Young Monsters in Love - A Thanksgiving-ey Manchester Morgue Compilation

Okay, so there's actually nothing "Thanksgiving-ey" about this compilation at all because, well, nobody has ever written a song about Thanksgiving. Look it up, nobody. Unless you count Pugsley's Eat Us, or Happy Turkey Day from Addams Family Values (music and lyrics by Gary Granger) there aren't really any songs about Thanksgiving. In fact, I think Labor Day has more songs, and that's not even a real day.

Since my I Got Erection and Creatures of the Night cover compilations were fairly well received, here's another collection of cover songs. Some covers you'll love, some you'll hate, but that's part of the fun of listening to bands do cover songs, isn't it?

I've found some pretty standard covers for this collection - like Laos' More Than a Feeling - but I've also uncovered a few very bizarre choices. Veruca Salt taking on a Sex Pistols track? Paradise Lost doing Small Town Boy? And, the most bizarre part on that one, it actually works quite well (up until the "cry boy, cry" part, that bit sounds awkward).

Given the art I've used, this would've been more ideal artwork for a Valentine's Day compilation, but I'll just have to come up with something else when the time comes. This cover does have me wondering one thing - is it still necrophilia if both parties are technically dead?

Between the Buried and Me - Kickstart My Heart (Motley Crue)

Hellsongs - Seasons in the Abyss (Slayer)

Blutengel - Stay (Shakespeare's Sister)

Bat For Lashes - A Forest (The Cure)

Chromatics - Running Up That Hill (Kate Bush)

Ether Aura - Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me (The Smiths)

Paradise Lost - Small Town Boy (Bronski Beat)

Even Vast - Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division)

Laos - More Than A Feeling (Boston)

Ghostlines - Brave New World (Iron Maiden)

Epica - Replica (Fear Factory)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Sheena is a Punk Rocker (Ramones)

Nightwish - Where Were You Last Night (Ankie Bagger)

Tapping The Vein - Cornflake Girl (Tori Amos)

Iced Earth - Transylvania (Iron Maiden)

The Birthday Massacre - I Think We're Alone Now (Tiffany)

Theatre of Tragedy - You Keep Me Hanging On (The Supremes/Kim Wilde)

Angelzoom - Crawling (Linkin Park)

Veruca Salt - Bodies (Sex Pistols)

45 Grave - Riboflavin Flavored, Non-Carbonated, Poly-Unsaturated Blood (Don Hinson And The Rigamorticians)

The Jet Black Berries Strike Back

About 2 months ago I finally set up an actual Manchester Morgue email account (to be found in my profile on the right, tell your friends) and 2 months ago, I promptly forgot all about it. So, very sorry to the people who sent me emails and didn't get replies. I'm not a dick, I'm just an idiot. I'll be getting back to everyone (there were dozens of you, dozens!) shortly.

Anyway, one of the emails I got was from the band Jet Black Berries. What I gathered from the email "Holy fucking shit, The Jet Black Berries are back!". They're scheduled to have an EP released this month and a brand new album sometime in 2010. This is tremendous news and I for one cannot wait to hear their new album.

You can check them out, and a new song or two at their Myspace page.

Evil Dead: The Musical

Do you like The Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 and select lines of dialog from Army of Darkness? Do you like low-budget gore-comedy musicals? If you answered yes to both of those questions, you just might enjoy Evil Dead: The Musical. This is a recording of the show from way back in 2003. I downloaded this about a year ago and forgot I had it. I was reminded of it yesterday, finally gave it a watch, enjoyed the hell out of it and thought a few of you out there might like to check this out.

From what I understand this is a VHS rip of a performance of the show, and it is certainly not high on audio or video quality. However, I sat down to do a quick quality test of the file on a 42" TV and ended up planted there for the entire duration of the show, so if I could tolerate it at that size, for that long, I'd say it's watchable quality.

There is a lot of funny in the 90 minute runtime, and plenty of blood and entrails as well. If you watch one gory slapstick musical featuring a headless candarian demon attacking a man with a chainsaw, make sure it's this one.

The show is still running today, so be sure to check out a live show if they visit your town. Looks like Council Bluffs, Iowa is the next stop. So any Iowians (Iowans? Iowanese? Whatever you guys want to be called...) reading this make sure to get out there and check it out.

WARNING: This production contains fountains of spraying blood! Front row "SPLATTER ZONE" seats are First-Come-First-Serve. Ponchos will be available for purchase at the box office for anyone wanting to protect their fabulous clothing!

Split over 5 parts, you'll need all 5 to extract the file:

What the fuck was that?!

Remake of the Demons

I love Night of the Demons, Night of the Demons 2 and Monica Keena, so Monica Keena in a Night of the Demons should be okay, right?

Hey, at least it can't be any worse than Night of the Demons 3.

Mary Shelley Overdrive - Learn Karate

I just received a very exciting email from The Manchester Morgue's favorite band Mary Shelley Overdrive. I'll let the email do the talking:

"Here it is ... Learn Karate, a new full-length LP from Mary Shelley Overdrive. This is a FREE compilation of outtakes, demos, interviews and bootleg-quality live recordings. As with our other freebies, you share this music however you want. Post it, e-mail it, stream it, etc.

Learn Karate runs 59 minutes and has 21 tracks. Inside the ZIP bundle is a TXT file with notes on each song, an MP3-file sized cover, a printable cover and a PDF scrapbook of band photos.

This is a grab-bag collection of random songs recorded over the last two years, so expect a disjointed feel. Some of the tracks have less-than-perfect sound quality."

Phelpster says check it out (especially The God In The Bowl, my personal favorite of the bunch), and be sure to share it wherever you see fit:

Now...The World's Deadliest Fighting Secrets Can Be Yours!

1. I Heart Cthulu
2. Spider On The Ceiling
3. Dread Media Interview
4. The Siege and Investiture of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle at Weisseria
5. Birmingham Jail
6. Dinner With Drac
7. A Word From Our Sponsor
8. Dread Media Interview #2
9. The God In The Bowl
10. We Heart Music Interview #1
11. Pornstar 80 (Stardust Demo)
12. One Quarter, One Play (8-Bit Kill Screen Version)
13. The Tomb of Dracula
14. We Heart Music Interview #2
15. Zombie Apocalypse Blues
16. Murderworld USA
17. Charlie's Angels (Live)
18. Jack The Ripper (Live)
19. Pornstar 80 (Live)
20. The Devil You Know (Live)
21. Science Fiction Double Feature

Three Dimensions of Pete Walker

I haven't made a poster post in a while, so here are a couple Pete Walker one-sheets, and a couple of Pete Walker ads from some old issues of Fangoria.

The Flesh and Blood Show - With Free Blood-Proof Smock!

Three Dimensions of Greta

House of Whipcord

Schizo

Note the tagline from Schizo; "When the left hand doesn't know who the right hand is killing!". Now that is a tagline. Hilarious.

Adam Gorgoni - Candyman 3: Day Of The Dead

Adam Gorgoni's score from Candyman 3: Day of the Dead. Directed by Turi Meyer who wrote such gems as Chairman of the Board and Leprechaun 2 (which was apparently called One Wedding and Lots of Funerals on the UK video release - can any Britlanders out there confirm this?)

Bonus points to the composer for having the word "Gorgon" in his name.

01. Main Title (03:19)

02. Flashback/Love Theme (02:09)

03. First Death/Aftermath (03:12)

04. The Hallway (01:46)

05. It Was Him (02:04)

06. Are You OK (00:56)

07. Abuela (02:31)

08. A Brief Romance (02:56)

09. Tamara Dies (01:57)

10. The Warehouse (01:50)

11. The Goths Die (03:09)

12. Finale (05:30)

13. Epilogue (02:13)

Is it just me or is "Blood is sharper than the blade" the worst tagline ever? I've seen thousands of silly or corny taglines, but this one doesn't even make sense.

Introducing The Manchester Morgue's Completely Optional Donate Button

I'm seeing more and more bloggers putting up their little Paypal Donate buttons, so I thought I might as well give it a shot. This is, of course, entirely optional for anyone. If you're making more money than you need, you like my site and want to throw a couple of dollars towards it, that's great. If not, that's great too.

I'd considered this before, but I felt it seems a bit like begging. Not outright "hey man, do you have any change so I can buy a sandwich" begging, more like "guy playing a saxaphone while collecting donations in his upturned hat" kind of begging. Begging, but with a service attached. But now, with my current job/car situation I have to try and pull in a bit of extra income however I can.

I know, it seems weird to add the donate button now that I haven't had an actual post in about 2 weeks, but rest assured I am ready to get back into action and start posting regularly again, probably starting today.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Episode 508 Operation Double 007

This is Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode 508, featuring the Lip-Reading/Hypnotist/Doctor/Spy film Operation Double 007. This "not at all a James Bond ripoff" film stars Sean Connery's brother Neil Connery as...wait for it... Dr. Neil Connery. I didn't think it was legal to play a character named after yourself if you're not playing the character as yourself. Well, outside of a TV show, at least. For example, Drew Carey was called Drew Carey on his show even though the character was not the Drew Carey. But I don't think I've seen this in a movie before.

Still with me? Not only did they get Bond's brother, they even managed to get Miss Moneypenny herself Lois Maxwell on board - as Ms. Maxwell. What the hell? Twice? Really?

The bad news, the movie is, as you'd imagine, pretty awful. The good news, more hot broads than you can count. Sometimes dressed as cats, even, if that does something for you. The producers (and four writers) knew this film was a turd and filled the screen with as many attractive women as they could.

I've made it clear many times that I'm a Mike preferer, but I laughed my ass off at this Joel episode. A lot. This movie, while being a turd, is rather entertaining, and the MST guys seem to have really had a lot of fun with this one. I highly recommend any fan of the show grab this at once.

As an added bonus for this episode, regular visitors of the site will be excited to see both Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai's names in the opening credits of the film.

Sorry guys, Shout! Factory put this one out, links removed.

Remake Crazies

And now, The Crazies has a remake trailer. What is this, the 4th remake of a George Romero film? What's next, Knightriders?

The trailer kinda starts off looking like "Stroke Victims: The Movie" in a couple of scenes but it does end with some decent looking zombie onslaught action, so at least there's that. I'm taking a point off for the completely awkward use of Gary Jules cover of Mad World towards the end. A fine cover, but it does not work at all with the images onscreen. In fact, it works so little with the images onscreen that it kind of makes everyone involved look like a bunch of assholes.

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.

Jason vs. Leatherface Comic Book Mini Review

This is Topps Comics' (you know, the baseball card/stale chewing gum people) 3-issue miniseries Jason vs. Leatherface. In one corner the Chainsawing Cannibal Bubba Sawyer. In the other corner, the Mongloid Marauder Jason Vorhees. Who will survive and what will be left of him? You'll have to read and find out.

Each of the 3 issues features an incredible cover by Simon Bisley with interior art by Jeff Butler. Nancy Collins is credited as the writer

For even more Jason and Leatherface fun, be sure to check out some of the fan made stuff on YouTube. Apparently, if you know two tall fat guys, live near the woods and own a hockey mask from the 70s and a chainsaw you can make your very own Jason vs. Leatherface movie. Sumbitch

Zombieland Red Band Trailer (HQ)

New Red Band trailer for Zombieland. Stick it out to the end to witness the death of Ned Schneebly, on the crapper.

John Hughes - February 18, 1950 - August 6, 2009

A couple of days late with this post, but seeing how the man was responsible for making me laugh approximately 872 times over the past 20 years, I felt I still needed to remember him here, late or not.