House of Hammer/Halls of Horror 21-30

Here is the last of the House of Hammer issues. They eventually changed the title to Halls of Horror, but it's still the same magazine. I realize the covers aren't in order, Blogger uploads pictures so that the first picture in the list is the first to appear on the post. Meaning that it will be at the bottom. I'm too lazy to fix it right, but I doubt anyone will really care much.

A Remake On Elm Street

We have a trailer. Looks pretty decent, some of the shots of Freddy in the shadows are very striking, but I'm not too sure about the one actual face shot we get at the end. He looks almost...cute? Like a burnt muppet or something. I can't quite put my finger on it, but he looks like a cute loveable character I've seen before.

MST3K Squirm Review

I haven't put any Mystery Science Theater up in quite some time, so here is the 12th episode of the final season. This is their take on Jeff Lieberman's Squirm. A tale of a dorky scrawny city boy and his daft scrawny bumpkin girlfriend in a fight against mutant earthworms - occasionally portrayed by spaghetti noodles. There's also a burly mildly retarded Steve Young/Alvin The Chipmunk looking man, who may or may not be a rapist, depending on what part of the movie you're at. Is he dumb and socially awkward, or is he a sex offender with a record? The movie didn't seem to know, why should we?

In addition, we also get a hilarious short called A Case of Spring Fever in which an obnoxious demonic sprite named Coily shows an obnoxious old moron I think was named Joe - because in the 50's everyone was named Joe - just how important springs are to the world. Turns out, without them the world would cease to function.

This was the second to last episode of the show and the riffing is as strong as ever. I could be biased, Mike episodes with crappy 70's-80's horror/monster movies were always my favorite. I think if you liked Boggy Creek II, or A Touch of Satan you should certainly get a kick out of this one. Come for the over the top southern accents, stay for the legendary "worm in my egg cream" scene.

Interesting thing about this movie, it being shown on MST really pissed off director Jeff Lieberman. Jeff was apparently displeased with his film being shown on MST because "you can't goof on what's already a goof". I've seen Squirm, and if it was supposed to be intentionally comical - a "goof" if you will - some wires must've gotten crossed somewhere because it's not. Maybe in theory it's funny. Take the "creatures run amok" formula, except instead of a killer shark or a big ass grizzly, what if it were something harmless, like regular sized worms. That can roar for some reason. However the actual movie just seems like a regular fairly dull creature picture that just happens to be funny because it's kinda stupid.

I'm not trying to sound like a dick or anything here. I respect him as a filmmaker - Blue Sunshine, Just Before Dawn and Remote Control are all very entertaining - I'm just saying I didn't think Squirm was a goof. Either way, the movie does have a pretty metal poster.

Henry Gibson - September 21, 1935 - September 17, 2009

Henry Gibson September 21, 1935 - September 17, 2009

There have been a lot of celebrity deaths lately, but this one really got to me. Maybe because I used to watch Henry on Laugh-In with my Grandfather when I was a kid and it's reminding me of him. Or maybe because The 'Burbs was my favorite movie until I was about 11. Probably a combination of the two.

He's one of the few guys who I feel the need to yell out the name of when I see them in a movie. I'm pretty sure I did this in the theater during Wedding Crashers. Him and Udo Kier. Udo wasn't in Wedding Crashers, I mean I yell out his name during movies also.

I think a week-long movie watching marathon tribute dedicated to Henry is in order for us all. Some possible choices:

Blues Brothers
The Halloween That Almost Wasn't
Innerspace
The Long Goodbye
Monster in the Closet
The 'burbs
Wedding Crashers

Mummies, Humanimals and Frankenstein are all inside of the House of Hammer

Okay, another huge break from posting. This one wasn't my fault (entirely). Let me explain.

I've never really been a fan of Megadeth. Dave Mustaine's usually ridiculous vocals always kill the music for me. But their early albums are always on "best thrash album" lists, and I'm a laid back dude, I'm willing to give a band I don't like a second chance. But since I'm not a fan, I thought I'd just download an album or two to see if my opinion had changed. I know, I know, downloading readily available music is bad, but spending money on music you might hate is worse. So I clicked on the first Blogger site I saw, found a couple albums to check out and clicked the link. The site I found it on didn't use one of the major downloading services, but I've always had good luck with not having anything really bad happening to me when downloading. The next thing I know, Bam!

Trojan.

Computer turns itself off. I get the computer back up, run like 4 different anti-virus/anti-malware/etc. programs. I am able to kill most of the problems but this one son of a bitch will. Not. Die. Somehow killing the others off just makes this one stronger. Now I can't get Firefox to open. I can't get Opera to open. I'm stuck using IE, for god's sake. Now none of the anti-virus programs will stay open for more than 5 seconds. Whoever developed this trojan (Dave Mustaine, I'm looking in your direction), good job, you win. You murdered my computer.

The moral of the story, I guess, would be "Don't illegally download music". However, we all know we're going to end up doing it at some time for some reason, so when you must download music steer clear of non-Rapid, Mega, Mediafire, and maybe 4shared links for downloading.

Luckily Nero is somehow unaffected by this, so at least I don't lose all of my files. So, I had to go in, back up a shit-ton of files (I had almost 8GB of Photoshop DVD cover related files alone) and eventually go in there and completely format the hard drive. Damn you Dave Mustaine.

Anyway, I'm back up and running, so here are issues 14-20 of House of Hammer. I believe the cover for issue 14 has the only known painting of a caveman getting hit in the crotch by a dancing tyrannosaurus. So it's got that going for it. Also, issue 18 wins the award for "Worst Werewolf". Drunken Security Guard Werewolf from the 1996 movie Werewolf step aside.

People have been clamoring for more Mystery Science Theater, so stayed tuned for that. And by the way, the feds have put the kibosh on my Tokyo Gore Police OST post, so sorry to anyone who missed it, but I'm not going to try and post it again.

House of Hammer Magazine 8-13

Here are 6 more issues of House of Hammer Magazine. Featuring comic adaptations of several classics like Plague of the Zombies, Curse of the Werewolf and The Gorgon, among others. I've gotta say I love the many Frankensteins, young and old, featured on the cover of issue 12. That would make for a cool shirt. See:

I'd also love to see an updated painting, featuring everyone to ever play a Frankenstein monster. Blackenstein, Herman Munster, Frank N. Stein from the old Monster Squad show, the Little Person Frankenstein from Full Moon's The Creeps, the Frankenstein that versed Dracula in Dracula vs. Frankenstein... I mean everybody. It would be a pretty huge painting, I think about 600 different guys have portrayed some kind of variation of Frankenstein's monster over the years. If only I could paint....

Spring Break - Bootleg Commentary Track

A couple weeks ago Anchor Bay released the classic 1982 Sean S. Cunningham comedy Spring Break starring David Knell, Jayne Modean and a dude who looks a lot like Ray Liotta with feathered hair. While AB did a great job on the transfer and everything, they failed to check and see if the cast of Spring Break might be interested in doing a commentary track.

Turns out, yes. Yes they would.

But since nobody from AB bothered to ask them, they've went out and recorded one themselves, guerrilla. "They" being David Knell, Jayne Modean, Perry Lang, Steve Bassett and Jeff Garlin. Yes, Jeff Garlin. He was only in the movie for a minute, (as a guy called Gut Gut) so I think it's pretty awesome that he'd be willing to join in on the commentary.



The asking price is $3.99, and I'll let David Knell explain why you should buy this commentary:


Those interested should click here to check it out. And, don't forget, I do have the soundtrack available to download, if you haven't already.