Sometimes I Doubt Your Commitment...

...to Sparkle Motion!

Please excuse the crudeness of the cut & paste, all I had to work with was MS Paint. Have a great weekend everyone!

King Part Three.

This Thursday, Stephen King comes to town. He's making an appearance here in Toronto, to plug his new book Under The Dome.



How about that? Even books get trailers now. If the appearance of Stephen King wasn't enough, he's also being interviewed by Canadian icon David Cronenberg. Yes, it's going to be quite an evening. In preparation, I figured I'd trot out the remaining King covers that were at my store. If you'd like to check out the first two Coverbox Wednesdays featuring the works of King, click here and here.

Okay, yes it is true that last one isn't Stephen King, but almost every customer who came into my store thought it was because a similar monkey was also on the cover of King's short story collection Skeleton Crew.

Well, that's it for now. There have obviously been countless other titles adapted from King's prolific career, but they came after I'd taken my leave of Cockbuster. Be sure to check back on the weekend to hear about how this King/Cronenberg thing went.

25 Years of Nightmares!

Twenty five years ago today, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare On Elm Street was unleashed upon the world.

A Nightmare On Elm Street easily earns its place in my Fearsome Fifteen, by going to a place that no slasher had attempted before – your dreams. I mean, I didn’t grow up in Haddonfield and never went to summer camp, but I went to sleep EVERY NIGHT! What defense would I have against a depraved killer in my own head? The filmmakers also had limitless possibilities for unsettling set pieces as the rules of reality no longer applied. This theme had been explored earlier that year in Joseph Ruben’s Dreamscape, but Nightmare left out the heavy science-fiction elements and brought it home.



And then there was Freddy. Before his many sequels turned him into the slasher equivalent of Henny Youngman, he was a menacing figure. Fuelled by revenge, he took pleasure in making his victims suffer. So, a quarter-century on, I tip my fedora to Wes Craven and Robert Englund for all the nightmares. Here below is some schwag from the archives I dug up for the occasion. You know, I scare myself sometimes (sometimes?) with just how much shit I have stowed away because this is but a fraction.

My Halloween costume circa 1988.

That last pic is the title screen from the 1990 Nintendo game. I saw it in action at Serena’s place the other day. It’s kind of an incoherent mix of Ghosts & Goblins and Double Dragon that Freddy pops up in now and again. I could go on, but The Angry Video Game Nerd said it so much better than I.

Lastly, Robert Englund recently released a book that largely chronicles his experiences playing the knife-gloved killer. You can read my thoughts on it here.

Don't Kill The Messenger XXXVII

Hello all. I'll keep it brief today, as I'm not posting from my main computer, as it is having some virus issues.

Oh No James, Say It Ain't So.

I've spoken before about my unabashed enjoyment of last year's horror reality show Scream Queens, so imagine my glee when I heard that VH1 was going to give it a second season. Then, this week of the Twitterverse, one of the three 'judges' of the show, director James Gunn (Saw alumni Shawnee Smith and renowned acting coach John Homa being the other two) announced he wouldn't be returning due to a conflicting film project. That's a real shame because Gunn's presence is definitely one of the best elements of the show. He did assure everyone that his replacement will be up to the task and I can't wait to see who it is. For more on this story, click here. Scream Queens began casting for season 2 in August, so hopefully we'll be seeing a new crop of beauties clawing their way to that bloody tiara sometime early in 2010.

All A Twitter

And speaking of the Twitter, it's a great way to keep up with film productions. Yes, film websites use it as a sort of an RSS feed for their newest posts, but I was actually talking about directors, crew and even actors tweeting from their movie sets, keeping everyone in the loop. One such individual is Milla Jovovich on the set of Toronto's Resident Evil: Afterlife. And she's doing it a lot. And it's pretty awesome. To follow Milla's feed, go here. You can also follow actress Diora Baird, who has been tweeting from the set of the 30 Days Of Night sequel, Dark Days.



To The Tune of Thirteen.

As you know, Friday the 13th just passed us, so I thought I pass along this little interview that Mark Morton from the Examiner.com recently did with Harry Manfredini. Manfredini is the composer of almost one hundred film scores, including Swamp Thing, Deep Star Six, House and the seminal Friday films. Here's a sample of the interview.

Morton: So, with all of the technological advancements that emerge every year, when looking back, did you feel that you were limited at all when doing something like the original Friday the 13th?

Manfredini: If I have to say anything about horror films, it is the fact that they are un-limiting. You are really free to do whatever you want and be creative within anything you can think of. Harmonically, you are totally open, instrumentally, whatever! I mean, the “ch-ch-ch-ch” sound is actually me! But yeah, with the original Friday the 13th, they say that necessity is the mother of invention. There was no money and no time to do the score, so I really had to come up with all kinds of things on my own. I was using instruments that people laugh about now. I borrowed an instrument from a rock musician friend of mine called an Orchestron, which had a record player hooked up to a keyboard. And instead of playing music, the records had sound files on them, like an optical film track, and if you pressed a certain key, it would play the record at a given speed. It was really like a Rube Goldberg machine! It was hysterical. I also used an Irish tin whistle. I would open up a piano and scrape the strings with a quarter. Again, that’s the fun thing about horror films; you are free to do whatever you can imagine.

For the rest of the interview, click here. And for one of the most KICK-ASS INTROS EVAR, take a look below.

Wasted Views

The Skinny Puppy show was great last night, with a solid mix of old and new stuff. Even after twenty five years, they still put on a great show.

The Aftermath.

As an addendum to my earlier posts, I'd like to include the Skinny Puppy video for Worlock. Before YouTube, this video was like The Holy Grail for me. It is riddled with clips from horror flicks that were ripped to shreds by censors. Since the song is about censorship it seems appropriate, though ironically the video was locked away in Nettwerk's vault for the longest time after being banned itself. Thankfully, we can all now enjoy it here. How many horror movies can you pick out?

Skinny Puppy's Horror Show Part Two

Okay, time for numbers five through one.

5: Song - Monster Radio Man; Source - The Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street"

This is the second appearance of The Twilight Zone on this list. Everytime I watch an episode of this old show, it still amazes me how ahead of its time it was. The only reason this stuff was even allowed on television back then is it was likely just dismissed as sugary science-fiction entertainment. There again is the genius of Rod Serling.


4: Song - ...Brap; Source - Andy Warhol's Dracula

This song was on their first EP, and with the aid of the screaming skills of Udo Kier and Milena Vukotic, it is truly a full-out assault on your eardrums.




3: Song - Burnt With Water; Source - The Exorcist

This is another track from Mind: TPI and I love it because the samples blend so well with the music in this one. I couldn't find the song, so below is some 1986 concert footage courtesy of YouTube user Tenguzame99.





2: Song - Testure; Source - The Plague Dogs

Testure is one of my favourite Skinny Puppy songs and tracking down this old animated movie was kind of a big deal for me way back when. Here below is one of Puppy's more powerful videos. I love the inserted clips of Evil Dead 2 and The Exorcist in there too. There is also an extended cut on YouTube, so feel free to track that one down - if you dare.



1: Song - Rivers; Source - 2001: A Space Odessey, A Clockwork Orange, The Fearless Vampire Killers and Dead & Buried

Rivers is a sampling masterpiece in my opinion. So many movies, flowing in and out of each other, you can just close your eyes and the dark imagery just swirls around in your head. Again, awesome job on the video mix by radi0n. He did however, omit the samples from House By The Cemetery & Maniac 2, so I included them below, as well.








Well, that's the list, hope you enjoyed the trip. Oh, and happy Friday The 13th by the way. Seems oddly fitting, don't you think?

Skinny Puppy's Horror Show

Skinny Puppy, one of my favourite bands of all time is coming to town tomorrow and I can’t wait. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I – the lover of all things horror – am a huge fan as their dark soundscapes as they're often horrors in themselves, even without all the genre movie samples that populate their music. I’ve posted about this before, but with their concert date imminent, I wanted to go into more detail and showcase my favourites. Now, at first I thought this post was going to be an insane amount of work because of all the capturing I’d have to do from multiple sources. However, after some searching around YouTube, I found a few users had already done a lot of the work for me. So, I want to give shout-outs to billynair, dvsoldier, Jennifer1023 & especially radi0n for making this a lot easier on me. So, let’s get on with it, shall we? These are my top ten favourite movie samples from Skinny Puppy songs. Apart from the few instances where they have been mixed together, I will have the original song on top, with its corresponding source(s) underneath. I’ll roll out five today and the rest tomorrow. Enjoy!

10: Song - The Choke; Source - Roman Polanski's The Tenant

The Tenant shows up a lot in Skinny Puppy's work, they even named a song on their album VIVISectVI after Isabelle Adjani's character Stella.



9: Song - 200 Years; Source - The Twilight Zone Episode "Elegy"

The Twilight Zone was an incredibly influential show and this is the first of two occasions it appears on this list.



8: Song - Deep Down Trauma Hounds; Source - Looney Tunes Episode "Water, Water Every Hare"

I always knew it was a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but it took me years upon years to actually find the right one. Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse was the first Skinny Puppy album that I ever listened to, so naturally it appears a total of four times on this list. The other samples in this song are from an episode of Perry Mason.




7: Song - Love; Source - The Legend Of Hell House

This is probably my favourite instrumental work of theirs. The layering of sounds here is just brilliant. Skinny Puppy were obviously big fans of the film as samples also popped up in several songs on Bites and Remission.

6: Song - Who's Laughing Now?; Source - Evil Dead 2

It's not hard to see why this is one of my favourites. The gratuitous dismemberment of Sam Raimi's classic fits in well with the themes of Skinny Puppy's album VIVISectVI.

Be sure to check back tomorrow when I reveal the final five entries on the list.