I don’t know what it is, but I get the biggest kick from the most obscure shit. Take the thread on DVD Maniacs where the board members discuss the conspicuous placement of J & B Scotch bottles throughout various European cult flicks. KH Brown even went to the trouble of contacting J & B for their opinion on the matter.

A: Thanks for your email.

We had heard of this before being in what they call in Italy “Yellow” flims. We think that it is because of J&B being very popular with the Rat Pack (Franck, Dean and Sammy) and perhaps that is where the Italian connections comes in!! probably something we will never really know but a nice story.

We still have very strong Hollywood ties and still appear in some great films the earliest being Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the most recent being The Cooler

regards,
J&B

If you’re obsessive like me, go check out the fun. There’s plenty of beautiful screengrabs available to support their case. Oh, and take a shot anytime someone says that the thread makes them thirsty.

I’ve been sick the past couple days, but I woke up this morning feeling better and with a profound need to dance like I have ass in my pants. Quite possibly the funkiest damn soundtrack for a horror movie, the entire Blacula album can be found over at Dust to Dust.

My fever may have broke last night, but I’ve still got the fever, if you know what I mean. As an added bonus, here’s discotheque fave Soul Dracula (among others), which I originally picked up from the much-missed Dr. Mysterian. I strongly suggest you check his site anyway, if only for a brief history of vampires and their connection with the dancefloor.

You’ve got to get up to get down.

This cheered me up. Jeano Roid of the band The Creeping Cruds visited the location of the cabin from the original Evil Dead and came back with his soul intact.

The walk back down the trail away from the cabin was quite creepy indeed! There were a few property for sale signs in the area which leads me to suspect that sadly someday soon this infamous spot will be just another victim of sprawl.

I love horror travelogue pieces like this, and hope to take a road trip hitting all the hot spots one day. Maybe I should dig out those photos from my trip to the Evans City cemetary…

Really, who doesn’t love physical special effects work? I have nothing against computer graphics, especially with the advances that they’ve made, but no matter how good they get they never seem to have the charm of something that’s really there, inhabiting the same space as the actor and the sets.

Industrial Light and Magic has sold off their physical effects department. In case you think this is just about Star Wars, films that they’ve worked on include Ghostbusters, Labryinth, Dark Crystal and Poltergeist, among many others. When we were little, my cousin and I rented Poltergeist and watched it ten times in a row, over and over again, and at least part of the magic that kept us glued to the screen was watching a man rip his own face off. Sigh.

One of the things I miss most about living in the Niagara Region is Off-Beat Cinema, a long-running cult movie program hosted by a bunch of beatniks.  I have a few tapes of the show from back in the day, and sometimes when I’m feeling a little homesick I pop one in and watch The Giant Gila Monster or The Exterminating Angel.  One night, Oscar (one of the hosts on the show) said something that has stuck with me for years.

“Charlton Heston.  With Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and Omega Man, he gave up a respected career as an actor to BECOME MY GOD!”

Embrace the glory that is Heston, with these absolutely incredible homegrown Omega Man bubblegum cards courtesy of the fine craftsmanship of Bubblegumfink.  So good you’ll change faith.

In support of their forthcoming Bollywood Horror collection, Mondo Macabre have placed one of the featurettes from that upcoming release on Youtube. Entitled “Freddie, Jason and… Saamri - The Ramsays and the Birth of Bollywood Horror”, it’s a fascinating peek inside a rarely seen sub-sub-genre. The Horror Blog, entertaining and educational!

Warning : The link found below contains spoilers for some of the films discussed. However, most of them are considered classics of the genre, so odds are good that if you’re visiting here you’ve seen them all.

The Sydney Morning Herald asks five of horror’s new breed of director, and one of the old guard, what they consider to be the scariest movie they have ever seen. The directors chosen include Eli Roth, James Gunn, Christopher Smith, Rob Green, John Moore, and Robin Hardy.

It’s interesting to compare the films the directors choose to their own work, whether the influence is apparent or if they admire a style of horror which they don’t even try and work in themselves.

In a touching obituary, Tim Lucas says farewell to one of grindhouse cinema’s greatest icons, Audrey Campbell.

One of the joys of writing this blog is discovering films and personalities who I may not have run across otherwise. Such is the case here. I hadn’t heard of Audrey Campbell until just recently with the purchase of Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford’s book Sleazoid Express. There they devote an entire chapter to the three sexploitation films Campbell appeared in as Olga, a precursor to most of modern cinema’s hardened, voracious dominatrices. Upon reading the book, and seeing how so many of my favourite modern films grew out of the innovations brought on by the efforts of earlier exploitation filmmakers, I have a greater appreciation for the work that people like Audrey Campbell accomplished.
Rest in peace, Audrey Campbell.

For some reason this amuses me to no end.

Hot on the heels of the latest RomCom comes a list of the top ten cinematic break-ups. Impressively, number #6 is The Bride of Frankenstein, a reminder that even the shortest courtship can result in excessive drama.