples of Exploitation I've yet seen. For instance, in the famous "eye gouging" scene, the director used an insert he filmed of a corpse's eye, so that he could have the camera not pull back from the action. This is something that can go either way in terms of being effective or disturbing (for example the two version of Tarantino's "ear slicing" scene in Reservoir Dogs), but in this case it was both. For the scenes where Lindberg's character is shooting up, she used a real hypodermic needle filled with a saline solution, that was probably more important for the acting (method-wise) than the visuals, but effective none the less. Of course there are the infamous hardcore inserts, with money shots and all, that strip any possible romanticism from prostitution fantasies. All of this adds up for a very evocative flick. The DVD release is very beautiful, both the the film restoration itself and the amazing artwork on the cover, though some of the special features are weird. Besides the alternate footage and deleted scenes, there is a very distasteful slide show of Lindberg photos that were shot during the porn scenes that seem to cross a line in terms of taste. In my opinion the sex scenes in the film, though included to appeal to a more base audience, were actually included to evoke the opposite reaction. I think Vinenius shot these to make the audience hate what the character was going through and to justify the actions that the character later takes against both her captor and her "johns", but the special feature picture show glorifies the actress's choice to go topless and makes turns it into something that's supposed to be titillating. At the end of the day I would suggest to anyone interested in the film who hasn't seen it to try the edited They Call Her One Eye version of the film, but if you are like me and just have to know what was truly intended, no matter how disturbing it may be, to go ahead and seek out the full A Cruel Picture version. Category: Buried in DVDs -- posted at: 12:50 PM Comments[0] |
Tue, 26 December 2006 So, something else that I thought I'd mention about this blog and my DVD collection is that it truly is a collection and not just a bunch of DVDs that I buy. I've spent the better part of my life collecting one thing or another, whether it's toys, stickers, baseball cards, comic books, or now DVDs, there has always been some project or another sucking up all my spending money and time. Collecting is important to me, besides being a hobby, it keeps me focused on the future (to the eventual end of a collection) and provides nice little ticks in my time line that I can both look back on and seek out. Sounds sort of stupid I guess, but how many people do that? I mean how many times have you thought of where you were or what you were doing at some important date to you? Where were you on 9/11, or what were you doing when your first baby was born, etc. So my current obsession, collecting-wise, of course is DVDs, but there is sort of a theme going. Of the movies and TV shows I own, at least half were purchased to complete a collection. Basically I'm working on owning at least one episode of every TV show I used to watch when I was a kid, as well as all the movies I'd watch over and over. Pretty much this is relegated to the 80's, but there is some spillover into the 90's like Aeon Flux or the Tick cartoon. I have a list of about two or three hundred films and about two hundred TV shows that I'd like to get someday. This is what started my interest in TV on DVD and keeping up with the latest news and stuff. This is also one of the reasons that I love the DVD format so much. I remember in the 90s, when I first started buying movies and stuff, it was pretty rare to find a TV show released on VHS. Of the shows that were released, most were anime and the rest were newer action or sci-fi shows like Highlander, the X-Files, Star Trek, Xena, and Hercules, and all of them were so expensive that it became cost prohibitive to buy them. Take Highlander for example. There were six seasons of the show released on VHS and each season was broken down into a 10 video box set, that you could buy together or separately. Each tape was about $15 apiece, which put the entire season at about $150, not to mention that it too up like 3 cubic feet of shelf space. Owning the entire highlander series would probably take up the majority of one of those cheap-o Wal-Mart bookcases. For me, just getting out of high school and working nights at a local grocery store, that was out of the question. There was no way I was going to spend an entire paycheck on a TV show. Every once in awhile a studio would release either a best of or like a tape with the first couple of episodes on it like Kids in the Hall or the Tick cartoon, but those were few and far between. Basically what I'm getting at is that it was damn near impossible to afford or attempt to get a lot of TV episodes. DVD on the other hand has been a blessing for television shows being re-released to the public, though it was a bumpy road to begin with. The first shows I remember getting a DVD release were the X-Files and Star Trek and both were just as expensive if not more so than their VHS counterparts. For one, the X-Files was only released as a box set so you had to plunk down $120 all at once. With Star Trek, it was released two episodes to a disc, individually priced at about $25 apiece. As the years went on though and DVD purchasing caught on like wildfire, you noticed TV sets being released cheaper and cheaper, $45-$60 or so, and then a series of older shows came out that set a new bar for TV on DVD. With the release of shows like Sanford and Son, Good Times, Soap, and Mork and Mindy it was all of a sudden possible to get an entire season of a show for around $30. That's when I started buying 'em. Anyway, DVD has been a blessing for TV on DVD and now it's pretty normal for a show to be released for $20, sometimes for even less. So like I said six thousand paragraphs ago, my plan is to try and get at least one episode, if not a season, of every show I've ever loved on DVD as well as every movie. The other day I looked at the list and was surprised to see that I've almost completed the films, and have just about caught up to what has been released for TV, series-wise. One of the high water marks I've been trying to get to is being caught up with all the current releases, so that I'd just have to pick up a set every once in awhile when they were released. I think sooner or later I might chuck the list up as a post on this blog so that I can share the progress and anyone reading can see my horrible taste in TV and movies... Category: Buried in DVDs -- posted at: 12:57 PM Comments[1] |
Tue, 26 December 2006 First off, I hope everyone had a great time opening swag or whatever this holiday. I thought I'd take a second in this post holiday bliss and share a coloring book I stumbled upon while trying to find a couple last minute gifts for some of Carrie's nephews. Well, that's not exactly true, they were for me, but they made great "fake gifts" for the boys. See they're still at that age when they get their Christmas morning first (and because there is a divorce involved, first at many places) and when the adults are exchanging gifts they get kind of jealous, so it helps to throw a couple things their way to distract them. Category: general -- posted at: 10:57 AM Comments[1] |
Mon, 25 December 2006 What can I say about the Wizard? When this flick came out I was at the apex of my Nintendo playing years as well as one huge Fred Savage fan. It seemed like you couldn't turn on the TV or go to the theaters without seeing something with Fred Savage in it from 1987-1989 (The Princess Bride, The Wonder Years, Little Monsters, Vice Versa, and the Boy Who Could Fly were all favorites of mine.) So this was another in a series of 80s flicks that seemed like it was tailor made for my viewing pleasure.  I missed the flick in the theater because my family was in the midst of moving from Florida to New Hampshire during its theatrical run, but I know I helped to wear out a VHS copy at our new local video store when we were all settled. When this flick came out the 8-bit Nintendo system was at its height and they just starting doing crazy stuff like introducing the Power Glove. For all those unfamiliar with the PG, it's depicted in the picture above, which is also sort of a fanboy gripe as Fred Savage's character never wears the glove in the movie. In fact, that's one of the cooler (or most stupid depending) parts of the film, when Lucas (the de facto villain) has one of his lackeys (one of which is a young Tobey Maguire) bring him a box that he slowly opens to reveal the glove. It's such a James Bond moment. It's also funny that the glove comes off as the best Nintendo accessory since the plug-in cheese slicer, when in fact it was one of the worst. The power glove was one of Nintendo's first shots at working in a virtual reality aspect to their games systems (after the Zapper pistol and the Robotic Operating Buddy) which has culminated in their new interface on the Wii system, though they didn't design the glove, just licensed it. The power glove was heavy and required the wearer to position their arm in such a way that it was in the field of a trio of sensors that attached to the TV. Because of this it was a pain to use, literally and figuratively, so what ever benefit it provided in terms of a more natural game-play, were out weighed by the pain of trying to use it. The other Nintendo thing this movie introduced the public to was Super Mario Bros. 3, which at the time was starting to make its way around arcades thanks to the Nintendo Play Choice Ten. Other than these items the flick is really shitty at pimping Nintendo merchandise as almost every instance that a game is mentioned in the movie is either factually wrong or just plain stupid. First of all, most Nintendo games, even though they have a points system int he game, are not about getting a high score, but are more concerned with advancement in terms of boards or beating the game. Points as a measuring stick were more of an aspect to Atari games, most of which don't have endings, but just get progressively harder as the game goes on. There are so many instances were people are exclaiming "He got 50,000 on Double Dragon in the first two minutes..." which is both impossible and pointless. There are also a number of times when a game is referred to as one name while the cabinet shows a different game entirely not to mention that most of the off screen game play sound effects are culled from the Atari library of games and just come off as silly. When Jimmy is playing the Legend of Zelda and it sounds like Pac-Man it's pretty silly. Don't even get me started on the fact that he was playing console only games in arcades around the country, up to and including a sit down horizontal table screen system in a diner of all places. The most funny of these inaccuracies is during the final contest at the end of the flick when Super Mario 3 is revealed and the contestants are playing their hearts out and the crowd is shouting out what they should be doing. I mean the game wasn't even released yet and people are shouting out crap. "Find the warp zone Jimmy!" WTF? Anyway, beyond all these silly fanboy gripes, I always loved the film, I think because at its heart it's a road movie in the vein of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Big Shots, Dutch, and National Lampoon's Vacation, and I really dig that format. When you pit two or three kids against the open road I get huge pangs of envy as it's the ultimate freedom for a kid that's got both a curfew and restricted distance from the house he can travel. For awhile this is the largest obstacle a kid has to face, starting with being able to cross the street, then leave the neighborhood, to finally being able to stay up past 9:00 at night. So these movies, especially the Wizard, are a way for a kid to live out his most unrestricted dreams. Even if it's just to get to Universal Studios and play a Nintendo game that he really doesn't even care about. Category: Buried in DVDs -- posted at: 1:04 PM Comments[1] |
Thu, 21 December 2006 Well, since I've more or less ignored the holiday for most of the month I decided I should throw up a little bit of Christmas cheer. I've really got mixed feelings on the holiday. On the one hand it's a great time for family to get together, have some good food, and buy each other some fun swag, but on the other the swag buying can get so out of hand. I've got a pretty small family and for as long as I can remember we've pretty much stuck to buying for our immediate family and then for a few friends and stuff. So this is some 20-odd year-old Christmas cheer from me to all of you, who ever you are. Category: General Nostalgia -- posted at: 10:39 AM Comments[7] |
Wed, 20 December 2006 Actually, no it won't. I live in the heart of the south, and it would surprise me if we could string a sentence together let alone politically and radically detach ourselves from the country. Not unless the fate of NASCAR was riding on the outcome. I figured since I wrote about a movie I don't own today, that I'd take a minute to write about one I do own to sort of balance things out. Oh, and I'm bored, and when I'm bored I typically let whatever movie song I can think of run at full blast though my head and just sort of zone out. It's a survival tactic I learned in high school when I had to wait 3 hours for a ride home every day.  Anyway, the song that's been on loop in my head for the last hour is probably one of the most annoying yet catchy southern folk ballads I've ever heard, and I think I've heard three. They're all about the same damn thing, with various styles of banjo picking or acoustic guitar and different choruses, but at the end of the day they're about the south rising up against the imaginary snowbirds they feel threatened by. The song is called Rebel Yell and was written by Herschell Gordon Lewis for his 1964 exploitation splatterfest Two Thousand Maniacs. About three or four years ago, my friend Kevin and I had been taking turns hosting a regular movie night when we decided to do something a little more productive with our movie watching. We had just been bombing out to the local Blockbuster to spend about an hour trying to agree on a flick to watch. So in an effort of productivity we decided to make movie night a little more educational by coming up with a list of flicks that fit in a genre, the best of the best, and then watching them in chronological order to try and see if we could get a better understanding of where a genre came from and how it's changed over time. For my first list of flicks I picked the horror genre because it's one my friend had absolutely no experience with. He wasn't allowed to watch anything over PG-13 while he was growing up and by the time he could he had no interest in them anyway. So I set out to change that since I was practically raised on a steady diet of horror. Now I don't think I'm an expert or anything, I can barely tie my shoes in the morning, but I felt confident that I could come up with 34 flicks that defined horror from the 60s though the 90s. I did a bunch of research, bought a few books (David J. Skal's Monster Show was pretty helpful) and came up with the following list (in the order I remember them, not chronological): Jaws, The Birds, Psycho, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th Parts 1 & 6, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Nightbreed, Child's Play, Bride of Chucky, Evil Dead 1 & 2, The Howling, An American Werewolf in London, Donnie Darko, The People Under the Stairs (by request), Scream, The Blair Witch Project, Freddy Vs. Jason, Dead Alive, Poltergeist, Alien, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Terror Firmer, The Toxic Avenger, House of a Thousand Corpses, From Dusk Till Dawn and 28 Days Later That went over alright, but in the end the list didn't feel right to me. I felt like we missed a bunch of important movies, stuff that I'm just not familiar with. So I went on a quest to watch anything that I could that felt like it filled in the gaps. Originally I had skipped the really early stuff because I was under a stupid childhood misconception that anything before the 60s just didn't qualify as horror (scary maybe, gothic surely, but horror in my mind equaled blood & guts, boobies, slashers, etc., etc., etc.) The first thing I did was to seek out older films, starting with some silent movies (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, and Phantom of the Opera) and then worked my way up to the Universal flicks (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, etc.) When I realized that I botched my list by not thinking to include this stuff, it just fueled the fire to watch more, so if I ever did an addendum list I would get it right. Well, while doing some more research (I was reading Joe Bob Briggs amazing book Profoundly Disturbing) I came across a movie called Blood Feast. The film is sort of considered the grandfather of gore flicks (though the Hammer stuff like Curse of Frankenstein was pumping out some of the red stuff a few years earlier.) So I Netfixed it and fell in love with the film. It was directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, and was the first part of a loose "Blood" trilogy. I promptly rented the second installment, Two Thousand Maniacs, and was double smitten. Two Thousand Maniacs is an amazingly crazy film that stars one of my favorite B-Movie actors, Bill Kerwin (who I was introduced to in Blood Feast and it's awesomely weird "How to Carve Meat" special feature.) Kerwin is like the William H. Macy of his day, though not nearly as prolific. He had a slightly odd look to him, but was just as cool as any other cat and could take down a town full of redneck killers like nobody's business. The movie is basically a super low budget exploitation flick about a handful of northern motorists going south for various reasons that are tricked into driving through a small town in Georgia and persuaded to believe that they are the official guests of honor at the towns Centennial celebration. They are in fact nothing of the sort as the town's people have much more nefarious things in mind. The movie does a really good job of being disturbing and showing a lot of gore, which for 1964 is way ahead of it's time. The actors, particularly the ones playing the locals do a wonderful job of being over the top and creepy, some downright evil. It's truly one of those films that lives up to its name. Coincidentally, the film was shot on what was to be the future local of Disney World, which makes visiting the theme park that much more fun as an adult. Category: Buried in DVDs -- posted at: 1:13 PM Comments[0] |
Tue, 19 December 2006 So I figured since this blog is about DVDs, I'd also thrown in an entry here and there for flicks I've watched recently but don't own. I like the idea of keeping it strictly to stuff I own on the one hand because it'll give the blog a little bit more of a concept, but at the same time I don't want to box myself in either. So I guess from time to time I'll throw in a flick I don't own.  The flick I watched last night was the 1974 road film, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, which a co-worker of mine Danny, thought I might dig. I think we have pretty similar tastes, if nothing else for more obscure or foreign films, so I was happy when he recently brought up Dirty Crazy because I'd never heard of it. He lent me his copy and I spent the evening watching it as my fiancee Carrie baked cookies. The flick a pretty straight forward heist/road picture that stars Peter Fonda as a devil-may-care ex-NASCAR driver turned thief Larry, Adam Roarke as Larry's on the wagon pit mechanic partner in crime Deke, Susan George as Mary, a sticky one-night-stand that gets in the middle, and Vic Morrow as Franklin the local sheriff bent on taking the bunch in on his own terms. There are also a couple of other great actors in some smaller role, namely Kenneth Tobey and Roddy Mcdowall who make the most of the screen time they've got. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, though from the title of the film and the suggestive pictures of Susan George on the back cover I thought it might lean towards exploitation in the Big Bad Mamma vein. The flick kind of started off in this vein, in the first few minutes we see Larry sneaking out on a Mary, and then a disturbing double kidnapping and heist begin to take shape. The kidnapping in particular is pretty brutal, not so much in what happens, but in how the audience is dragged through it, literally through the eyes of Deke as he breaks into a house, sneaks past a little girl watching TV, and then later as he stalks and abducts the girl's mother as she's taking a shower. Pair this up with inter-cut scenes of Larry getting set up behind a grocery store and the audience is left to wonder what exactly is going on. The tone of the movie makes a 180 shortly after the kidnapping/heist is ending when Deke goes to tie up his hostages and he lets it slip that he has no interest in harming them, going so far as noticing that the girl he's bound up is having problems breathing, taking the tape off her mouth and leaving them unharmed. The film then becomes one long race for freedom as Larry, Deke, and a clingy crazed Mary make their way south away from a crap load of local cops. It's at this point that I really started to dig the flick as we really get to know the main characters as they're stuck in their getaway cars, most notably a "Limelight" yellow 1969 Dodge Charger R/T, bickering with and backstabbing each other. I think one of the most awesome aspects of this flick are the chase scenes as Director John Hough, a veteran of shooting action on British TV and movie second unit's, had everything shot at speed with the actors doing most of the actual driving. Seeing Peter Fonda at the wheel acting like an ass and knowing that's he's driving upwards of 100 miles and hour is pretty impressive. All of the stunts in the film are also real, most of which are covered in one shot with no cuts, so when you see the Charger slam into a truck or swipe a tractor trailer, it's all happening as shot on screen. A lot of times the cameraman was in the back seat while the sound guy was in the trunk and after a muffled shout of "Start" from the trunk Fonda would peel out as the director listened in on a headset. Something that struck me as I was watching the flick is that it's basically a template for a show like the Dukes of Hazzard, and a perfect example of a type of entertainment that is largely gone from TV and movie screens today. It's very rare that we get a movie or TV show that a vehicle is so essential to anymore. Shows like Airwolf, Street Hawk or Knightrider and movies like Bullit and Dirty Crazy really are a thing of the past, and as a genre it's kind of sad to see it tossed aside. Sure there are fun scenes in movies every now and then, the bat-tank in the recent Batman movie, the car chase in the Bourne Identity, and probably a few I'm forgetting, but none that are so essential that they couldn't be nixed and not lost. It'll be interesting to see what Quentin Tarrantino does with Death Proof, his half of the exploitation double feature Grindhouse that he's sharing with Robert Rodriguez. Since he's professed a love for road flicks, Dirty Crazy in particular, it should be fun to see how he spins it. All in all I really enjoyed the flick and think that it holds up very well. The chase scenes are great, the cars are beautiful, and there are a ton of fun lines like "I'm gonna eat your lunch..." and "You know what a smart man would do in a situation like this? I don't know, I was asking you..." Category: Buried in DVDs -- posted at: 1:21 PM Comments[0] |
Mon, 18 December 2006 Unless some other ordering bug bite me, I think I'm going to just pull a random DVD off the shelf to talk about for each of these posts. Today's random flick is the underrated 1981 fantasy Dragonslayer, starring Peter MacNicol (Janosz from Ghostbusters II and I guess he was on Ally McBeal or some junk) as Galen the Sorcerer's apprentice, Caitlin Clarke as Valerian a peasant virgin masquerading as a boy, and Ralph Richardson as Ulrich the Sorcerer.  This was one of a handful of weird fantasy movies that my mom introduced me to as a kid when she'd let me stay up late on the weekends. My mom's always had a weird sleeping schedule, sleeping in the after work time, and waking up at like 9:00pm and staying up most of the night, and in the summer and on weekends she let me stay up to watch TV and movies with her. Dragonslayer was one of the flicks that we watched over and over and for the life of me I can't pinpoint why, because typically my mom doesn't like genre flicks, or fantasy all that much. We also used to catch Conan whenever it came on and then over a three year period watched Willow religiously almost three times a week. I don't know about Conan, but I think my mom really dug the non-action moments of flicks like Dragonslayer, in particular the village celebration scenes and the budding love story between Galen and Valerian. Either way we watched it a lot and I've always really dug the flick. For years I never made the connection that the Peter MacNicol was the same guy who played Janosz in Ghostbusters II, which just goes to show you how easily you can fool me with a terribly annoying misc. foreign accent. In retrospect, I'm surprised he hasn't made a larger name for himself in the character actor department like Steve Buscemi and William H. Macy. This has always been one of those films that surprises me when I bring it up in conversation. It seems like nobody I know really likes the film, and then for no particular reason. Everyone seems to just shrug it off like it's got bad special F/X work, or some uber silly story or something, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Although some of the animated flying sequences are kind of dated, the bulk of the F/X work is pretty awe inspiring and effective in my book. The scenes in the dragon's lair with the fire on the water, the baby dragon creatures, the sets and costumes all seem so much better than most of the fantasy movies I've every seen. I think the problem might lay in the realistic world the story is set in. True the film is fantasy oriented with dragons and some minor bits of magic, but for all intents and purposes it's not as much fantasy as period piece. There are no elves, hobbits, nelwyns, dwarves, unicorns, etc., just the one dragon, and it's treated like we would treat the dinosaurs or something. I don't know. It's also one of two of my favorite "women pretending to be men" flicks of the 80s, the other of course being Just One of the Guys starring Joyce Hysler as Terry. Both flicks really screwed with my head as a kid in terms of masquerading as another sex, and probably opened my mind to stuff I'd get into later like Rocky Horror and Hedwig. The film was directed by Matthew Robbins, the same guy who brought us Corvette Summer, *Batteries Not Included, and the long out of print classic The Legend of Billie Jean. It was also written by Robbins with Hal Barwood, who as a duo also wrote Corvette Summer and worked on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Dragonslayer was on my list of movies to eventually buy for awhile, but I didn't look for it until I happened upon it in the $5.50 bin at Wal-Mart, so I don't know if it still has that reputation for being a bad flick that was released at a really low price or what. Category: Buried in DVDs -- posted at: 1:28 PM Comments[0] |
Mon, 18 December 2006 So for column #5 of Peel Here, as promised, I’m going to take a look at a weird set of sticker cards published (printed, released, whatever) by a joint effort of General Mills and Donruss in 1983 called the Zero Heroes. I'm not sure if General Mills owns Donruss or if Donruss just distributed the cards (since they do that and I could see them accepting outsourcing work from other companies.) Now for the most part, the main company printing sticker cards in the 70's and 80's was Topps, what with Wacky Packs, Garbage Pail Kids, and the six thousand sticker sub-sets in movie and TV licensed card sets, but every now and then the other two companies, Fleer and Donruss would get in on the action. There are 66 cards in the set, mostly made up of various goofy superhero spoof's, with a few misc. stickers thrown in for good measure. Each hero card has an origin story printed on the back that details how they came to be and how they ended up. At first, when looking through this set again for the first time in 20 years, I thought that there were heroes and villains, as there were a small number of cards that had odd black backgrounds. Upon reading the origins though, it seems like these were just weird editorial or design choices, as all of the cards seem to be heroes.
Category: Peel Here Volume 1 -- posted at: 12:15 PM Comments[0] |
Sun, 17 December 2006 A couple years ago I really got into an awesome book on film making, Robert Rodriguez's Rebel Without a Crew, that details how he went from a struggling film school student who scraped together $7,000 to shoot his first film, to a Hollywood player. The meat of that book deals with how he raised the money for and the eventual shooting of El Mariachi and all the crap he went through to get a movie on film. It's a pretty fascinating read and when I was done I really wanted more.  The only other book I could find at the time that was in a similar vein was Lloyd Kaufman's Make Your Own Damn Movie!, which is basically a how to on independent film making the Troma way. The main difference between the two books, though they both are proponents of low budget film making, is that while Robert Rodriguez urges you to use as little money as possible to get a big budget look, Kaufman's view is to use as little money as possible to get what ever you can on film, even if it means using a watermelon as a stand in for a human head in a "head crushing" scene. Kaufman's vision for film making leans more in a "Get it done no matter what..." direction that is truly the mantra for low budget filmmakers everywhere. In Make Your Own Damn Movie!, there is a chapter where Kaufman mentions a few film makers that he's met or worked with that are already following in the footsteps he's left in the indie film scene. One in particular stood out to me, Chris Seaver, who had been making movies since he was like 13 or something. Seaver's production company, Low Budget Pictures, pretty much epitomizes the low or no budget film making community in that above all else, getting the picture shot and on some form of media available to the public is the most important aspect of the film making process. If that means being shot on video, digital video, or 750,000 still frames edited together to make a moving picture with sound edited on top, then do it, package it and sell it to the public via websites, eBay, garage sales, indie distributors, and conventions. It's not to say that story and acting aren't or can't be important as well, but there sure is a push to do it and get it done with whatever talent and is available and sometimes that's very little. I was curious after reading Kaufman's book, so I found a copy of Seaver's biggest production at the time, Mulva: Zombie Asskicker! on eBay for $2. The price seemed right for taking a chance on a flick like this, and the cover (pictured above) looked pretty darn sweet (though ultimately highly misleading.) When I finally got the DVD in the mail I was surprised to see that it was actually a double feature paired up with another of Seaver's films, Filthy McNasty. Great, two flicks for $2, and I figured that I'd get a good idea of what this dude, and possibly the low budget community were up to. I popped the DVD in and sat back with a bowl of popcorn and watched my first Chris Seaver flick. I truly didn't know what to expect, and as I sat through the 50 odd minutes of film my opinion kept flipping between "Worst film ever!" and "Wait, I think there might be something to this!" Basically Mulva: Zombie Asskicker! is the story of two hapless girls, Mulva, a candy craving 80s obsessed mush-mouth, and her friend Cassie, a kinda-goth sarcastic, who are planning an awesome night of Trick or Treating only to find themselves dealing with town bullies and a horde of zombies bent on destroying their beloved city of Tromaville (yes, Seaver is heavily influenced by Troma flicks and Lloyd Kaufman.) Thrown into this crazy omelet of a meal are Bonejack, a Bill Cosby obsessed, Don King haired, neighbor and mentor played by Seaver himself (in black-face no less), Teenape, a misogynist ebonically challenged man-ape (in the vein of Teen Wolf), and a handful of cameos by Troma regulars Debbie Rochon, Trent Haaga, Doug Sakmann, and Lloyd Kaufman himself in a dance scene that ends the flick (most, if not all of Seaver's flicks end in dance scenes.) Now before I mislead anyone into thinking that this is some awesomely crazy flick that completely fell off their radar when looking through all the sludge that fills your local Blockbuster, I have to take a minute to explain something about this flick. On the surface, this film (which is a term loosely used to be sure) is probably a candidate for one of the worst flicks ever. Next to this, Plan 9 From Outer Space is like Citizen Kane. The production values are as low as one could imagine without looking like a blocked porn channel on cable. Shot on video, the film looks like the a 12th generation copy, edited together on two VCRs that are connected by a coaxial cable that's been chewed on by the family dog. The sound and lighting quality are so poor that it's hard to discern what's being said and by whom, and the acting is almost non-existent (though both Trent Haaga and Debbie Rochon are awesome in their cameos, and Seaver is pretty electric as Bonejack.) Once again, though, before I go winning you over to the faults of this flick, I have to say that through all of this, the film is still watch-able. Not only is it watch-able, but it's actually kind of funny, and under much better circumstances, it might even be good. There's a potential here that would probably be lost on the majority of people watching, but for someone who is around the same age, into comics, horror, pop culture and bad movies, there is a possibility that a glimmer of something larger could be seen. I was still sort of in a bit of shell shock after watching the film, so I just kept it going and watched the double feature flick, Filthy McNasty. It was after I finished watching this flick that I felt like I had a better grasp on what Chris Seaver and Low Budget Pictures were all about. McNasty, a much cleaner and better quality (in terms of production values) flick, is the starring vehicle for Debbie Rochon and is about two girls who make a deal with a demon to be more popular, but then have to deal with the demon killing their friends. It's modeled after flicks like April Fools Day and oddly enough Cinderella, with a little bit on John Hughes thrown in for kicks. Of course there is also a lot of Jackass, and a pinch of Peter Jackson as well in the amazingly dirty jokes and an all too uncomfortable nude scene (which with actors this young and in a film with such low production values feels downright illegal.) Like Mulva, McNasty is hardly a good flick, just better than Mulva in terms of production value. Both flicks were shot for very little with only what was on hand for costumes and props. The actors are largely friends or acquaintances that Seaver has pulled together over the years and most are no longer involved with the company. Again, like Mulva, there is a glimmer of something better than what is on the screen in the flick. Like eating Chinese, I was weirdly ready to re-watch these flicks the next day and magically the low production values (much like an Ed Wood film) added to the experience this time around. Everything started to have a feel of intention, and the jokes, a lot of which seem like the type of in-jokes that develop amongst a group over years became a little clearer. Both flicks feature commentary, which help to shed a little light on in-jokes, and the conditions with which the films were made, which just compounded the enjoyment of watching the flicks. After the third watching, I felt like I sort of knew these guys, like they were a group of kids in high school that used to sit at their own table in art class and you'd over hear them all the time talking about the weird crazy stuff they did on the weekend. Though I wouldn't go so far as to say these are some of my favorite films, I will say that they're a window into a area of fandom that I didn't realize existed and in turn is a very pure form of film making, one totally not for profit, only for hardcore fans, and at the end of the day is about getting a flick shot, packaged and sold to the public in the most direct way possible. In a time when it takes almost a million dollars to make even the most independent of indie films, it's nice to know that there are still people out there shooting movies that cost a couple hundred dollars to make. That's a goal worth shooting for. Category: Buried in DVDs -- posted at: 1:36 PM Comments[0] |
Fri, 15 December 2006 So I figured since this column is going to deal mainly with my personal movie collection, I'd start the first real post with probably my favorite movie of all time, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Though I've been watching movies since I popped out of the womb, most of what I loved when I was younger were more or less simple films. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Superman, and the like are all great movies, but at the end of the day they are pretty straight forward and though I love them, I think a lot of it has to do with the age I was when I saw them. When I see films like these today, the Lord of the Rings trilogy for example, I like them, but I don't love them like I used to.  When I think of the newer films that I love, they all typically have an aspect to them that makes them just a little more challenging or a little more complex whether in terms of concept or the extent of the ambition involved. Take the Big Lebowski for example. The film has a really odd dichotomy between its simplicity (it's a film about a guy who just wants to get his rug back, because it really does tie his room together) and its huge ensemble cast of secretive characters and its unnecessarily complex film noir plot. There's something there that I can't put my finger on that just makes me love this film more than the parts combined. Some phantom rug that ties the movie together for me. Most of Charlie Kaufman's efforts (Being John Malkovitch, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) are like this for me. Out of all the films I saw as a kid, Buckaroo Banzai is one of the ones that has this aspect to it. When I first saw it I didn't love it, probably because of this. There was more there than I could process as an 8 year-old, but as the years went on and I revisited the film I got more and more out of it. It's actually very similar to the Big Lebowski in that on the one hand it's a simple action movie, one of a million in the 80s, that deals with the threat of an alien invasion thwarted by a small band of unlikely humans at the last possible moment. Yet the cast of characters is amazingly rich and the plot is, like Lebowski, unnecessarily complex and weird to a point where it all becomes much more than the sum of its parts. I want to say that I first saw this film on HBO during the day on either a summer vacation or a weekend sometime in the mid-eighties, and like I said sort of dismissed it. Later on I would keep coming back to it because of the actors, a lot of which went on to star in other movies I loved (Peter Weller in Robocop, John Lithgow in Harry and the Hendersons, Jeff Goldbum in The Fly, Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future). I also love the unexplained "I just started reading in the middle of this comic book" feel the film has. All the unanswered questions. Who is this infamous World Crime League? Why is Perfect Tommy (Lewis Smith) so perfect? Who is Peggy Priddy, twin sister of Penny Priddy, and Buckaroo's first wife who was murdered? Why does New Jersey (Goldblum) have such an affinity for woolly chaps and 50s era cowboy clothing? Etc., etc., etc. In fact, in the film itself Buckaroo and his team, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, are stars of their own Marvel comic book, which was also released in real life by Marvel. Add to this the dry delivery by Peter Weller of some really obtuse yet hilarious lines such as: "Hey, hey, hey. Don't be mean. We don't have to be mean because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are." There are also a lot of little touches everywhere that make the film really fun to watch. How they manage to tie in the original invasion of the Lectroids to the 1938 Orson Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds is genius. I also love that the character names are silly and funny, breaking the unspoken rule of comedy of no funny names and still managing to pull it off. I mean Buckaroo Banzai? Penny Priddy? All the Lectroids being named John something or other (Christopher Lloyd's Bigboote is a standout.) Tie this together with insanely esoteric concepts like an 8th dimension that allows solid matter to travel through other solid matter, yet also serves as a gateway to either a parallel universe or as a worm hole to another galaxy, and you have a very rich and fun film that manages to mix action, comedy, and pulp nostalgia into one giant roller coaster ride. I really do love this film, right down to its dated special effects (some much more effective than today's CGI nightmares leaking off the big screen) and corny dialogue. I love this film because it's intentional and crafted to be exactly what it is. I think the scene that sums this up the best is the end sequence, a wacky dance/walking montage set to some awesome 80s synth music that finds all of the characters in the film (except the bad guys I think, but including those who have died) dynamically joining up at a concrete drainage area to just, well, walk dynamically. It really is a beautifully shot scene with plenty of fun zooms, twists and turns that is so upbeat, yet so serious it's almost mind numbing. Wes Anderson made an homage to this sequence in The Life Aquatic at the end when all the crew members and characters meet up and walk to the ship. Another aspect that I love is this film's connection to Big Trouble in Little China, my favorite John Carpenter film. At the end of Buckaroo Banzai there is a title page that pops up that says you'll see him next in BB vs. The World Crime League. Of course the sequel never materialized because BB didn't do well in the theaters, only grossing $6.2 Million, though it was only released in 236 theaters which is a pretty small release. Well the director W.D. Richter, who is mainly a screenwriter, ended up modifying the sequel script into what is now the script for Big Trouble in Little China. I'm not sure if Jack Burton was a character in the original script or if Buckaroo morphed into him, but it's pretty interesting to see what would possibly have been in the proposed sequel. If nothing else, and barring the tone of John Carpenter's flick, I think Lo Pan and the fantastical Asian underworld would have been very similar in a BB sequel. **Update** The Big Trouble in Little China connection is probably just an internet rumor. Anyway, to this day I carry the film around with me. I've got a BB patch that I bought at Dragon Con in Atlanta 6 years ago on my jacket. Just one of my favorite films. Category: Buried in DVDs -- posted at: 1:44 PM Comments[3] |
Fri, 15 December 2006 I've decided to start a sub-blog to Branded in the 80's. I love the concept that I've wrapped this website, blog and podcast in, but sometimes I want to write about other stuff that doesn't fit so neatly into the fold, so without further ado I present, Buried in DVDs: The Electric DVD Collecting Boogaloo! This is where I'll be talking up my DVD collection and any other film or TV related junk that I'm into. Yup. Same crap, different decade... ...or maybe the same decade, as the first post could have easily been on this blog. Man I'm a genius. Category: general -- posted at: 11:03 AM Comments[3] |
Thu, 14 December 2006 Finally, after years of putting it off, I broke down and bought the entire V television series on DVD, both the mini-series (including the Final Battle) and the regular TV series. It's one of those things that I've been meaning to make my fiancee sit down and watch, but it's hard to get someone to commit to 27+ hours of TV, especially when they think it's going to suck and take a day away from a life that could be spend doing anything else. Anyway, for me (and a lot of other geek/nerd/dorks who grew up in the 80's) V was the next best thing to Star Wars, which is probably the best way to describe anything Sci-Fi related in the late 70s and early 80s (e.g. Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rodgers, the Last Starfighter, etc., etc., etc.), and was the closest thing to a huge cultural TV event that I experienced first hand in the 80s. I remember watching it every time it was on TV either first run or later re-run on Saturdays on the more local channels, and then being so jealous of my friend Jeremy who had a copy of both the original mini-series and the Final Battle on VHS recorded from when he was living up in Route Island. My family didn't have a VCR when it was aired originally, so I never had a copy of my own when I was a kid, but I did have the next best thing (at least in my weird young brain), the official V action figure. But lets be honest and call it what it really was, a doll. It says action figure on the original package, but in a time where the standard for action figures was between 4 to 6 inches, the V doll just didn't fit in (unless you assumed that all alien races were three stories tall like the Zentradi in Robotech. In fact if you were lucky enough to have some of the Indiana Jones figures you could probably have this figure mixed in as the result of the Nazi's contact with the alien visitor race and the Zentradi, and Harrison Ford still would have beat the crap out of them.)  As far as dolls go though, the V figure was pretty cool. Not only did he come with a removable head mask (yet another in a long line of awesome figures with removable headgear), but he also had a pretty darn accurate laser gun (I've always loved the design on the V laser), nifty sunglasses and tongue flicking action. This was no Ken doll.  The only thing this doll was lacking that would have made it the best doll ever are shock trooper accessories like characters have on in the pictures printed on the box. I mean a doll with a removable head mask as well as a cool black helmet would be like four times as cool. Add to that a black vinyl Michael Jackson vest and attachments that made the laser pistol into a rifle and were talking male doll nirvana.  It's a mystery to me how a lot of my toys became lost to time, but the destruction of my V doll is pretty much burned into my memory. Actually destruction is the wrong word as it was more of a dissection. I was pretty good about taking care of most of my toys, but some just were not meant to last. I think I had the V doll for a couple of weeks before the head mask started to tear. There is a slit on the back of it from the neck up to the middle of the hairline so you can open it wide and put it on the figure's lizard head. Well every time you do that the rubber on the mask would tear a little because it isn't slit far enough up. But when you start a rip in rubber it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. The next thing I knew it was all the way up and over to the hairline in the front so that the mask would stay on properly anymore and needed the sunglasses (which wrapped around the entire head) to keep it on. My mask also had a thin spot of rubber on the front where a bubble got into the mold, thin enough so that the green skin would sort of show through like on some of the TV episodes. This was cool at first but then it broke and now I had a new rip in the rubber that was spreading. At this point I just threw the mask away, I mean the lizard head underneath was cooler anyway right? Well at some point in the next few weeks I started getting curious about how the tongue mechanism worked. I had already ditched the mask so I think at this point I was ready to give up on keeping the figure intact, and decided to do an autopsy to really see how this figure worked. In the end the figure was in about 15 pieces and was relegated to the trash when it just didn't interest me anymore. I've always sort of regretted taking the figure apart, especially as the years went by because I realized that the figure was actually kind of rare. There wasn't all that much V merchandise made (at least not in the USA, apparently there was a ton produced in Argentina) and because it was so unlike the rest of my toys I had a soft spot for it in my heart. While looking for 80s stickers on eBay recently I stumbled upon a guy who pretty much specializes in selling V figures. I guess he lucked into like 10 cases of old store stock or something and he sells them mint in box at varying prices depending on how yellowed or otherwise damaged the plastic on the box is. I decided to break my rule of not replacing my old toys this once because the figures are basically new, and picked one of the cheaper ones up. When I got it in the mail after I got back from my vacation in Florida I was torn. I knew I wanted to write this article on the figure, but I wasn't sure if I should keep the figure in the box (in case I wanted to re-sell it or just for posterity's sake) or if I should rip it open and have some fun with it. In the end, like I've always done and probably will always do, I opened the figure. I have some weird internal thing that prevents me from keeping toys in their original packaging. It's like the toys can't breathe or are frozen in carbonite and I have to rescue them. I had a friend when I was 10 or so who kept all of his Transformers mint in the packages, and even though he's probably a plastic crack dealing millionaire now I have to wonder if a small part of his childhood is dead to him now.  Besides, the plastic on the packaging was getting pretty darn yellow and brittle and didn't look all that good on a shelf because of it. It just looked dirty.  Now that he's liberated from the confines of his yellowy plastic prison he looks a lot cleaner and happier, though I'm sure the happy bit can be attributed to his god awful evil Nazi smile.  That is actually one of the more disturbing things about this figure in fact. LJN based this figure on the alien Visitor propaganda posters that you see in the mini-series (made popular by that scene where Abraham Bernstein (Leonardo Cimino who played Scary German Guy in the Monster Squad) spray-paints a big "V" for victory over a Nazi looking visitor who has his arms around some young kids and grand parents. It's pretty much your basic Aryan Nazi stereotype, which is actually the basis for the V series to begin with (the mini-series started out as an alternate 1980 where a new fascist regime comes to power and eventually the producers wanted to make it into a sci-fi film instead.)  This was the only style of V doll that was made, though I've heard rumors of a Diana doll and a proposed line of smaller figures and vehicles that were never produced. It's kind of weird when you think that they only made the one figure, a very Nazi-esque figure and no good guys (I guess because a Marc Singer figure doesn't have sweet tongue lashing action capabilities), that kids would be sort of just goose stepping along with this toy. Like that one shady kid down the block that had one Skeletor figure and he used to play "torture my sister's stuffed animals" with him, cackling in a high pitched laugh.    Even though the figure is kind of weirdly disturbing, I'm glad I bought it again. It's actually kind of cool to have something like this back from my childhood, and I can totally see how easy it would be to get swept up in trying to buy everything back. Luckily I have a pretty high threshold for the amount of money I'm willing to spend on stuff like this so I doubt that I'd be willing to plunk down much money on the hobby. Since most of the other toys I was into usually fetch about $75-$100 on eBay for mint in package figures I don't think my collection is going to grow all that much. That's alright though, I'll just sit and watch my cat chew on this one content in the knowledge that some anal fanboy is getting the shivers as if someone walked over his mint in package grave.  Category: Toys -- posted at: 10:01 AM Comments[6] |
Tue, 12 December 2006 So while I was fixing the "dropped podcasts by iTunes" fiasco I noticed a couple of other older posts that had typos and needed updating and stuff. One of which, this post about 80s and 90s cartoons available on DVD, was just screaming for an update. Instead of listing them all here and trying to get all the links embedded and stuff I'll instead redirect you to a few of my Amazon.com listmania lists that should do the job for me. I love listmania lists, but only when the people making them have half a brain and know what it is they are making lists about. It's kind of tiresome to click on list after list that is either in desperate need of an update or is just plain off topic (like a list of 80s cartoons with like recent X-Men shows or Family Guy on it.) I think I've done a pretty good job (this is where the previous rant bites me in the ass when someone else reads my lists and hates them), but I've been known to be an idiot and oblivious to this fact. So if you know of anything that needs to be on these lists or something that seems off, let me know (but don't tell me about Rainbow Brite, M.A.S.K., or the Silverhawks DVD's currently listed on Amazon, they're all bootlegs.) So in case you were wondering what is available on DVD 80s & 90s cartoon-wise, here you go. The Great List of Cartoons Vol. 1 The Great List of Cartoons Vol. 2 The Great List of Cartoons Vol. 3 Category: Cartoons -- posted at: 3:28 PM Comments[2] |
Tue, 12 December 2006 I'm going to break format a little and take a second to talk about an awesome DVD set for a cartoon that was a little before my time, but one that I've been getting into lately, the Groovie Goolies.  I've crossed this cartoon's path a few times in the last 10 years but never got around to checking it out until recently. The first time I heard about the show was when I picked up the Saturday Morning: Greatest Hits CD (the 1st CD I ever bought btw) in the mid 90s and fell in love with the Toadie's rendition of the Goolie-Get-Together theme song.  Then a few years later I was flipping through a stack of used CDs at my local Disc-Go-Round when I came across a disc with some awesome cover art. TheCD was by the band the Groovie Ghoulies and it was called Re-Animation Festival. I picked it up and proceeded to play it over and over for the next few weeks. Their monster themed bubble-gum pop punk really clicked with me, particularly their Chupacabra song.  With these songs swimming in the back of my head this past Halloween I found something a little closer to the actual show when I noticed a few record blogs that posted about the original show's LP.   I managed to snag a copy and give it a listen and was hooked on the really fun Archie's-esque bubble-gum rock. So finally I decided to check out the show on DVD. BCI Eclipse released the complete series this past year on DVD. There were a total of sixteen episodes produced in 1970-1972, which aired on CBS Saturday mornings. The show is basically an Archie's spin-off though I don't think the characters ever appeared in the digest comics or cartoon. The show is one of the earlier efforts of Filmation, the company responsible for bringing up great cartoons like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Bravestarr, and the Ghostbusters (not to be confused with the Real Ghostbusters, the cartoon spin-off of the 80s movies.) Basically the Groovie Goolies is a monster themed animated version of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, the late 60s variety and sketch comedy show. Filmation was pitched the idea of doing a monster themed cartoon and decided to try the ultra fast paced musical and variety show format made popular by Laugh-In to try and capture the attention span of the sugary cereal eating children's television audience. Filmation took a queue from the Scooby Doo rogues gallery, as well as inspiration from the Munsters and the Addam's Family and created a trio of classic monster characters. Drac, a stuffy vampire, Wolfie, a beatnik like beach bum werewolf, and Frankie, a slow paced (almost laconic) Frankenstein's Monster with a voice that sounds a lot like Boris Karloff were the main characters (not to mention the members of the Groovie Goolies Band) surrounded by a bunch of miscreants like Mummy, Batso and Ratso (two trouble making ghouls), Boneapart (skeleton whose voice actor sounds a lot like Bender from Futurama), Hagatha (a witch cook), Bella La Ghostly (a vamp-esque lady inspired by Morticia Addams, Lilly Munster, and quite possibly Vampira), Orville (Little Shop of Horrors Audrey II like everything eating plant), and surprisingly enough a spin-off character from the Archie's, Sabrina the teenage witch. The GG's was produced by Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott, was directed by Hal Sutherland, and featured the voice talents of Howard Morris, Larry Storch, Larry D. Mann, and Jane Web just to name a few. Each episode featured a barrage of pun-y jokes, two musical numbers (one featuring the Goolies themselves and another that closes each show featuring a spoof of a popular band, like the Rolling Headstones), and a few quick sketches. The show reminds me a lot of the Monkees, with a lot less plot and a lot more kookiness. The musical numbers in particular are very similar, both in tone and with their nonsensical chase and dance scenes. There are a ton of fun catch phrases, Drac's "This place is driving me batty!", Frankie's "I needed that", and Wolfie's "ArrroooOOOooo!", as well as a plethora of monster themed puns and sketches, enough silliness in these 16 episodes to last for weeks. There's also a lot of references to pop-culture products, not the least of which is Wolfie's drag racer that's at least twice as cool as the Aurora model version (it even grows hair!) The DVDs feature a couple commentary tracks, some image galleries, and a very goofy 45-minute documentary hosted, written, and directed by Daniel Roebuck and Wally Wingert two confessed Goolians and monster buffs (Daniel Roebuck's got some great articles in the awesome Horrorshow Magazine, including a trip to Universal Studios with Ben Chapman, one of the guys that was in the suit in Creature From the Black Lagoon.) The documentary, though ultra silly, manages to touch on a lot of stuff from interviews with those involved, fans like Alice Cooper and the band the Groovie Ghoulies, not to mention a bunch of fun facts and trivia (Before the show was called the Groovie Goolies is was also called Monster Inn, Spookie Kookies, and Googlie Ghoulies.) To sort of tie this into the 80s format I've chosen I will say that the show was the grand father to shows like Count Duckula and to a small extent Kidd Video. Before Kidd Video released an album in the Middle East and was blasted to the flipside, the Groovie Goolies were recording LP's and scoring top ten hits like "Chik-a-Boom (Don't Ya Jes' Lov It!)" They even had live action counter parts that posed for the album cover and even starred in an hour long 1972 special on ABC titled "Porky Pig and Daffy Duck Meet the Groovie Goolies." All in all the show is really fun and is a perfect example of what Saturday morning television was like in its heyday, not to mention an awesome amalgamation of monsters, pop music, and animation. Category: Buried in DVDs -- posted at: 11:34 AM Comments[7] |
Mon, 11 December 2006 So like I said in the previous post I just got back from a vacation to Florida to visit my parents and sister. One of the things that I love about going back down to Florida (where I spent most of my childhood) is the convenience stores, in particular 7-Eleven’s. As anyone who has read this blog knows, I love, love, love me some Slurpees. I could probably drink two a day for the rest of my life and never get tired of them. It was the first frozen drink I was introduced to and for the most part still my favorite today. Category: Soda Pop Culture -- posted at: 2:55 PM Comments[3] |
Mon, 11 December 2006 I’m back from a week's vacation with a very postponed Peel Here column. Most of the stickers I've been and will be showcasing in this column are part of a new collection I started just a couple months ago, as I haven't actively collected stickers since I was a wee lad 20 years ago. There are a few exceptions to this though, and these following stickers are the first. I came across these sticker cards about ten years ago while flipping though a humongous non-sports card collection at my local comic shop, the now sadly defunct Dark Adventure Comics. The collection was left over after the current owner bought out all the store stock from the previous owner and the new guy didn't really care for cards outside of the CCG market (like Magic the Gathering and stuff.) So whenever I had a day off of work I'd spend a good three or four hours pouring over the thousands of cards looking for some hidden gold. One of the cooler finds were these 21 Jump Street sticker cards from Topps. At the time I wasn't really familiar with the various franchises that Topps did card and sticker sets for and I just couldn't believe that they took the time to put out an entire set of sticker cards from a weird show like 21 Jump Street. I guess I just didn’t realize how popular the show was. Anyway I picked though the sticker cards and pulled out all the ones I thought were cool, namely all the Johnny Depp (Officer Tom Hanson) and Peter DeLuise (Officer Doug Penhall) cards, and a few Dustin Nguyen's (Officer Harry Truman Loki) for good measure. They ended up at the bottom of a stack of various cards that I kept in a lunchbox for the next 10 years until I decided to start this column. So here is my small collection of 21 Jump Street sticker cards for your enjoyment…  These sticker cards are actually pretty piss poor in the quality department. First off none of the cards are die-cut (as is typically the fashion with Topps sticker card sets) and half of the images are blurry. The fact that they aren't die-cut is pretty funny to me because of the little Peel Here logo arrow on the corner of the card (the name sake of this column), which is part of the sticker in this case. Typically Topps has the Peel Here logo outside of the sticker’s image area, but they just got really lazy with this set.  Now the majority of the cards in the set (there were 44 all total) are graced with the arguably the most popular actor and character in the show, Johnny Depp as Officer Tom Hanson. 17 of the 44 cards in the set were dedicated to now super star drunk pirate with another 6 featuring Depp and another actor. For a star heat throb in the 80s this was pretty impressive, I mean I sure as heck don't remember Ricky Schroder having a set of sticker cards. Michael Jackson did though, which puts Johnny Depp's popularity into perspective, more popular than Ricky Schroder, but not quite as hot as Michael Jackson who only had to share the spotlight in his sticker card set with a tiger and a few llamas. I think my favorite of the cards above is the sweet "What a Hunk!" sticker. That is some amazing gel usage if I've ever seen it. Where in the hell was he going undercover with hair like that? Mafia High School? Anyway, in true Topps fashion there were two separate types of card-backs, ones with trivia and ones with puzzle pieces. Below is an example of both, as well as the "What your completed puzzle will look like" card back.  It took 24 cards to complete the puzzle, so it was actually pretty big. I'm not all that familiar with Topps sticker card puzzles, but from what I've seen in the Garbage Pail Kids sets there are usually only 9 cards needed to complete the puzzle. I was never quite sure what you were supposed to do with the completed puzzle though. I guess you could tape them to a piece of poster board or something. Just for the hell of it here's some pointless 21 Jump Street Trivia: -Holly Robinson who play Officer Judy Hoffs actually sang the theme song to the show with Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise on back-up vocals (they shouted "Jump") -Jump Street was one of Fox's first big hits and it lead off the Sunday night line-up, a spot that the Simpson's took over and has held ever since. -Richard Grieco (Officer Dennis Booker) was actually as popular if not more than Johnny Depp on the series, even garnering a spin-off series that lasted for one season. Currently Richard Grieco isn't buying any islands, so I think Johnny Depp has beat him in the popularity polls of late. Next week on Peel Here I'll be taking a look at a another set of sticker cards, one that I had a few of as a kid and featured a bunch of dorks in tights. Category: Peel Here Volume 1 -- posted at: 9:22 AM Comments[4] |
Fri, 1 December 2006  Episode Five repeat! This one's all about 7-Eleven's.Comments[0] |
Fri, 1 December 2006  Episode Four repeat! This one's all about Garbage Pail Kids.Comments[0] |
Fri, 1 December 2006 Episode Three repeat! This one's all about weird toy nostalgia. Comments[0] |
Fri, 1 December 2006  Episode Two repeat! This one's all about Showbiz Pizza, Chuck E. Cheese and birthdays. Enjoy!Comments[0] |
Fri, 1 December 2006  Episode One repeat! It's all about Bigwheels folks.Comments[0] |
Fri, 1 December 2006 So, everyone likes repeats right? No? Too bad. iTunes dropped all my older podcast episodes, so I've decided to take the backasswards way of getting them back up. In glorious crappy mp3 quality here is my first podcast. Enjoy. Comments[0] |
Fri, 1 December 2006 Okay, so I was checking my podcast account on iTunes the other day and I noticed that they're only carrying my most recent show and have dropped all the others. That kind of pisses me off. At times like this I wish my parents had gotten me into computers when I was younger so that I might be a little more up to date on how all this crap on the internets work. Anyway, I'm sure there is a very easy way to get ahold of someone at the Apple helpdesk (snicker, laugh, guffaw) to get them to read my RSS feed correctly (I checked and Libsyn has the RSS feed set up fine), or to not drop older shows, but the heck with it. To get around this problem I'm just going to repost my older shows real quick and be done with it. I'm not a "look at me, I'm doing great things" whore or anything and for the most part I don't mind if I don't get that much traffic on the site or anything. When you get down to brass tacks though most of the people who have found my site have found it through iTunes, and I've met a lot of cool people that way, so I would kind of like to keep it that way. So for all those who have already listened to my previous podcasts, just ignore the previous six posts, I'm just cleaning house, or drawing more attention to an older wing that's become dusty and forgotten (though not really.) Category: podcasts -- posted at: 2:44 PM Comments[0] |
Fri, 1 December 2006 So I changed my mind about what to post for this week's Peel Here. Actually I was way too lazy to scan a bunch of Johnny Depp stickers because I spent the evening scanning in pages from an art project I was lucky enough to take part in called simple enough "The Sketchbook Project" headed up by a very inventive 13shadesofblack in the Deviant Art community. If you want to take a gander at what's been added to the book so far go ahead, though it might not stay up for long. Anyway, because of this and because I didn't have it at the time of the first Peel Here column, I present to you today another awesome 80's Antioch Press story book with stickers for the highly underrated flick Ghostbusters II. Do people hate this because it's a sequel to a great movie, because it wasn't Batman, or because Dan Akroyd started gaining weight around this time? Maybe it's because of Peter MacNicol's somewhat annoying protrayal of Janosz Poha and his "Drippings withs goo..." accent that scarred everyone away from the theatre. I don't know because I saw it and loved it. It's got dancing toasters, rivers of slime, an NES turbo controller hooked up to the animated Statue of Liberty, and most importantly Venkman as an awesome host of a TV show I know I'd watch, not to mention a birthday party of kids anachronisticly shouting "We Want He-Man" at dancing Ghostbusters two years after the pathetic decline of He-Man's popularity. What more do people want? Anyway, I've been digging into internets doing research on the Antioch Press library of sticker storybooks and I've unearthed some really cool stuff. I think the only book I had, was the first Ghostbusters book, which is a shame because I think I really would have liked some of the others. From what I can tell Antioch released about 20-25 books from around 1981-1990 that were all done in the same format, small 6"x6" books with a plate of 12 stickers glued to the inside front cover. I won't mention the ones I've managed to procure yet, but some of the licenses ranged from the WWF (mostly Hulk Hogan related, in particular an awesome book where Hogan reviews his fellow wrestlers), the Bigfoot monster truck, a whole slew of Garfield and Friends books, and a couple of rare Ghostbusters companion books, one a making of and the other is sort of a training manual. There were also a couple of very basic books that centered on stuff like sports cars, horses and submarines. You can always tell an Antioch sticker book by the big white circle with a rainbow in it proclaiming it's 12 sticker goodness contents.  Though I didn't care for the picture cover of the first book, when taken into context with this second book I'm glad that the layout and design crew stuck with the same format in terms of the red half circle and a group shot. The movies were like five years apart and it's surprising to see them sticking to a design like this. As far as the stickers themselves are concerned, I really dig this set a bit more than the first set, for one because Ernie Hudson secured a spot on a sticker, and second because they used some of the book production art from the inside front cover on a sticker which is what I wanted for the first set of stickers. I also dig the grotesque close-up of the scourge of Carpathia himself Vigo. It gave me chills as a kid in the theatre to here Wilhelm von Homburg spout, "On a mountain of skulls, in the castle of pain, I sat on a throne of blood!" Chills I tell you. Though it could have been the weird spell of motion sickness I used to get in theatres around the late eighties, but I'm sticking with scare chills.  I think I may only have one more of these books, but it's a dozy in nostalgia terms, so that'll be fun when I get to it. Okay, so I'm heading down to Florida tomorrow morning for a vacation with the family unit, but I'll be back next Thursday with more inane 80's nostalgia fun, and hopefully I'll actually get to scanning some sweet, sweet Johnny Depp sticker goodness. Category: Peel Here Volume 1 -- posted at: 11:44 AM Comments[3] |
Thu, 30 November 2006 Talking about Transformers, I just recently stumbled upon a new line of toys from Hasbro that I have just fallen in love with. Before I get to that, let me preface this by saying that I loved me some Transformers when I was a kid, but I never had that many. At least it felt like that at the time. I guess I had my fare share, though most of them were either the small figures like Cliffjumper, Warpath, and Brawn, or the slightly larger figures that would combine to form a larger robot like the Technobots (which formed Computron.) I had a few of the regular sized figures, though I got most of these through trading with the exceptions of Sideswipe and Ironhide. Category: Toys -- posted at: 3:03 PM Comments[3] |
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