The Second Annual International Curtis Armstrong Day

It's November 27th, that means it's once again International Curtis Armstrong Day. Okay, so ICAD is just some stupid thing I made up but it is Curtis "Dudley Dawson" Armstrong's birthday, so if by chance he sees this, Happy Birthday, you hilarious bastard!

To celebrate this made-up holiday, I thought it'd be fun to make a shirt in Curtis' honor. Sadly, CafePress did not feel the same way and informed me that my design was a copyright violation, so it just didn't pan out. But, since the shirt can't be, here's a little look at what I was working on. It's very basic, and the line is way too obvious, but I just wanted to get an idea of what it would've looked like. I intended to think of something more clever later on but I gave up on doing any further work on the design once they killed it.

Happy Thanksgiving From My Family To Yours...

Just stopping by to wish all my regulars and any newcomers a Happy Thanksgiving, and wish any of you with cahones enough to venture out to go shopping on Black Friday the best of luck. Try not to be trampled, or arrested after pummeling someone with a lamp in order to get the last $3 DVD of Airheads (soundtrack to be featured here soon, by the way). I personally will be spending the first half of today enjoying the gluttonous festivities (I have 4 potential dinners to partake in, yikes) then I'll wind down with a double feature of Addams Family Values, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, the two greatest Thanksgiving-ey movies of all time. Granted there are only like 10 movies that even have anything to do with Thanksgiving, and one of them is the atrocious Home Sweet Home, but still.

If you find yourself with some free time between eating yourself stupid and passing out on the couch afterwards I highly recommend heading over to The Insomnia Video Stash. Fellow blogger Krug+Company (real name Michael Krug), who also runs The Inferno Music Crypt just started the site up and it's loaded with great music videos and movie trailers for you to check out. Be sure to watch the new Rambo promo reel, looks pretty decent and plenty violent, it even includes a Road House style throat rip. High five?

And if you're still looking for something to do I've just gotten a couple of soundtracks re-upped. First, Howard Shore's score from the mind-blowing (zing!) film Scanners, followed by the double whammy Friday the 13th Part 7 and Part 8 soundtrack. The House By the Cemetery/Manhattan Baby score is also back up. And while I'm here, this was a rejected banner I came up with last Thanksgiving. I kinda like it despite not putting it up on the site so I felt it should at least make an appearance here.

Disclaimer: No one in the first photo above is an any way actually related to me or anyone I am affiliated with. Nor do I know who any of the people are or who was responsible for the hilarious (and actually kinda frightening) zombification of said people.

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers and other film scores by Michael Perilstein

I just got this one in the mail from the fine folks at Atomic Records in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (buy a shirt!). This is a compilation of Michael Perilstein's work from Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Deadly Spawn, Muhammad Ali: A Twilight Portrait, Vent Man and The Willies.

For those of you not familiar with Fred Olen Ray's Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, HCH is, what many consider, to be the second best hooker movie of all time (2nd behind Frankenhooker of course). It features Gunnar Hansen as the leader/pimp(?) of a chainsaw worshipping hooker cult and has Jay Richardson (who has been in a whole shit-ton of low rent movies) giving a hilarious performance as wiseass detective Jack Chandler. The film is full of naked women, chainsaw dismemberments and buckets of Ocean Spray blood. And it's pretty damn funny, too. What more could you ask for?

There are ony two tracks from the The Willies but I wanted to talk a bit about it since it's actually a pretty interesting little movie. It was directed by Brian Peck, probably most famous for his portrayal of Scuz in Return of the Living Dead. In his sole directorial effort Peck brought along a few friends from the various ROTLD films. We get James Karen and Clu Gulagher from the first film (and part II for Karen) and Dana Ashbrook from Part II. In addition to those fine individuals, a young Sean Astin is here, on the receiving end of a hilarious Goonies reference early in the movie. And if that wasn't enough, you even get an appearance from Micheal Bower, the legendary Donkeylips from Salute Your Shorts. Granted, in the end The Willies is a pretty mediocre kid's horror film, but it does have a pretty good little cast.

Somehow I have never seen The Deadly Spawn, so I've got nothing to really say about that one. Probably a good thing, I've rambled on for quite a while now anyway. Here's the tracklist. Be sure to read the titles, some of them are quite funny.

I'd stumbled into the middle of an evil, insidious cult of chainsaw worshipping maniacs.

Speaking of funny, here's a little description of the films that was included in the booklet.

Vampirella - Illustrated Tales to Bewitch & Bedevil You

And we'll finish up with three more issues of the comic starring everyone's favorite scantily clad vampiric alien, Vampirella. Like I've mentioned before I really don't have many issues of Vampirella, so I'll just be posting random issues unless I find a more thorough collection somewhere else. This set includes issue #3, #8 and the commemorative edition of issue #1. I have a scan of the actual first issue, but it has a weird purple hue on all of the pages, so I put the commemorative one up instead. It's the same thing, just felt I should explain that while I'm here.

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CREEPY – This is the World of the Creepy!

Continuing on with 3 more issues of Creepy. This set includes Issue #19 (Mar. 1968), #20 (May 1968) and #21 (July 1968). While I love the idea of a giant Cyclops frog, my favorite cover here is for issue #19, Mark Twain – Zombie Asskicker. At least, that’s what I’ve been calling it. Enjoy...if you dare! (It's been a while since I've used an 'If you dare!' joke, hasn't it?)

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EERIE - More Mind Shattering Illustrated Terror Tales of Creeping Fear and Raging Monsters (you get all that?)

It’s Warren Wednesday here at The Morgue. Today, and any following Wednesdays that I actually remember I will try and post the latest sets of the Warren comics that I regularly post. Of course, the Vampirellas won’t last very long as I only have about 20 issues, but I have enough Creepy and Eerie to last for a while. I’ve been posting these for a while, but I thought it’d be nice to try and be more consistent with posting them and try to have an actual set day each week when I post them. So we’ll start with the next few Eerie issues, this set includes Issue #14 (Apr. 1968), #15 (June 1968), #16 (July 1968) and #18 (Nov. 1968). Sorry, but I don’t currently have issue #17. I will post it if I happen to find it though. My personal favorite cover of this set is issue #14, which I like to call “Revenge of the Skinless Mohawked Coneheads”.

Use CDisplay to view the issues, and thanks to the original scanner(s) and uploader for making it possible for us to read these issues.

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Look for the Creepy set in about 5-10 minutes here.

Mystery Science Theater Lives On Even More

Mike Nelson has been keeping busy with his good friends Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett doing his Rifftrax thing, and putting out the series of Film Crew DVDs. Now, luckily for us it looks like Joel Hodgson is officially coming out of movie riffing retirement/hiding. Joel, along with non-Mike former MST3K members Trace Beaulieu, J. Elvis Weinstein, Mary Jo Pehl and Frank Conniff have joined forces to create Cinematic Titanic. The page only has the option to sign up for a newsletter at the moment, so I'm not quite sure what Cinematic Titanic is all about just yet. But we won't have to wait long to find out, according to CHUD their first film should be out in time for Christmas.

As I've stated numerous times before, I've always been a bigger Mike guy, but I'm very excited to see that Joel has finally resurfaced and he's bringing Clayton and TV's Frank along with him to make things even better. It's a good time to be a fan of professional movie heckling.

Roy Budd - Mama Dracula

Okay, I guess I'll actually post something more Halloweeney today, this is Roy Budd's music from Mama Dracula. For those of you not familiar with Mama Dracula (or Mamma Dracula as it's also spelled some places), it's an alleged horror comedy from 1980, starring Oscar® winner Louise Fletcher. It was brought to us by director Boris Szulzinger, who only directed a couple of other films prior (none after), films even more obscure than Mama Dracula. I say "alleged horror comedy" because the film is neither scary nor funny. I actually usually really enjoy movies that fall under the horror comedy, or horromedy subgenre, even the bad ones, but, as my friend Taliesin can attest, this one is pretty godawful. Although, it is notable for having the ugliest vampires in all of cinematic vampiredom. I'm of course speaking of these two chaps.

Bad movie, but Roy Budd did his usual respectable job scoring it, being the admirable filmscorer that he is (I've gotta stop making up words, my Blogger spell check must hate me). I'd been looking for this one for a while and I finally stumbled upon it the other day. The track listing goes from 15-30, which usually means the music is from a compilation type album, but I can't find any listing for a Mama Dracula soundtrack apart from the French LP released back in 1980, so I'm not sure what the odd numbering is about. Anyone know?

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Album Cover of the Year

Here it is, my vote for Album Cover of the Year, 3 Headed Monster's self-titled debut. In my opinion this cover is more badass than anything that badassed before it. Okay, that's overdoing it a bit, but it is my favorite cover this year. Anyone have a cover they think tops it?

In addition to having a great cover the band is actually quite good. Not a case of a shitty band hiding behind great artwork here. I recommend checking the album out, one of the few completely instrumental metal bands out there, at least that I know about. You can hear a few of their metalriffic songs right here.

Vampirella - Chillingly Illustrated Horror Classics!

I had a request in one of the Eerie posts and I've finally managed to wrangle up some issues of Warren era Vampirella. Beloved among young boys in the 1970s whose parents didn't keep any kind of porn in the house. Kidding. Or, I don't know, maybe not, some of the stories do get kinda racy I suppose. Anyway, I don't have anywhere near as many Vampis (Vampi's?) as I do Creepy or Eerie, but I've got enough for a few posts at least. Given the limited number of these I have, I'll just post random issues since I don't have more than 2 consecutive issues in my collection. It skips around, 1, 25, 34... I am on the lookout for a more complete set though. With that said this set includes issue #34 (June 1974), #38 (Nov. 1974) and #40 (Mar. 1975).

Credit to the original scanners. Use CDisplay to view the files. Godspeed.

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CREEPY - Haunted Fear and Sheer Terror Illustrated!

And here's the Creepy set I mentioned earlier. This set contains issue #16 (Aug. 1967), Creepy #17 (Oct. 1967), and #18 (Jan. 1968). To make the reading of these issues as easy as possible head on over and download CBR reader CDisplay. I know you're all probably sick of me posting the link to CDisplay, but I know if I don't someone who didn't download any of the other comics will want to know how to read them. As always, credit goes out to the original scanner or scanners.

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EERIE - Illustrated Tales of Creeping Fear and Raging Monsters!

It's been a while since I posted any Creepy comics, and even longer since any issues of Eerie have reared their ugly heads on the site, so let's change that. Here are four, (count 'em, four) issues of Eerie for your enter'slay'ment! Sorry, Tales From The Crypt is on in the background, those terrible puns are infectious. We left off at issue number 7, sadly I don't have issues #8 or #9, so I'm jumping ahead a bit. Today's set includes #10 (July 1967), #11 (Sept. 1967), #12 (Nov. 1967), and #13(Feb. 1968). I particularly enjoy the cover for issue #13. We've got a skeleton strangling J. Peterman in a graveyard with an extension cord. I really like how the skeleton seems to be so ashamed of being bald that he's still managing to pull off a combover, despite the fact that he has no skin and therefore wouldn't be able to have hair. A combover from beyond the grave, that is dedication.

To make the reading of these issues as easy as possible head on over and download CBR reader CDisplay. As always, credit goes out to the original scanner or scanners. I mentioned Creepy a moment ago, I've got a new set of those to put up as well, so check back a little later. I don't have time to post them right now, I've gotta go help someone powerwash something. No idea what I'll be powerwashing just yet, but I know I'll be powerwashing something today.

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Target's Transforming Transformer

As you've probably already seen/heard/been aware of for some time, this summer's most robot-having movie has come out on DVD today. Which is kind of ridiculous because it came out less than 4 months ago and was a huge money making success. I mean, I really enjoyed the movie and am happy to have it so early without having to find "a guy" who already has it in a bootleg form, I'm just saying that it seems like one they would've released closer to Christmas. Would've been an easy "person under 20" gift for people who didn't know what else to get someone. This movie has got to have a record for most store specific DVD exclusives of all time. Everyone has some "exclusive" case or free gift that you get when you purchase it, even places like K-Mart and they never have any exclusives. As you can see I went with the most over the top and ridiculous version I know of, Target's transforming Optimus Prime case. Its cased in a pretty cool oversized (width wise, it's the same height as a regular DVD case) clear box with the title on the spine so you can still fit it on your shelf:

You take it out and in 3 simple steps you can transform it into this wonderfully tacky little number shown here (the actual case is on the back and snaps shut to keep the discs inside):

The fully transformed case is pretty large, about 15 inches high. Despite having little feet this little bastard doesn't seem to actually stand up by itself, so you'll probably have to find somewhere good to lean it up against. Because it will fall. Anyway, just wanted to show this off, if you want one I recommend getting to the store soon because they didn't have many left when I picked mine up.

That's all I've got to report on this matter. I'll see you guys soon with some new stuff put out by a company called Warren.

Allan Trautman - Professional Zombie

Here's a cool little thing I found while going through my stuff earlier today. This was sent to me a few years ago by Allan Trautman, the man underneath the Tarman costume in Return of the Living Dead. Thankfully they were able to reattach his head after it was knocked off by Clu Gulager during the movie and Allan went on to have a pretty nice little career as an actor/puppeteer in things like Greg the Bunny and Unhappily Ever After.

Apart from this, my autograph collection is pretty limited. I've never gone to a convention and even then I'm a bit cheap so if I did attend one I doubt I'd pay Ken Foree, for example, $20 for him to write his name on something, as awesome as Ken might be. That said I do have a postcard signed by Catriona MacColl, another signed by Caroline Munro, and an issue of Fangoria signed by one David DeCocteau. That's about the extent of my signed items collection. I thought this would be cool to post since any kind of behind the scenes stuff on Return of the Living Dead is sadly quite lacking. I know there's a documentary on the newly released DVD, but I haven't picked that up yet and from what I read it looks like it's just newly recorded stuff. Unless I'm mistaken, which I very well could be.

Blogspot Sites Mentioned in The Guardian

Kevin, one of my readers, was kind enough to point out that my site was listed in the British national newspaper The Guardian under a "recommended internet sites" section. He was also kind enough to scan in the article and send it to me. I was very happy and excited to see my site mentioned (obviously), made my day actually. So I thought I'd give everyone a look at the page, which also mentions several fellow blogger sites such as Xtabay's World, Mondo Morricone, You Don't Have To Visit This Blog and one that was new to me called Stigma Rest Room. I'm gonna try and use this whole thing on my resume, once I think of a fancy way of saying it. I'm open to any suggestions because I've got nothing. Here's a closer look at the actual part of the page that mentions us, in case you can't make it out on the first image:

Since I'm now a celebrity in England I'm going to try and use it to my advantage and briefly date that chick from The Bionic Woman. Or maybe I'll go for Jodi Albert. That is unless Xtabay or nomwl1 beat me to it. Wish me luck.

The Manchester Morgue's Mega Sega Rom Pack!

Here's a bunch of Sega Genesis Roms for your downloading and playing pleasure. I had posted a NES rom pack way back when I first started the site and a few people seemed interested in seeing some Sega roms posted, so I went ahead and assembled this little set here. There are about 60 Roms included in this pack, plus 3 emulators in case you don't have one already. I guess it's not that "mega" of a Rom pack really when you consider that I have like a thousand Sega and Mega Drive Roms, but it's more than a few, so we're sticking with "Mega". I went through my Roms and found some of the best games that were put out for the Genesis, I even looked up a couple "Best Of" guides to find some good lesser known games. I also went ahead and threw Shaq Fu in there because it's apparently one of the worst games ever made and I find that funny for some reason.

I think the highlight here, for me at least, is Zombies Ate My Neighbors, but I also really enjoy Comix Zone, which has you jumping into the next panel in the comic book that is being created as you play. Definitely make sure those are among the first you try out. Another that is surprisingly entertaining is Michael Jackson's Moonwalker game. Very stupid game, but also very fun. I was also very happy to see that the Julian Sands movie Warlock even had it's own video game at one point. Something surreal about seeing the Trimark logo popping up on the screen of a video game. Anyway, here's the list of what all is included in the download. The emulators are the zipped folders, I personally couldn't really get the AGES emulator to work, but I think that might be my computer's problem. If neither of them works for you, just do a quick search, tons of sites have them to download.

Addams Family
Alien 3
Alien Soldier
Atomic Runner
Bio Hazard Battle
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Castlevania: The New Generation
Columns
Comix Zone
Contra: Hard Corps
Dinosaurs for Hire
Double Dragon II Japanese
Double Dragon III
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
Duke Nukem 3D
Ghostbusters
Golden Axe Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
Gunstar Heroes
The Haunting (Starring Polterguy!)
Home Alone
James Bond - The Duel
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker
Mutant League Football
Mutant League Hockey
M.U.S.H.A.
Rambo 3
Ren and Stimpy: Stimpy's Invention
Revenge of Shinobi
Road Rash Part 1, Part 2
Robocop 3
Shaq Fu
Spiderman - Animated Series
Spiderman and X-Men
Spiderman Vs. The Kingpin
Splatterhouse Part 2, Part 3
Strider Part 1, Part 2
Superman
T2 Terminator 2 - Arcade
T2 Judgment Day
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles : Hyperstone Heist
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles : Return of the Shredder
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles : Tournament Fighters
Terminator
The Ooze
Toejam & Earl Part 1, Part 2
Toxic Crusaders (Troma!)
Twin Cobra Japanese
Undead
Vectorman Part 1, Part 2
Warlock
Wayne's World
X-Men
Zombies Ate My Neighbors

Welcome to the next level!

Quick note, for some reason the game The Haunting (Starring Polterguy!) only seems to work on the Xega emulator. If anyone actually gets it to work on one of the others let me know.

Captain Supermarket!

This is one of my all-time favorite posters, the Japanese poster for Army of Darkness, or Captain Supermarket as it's known in Japan. I love the little Bruce Campbell soup cans and the completely random dolphins (?) in the background. I also love how they put both Ash's chainsaw and boomstick in the same bag as the other groceries. How strong is this bag? Sadly I don't think there is a full size version of this poster, I've only seen 7"x10" chirashi posters which are like $20. That seems a bit steep for a sheet of paper, has anyone seen this poster in a normal 27"x41"-ish size?

April Fool's Day in October

Here's the music from one of my favorite slasher films, the 1986 Fred Walton film April Fool's Day, starring the lovely and talented Deborah Foreman and Thomas "Biff" Wilson. This soundtrack was originally posted on 7 Black Notes quite a while ago, and probably another site or two since he posted it, but I haven't seen it anywhere recently so here it is for those of you who haven't had a chance to get it yet.

1. Intro
2. Main Title
3. Choke And Dagger
4. Pier Pressure
5. All´s Well That Ends
6. Snakes Alive
7. Stab In The Dark
8. Hanging Around
9. The House
10. Trick Or Threat
11. Nan In Danger
12. Nightwatch
13. Sitting Duck
14. Night
15. Getting The Point
16. Little Miss Muffy
17. Muffy Attack
18. First Victim
19. Hack-In-The-Box
20. Too Bad You're Crazy (Bonus Track)

Please God, let it be Ding-Dongs!

Mystery Science Theater 3000 Episode 319: War of the Colossal Beast

I felt it was time to post a new episode of the best television show ever made in which a man and his robot sidekicks watch and relentlessly heckle bad old movies. This is Joel Robinson, Thomas Servo and Crow Theodore Robot and their take on the 1958 film War of the Colossal Breast. Wait, make that Colossal Beast. War of the Colossal Beast is Bert I. Gordon's follow up to Bert I. Gordon's 1957 film The Amazing Colossal Man. It's the same 60-foot tall character in both films, Lt. Col. Glenn Manning, but somewhere between the two films Glenn loses an eye and most of the right side of his face, so I guess that's enough to elevate him to "Beast" status.

This episode features what is arguably the weirdest short of the entire series. A stunningly bizarre and confusing oddity that goes by the name of Mr. B Natural. This short film tells the story of Buzz, a kid who I'd place at around 12 years old, who is kind of, well, a sad, weird loser. He wants to fit in with the cool kids in his class but his general twitchy awkwardness prevents him from doing so. One day he is visited by a musical note in human form/CONN trumpet salesperson called Mr. B Natural. Get it? What makes this short weird is that this "Mr." B Natural character is very clearly a woman. And what a spritely little dingbat of a woman she is. Prancing around in a tight little Peter Pan type getup, acting suspiciously chipper the whole time for no apparent reason. She's also very clearly completely deranged. She's one of the only people I can think of that I find both unbearably annoying and genuinely terrifying at the same time. There's actually a lengthy piece about the short on Wikipedia if you want to learn more. And I think you do.

I actually made two different covers for this one. Same exact cover apart from the front cover images. I made one with the awesome poster and one from a still. I know some people like the ones with images from the film and some people (like myself) prefer the way the ones using poster art look. If anyone needs these in higher quality let me know and I can upload them somewhere, the original JPEGs are over 3 MB so I didn't want to upload images that size on here.

Split over 2 parts (both about 350MB) and uploaded to MegaUpload. You will need both parts to watch the episode.

Part1
Part2

The Manchester Morgue: The T-Shirt

I've wanted to get a shirt made for the site for a while now, just for the hell of it really, I thought it'd be kinda fun and make for an interesting post. So after some messing around with a design I placed an order at CafePress and the shirt has arrived, so I thought what better place to show it off than on the site that inspired the shirt.

Pictured above is the shirt in non-action mode, and here's a look at the shirt in action mode. That is, if you consider sitting down on some stairs "action". I was originally going to get a picture of myself wearing the shirt while doing something really cool, like kayaking, but my photographer bailed at the last minute so I had to take the picture myself. That, and I'm not entirely sure what kayaking is or how to do it.

And here's a closer look at the actual design, it's more detailed than it came out on the shirt, but I'm still happy with it. I would like to thank my Andreas Vollenweider tape for allowing itself to be unspooled and scanned for the purpose of this t-shirt being created.