Samhain Project: Late Phases

Nick Damici is one of my favorite people involved in film. He frequently partners up with Jim Mickle to make some wonderful films including the incredible Joe Lansdale based piece, Cold in July among others. He also worked with Mickle to produce the top-flight Hap & Leonard, the series for Sundance. 

He’s fairly well known for his role as Mister in Stakeland and its follow up. But in Late Phases: Night of the Lone Wolf,  he stretches in a role that is absolutely fucking hard to believe. He plays a 70+ year old war veteran who has a strained relationship with his son played by an equally effective and heartbreaking Ethan Embry. 

Damici’s character moves into a different old folks home, one that seems to have a problem with local murders every 30 days or so. He is not stupid and decides that his final battle is going to be against the obvious; The Full Moon Killer.  Late Phases is extremely underrated and overlooked, and in a way that kind of pisses me off.

It’s that fucking good, folks.  Kudos to the Spanish director of the nightmarish Here Comes the Devil, Adrian Garcia Bogliano.  I think his film ranks up there with Joe Dante's The Howling, and An American Werewolf in London as top-tier werewolf films.  I dig my lycanthrope cinema and Late Phases is a good one, kids.

Fantastic performances, scary practical effects, and dry twisted humor make this a Halloween must. Particularly for those who dig their monster movies with a little fur and a lot of teeth. The bites aren’t just bloody, they go for the heart, as folks who have unfinished business in their relationships can really relate.

Plus you got Tom Noonan and Larry Fessenden and Dana Ashbrook, he of Return of the Living Dead Part II and Twin Peaks.  I'd like to thank Rue Morgue's John W. Bowen, penman of the It Came From Bowen's Basement segment of the George Romero issue from last year, for reminding me of the gloriousness of this film.

Samhain Project 5: Being Scared of "Eight is Enough"

Now, I'm no stranger to being frightened by what would normally be saccharine television.  Check this shit out:  A Very Brady Nightmare.  

But!  I wasn't alone!  Observe: Kindertrauma.

Always nice to have corroboration.  

Anyfrigginway, when I was a young tyke,  Eight is Enough, as cornball as it was, was adored by the female members of my family, and thusly I remember catching more than my fair share of episodes, so I got an Eight is Enough contact buzz. Thanks, Linda.

One January in 1979, ABC aired an episode of the program entitled Horror Story.  Seems all kinds of creepy shit happens to the Bradford family, just scattered about town instead of all of them being sequestered in Tom & Abby's house to face these dangers.  The crux of what spooked me was that one of the daughters, I believe Nancy, has a blind date arrive who strikingly looks like Tony Perkins. 

Now I guess I wasn't ready for horror quite yet, as my dip into Stephen King filmwork began with Salem's Lot, which was 11 months down the road.  I guess in that stretch, I somehow developed the gearwork for scary programming.  

But here there was horror imagery, meant to be an homage, I guess in a comic sense.  However, it was as George A. Romero said of Frankenstein, "bothering me a little bit, there".

Not a lot sticks out in my mind in terms of details, other than a pair of sisters walking down the stairs with a candle in the dark, as there is a storm-induced power outage.  The coup de grace, the silhouette of a massive butcher knife highlighted against kitchen curtains from outside by a flash of lightning, was the money shot that stuck with my poor little eight-year-old brain for quite some time. 

It's slightly less stupid to be frightened by an episode of Eight is Enough than The Brady Bunch, but kids are kids and their minds operate a certain way.  You can't blame them for the way their brains process things.  I just remember this particular episode of family TV scaring the shit out of me. 

They should have aired this in October. I've believed that for years.  Check out this fuckin' promo.  It's like the trailer for a Friday the 13th movie for chrissakes.  Maybe that planted the seed, so that I had no choice but to be scared once it ran. 

The episode is available on Tubi.  IF YOU DARE!!

The Samhain Project 5th Anniversary: The Monkey

In the summer of 1988, whilst living in Wausau, Wisconsin, the setting of the SYFY channel's engaging Revival, (oddly enough, also Stephen King novel title) my sister Pee-Wee and I hit a bookstore much like Kenosha's long-gone but core memory, The Paperback Exchange.  I waxed nostalgic about that joint here. 

I bought a hardcover copy of Steve's Skeleton Crew, a short story collection. I decided my beat-to-shit paperback wasn't holding its water anymore, so I bought a beat-to-shit hardcover.  

                                     

I know, it sounds stupid, but there's a logic there. A ROB logic. Anyways, when I opened it up, a leaflet fell out, which was one of the short stories from the book, The Monkey.  

It was from one of those magazines that you wouldn't want your mom to know you look at.  I didn't know what to make of it, but I held on to the leaflet for a while.  Eventually it got beat-to-shit in nature, (tired of that hackneyed terminology yet?) and had to be tossed, and I didn't really think much of it.  Now, the damned thing is selling online for an ungodly amount.  (I'm not of a mind to discuss specifics).   It draws up negative emotions not unlike the time that I gave a box of basketball cards to my adored nephew, a box that just happened to contain that legendary Fleer Michael Jordan rookie card...

I'm gonna change the fucking subject now.   Ahem.

So, Frani and I watched Osgood Perkins' recent The Monkey.  As you well know, the entertainment world is engaged in Phase Two of the Stephen King filmic explosion.  A renaissance of the highest order. for the last eight years or so, the man (and I literally mean THE MAN) has had a cinematic and small-screen renaissance.  I really hit that hard in last year's Samhain Project.  The Monkey is brilliant.  It is not a mimeograph of the short story, but contains enough of the original's creepiness to own up to its pedigree.  

Perkins is the son of legendary Anthony Perkins, and the talent for the eerie has definitely been passed down. His brief appearance here is also a chucklefest. (Way back in the Anchor Bay days, his supporting turn in the zom-com Dead & Breakfast was pretty amusing, too.) Filmography wise, he's responsible for the chilling The Blackcoat's Daughter, and the absolutely menacing Longlegs.  He tells a great story in general, but here he mixes in a generous sprinkling of jet-black humor that makes you laugh while (at least, if you're like me, feeling slightly guilty) looking around the room to see if anyone else is. 

The concept of two brothers and their connection to a wind-up stuffed monkey that bangs his cymbals together with results from hell is retained here, but given modern sentiment, and severely twisted characters, and a comic glue that holds it all together.  I loved The Monkey, while Frani was hoping for less goof, more oof, she still enjoyed it.  As it is wrapped in uniqueness, I thought it would be a great start for this year's Samhain Project, which I'm sure you'll notice if you pay any attention to this thing of mine, I'm starting a tad early this year. 

Why?  Because I love it, and the longer what's now become known as Spooky Season lasts, the happier I am.  

Looking Back

 

I lost my Dad 45 years ago today.

For decades I thought the fact that it still hurt so much after all these years meant that there must be something wrong with me. 

Then, not too long ago,  I had a therapist say to me that thought was wrong.  I was entitled to my pain.  Especially from a burn that took place at age 8.  It left its mark, and there was nothing wrong with trying to make it less awful. 

You don't get over some things. 

But you can get past them. 

So it still hurts as it haunts. 

I still fucking miss my Dad.  And it's because I still love him deeply even though he's been gone this long.  Sometimes it feels like he passed away a thousand years ago, and it often feels like yesterday.  

One of my greatest regrets is not saying goodbye to him as Mom begged me to the day he aspirated.  The day my Mom said through tears, "He's dying..", as she fiercely pecked 9-1-1 onto the phone's keypad. 

I couldn't say goodbye.  It was too final.  It would mean he wasn't coming back. 

What I should have said was "I love you", before that ambulance vanished down Lichter road into eternity. 

Independence Day Traditions

 

Every July 3, I try to watch Dan O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead.  I was up until 12:40 last night watching the 1985 zombie classic for the reason stated above.  Now Twister and Jaws are recognized as the ultimate in summer entertainment, but this one has its moments.  If you have the stomach. 

I distinctly remember Hemdale films pushing the crap out of this movie in the summer of 1985 while I was staying at my sister's house in Marshfield, Wisconsin.  That trailer got to me, even at the ripened old age of 13.  There was something disturbing about it, even though its in-your-face nature told you it was elbowing you in the gut.  Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, brudda.   

But it bugged me. 

I didn't really see it until the summer of 1986 after myself and some friends of mine in Waco, Texas ran from vandalism trouble, broke my key off in the door upon returning home, and hid in the dark making sure pursuers didn't follow us to the point that they knew where we were.  They didn't. 

After my co-horts went home, I went up to my room to watch the film.  By myself, as was often the case on Friday nights, my folks weren't home.  The movie had the same affect on me that I thought it would, watching the trailer the summer before.  Return is one of the few movies that can, with perfect balance, combine a disturbing underlying grim dread with laugh out loud dialogue and slapstick humor.  Not an easy tightrope to walk, but Dan O'Bannon manages to pull it off.   I mean, because this film is one of, if not the first zombie movie to feature the oft-hated "running zombies", our characters really seem like they're in a situation devoid of all hope as panic and numbers seem to be against them at every turn.  And then the military handles it just like one would think they would.  ]

The movie's opening feels akin to Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake in the sense that something feels off at the start.  You're uncomfortable in your settings.  And for good reason. 

Despite it's oft-comic nature and yuks, the film is really some grim shit. Yet, you're laughing. 

But that trailer in 1985, man.  It really freaked me out.  The looks of desperation on the faces of Clu Gulager and James Karen, the completely convincing utterance of Don Calfa as he chokes out "Things are getting out of hand here, Burt."  Meanwhile, punk legends 45 Grave's Partytime is blasting in the background as a complete antithesis to this grim and hopeless vibe rolling above it.  It may have captured the tone of the film it was selling, at least in my case, as well as any marketing conglomerate has in the history of filmdom. 

So, happy July 3rd, folks, and I am sorry if you can't make it to Burt's Sunday Barbecue because "the movie lied."

The Spectrum Files: Vice Squad

 

As a kid, it's no secret that I was impressionable.  Back then at 9 years old, even though I knew movies were an art form, they still struck me as probably more real than they should have in terms of emotional affect.  To this day, I get a feeling from them, an electrical arc that may be positive or negative, despite my being more up to date with the fact that it's fiction. 

As Frani reminds me, "It's not real".  I get that.  But art still has the power to disturb.  Sometimes, as Rob Zombie said, "It's not safe."  Especially in my case.  Even at 53, I have films on my AVOID, or at least PUT ON HOLD list, because I know some of the events that may take place in the film.  Despite knowing it's a performance, I don't feel psychically prepared for what I know will unfold on screen.  So I wait. 

Anyhoo, while watching Spectrum (my film school at age 9-10), I caught a trailer for Gary Sherman's Vice Squad.  There was a character in there that the trailer did such a great job of making him the personification of evil, that I had to see the film to make sure he got his just desserts.  Mind you, he wasn't a monster, not a creature, not a demon, not even a masked serial killer, per se. 

He was a pimp.  A pimp named Ramrod. 

The trailer gave you just enough of his pure unrefined evil to make you shudder.  An evil magnified by the performance of one Wings Hauser, father of Cole. The offspring known to many as Rip on the overblown television county fair known as Yellowstone. (Rest in peace, sir, we lost Wings recently.  He did leave an interesting body of work.)

Ramrod's path of destruction leads the Hollywood Vice Unit, lead by one Gary Swanson.  This is a role where he displays degrees of empathy, and a vicious prioritization of job over humanity that when put together lead to a good illustration of his dichotomy.  Ramrod becomes his night's agenda, as he brutally beats to death future MTV Veejay Nina Blackwood at the film's outset.  Ramrod's a wily one, escaping incarceration at one point to continue his murderous trail of mayhem through the night.  He ends up attempting to seduce and take into his pimpdom a prostitute named "Princess", a single mother trying make some sort of life.  Little does he know Princess is wired up. That leads to the beginning of the manhunt.

The role of Princess is played by the former Mrs. Kurt Russell and she's incredible.  People talk about what kind of hell Stanley Kubrick put Shelley Duvall through, a sort of psychological torture.  Well, Sherman puts Mrs. Hubley through a physical nightmare and her performance is hard to forget.  It's a shame low-budget sleaze faire like Vice Squad suffers from poor dialogue and even worse acting from supporting characters, because Season Hubley's performance is sad, tortured, angry, rebellious, strong and sympathetic; deserving of acknowledgement, if not hardware. 

The Neon 80's is beautifully shot by one John Alcott, veteran of many Stanely Kubrick films, and with that pedigree, a few others one would be surprised he did.  This is some great nighttime shooting,  like low budget Michael Mann.  The action sequences pack intensity and speed, the stuntwork looks like people engaging in dangerous activity instead of stunts.  Pretty convincing stuff; the film works. 

As a kid, I probably shouldn't have been watching this sex and violence riddled affair, but it wasn't the first, and certainly wouldn't be the last. Outside of a few uncomfortable scenes, not a lot stuck with me other than the anticipation of seeing it.  But the payoff is still locked in my mind. 

And yes, it is worth it. 

Looking for Laughs: The Sniglet

Rich Hall is still around, but during the 80's he really was a driving performer in my interest in humor derived from the English Language.  Of course, George Carlin was the master in the comical exploration of wordsmithing, but Hall was no slouch. 

He started his career in stand up comedy before making a successful foray into television.  He was a writer and performer for Late Night with David Letterman (which I will eventually go into with some depth at a point in the future), before becoming a regular on HBO's Not Necessarily the News.  He was a player on my biggest ingress of Saturday Night Live, the 1984 season, and is the only performer to be on that show as well as ABC's short lived Fridays. (along with Michael Richards.  Before Seinfeld, he paid his dues.  Anyone see Transylvania 6-5000?)

While on NNTN, he unleashed the sniglet upon the world.  He of course expanded it's sphere by appearing on Late Night as a guest to sell the idea, and multiple volumes of books full of them were published. One copy I had (Unexplained Sniglets of the Universe) even invited you to send in your own creation to be published in a future book.  It even brandished an entry form at the back. 

What is a sniglet?  It's a made up word that serves to describe something that may not otherwise have a single word description.  For example, from the premiere Sniglets edition, you have:  

EXPRESSHOLES:  n.  People who try to sneak more than the "eight items or less" into the express checkout line. 

Of course being around 12 or 13, I found these things fucking hilarious, sought out and bought the one book I did end up having, and shared them with friends who always found them annoying and far less funny than I did.  I bought the slim tome in Waco, Texas, (at the Richland Mall, of course), and it went over just as poorly in Waco as it did in Wisconsin after I moved back home. 

One of those things that I should have just shared with myself I guess. 

I did make up my own sniglet, and planned to send it in to that address at the back of the book which was P.O. Box 2350 in Hollywood.  

This is it's world premiere.  DRUM ROLL, PLEASE.

PILLOTISSERIE:  The act of turning your pillow over in the middle of the night to lay your face on the cooler side.

I never did send it in.  Maybe with some encouragement, I would have done so, but being surrounded by people with no sense of humor at the time, or at least not sharing mine, I felt it futile at best. 

Anyway, long live Rich Hall and his sniglet.