trick 'r treat

i expected a crush of trick 'r treaters tonight.  the pandemic is still with us but most people are feeling a bit looser on restrictions etc etc.  tonight, well i can't gauge the number terribly so.  i mean, i have no idea if the number of kids was, on balance, higher or lower than any other year.  we had 34 kids.  we kept count.  but our part of the neighborhood is not high traffic.  save that for the Fab 40s, the neighborhood made famous by the movie Ladybird [2017] which get hundreds of kids & their families.  maybe even thousands.  that's not an exaggeration.  families drive to the Fab 40s for halloween & for christmas decorations.  we live on the outside of it.  nevertheless, i love handing out candy to trick 'r treaters no matter their numbers.  one kid was dressed as Sam from the film Trick 'R Treat [2007] (which i watched tonight because it is such a kick ass movie & a homage to the high holiday).  i might just ham it up when i give out candy.  i enjoy the act & i love seeing the kids dressed in their halloween costumes.  as for candy, i don't eat a lot of it but for during the spooky season.  during halloween i gobble it up.  below is our jack o' lantern carved by anna.  the most depressing, & exciting, day of the year is the day after halloween when a full year must pass for the high holiday to return.  depressing because it will be a full year.  exciting because we have a full year of anticipation & planning ahead of us.  halloween 2022 is now behind us.  until next year, stay spooky!

boo!

today is halloween!

i'm still quite achy from this weekend's work in the garden.  did a lot of digging, planting, staining a fence etc etc.  but the weather is cooler.  pumpkins are out.  houses, many houses it seems, in the neighborhood are decorated for the high holiday.  & i have the day off to observe my favorite day of the year.  the only decision i need to make today is to pick what movies to watch!  however you spend this spooky day boils & ghouls i hope it hits all the right notes for you.  everyday is halloween! 

boo!

everyday is halloween

13 ghosts [2001]

after a long weekend of physical labor to get our garden in shape my tired bones sat down & watched this remake of the william castle classic.  does it hold up to the original?  are you fucking kidding me!  even with the talents of f. murray abraham, tony shaloub, matthew lillard & embeth davidtz can't rise up to meet the challenges of this fucked up flick.  what's it about?  abraham is a powerful man who wants to become the world's most powerful man by getting 13 ghosts in his mirror funhouse abode to do something that was prescribed by a 15th century mystic.  do this, whatever this is, & you rule everything.  shaloub is abraham's nephew fallen on hard times after the loss of his house from a fire & the death of his wife.  he's necessary to complete abraham's mechaninzations.  & it almost works.  rather, this movie is interesting in its use of lighting, fast cut editing, & spook house ambience.  the late 1990s & early 2000s was the moment for hyper-kinetic filmmaking.  each time a ghost enters the frame the edit goes to a power of sparks flying from that ghost's weapon of choice as it tries to hit our luckless family trapped in abraham's house of mirrors kind of home.  & the ghosts all look like they stepped out of a commercial haunted attraction.  spooky?  kinda.  goofy, for sure.  nevertheless, i stuck to the end of this movie out of a kind of perverse dedication.  i remember watching this movie upon its first release.  i remember it freakier than it is.  oh well.  my problem.  but i bet william castle was laughing in his grave.  

boo!

everyday is halloween

thursday nite drive-in double-feature

so many movies, so little time.  i think charles dickens said that.  at any rate, you know how much i dig 1950s monster movies.  that era was rich in creature features.  & this DVD does its best to replicate a night at the drive-ins by inserting cartoons, intermission shorts, PSAs from the management warning young lovebirds to tone down their public displays of affection.  plus, it uses DISTORTO SOUND.  the track is in mono to recreate the experience of listening to the movie with a drive-in speaker.  that shit was tinny as hell.  also, there is the ambient sounds of car tires driving over gravel & the light banter of your drive-in seatmates reacting to scenes on the screen.  overall, this disc does a fairly good job of it.  but for the movies, both are creature features released in either 1959 or 1960.  i couldn't get a precise year.  the dust jacket of this disc says they are both from 1960, but when i look them up online i get the year 1959.  who cares.  the giant gila monster was made to capitalize on the rock&roll youth culture of the 1950s with hot rods, malt shops & a rock&roll singer who is also the hero.  & there is a giant gila monster taking out a few of the locals.  why?  how?  again, who cares.  this is a dumb ass monster movie that makes no bones of it being a vehicle to sell to the drive-in circuit of that time.  but the wasp woman is another thing for sure.  shot in a couple of weeks on the cheap by roger corman this flick stars susan cabot as an aging cosmetics company owner, janice starlin.  she is also the face of the company & because she is the aging face for advertisements sales have fallen flat. to fix that issue & get sales roaring upward cabot enlists the services of dr. eric zinthrop, played by michael mark.  the good doctor's research of wasps is of interest to jan because of an alleged fountain of youth made by the royal jelly of the queen wasp. does jan want that royal jelly?  does corman make movies for a buck & a half?  the only problem is that ingesting too much of queen wasp royal jelly can turn you into a human wasp homicidal hybrid.  but for a few sweet days the user can look 15 years younger!  oh man!  guess where this movie is going.  some people are ripped apart!  including the night watchman played by bruno vesota who has maybe two minutes of screentime.  oh my!  well but so, corman knows how to make a movie.  the pacing is slow for today's audience, but the editing & photography belie corman's famed cheapness.  this movie is as much a study on the danger of wanting eternal youth as it is an example of solid exploitation movie making.  

boo!

everyday is halloween

 evil dead [2013]

all is cool here at casa de lopez/bronson.  i checked on my peeps at MIT who i tasked to make the spooky season longer than the christmas season.  these scientists & specialists are quite good but alas no go.  so i've been doing my level best to enjoy this year's high holiday.  not by doing anything that i normally don't do.  but this year is a bit more chill.  no pumpkin patch sorties.  no haunted house exploring.  rather, i'm watching horror movies, digging the [slightly] cooler weather, & finding, again, that the things i love, like halloween, always live in the heart.  so but then, this film.  a remake of the great Sam Raimi early '80s indie scare film.  director fede alvarez crafted a worthy remake.  the plot & the setup are similar to the original movie, friends find a mysterious tome bound in human skin in the basement of a cabin in the woods, open the pages, recite a verse, & BLAM!  blood, guts & death galore!  fucking love it!  alvarez & co. keep things gooey & red.  the final girl, mia, played by a wonderful scream queen - man! she seems to be in the possession of a three-octave scream - jane levy is a heroin addict who is sent to the aforementioned cabin with her brother & friends to dry out.  they find that mysterious tome.  & the shitteth hitteth the fan.  what more can be said?  levy is a delight to watch as she battles The Abomination.  the kills are inventive.  & the FX are moist & deadly.  seriously, i needed a shower after watching this flick.  but so far, watching horror movies do not impede the flow of time.  nothing does.  so we are nearing the end of the spooky high holiday of 2022.  & yet, i hold halloween in my heart.  duh!!!  the spooky season is not yet over.  & i can't wait to pass out candy on the high holiday.  the only thing i can think of that is scarier than this pic is running out of candy at the height of Trick 'R Treating!

boo!  

everyday is halloween

hellraiser infomercial [1987]

once upon a time i was a very rabid reader of horror fiction.  i haunted the horror section of bookstores.  read lots of stephen king, but my man at the time was clive barker.  his short story collections books of blood are the good shit.  then, i found barker's novella the hellbound heart published in the horror anthology series night visions guest edited by george r.r. martin.  i found this tale so terrifying i was not able to finish reading it.  but when i watched clive barker's first film hellraiser based on his novella i fell in love with barker's visions of damaged glamor, revulsion, desire, carnality, & the darkest desires created by the human heart.  i've seen this pic many many many times over the 35 years since its release.  but what i just discovered was this cheap ass infomercial embedded in the first printing of the VHS & Betamax videocassettes.  either the tapes that i rented back then didn't have this extra or i simply didn't pay that much attention once the movie was over.  the silliness of the voice actor hawking generic stuff, like a thermos with the word hellraiser affixed to it, & the old lady who introduces the informercial, is both the stuff of nightmares & material fit for a cartoon.  from what i've read about this goofy gag that it was real.  you could actually buy the goods for sale.  what an artifact from the good ol' 1980s, an era that saw the birth of late-night TV informercials [first infomercial i watched on late night TV was selling ant farms] & cable TV home shopping channels.  what's a little blood, flesh & chains between seller & customer?  as Pinhead would say, this shit will tear your soul apart! 

boo!

everyday is halloween

pumpkin pie wars [2016]

another movie you ask?  wait, this one is a bit different than the usual fare i survey on this blog.  yes, it is a fall harvest kinda movie.  it does have pumpkins.  no, the pumpkins don't rise up from the patch to dispatch randy teenagers.  nor do the pumpkins declare war on humanity &/or other forms of life.  rather, this is a romance from Hallmark.  you know the brand.  the Hallmark channel is famous for a kind of formulaic romance movie centered on holidays & season, like autumn & christmas & spring & winter & & &...you get the drift.  i love 'em.  unabashedly.  these romance movies are the thesis of exploitation films.  find a fear, emotion, sentiment, etc etc. & make a movie capitalizing on it.  thus, we have, in varying degrees, a real need for love, connection, romance, sex, & place them in a bucolic setting, preferably an adorable small town located in, say, new england or upstate new york.  add a thirty- or forty-something woman from the big city who is attractive, smart, independent, & in need of a change.  she is either forced to move to that adorable small town, either for a working assignment, or that she got lost & ends up in that adorable small town, or she returns to it to help out a struggling family business.  lo!  enter casey, played by the lovely julie gonzalo [a regular in Hallmark movies] who returns to her adorable small town to help with her mother's bakery.  her mother, faye, played by michelle scarabelli, is the reigning champion baker in the annual harvest festival  faye's rival, & former best friend, lydia, played by jennifer-juniper angeli, owns a competing bakery.  casey, a graduate of the wharton school of business, & alleged brilliant business strategist, is tasked to take on baking duties after her mother injures herself & is forced to stay off her feet.  casey must enter into the harvest festival baking contest cuz it is critical that she win in order to keep the bakery in dough.  oh man!  the hatred between faye & lydia is scorching!  but to complicate matters is lydia's handsome, intelligent, & overall cool egg of a son, sam, played by eric aragon, who is also in town to help his own mother's bakery business.  guess what happens next.  no!  i'll tell ya.  casey & sam must work together, combine their baking strengths, their competing pumpkin pie recipes, & enter as a team in the baking competition.  sparks, & allspice, fly!  is there a happy ending?  this is Hallmark so of course all their movies end in a happily ever after.  the chemistry between casey & sam is pretty good.  the searing hatred between faye & lydia is soothed.  & in this world it is alway fall.  also, this pic is ably directed by steven r. monroe, who is a veteran director of horror & exploitation movies, like the remake i spit on your grave [2010].  & i fucking loved it.

boo!  

everyday is halloween

attack of the giant leeches [1959]

sometimes a b-movie just hits the right spot.  & for the spooky season there are no shortages of campy monster flicks from the 1950s to both frighten ya & make you laugh like a doofus.  & this pic hits all those cheesy notes.  down in the florida swamps something is disappearing the local folk.  you know you are down home when the locals are all dressed like hillbillys from central casting from their hats with flipped-up visors a la benny hill, all the way down to their greasy overalls.  that they drink their hooch straight from the jug is a nice touch too.  so well, come along park warden steve, played by ken clark, who takes an interest in these missing locals, add a sex kitten, liz, played by yvette vickers, who is married to dave, played by bernard vesota who is the proprietor of the bar & general store, & a few extras for color & we got a movie!  oh, don't forget the two dorks dressed in black plastic bags as the giant killer leeches.  steve does get to the bottom of the mystery, discovers the leeches' lair & uses dynamite to rescue liz & recover the bodies of the missing goofballs.  oh, & how did these leeches get so large & homicidal?  shit!  this was the nuclear age of terror 1950s.  a local doctor, & overall sage & father to steve's love interest, nan, played by jan shepard, doc greyson, played by character actor tyler mcvey, explains that they must've mutated on account of the atomic energy used at cape canaveral.  kaboom!  directed by bernard l. kowalski,  produced by gene corman, brother of roger corman, & distributed by that great engine of horror, b-, & exploitation cinema american international pictures this movie runs a tidy, mercifully short, 62 minutes.  it is now in the public domain so sit down, have a cool one, grab some snacks, & a little smoke if you are into that kinda thing, & enjoy a blast from the past drive-in psychotronic feature for the spooky season.  

boo!

everyday is halloween

bad candy [2020]

what more can be said about this halloween anthology showcase.  what's that?  you've never heard of it?  hell, neither did i, but for a couple of hours ago i was looking for horror movies on one of the streaming splatforms we subscribe to.  a movie about the high holiday?  featuring corey taylor, the lead ghoul in the band slipknot, & zach galligan, better known as billy from the wonderful - is it a christmas movie, or a halloween movie?  who cares! - cuz it is a classic from filmmaker joe dante, gremlins [1984]!  so while then these two dudes are dj's in new salem at psychotronic radio 66.6 fm on halloween night.  they are telling terror tales that may or may not be true to life.  the eponymous bad candy is a scary ass clown [are there any other kind?] who is the principal rapscallion & glue for all of these stories.  does this film work?  not as a cogent, cohesive narrative.  but if you're looking for an hour & half to kill with some cool fx & even cooler iconography of the spooky high holiday you can't go terribly wrong.  unless you've done some social wrong & then bad candy will be seeking you out!  cuz this film is not only for scaring but it is a morality tale too!  the only people that bad things happen to are bad people!  DUM DUM DA!

boo!

everyday is halloween

hocus pocus [1993]

why - how - a film becomes a cult classic is the subject of a great many master's & phd theses.  sometimes it might be just plain dumb luck.  & a certain cheesy charm that has that oh i don't know what.  whatever the reasons this Disney flick from nearly 30 years ago have achieved that rarefied status.  it is a beloved cult movie for the spooky high holiday.  & i just watched it for the first time a few days ago with anna.  what a celebration of three witch sisters of Salem, MA who are doing their goofy best to stay young & live forever.  do they get their greatest wish?  not if a pair of teens, & a young thora birch, along with a talking black cat, can help it.  but is this movie a fun watch & worthy of its status.  i withhold judgment for who the hell am i.  my movie collection is comprised of the weird, the strange, the controversial, the bloody & the goofy.  de gustibus non est disputandum.  i did like the halloween imagery.  jack o'lanterns, stormy nights, creepy graveyards, & more silly energy than any movie to compare it with.  hell, i wanted to see the Sanderson Sisters succeed.  i was rooting for them the whole length of the film.  plus, some of the locations are in Salem.  that's a doubleplus good!  

boo!

henry rollins in sac

my second punk show, at the tender age of 15, was a gig with Black Flag as the headliner circa their Damage LP era.  this was the first album with henry rollins as their lead vocalist.  rollins was - is - known for his intensity & at that show when he was i think 21 was a massive force of energy, emotion, & screams.  this gig was at a soon to be defunct disco called the Galactica 2000.  the mirror ball was still hanging from the ceiling.  

rollins is a punk rock grandad.  at the tender age of 61 he does a great many things.  being the lead vocalist is no longer one of them.  in addition to acting & hosting a podcast & authoring a number of books - including poetry - he travels the world as a spoken word artist.  part lecture, part stand-up comedy, part social & political commentary this is where rollins shines the brightest. 

b. & i have seen him four times now the past 20 years.  twice in SF.  & now twice here in our beloved burg of Sac.  

rollins rolled into The Crest theater tonight.  i don't know if he performed at this venue with Black Flag or with Rollins Band.  he might have.  after all, rollins is no stranger to touring & he's been here many times.  

even so, b. & i saw him perform about a year before the Pandemic.  his range of topics is always prefaced, & underscored, by a common humility & humanity that is shared by us all.  tonight was no different.  & because rollins has been doing his spoken word tours for a few decades he has honed his storytelling skills hard & sharp.  he's a great storyteller.

The Crest is a wonderful ol' skool theater.

there are few of these treasures left to us.  i've seen more movies, first run, second & third run, & midnight movies, than i can count at this theater.  i've seen many bands.  & the wonderful early 2000s Trash Film Orgy, that paean to horror & exploitation cinema, was done at The Crest too. 

we must've been obvious in our enjoyment because a woman walked up to b., in mid-performance, to tell him so.  i don't know why she did that.  maybe she doesn't know why either.  she was from a back row so perhaps our being doubled up in laughter was infectious?  who knows!

we tried to get a good pic of the master at work.  but the lights washed out rollins.  still, when the set was done & rollins started to walk off stage right i snapped this pic.

it was time to leave.  downtown Sac on a monday night is a pretty quiet place.  not much happening.  b. & i walked the length of K st mall all the way down to the Golden 1 Arena & back.  we noticed rollins tour bus parked beside The Crest.  we got all fanboyed out & debated to wait beside it to get a selfie with the venerable punk & to shake his hand.  Black Flag was - is - seminal in my life as a human being.  so is rollins the spoken word artist.  rather, we opted to take a few selfies in front of his bus & leave the dude alone.

with that we walked to the parking garage, got into b.'s vehicle, pointed it to our respective homes & bade the evening adieu.

everyday is halloween

there are no shortages of vloggers on youtube for all manner of causes, rites, occassions & obsessions.  we find our likes.  & vlogger derek millan is one of my favorites.  his channel specializes in the haunted happenings of Salem, MA.  Salem, as we know, is infamous for the witch trials.  but for the spooky season Salem throws out all the stops for the high holiday & derek millan hits them all.  for this video is the haunted happening parade.  dig the neighborhood of historic homes decorated spooky.  dig the cast of characters, like Borah! the Witch, derek features.  & dig the idyllic autumnal beauty of a new england town.

boo!

everyday is halloween

but even more so every day is a course of survival in the ordinary madness of our everday lives.  & i'm delighted in knowing that there are a great many more artists & writers who, like me, love horror.  movies, music, books, ephemera etc etc.  i don't claim i am unique in my obsessions whether it be poetry or bloody so bad it's good horror movies.  but now there is a new lit. journal dedicated to my beloved genre of horror.

cul-de-sac of blood

founded by poet/editors gina myers & jeff t. johnson they publish poetry, essays, fiction & a weekly movie review all steeped in what johnson calls horror poetics.

why horror?  i've been asking myself that all my life.  but, as i've written & said about the object/subject of our love sometimes it is to be.  perhaps horror is something about survival too.  even if we experience 'danger' in the safe space of a movie theater, or at home, we learn that whatever is thrown at us, or we are thrust into, we can come out the other side.  as robert frost wrote, the best way out is always thru.  for me horror is the thrill ride & an object of survival.  & ofttimes, horror is plain ass cheesy fun.  

boo!

everyday is halloween

spooky sounds

this CD is one of my very favorite halloween soundscape albums in my collection.  released in 1999 by Mark Harvey who founded Nobody Records.  i don't recall, after 23 years!, how i got wind of this record.  but i remember ordering it off of the website & about a week later a pair of CDs arrived in the mail.  old fashioned physical media!  i think CDs have a bad rep in our digital age.  maybe it's because of reverse snobbery.  you either stream or you collect vinyl, or you do, most likely, both.  

but i remember when CDs were the preeminent performance for music; the sound quality was crisp, precise & groundbreaking.  & dig this art inside the sleeve.

like a homemade haunt!  i fucking love it!  plus the disc is pumpkin colored.

& the back cover with the soundscape titles is killer!

i can't believe 23 years have passed since i found & bought this disc.  & for me this music is timeless.  like halloween, dressing in costumes & trick 'r treating.  remember all hollow's eve is the night when the membrane between the dead & the living is the thinnest.  a magical night.  & this soundscape is the perfect sweetener to the spooky high holiday.  of course, we live in a digital so you can buy the digital album & listen to the tracks by clicking here.  go on!  i double dog dare ya!

boo!

everyday is halloween

richard duerden digged the spooky high holiday too!

boo!

everyday is halloween

scary songs

this tune by the talking heads is from the brilliant jonathan demme concert film Stop Making Sense [1984] & is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest rock&roll concert movies, ever.  what makes this a scary song ripe for the spooky season?  the title gives it away.  david byrne crafted a tune written in the first-person perspective of a serial killer.  creepy?  fuck yeah it is.  but try getting the chorus fa-fa-fa-fa out of your head.  once you've heard it this earworm clings to you like soap film.  how scary is that!

boo!

a bit of self promotion

the editors of the tiny, gina myers & emma brown sanders, were kind to accept three of my poems for publication

my poems find themselves in wonderful company

with established poets

alice notley

brendan lorber

et al.

& poets who are exciting & new to me

dillon clark 

jamie perez 

et al.

& killer art by

tabitha arnold

my many thanks to the editors

you can find the issue by clicking here

the tiny

please click & read some damn good poems & support indie publishing 

as my momma always said

carpefuckingdiem

& die reading/writing poetry!

everyday is halloween

i'm a child of the 1970s when holiday plastic blow mold decorations where the thing.  there were a few companies producing blow molds but the best known is Empire Plastics.  founded in 1953 Empire dominated the blow mold market until they sold their designs & equipment in the 1990s.  by 2001 Empire folded.  i'm not sure if blow molds are still produced in the quantity of yester yore.  & yet these designs, particularly halloween decorations are dear to me.  

this pumpkin man is from 1969.  he came with a light that was inserted in a hole in the back.  prop him up on a table or windowsill, plug him in, & you got the vibes of halloween.  i bought this dude without the lighting fixture, but no matter.  he's a little scratched, a little worn, a little left out in the weather.  & just like life, i love him all the more.

boo!

everyday is halloween

 halloween iii: season of the witch [1982]

so for the third installment why not try something different.  why not go for something unique.  why don't we get rid of the main antagonist, slasher & one fucked up dude, michael myers.  let's try to get to the essence of halloween.  so director john carpenter & producer debra hill tried something different.  they enlisted director tommy lee wallace to make a film about the killing side of halloween.  wow!  did they ever.  conal cochran, played by dan o'herlihy, owns Silver Shamrock Novelties.  he has pieces of stonehenge that he made into tiny medallions.  he inserted those medallions in children's halloween masks which have sold like hot cakes.  furthermore, cochran, that little devil, has bought up airtime on the three main TV networks so that when the kids, who are wearing Silver Shamrock masks, watching a halloween special, at a specific appointed time, will die in the most goofy manner possible.  the masks kill their victims by, well i dunno how, but bugs & snakes crawl out from the masks leaving their victims deader than a door nail.  why does cochran do this?  cuz he wants to return to the ancient pagan rites of samhain of which children sacrifices were made.  does cochran get away with it?  not if character actor, & all-round bad ass, tom atkins, has anything to do with it.  oh my!  there are killer robots [i shit you not] & an awesome TV countdown for the Silver Shamrock TV horrorathon that i've used on this blog to announce the high holiday of halloween.  this flick flopped.  the next movie in the halloween franchise saw the return of our favorite The Shape, michael myers.  but for a glorious moment carpenter & hill had envisioned an anthology film series dedicated to halloween.  oh yeah, the late, great dark fiction writer, & resident of nearby stockton, dennis etchison wrote the novelization.  i've not read the novel but i bet it is even weirder than this pic.

boo! 

everyday is halloween

 

ah yes!  we have entered into my very favorite time of year.  the spooky season.  i love autumn.  i love halloween.  i love my beloved genre of horror in all its accoutrements.  the above lovely lady is from my collection.  i think guests at casa de bronson/lopez might be surprised that the place isn't done up entirely in all things spooky.  such as a whole room dedicated to halloween/horror decor.  not so much.  but i do have a few things here & there.  i purchased this allegedly 1940s Beistle witch at an antique shop off of Cannery Row in Monterey some years back.  is it authentic?  i don't really care.  even reproductions of vintage Beistle halloween decorations are enough to set my heart a'pumping.  so in the spirit of jumping headlong into the spooky season let this lady be the first to yell at ya...

boo!