everyday is halloween!

at last, it feels like fall arrived!  it even rained a tiny bit this morning.  puts a spring in my step.  lots of homes in the neighborhood have decorated for the Spooky Season.  & today, the satellite radio station, Scream, on SiriusXM [we are longtime subscribers] began its annual broadcast of scary sounds, spooky songs, & terrifying stories.  below is one of those stories that some good soul put on youtube.  it's called The Scarecrow.  

tune in, turn on, drop dead!

boo!

Jim Cory [1953 - 2024]

i just learned poet jim cory recently passed away.  friend of jim's, alex gildzen, just posted this memoriam here, Arroyo Chamisa: Jim Cory (1953-2024).  i don't remember what compelled me to write to jim many years ago.  perhaps it was at the beckon of alex?  perhaps it was some poems that i read either in a journal or online by jim?  but i did reach out to jim cory & for well over a decade plus years he was generous with sending me his books, including the manuscript of the selected poems by karl tierney he was editing & later published, & his thoughts.  jim was kind in our correspondence.  he was an exciting poet who thrilled me.  he still does.  jim & i fell out of touch these last few years, but something compelled me to reread his poetry this weekend, as well as look him up online.  i am shocked by jim's passing.  

below is jim cory interviewed about his friendship with the poet james broughton.  both jim & alex are featured in the broughton documentary Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton, which you can watch in its entirety here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lazAYHrKxw0.  

godspeed, poeta

everyday is halloween!

it came from the trailer park!

here is the classic trailer to one of my all-time favorites scare flicks, Creepshow [1982].  i've seen this flick a thousand plus times in the 42 years of its primary release.  i remember the first time i saw this movie, in what theater, & who i was with.  i was 15 years old who grew up on the weekly TV horror host bob wilkins' Creature Features.  when this flick, written by stephen king & directed by george a. romero, based on the 1950s era horror EC Comics, i was already a bonafide cheesy horror movie geek.  my companion, a girl i had a strong crush on, was kinda meh about this pic.  but me, i was in horror movie heaven!  i still am & this movie is like mom's meatloaf, or tortillas.  pure comfort food.  as it is great viewing for the Spooky Season!  but i dig this trailer with the voice-over narration.  ol' skool!  as it is said, they don't make them like they used to!

boo!

everyday is halloween!

scooby-doo on zombie island [1998]

yes, i admit it!  i confess!  i love the scooby-doo franchise whether it be in TV or movies or or or!  & this flick is one of my very favorite of my favorites direct-to-video scooby-doo films.  darker in tone, where the creatures are real supernatural beings, this flick is great viewing for the Spooky Season.  the voice actors are stellar, the writing is impeccable, the editing is killer, & the songs are memorable.  the director of this flick, jim stenstrum, was on a roll at the turn of the millennium making a few more of my favorite scooby-doo pics, like Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders [2000] & Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase [2001].  these are films to watch & savor.  i mean, they are damn good movies!

the gist goes like this: Mystery Inc. is kaput.  the gang has gone their separate ways.  velma is the proprietor of a mystery book shop.  scooby-doo & shaggy work as customs agents at the airport where scoob's sharp sense of smell finds contraband foodstuffs.  daphne is now a TV host of paranormal phenomenon & fred is her producer.  each one misses the gang & their adventures.  fred sees the wistful melancholy in daphne.  so he hatches a plan for daphne's birthday.  get Mystery Inc., along with their van, the Mystery Mobile, back to together & find real paranormal stuff for fred & daphne's TV show.  a few few calls to velma, scoob & shaggy, & bob's your uncle!

the gang lands in new orleans where a local cook/caretaker overhears their wanting for real ghosts.  she tells the gang that in the bayou is a pepper plantation where she works that is really haunted.  the gang having nothing to lose follow the cook/caretaker into the swamps in their search for ghosts & ghouls.  & they are soon not disappointed.  the owner of the plantation, ms. lenoir, voiced by sacramento's own adrienne barbeau, readily takes the gang into her confidence & her property.  soon the shit hits the fan!  as i've said, this scooby-doo adventure is darker than most of the gang's adventures.  the zombies are real.  there is a purpose in leading the gang to the pepper plantation.  which is based on a curse.  of course it is!  

nevertheless, scoob, shaggy, velma, fred & daphne break open the mystery to save themselves.  but does it save zombie island?  i won't tell!  this is a fun rollercoaster of a movie where the boogeyman is real & things do go bump in the night.  the voice actors are killer, including frank welker as fred, scott innes as scooby-doo, billy west as shaggy [i love shaggy!  that beatnik that will eat you out of house & home!], mary kay bergman as daphne, b.j. ward as velma [love her too!], & mark hamill as snakebit scruggs [a cantankerous local who only wants to catch the biggest, oldest catfish in the bayou, big mona!].  this is one helluva ride!

but i must also confess my love for this movie stems from my watching it with nick when he was a wee lad.  yes, i have loved the scooby-doo franchise since i was a wee little mutt.  but this movie, along with several other Mystery Inc. movies, holds a special place in my heart.  in the mid to later first decade of this new century nick & i would make an afternoon of going to Fry's Electronics [long shuttered] which had a vast DVD section.  nick would pick out a DVD as i would too.  often nick's selections were scooby-doo movies.  i don't know if nick's choices were influenced by me.  probably there were.  then at check-out we would get a box of Red Vine licorice to eat on the drive home.  i've seen this particular movie hundreds of times.  so that colors my love of this flick.  i am, at bottom, a dad who cherishes the memories made in sharp relief by this pic.  but don't let that stop ya!  because this is a damn good halloween movie!  go for a ride with Mystery Inc. & head into the bayou where things do go bump in the night!

boo! 

everyday is halloween!

it's friday nite & you wanna watch the original 1969 intro to Scooby-Doo!

boo!

everyday is halloween!

the pumpkin patch @ cool patch pumpkins, dixon, ca.  excellent pickings, the largest corn maze [allegedly, but i can tell ya that we've been lost in its rows for hours!], & it is said that when the sun sets you might even catch a glimpse of The Great Pumpkin rising up out of the patch!  

boo!

everyday is halloween!

 the return of the living dead [1985]

a young punk rocker gets a job in a medical supply warehouse.  his boss is having a great time showing the young man the ropes.  how to fill out the paperwork.  what kind of inventory, such as cadavers for the U.S. military & medical research, taxidermized dogs sliced in half & mounted on display stands [for, again, medical research], human skeletons, etc etc.  so far, an ordinary shift in a somewhat scuzzy warehouse.  but wait!  there's more!  the boss tells our young punk that the movie, Night of the Living Dead [1968], george a romero's groundbreaking zombie movie, is based on a true story.  the U.S. military created a way to reanimate dead human beings by a chemical gas &/or solvent.  now those 'zombies' are stored in the basement of this warehouse.  does the punk wanna see?  oh boy!  does he!

meanwhile, the pumker's friends are driving around aimlessly waiting for their pal to get off work.  they decide to spend the remainder of their waiting time in a nearby graveyard.  so punk!  back inside the basement the young punk asks his boss is it safe to store these containers with the bodies of the military experiments.  the boss reassures the young man that these canisters were manufactured by the U.S. Army.  they are safe.  BANG! goes his fist against the side of the canister storing a once reanimated human being.  & lo!  the gas leaks from the old container & the shit hits the fan!

& yet this is not your ordinary zombie movie.  written & directed by dan o'bannon, who, among many of his movies & screenplays, penned the great gothic horror movie in space where no one can hear you scream, Alien [1979], this flick is playful, goofy & satirical.  it is a punk rock movie where its tone is remarkably similar to Repo Man [1984].  no fucks are given.  authority is questioned & often mocked.  while taking in the zeitgeist of its era, i.e. nuclear war fears as well as detailing the fuck-it-all deviltry common to punk, & other kinds of, subcultures of the mid-1980s.  

this flick also boasts a killer score that has become standard on halloween mixtapes.  the songs on the soundtrack deliver the goods as well, with tracks by T.S.O.L., the cramps, 45 grave et al.  this is a funny flick & fun to watch in its nihilistic glee.  another thing is that o'bannon gave his zombies the ability to talk, use tools, & possess an appetite for BRAINS!  the zombies in this movie are no dummies.  they even organize to create more opportunities to feast on our grey matter!

this flick has become a classic of the spooky season.  many great character actors, like clu galager, james karen, & don calfa, are in on the madness.  the young punks are essayed by the likes of thom mathews, miguel a. nunez, jr. & linnea quigley et al.  pure popcorn goodness!  scary?  sure.  but even more so is this flicks raison d'etre.  be bold, be wild, be crazy, be goofy, & have a great time!  you want more than that?  i want your BRAINS!

boo!

everyday is halloween!

 i love this little guy, my vintage empire plastics blowmold, haunting the spooky season since 1969!

boo!

everyday is halloween!

 eaten alive [1976]

tobe hooper's second feature is a brutal mash of surrealistic imagery & psychotic brutality.  judd, played by neville brand, is the owner of a run-down motel in the louisiana bayou.  judd's companion is a giant crocodile living in the waters that border the motel.  brand plays judd to the uppermost limit of intelligibility.  the dude is either mumbling or shouting in a language that barely approximates sanity.  with his long hair, his broken granny glasses [like the kind john lennon wore], & his saggy khakis, along with his rifles hung on the walls of his motel, plus what looks like a swastika flag draped over a chair? it is difficult to discern what the hell is wrong with judd.  other than being a psycho who doesn't like attractive ladies.

but he doesn't feed his croc only nubile young women.  he uses his giant scythe to slash anyone who appears in his lobby or his doorstoop.  why?  cuz he's the star of a horror movie!  robert englund [who helped develop one of the icons of contemporary horror villains, freddy krueger] plays buck, the local troublemaker & ne'er-do-well who shows up at judd's starlight inn chiefly to antagonize the proprietor.  stuart whitman plays the local sheriff & mel ferrer plays the father of the daughter, clara, essayed by roberta collins, who is the first victim of judd's croc we see.  we can assume there's been many more thrown as food to a giant hungry croc living beside the starlight inn located in the deep swampy abyss of the bayou.  marilyn burns reprises her role as The Final Girl [as she was in hooper's great gritty film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre [1974], faye, captured by judd, tortured & bound to a bed, while her very young daughter hides from judd  & the croc under the motel.

& like hooper's earlier film there is no linear thought to the script.  instead, we are thrust into the bowels of chaos.  chance & bad luck determine the actions onscreen.  the editing is wonky, but the score, partly penned by hooper, is atonal electronic clanks, glitches & fuzz.  this flick is lit like a deranged christmas tree farm with saturated reds, blues & greys.  the result is not the hard-lined documentary reality like in Texas Chain Saw Massacre but rather a wonderland of dantean horrors.  the kills are gory & bloody.  the croc is enormous & so chubby no wonder he never gets full even after eating one bony human being after another!  i guess one of the reasons the croc sticks around the motel is for the easy eats.  even if human beings don't provide a great meal, we are mere sacks of bone, gristle & blood, judd supplies enough to keep ol' crocy happy.

another thing about this pic is american culture of the mid-1970s.  nearly everyone smoked, outside, inside, allover!  where even in the office of the madam of the brothel, miss hattie, played by carolyn jones, where our good sheriff takes mel ferrer & his other daughter, libby, played by crystin sinclaire, to inquire about the whereabouts of the very first victim, clara, i couldn't take my eyes off the billows of hovering cigarette & cigar smoke!  yes, we once lived with all that smoke that was everywhere!  & i had forgotten how popular wigs were with many women.  clara, miss hattie & faye all wore wigs!  well, then, that was the '70s for ya!  

if there was one winner-take-all in this flick it is the croc.  for him it was always dinnertime!  what happened to the croc after the last frame?  more easy eats?  who knows!  but like real life chance is what rules the world.  the only thing certain in this world created by hooper & co. is that a giant hungry croc is always nearby ready to take a chomp out of your life!

boo! 

everyday is halloween!

 the high holiday is defined by the jack o'lantern.  once upon a time, in celtic culture, it was a turnip carved into the halloween tradition.  now, because of the 'new world' we carve into pumpkins for halloween.  & lo!  here is beat writer extraordinaire william s. burroughs posing with a jack o'lantern made from the hacks of the writer's hatchet!  i've posted this pic before.  because it is a killer image.  burroughs' was a visual artist as well as novelist & he would make his art often by the random sprays of gun shots.  here we have the writer/artist making the traditional halloween thing with an ax!  burroughs was sui generis.  & this pic of burroughs on the porch of his lawrence, ks, [my brother & teacher in the art, jim mccrary was burroughs' office manager for several years] house with his own kind of jack o'lantern!  i take a look at this pic i know it is SPOOKY SEASON!

boo!

everyday is halloween!

a brand-new tune by the horror rock band zombina & the skeletones!  i've written about this band, & posted some of their videos on this my humble blog before.  i've been a fan of the band for at least 10 years or so.  it seemed that ZATS [as they are often called] went on a hiatus for a few years.  formed in liverpool in 1998 & led by vocalist zombina venus hatchet & guitarist/songwriter doc horror [they are pretty coy about hiding their identities.  i had run across, some years ago, someone addressed zombina by her real name in a comment either in a blog post or a video.  but i can't remember her real name & it really doesn't matter!].  ZATS are a fun band that mixes garage, punk, surf & pop elements in their tunes.  it is so obvious too that they are also guided by their own love of horror in all its glorious cheese!  & zombina sports a killer jack o'lantern belt buckle in this video!  so dig them!  their sound makes the high holiday rock&roll!

boo!

everyday is halloween!

October-November

by hart crane

Indian-summer-sun

With crimson feathers whips away the mists,—

Dives through the filter of trellises

And gilds the silver on the blotched arbor-seats.

 

Now gold and purple scintillate

On trees that seem dancing

In delirium;

Then the moon

In a mad orange flare 

Floods the grape-hung night.

boo!

everyday is halloween!

 house of 1000 corpses [2003] 

i have a soft spot for this movie.  i used to play it when Nick was a brand-new baby at 3:00 AM feedings & cuddles.  we used to have a surround sound entertainment system so when i'd put in this disc the opening scene was killer with the sounds of fired bullets pinging off the walls of the house.  i didn't play the film loud enough to disturb Anna's sleep nor Nick's feeding/cuddle time.  & it may seem a bit kooky to watch a violent horror pic while caring for a newborn but Nick didn't know what the hell i was watching!  besides, i am unapologetic in my love of my beloved genre!  

at any rate, i can't believe this flick is 21 going on 22 years old!  i just watched the original trailer & it feels like only two years ago that i waited over an hour to download the trailer on my old AOL dial-up account!  this is rob zombie's first feature film as a writer/director & it sure looks like he threw every horror & haunted house trope he could at this production.  this movie is a gaudy mess.  i love it for that!

the macguffin goes like this: four young people are driving cross-country to research a book they are writing about roadside attractions.  the date is 10/30/1977.  halloween eve eve.  our teens find a roadside attraction in the form of a gas station/restaurant/horror thrill ride in the middle of nowhere.  soon they are on the search for a local crazy called, dr. satan.  instead, they find a special circle of hell.  zombie has an especial affinity for 1970s horror/exploitation fare, like tobe hooper's texas chain saw massacre [1974] & john carpenter's halloween [1978].  throw in 1980s & 1990s aesthetic too & you got zombie's vibe.  it is clear that rob zombie loves the horror genre & he loves the high holiday of halloween.

which then this movie is a homage to all zombie's sources.  this movie makes no lick of sense!  but who cares!  the demented firefly family led by otis [bill moseley] & the clown captain spaulding [the late sid haig], who are the chief antagonists for our four teens, are a pleasure to watch.  particularly haig who spent a lifetime playing wild & weird psychos in low-budget films.   is this film surrealism?  sure, but it is also an homage to a kind of exploitation filmmaking that was prevalent during the 1970s & direct-to-video era 1980s.  

this is a movie to experience rather than explained.  check your head at the door & by the last frame you might've lost some valuable brain cells but what you'd gain is an experience of pure halloween horror cinema.  if it's not obvious that i love this film here it is i love this movie!  it's silly fun & bonkers to the nth degree.  & i've become a rob zombie as a filmmaker fan.  the opening scene & the opening credits are worth the price of admission alone.    

boo! 

everyday is halloween!

october 1st.  it is now spooky season!  my favorite time of the year.  tho it is still quite hot at daytime [will summer ever end!] the evenings turn temperate & the light of the october sun is warm, hazy, golden & chill.  & even tho my halloween activities have tapered a bit, like visiting the pumpkin patch & getting lost in the corn maze, i'll be posting pics of previous outings, luckily pumpkin patches & corn mazes rarely change over the years, they look & feel the same as they always have, i'll be doing the usual horror movie reviews & writing about the halloween vibes.  i'll be revisiting favorites.  i might not post something every day of this glorious month but i'll try to keep up because it is HALLOWEEN TIME & it only comes once a year!  come along with me for it is the most wonderful time of the year! 

boo!