SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: THE FACULTY

 

SEASON 6

Robert Rodriguez is one of my favorite filmmakers.  And for good reason.  It's not just the fact that he historically does everything himself.  And I mean it, from directing, shooting, editing, scoring, and visual effects, he's run the gamut in both 35mm and digital.  He started out shooting on low-grade film, and quickly moved forward with the times technologically.  It's all mapped out in his autobiography Rebel Without a Crew.  Highly recommended.

The Faculty was released the same year (1998) as the film I reviewed just a bit back, Urban Legend.  Despite being well-produced affairs with name casts, you can feel the difference from the opening frames.  The Faculty is the far better film.  It has, as Frani puts it, an edge that Legend just didn't have.  Whether it's the interesting use of music, badass camera angles, or Rodriguez' incredible editing, take your pick.

The casting is pretty slick.  Rather than the college setting in Legend, you have high school.  The script is better here, written by Scream's Kevin Williamson, so it's not fair to hold that against Urban Legend.  But that's the only category I'll give a mulligan on. Marco Beltrami's score is pretty good, and KNB are on board with the practical effects. All around great filmmaking. 

But the cast.  Wow.  All of those on board here, either as the teenagers quickly becoming aware that an alien takeover is occurring, or the school's staff, menacing and hilarious, who are the "pod people" looking for global domination are really good.

Most of them have gone on to become busy and respected performers.  The students (largely still rising at the time) include Sean Hatosy, Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Jordana Brewster and Clea Duvall.  The staff (familiar, but not the legends they are now) include Robert Patrick, Bebe Neuwirth, Famke Jannsen, Salma Hayek, and Jon Stewart. 

Piper Laurie, however, was already a legend at the time, rest her soul.

Hartnett as the aloof drug-dealing genius and Duvall as the sci-fi geek solo girl stand out.  These could have been squeaky clean hero kids, but this film didn't take that route.  Robert Patrick, who saved the John Cena vehicle The Marine by being the best possible hilarious tongue-in-cheek baddie does it here first.  Jon Stewart as the nerdy science teacher is fun to convincing.  But when these staffers have to become evil humanity-draining automatons, the switch is flipped successfully. 

Where the real difference between Urban Legend and The Faculty lies is the editing.  Rodriguez is having a blast here, injecting tone into the sci-fi plotline.  The scene where the teens try to calmly trek it out of the school surrounded by potential alien outlanders is slick, tight, sharp as a tack and eerie.  It also has twists, legitimately solid ones, that aren't found in Urban Legend.  The high action scenes are raw, edgy, and convincing.  The film has a 70's physicality to it that you just didn't see, even in 1998. 

It's pretty amazing when you consider that this was a pretty well-budgeted and marketed Dimension Studios film with a big cast all the way around, and yet not one of the first films that comes to mind when you think of Rodriguez.  That can be said despite the reduction of volume and quality of the work he's done in the last 15 years or so.  You can't blame the guy, he tried to get a cable channel off the ground and spawned a pretty decent television series based on his From Dusk Til Dawn on its airwaves.  Unfortunately, El Rey wasn't meant to last forever. 

Rodriguez' filmography will, however. 

SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: HOLIDAY SNACK'N

Part of the seasonal fun for me kicks off with the Halloween goodies in the stores.  I used my phone as a camera on a couple of food and department store visits to document the Halloween marketing bonanza. This is normally something fun that kicks off the seasons for me, but this year pickings were fairly slim. That being said, the products can even include gross-ass fireworks. 

But the snacks are fun.  Everybody loves candy around Halloween, though I try to minimize it. But you can always find fun stuff in that department.  However, what's with the snot obsession this year?

on the more normal (in the Peeps case that's a stretch) side of things, there's these:

I didn’t see much in the breakfast cereals department outside of the second year in a row of Jim Henson’s monster cereals.  But we did see some cookies of the refrigerated variety: 

I never did understand how someone could stand up in a standard food corporation meeting and pitch something like this.  Sure it may not effect the flavor, but really?  Halloween salad dressing??

I did pick up some cheap freaky cheese balls in a giant tub that were extremely cheap: 

But truly, the only Halloween sweets that I actually look forward to, seek out, and partake in annually are the Ghost DOTS & Hostess Scary Cakes.

However, one thing that pisses me off this year is the sudden appearance of clearance tags.  

On October 9th!!

I asked a department store employee why that is the way it is, and she told me it was to probably make room for Christmas goods; with a shrug. 

Don’t rush my holidays, you assholes. I waited all year through a cruddy and painful late winter and spring, and one of the most hellish summers I’ve experienced for this!  There’s plenty of time to enjoy it all.  So give me the opportunity to relish it!

Sorry.  I'm calm now.

SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: COMPANION

SEASON 6

 

Companion makes a good companion piece (pun fully intended) to the recent kaboom, Obsessed. 

Both involve emotional attachment that is unfounded and forced, while being manipulated and used by another.  Both involve fantastic performances by the female lead.  Both involve one shitty-ass “nice guy”

AI is seen to be awful, and in most cases there is evidence in today’s headlines that it may well be the end of us all.  But it should surprise no one that some folks would be inspired to abuse it as well. And in the ways that are exemplified here, terribly. 

And that abuse leads to entitlement, which leads to a bloody snowball rolling down the mountain of intentions in this quirky nightmare. 

Instead of worldwide effects, the AI here is handled in an isolated incident.  Therefore, humanity and the artificial intelligence problems are in a real “one can’t exist without the other” scenario.  Sophie Thatcher (so great in Yellowjackets and the amazing Heretic) plays the human robot here with a sad far-away aura reminiscent of a Blade Runner replicant.  Shades of The Stepford Wives make themselves apparent as well.  The discomfort created by that film's "androids" is not at all dissipated by decades of time nor different performers.

Jack Quaid's character, the “owner” of her, is a seeming mensch of a human, yet in reality a dangerous twat; self absorbed despite himself. And he pulls the role off well.  He stretches a bit from his parts in The Boys and Neighborhood Watch.  His pathetic embrace of entitlement is almost as disgusting as his willingness to abandon all elements of humanity during the execution of a poorly thought out scam.  Quaid seems less human than Thatcher at this point.

Harvey Guillen, so transcendent in television's What We Do in the Shadows, adds wonderful humor of a lighter scent (at least at the outset) to the otherwise pitch black comedy.  

Thought provoking, sad, and maddening, Companion has many layers and some may even keep you up at night.  

Halloween horror?  Perhaps not, but oft-terrifying nonetheless.  Remember.  A human created AI.  And many that engineered it are issuing the warnings on it in the news.  Like last week's news.  Those are probably the good engineers.

What about the bad ones?

SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: MONKEY SHINES

 

SEASON 6

As anyone who reads this thing of mine would know, I'm a huge George A. Romero fan.  Big time.  And not just because of his "Living Dead" oeuvre, but plenty of others.  Frani and I just sat down to one I've long left unseen: Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Terror.  

Jason Beghe (fans of Chicago P.D. & the old HBO early series 1st & 10 are familiar) is in an accident and wheelchair bound at the outset.  He loses it all, including girlfriend Janine Turner in an early role, who is taken by his spinal surgeon, Stanley Tucci.  Early in Tucci's career, smarmy little shits were his specialty. For good reason, because he played them well, as evidenced by It Could Happen To You and Kiss of Death, especially.  

Beghe's character is set up with a live-in monkey to help him function independently.  This monkey is donated by close scientist friend, John Pankow, who is probably the strongest performer in the film.  Always a strong actor, from To Live & Die in L.A. to Mad About You, and more, this shouldn't be a surprise.  There's a love interest of a sort in Kate McNeil who trains Beghe's monkey.  (That sounds vaguely double entendre-ish).  This sometimes works and often doesn't.  She's charming enough, and many will recognize her from House On Sorority Row.  Her in depth, chuckling look back at that genre favorite in In Search of Darkness III is quite the hoot. 

What does work is Ella.  The monkey.  She does everything Beghe requires and more.  This little creature is as adorable as they come, and quickly wins over the viewer.  She falls in love with our leading man, and due to some sort of chemical treatment being applied by Pankow, a link between the two is formed.  Ella becomes jealous, angry and violent.  Along the way, so does Beghe.  It's not convincing however, because when he gets vicious, it looks like he's doing a bad Robert DeNiro impression. 

And also, as Frani pointed out, even when Ella is supposed to be imposing and intimidating, she is just too damn cute.  And the final confrontation results in the viewer really not being able to decide who's the real villain here.  Because adorable is adorable.  Oh, just keep trying to smother me with your monstrous, fuzzy love, you snuggly little antagonist, you!!

Overall, thanks to Romero's deft touch, the movie works.  It's an interesting concept for a horror film, and well-written by George himself.  I recommend it.  It may not be the maestro's finest hour, but it definitely fits nicely into the era where George had studio backing and some degree of freedom.  Sadly, this ended when the original Orion pictures went under and the still excellent The Dark Half wasn't able to completely cross the finish line.  Solid stuff from a man with an incredibly diverse resume. 

THE SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: 10 SCARY NON-HORROR MOVIES

SEASON 6

Sometimes a movie is capable of scaring the shits out of you while not intending to exactly be frightening. I'm not talking about "disturbing", of course, because in this day and age there are a plethora of filmmakers who aim to only do that.  I'm talking about films with the capability of terrifying you by merely making you think...

Now there was a time people thought Idiocracy and The Day After Tomorrow were exaggeratory humor and science fiction at their most prime examples.  All, I can say is "Life Comes At You Fast, Bro". Because the government seems to be repeatedly stepping on rakes, and flashing stunning displays of self-dealing corruption.  With the weather being transformed into some sort of Frankenstein's climate monster due to those folks' indifference, neither film seems all that far off the mark anymore. 

Idiocracy has some things in the film that are just plain not funny anymore despite me howling in laughter at it almost 20 years ago.   And all those people calling Dennis Quaid's (serious irony there, innit?) warnings about the oncoming Whitley Streiber Superstorm "stupid movie pseudo-science" in The Day After Tomorrow, do you still want to hang on to that?

That's not where I'm going here today, but it's creating an extension to the "Scary even though..." genre.

Anyhoo.

1. Paradise Lost--Watching 3 teenagers being railroaded into life in prison or a lethal injection is terrifying.  The West Memphis 3 had it happen to them by a biased and discriminatory legal system and community.  However,  what happened to those little murdered boys is far worse, unfair, and disturbing beyond belief.

2.  Idiocracy--Yeah, it's a wackadoo comedy written and directed by Beavis and Butt Head and King of the Hill creator Mike Judge, but just think: If the morons of the world continue to reproduce at the current Jerry Springer rate, and smart people don't have time for kids, how off the mark is it really? Currently being proven out by Donald Trump and most of his supporters.

3: The Day After--It doesn't really hold up special effects-wise, but the build up to the button being pushed is undeniably creepy and tense. That poor woman, trapped in denial while trying to do laundry and fight off her husband's attempts to usher her into a shelter, is heart-rending.  From my knowledge, being pretty well read on the subject this film is fairly accurate.

 

 4. The Accused--Another standard legal system-gone amok movie, but the sequence where Jodie Foster is gang-attacked still haunts me to this day, and I refuse to watch it again.  A movie that made me somehow hate my gender and Leo Rossi simultaneously.  Men suck.

 

5. Trekkies--If you're a Star Trek fan, respect....really. But just like anything else pop-culture wise that you can be a fan of, some people take it to nausea-inducing levels of self-indulgence and hero-worship that exceeds even church-going zealotry.  Some of these people need help.  So many cringe-inducing moments.  Side Note: There's also a few moments in 25 Years of Terror where fans of the Halloween series are also shown in much the same light.  These people give me the creeps.

6.  Dopamine--A romantic comedy that poses the questions: what if love is just dopamine, and lust is just adrenaline?  Despite the saccharine ending, those questions posed by the movie chilled me to the very marrow of my bones. So it possessed me to ask my own question: Why are we doing this, then?

 7. Miracle Mile--The last 15 minutes of this movie show humanity at it's absolute worst, when knowledge that nuclear destruction is inevitable. I stared blankly at the screen for a good five minutes solid after the final frame, and couldn't sleep for days afterwords.  Yes, the atomic apocalypse would be awful, but somehow people would manage to one-up even that hideousness.

 8. Midnight Express--Please remind me to never, never, EVER, EVER try to smuggle heroin out of Turkey.

9. The Guyana Tragedy--Humanity's lemming mentality at its most pathetic and disturbing. Jesus Christ, this actually happened.  Learning of one person's ability to actually get people to willingly walk to their death literally scared the shit out of me.

10. Thirteen Days--The Cuban Missile Crisis and how close we actually came to flame-on. It's Goddamn eye opening to realize people who were gilded as one-time war-heroes also pushed for "collateral damage" actions and others agreed with them.  Thank the stars cooler heads prevailed, on both sides of the ocean.

SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: URBAN LEGEND

SEASON 6

This has the stank of 90’s all over it:  Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Joshua Jackson, Rebecca Gayheart, and Michel flippin' Rosenbaum.  Natasha Gregson Wagner pulls a Drew Barrymore at the outset.  However, a nice extended cameo by Robert Englund is pretty cool, and Brad Dourif is always welcome.  They both do their thing, whether wizened or creepy, and do it better than anyone else.

It also has that jumbly screeching string score that could be dropped into any horror film, or action film of the era, for that matter. 

What is cool however is the concept of a serial killer's use of urban legends as an M.O. to pick off students at a factionalized university.  However the film's execution is very bland.  Fitting the era, it contains the prototypical use of a whodunnit that doesn’t need anywhere near a Sherlock Holmes to figure it out. Here we have acting that’s very solid for a weak script.  That's a loss of balance that is felt from the first frame.

The direction is cut and pasted from Scream. 

What’s disturbing is the all too presciently written concept of angry people raging about violence on a college campus, which is being reflected in today’s headlines.  That's a bit unsettling, to say the least. 

Urban Legend has its moments, but it really won’t have the legs to go the distance and be considered a great Halloweener.

SAMHAIN PROJECT SEASON 6: ALONE IN THE DARK

SEASON 6

1982 was such a peak year they made a documentary about its cinematic wares.  I've got a future post coming up about that year.  I've alluded to it before, but I'll get there. 

That year was probably the apex of a genre that would go on for many more years.  Alone in the Dark probably wedges into it sideways.   There's no way in this day and age that a small indy studio could wedge the likes of Donald Pleasence, Martin Landau, Jack Palance and oh yeah, Dwight Schulz into a horror cheapie like New Line was able to here.  And the film works despite the odds against it.  Despite its cast and the effectiveness thereof, (no one phoned it in here, kudos to director Jack Sholder) its largely gone forgotten with the exception of a Scream Factory blu ray release. 

Pleasence runs a mental health facility with the style of the combination of a hippy love goon straight from the streets of Haight-Asbury and a potential patient himself.  His lack of respect for the dangerousness of the guys on the 3rd floor and dependence on electricity to keep them reigned in leads to the obvious when a two-day electrical blackout occurs.  Needless to say, our scary guys led by brick-house Jack Palance (who stayed that way until he passed away) and including Landau, looking a lot like a shark here, and a couple other psychotic chaps (Oops!  Let's not call them by that cold linguistic label.  Dr. Pleasence prefers to refer to them as "voyagers".  Yeah, let's go with that.)

All of this comes together nicely, performed well by everyone.  A surprisingly sharp turn by the actual protagonist, Schulz, is key here.   Some actual intentional laugh-out-loud flashes in the story, and that adds to the intrigue surprisingly well.  The script, penned by Sholder himself, is actually tight if tough to believe.  But this is an early 80's low-budget flick and credit must be given to the whole piece as a success. 

If you're looking for something off the beaten path this Halloween, you can probably do worse. 

Oh yeah, and a nice performance by the era's New York pseudo-punk outfit, The Sic F*cks.

SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: BACKROOMS

SEASON 6

 

Who'd have thunk that a photograph of a yellow empty office area of a building, construction in progress, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin would be the prompt for such freakiness?

Chiwetel Ejiofor leads a mind-bending flick as a dude who pretty much steps in turd soup with his life decisions.  He regrets this aspect of his personality as he engages in it.  A would-be architect, albeit one who deals in furniture, has perhaps decided to take his quasi-underachiever nature out on everyone else. 

Until the universe comes along. 

He discovers a sliver of light peering back at him from the wall of a sub-floor section in his furniture dealership.  

Once Ejiofor literally slips into the backroom, Backrooms never lets up.  His melting aloofness gives way to a sweaty, out of control obsession as a result.

An eternal confection of a banana colored, horribly fluorescent lit, shag carpeted galaxy is laid out before him. Albeit one with things in it.  Living and inanimate. As he works his way through the labyrinthine expanse of awful Joe Versus the Volcano workspace devoid of work, the film starts to.....

collapse in on itself?

In a good way, bro. 

It's up to you to decide what exactly is going on here.  The movie provides enough line to satisfactorily trip over for your own answers to the questions presented.  As I've said in an annoyingly disclaimerish fashion;  I don't mind ambiguous endings, I hate nonsensical.

Youngster director Kane Parsons has delivered neither.  I loved watching Chiwetel Ejifor and his psychiatrist, played with sharp disassociation by Reinate Reinsve, approach the blurriness of existence from two different angles.  

An amazing score here that seems like Goblin fell into a quasar dish with Tangerine Dream and Boards of Canada make this shit even more creepy than it would have been anyway.  And that's pretty creepy

Mark Duplass also pops up here to put an unraveling tie-up on things that gives the film's denouement all that is left that it needs. Because in Backrooms, it's better to be a door than a window.

THE SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: WHEN THE "HALLOWEEN" THING STARTED

SEASON 6

There’s a handful of movies out there I’ve seen so many times that I can tell you what the next cut is going to bring or what the next line of dialogue will be throughout the entire picture. Those movies fall into a very short list and they include: 

Halloween 

The Warriors 

Jaws 

Star Wars 

Back to the Future

Silent Rage (hee hee)

….among a few others. 

The first time I saw Halloween and The Warriors was a Friday night.  It was October 31, 1980.  Two of my sisters, Randee and Dee, shared a Racine, WI apartment where they used the television that I have in this picture below as their source of entertainment.  I spent the evening with my sister, Randee, some popcorn, and a pair of movies.  Randee took me out for burgers before we headed back to her apartment.  I was excited as I could be in that moment, as a lot of people had been talking about this Halloween movie for a long time. 

They couldn’t pick up a whole lot with that television, but they did subscribe to HBO with it. 

Yes, folks, as I recall, they subscribed to Home Box Office with this tiny 9 inch television.  Or at the very least, one just like it.  It doesn’t matter; it worked, and especially on Halloween night, 1980.   Randee and I watched The Warriors, followed by Halloween, both first time viewings for me.  That slightly grainy black and white picture may have lent both films something they needed for me in that moment. 

Also, Randee and I watched this pair of movies before I went to sleep, and I had some pretty intense John Carpenter-induced nightmares to say the least. But I’ll never forget that night.  A cinema breakthrough moment for my beginning years as a movie buff. 

It’s interesting how the descriptions that my mom‘s friends had given to me that month in relation to Halloween didn’t measure up to what was on the screen in John Carpenter‘s film. The main focus of that night was of course, Halloween, but I got an extra glimpse at the work of what would become my second favorite filmmaker,  Walter Hill,  and his cult curiosity, The Warriors.  The latter being an unexpected gem that Randee talked up before we watched. 

The former marked my autumns for the rest of my life.

The image quality of 9 inches of black and white television matters not.  Both movies struck a permanent chord.

Talk about scores.  My mind welcomed both John Carpenter's and Barry DeVorzon's orchestrations for the films.  Such great stuff, and they were an inspirational cinematic sparking for my 9 year old mind.  They rattled around the rafters of my head for weeks. 

                                            

                                            

The HBO guide's image selection and description for Halloween, as well as The Warriors up above remain a core memory. 

SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: CAST A DEADLY SPELL

 

SEASON 6

There was something special about the HBO Original film.  I'm talking about the old school ones from the early 80's to the mid 90's.  Films like Blackout, Flashpoint, & The Park is Mine.  They had fair-sized budgets, included name performers as well as directors.   Sometimes they would have a small theatrical release or be a foreign-market original, like Fortress, but they felt to me like something exclusive.  Only myself and other HBO subscribers had access.  In a matter of years, most of them would be largely forgotten.

Last night Frani and I watched the dust-covered Cast a Deadly Spell.  This one, unlike the others I mentioned, is being carried by the HBO Max streamer.  I guess you could call this one a horror-noir.  It has all the noir trappings.  A private investigator who drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney.  He wanders around 1948 Los Angeles consorting with police force members, unseemly types of all shapes and sizes, and of course, femme fatales.  All the while, cracking wise with sharply written dialogue. 

The only difference is that in this version of 1948 L.A., magic is everywhere and being used by any and all.  Except our hero, Lovecraft, being played with spark by the late great Fred Ward.  Ward is great, and the rest of the cast is game as well, and they include David Warner, Clancy Brown, and Julianne Moore. 

Martin Campbell, who may have one of the most underrated of the film industry's longest resumes, is the director who does a nice job balancing the noirish atmosphere mixed with something the genre normally doesn't fraternize with: the supernatural.

Ghoulish beasties of other dimensions abound, and great practical effects bring those to life, as well as makeup work.  Despite the genre mashup, all of that doesn't seem to intrude.  The weird blend of fantasy elements and hard-boiled mystery seems to makes sense in some strange way,  Cast makes you wonder if Max Landis had seen this film before writing Bright a few years back. 

Overall, the film is entertaining, with a handful of laugh-out-loud moments.   It has just enough of the supernatural horror for your average Halloween movie aficionado to chalk up on the list for this time of year. 

I was a bit surprised that after several gory scenes of mayhem and murder, to see Clancy Brown's "goddamn" had clearly been overdubbed with a "goldurn".  I'd much rather a young impressionable viewer hear that rather mind profanity, than see some of the bloodshed that came before it. 

Overall, I'd recommend it.  Kind of like a Hocus Pocus for the Crime Story set. 

SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: WITHIN THE PINES

SEASON 6

 

What a nifty little suspense thriller!

Our leading man, a sound recordist who is in the midst of a one way divorce heads out to the UK woods to record “ambience”.   Using his microphoned high tech recording device, he begins to follow sounds that perplex him. 

Nothing supernatural here, kids.  He walks into humanity at it worst.  Despite being a normal guy with normal problems, he does some greatness when confronted with a bitter slice of human nature, and an angry dose of mother nature. 

And you will admire his will. 

Brendan Cooney is terrific in a role that is all physical movement and emotional expression.  The lack of dialogue is a feature not a bug.  The woods does all the speaking here and the camera catches all its beauty, and its ugly ambivalence.  A chilling, yet sparse score adds to the tautness already unspooling on screen.  Which makes sense.  The composer had to come up with something to augment a project that relies so heavily upon audio that the sound designer is mentioned in the opening credits. 

Martin Cheney comes through in a major way.

A tight beautifully shot shocker, it will have you quietly hung on its lengthy imagery despite its compact 72 minute running time.  Right up to its stumble down the steps of a final shot.  If you like films that experiment with sound like Berberrian Sound Studio, the oft-harrowing Undertone, or Lorcan Finnegan's masterwork, Without Name, you'll like Within the Pines.

SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: ALL HAIL THE POPCORN KING

 

SEASON 6

Frani and I have had a good fortune of seeing Joe R. Lansdale speak a couple of times. The Texas born, mojo champion genius horror/crime/drama storyteller has been doing it since the late 70s and doing it with edgy style and wicked panache. Hearing him speak just sealed the deal of how special he actually is. A hard-core old-school liberal, who himself is the basis for the character Hap in his long running Hap & Leonard series, he walks the walk.  Also a martial arts expert that teaches at a very high level in his hometown of Nacogdoches, Texas; he is to be feared.

 

That’s all spelled out here in All Hail the Popcorn King, a documentary by Hansi Oppenheimer that is as down-home as the author himself. A lot of footage is garnered from speaking conversationally, and on-the-go with Lansdale himself.  Voice interviews from many others, like Bruce Campbell, Joe Hill and more are here.  It’s heartwarming to hear his children and other family members speak of the loving personality that is Joe Lansdale as well. They’re not ego stroking, it’s all very earthy and real. 

I was a GoFundMe contributor to this film, full disclosure, but really that only added to my enjoyment of it. I felt a little pride at this little engine that could. At 55 minutes, I would’ve liked a little bit more time to spend with it, but overall it’s a heck of a piece of work and deserves to be placed at the top of the the list of docs on American writers.

SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: NORTH AMERICAN CRYPTID MUSEUM

THE NORTH AMERICAN CRYPTID MUSEUM, PLANO,TX.

Ever since I saw the trailer for the movie Sasquatch, and saw the episode of In Search Of... that I documented here, I've been a believer.  In Bigfoot.  Many have considered me a doof for doing so, but I figure if they believe in demons and boogeymen, I'm safe in my faith in a mysterious woodland being that happens to be completely undocumented.  

The North American Cryptid Museum just happens to be in the town I live in, Plano TX.  Frani and I decided to check it out today, and it was actually pretty impressive.  Attached in the building that houses the popular haunted attraction known as Dark Hour, it was pretty easy to find as well.  The "Ranger" who was our tour guide was funny, wise, knowledgeable and came at the museum's displays from not just a lore angle, but a fairly scientific one as well.  I think The North American Cryptid Museum would be appreciated by followers of Loren Coleman as well as Sid & Marty Krofft. 

It's wide ranging and pretty comprehensive.  Examples of cryptids are in abundance and well-detailed.  Not just by the fantastic designs and craftsmanship executing them, but in the visual and written examples of corroboration.  There's not just news videos rolling alongside both the towering and tiny cryptids on display, but tons of written media documentation underlining the eyewitness accounts dating back in many cases to the 1800's or even earlier.  What's really cool is the examples of very familiar-to-me cryptids, like the Hodag, and the infamous Beast of Bray Road.  The latter of which's display has a nice shout-out to the late great journalist Linda Godfried, who wrote the preeminent text on

 the matter.

Our guide's anecdotes of encounters mixed nicely with matter-of-fact accounts were often funny as well as chilling.  He pointed out that Bigfoot has been witnessed in every state except Hawaii, and that every state has examples of a cryptid. License plates nicely accent the many examples, as well as displays that textualize details that are both informative and creepy.  Some language is nicely handled by covering words and names that may be culturally insensitive if shared aloud, and I respect the hell out of that.  There's depth here that I didn't expect, and once I found that the whole museum is really a "labour of love" by the Dark Hour owner, it wasn't hard to see why that angle was taken. 

This was a blast of a thing to do for so-called Spooky Season, but really, for everyone, this is something that can be taken in year round.  And with the constant updating and fun additions like the Seattle Raccoon sensation, Jimothy, it wouldn't be repetitive to pop back in more than once.  I highly recommend The North American Cryptid Museum, and not just for Bigfoot aficionados like myself, but the civilian as well. 

THE SAMHAIN PROJECT, SEASON 6: TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: THE MOVIE

 

SEASON 6

I've written before about they syndicated 80's anthology series known as Tales from the Darkside.   It made it's way to the big screen in 1990 in the form of what Tom Savini said should have actually been Creepshow 3, and not this apparent bullschtein below.  I've not seen it.  Don't plan to. 

In Tales, there's great appearances by big names who weren't quite big yet.  Folks like Steve Buscemi, Christian Slater, and Julianne Moore, all game and turning in good work.  There are fun turns by Deborah Harry, David Johannsen, and Robert "I Can't Stop My Leg" Klein.  Great to see Klein here, as he's one of the comedians that I always forget was a centerpiece to me falling in love with standup in the early 80's.  In the latter segment, he plays James Remar's somewhat wishy-washy agent in the most compelling short of the three parts of this anthology. 

Lot 249 is interesting enough as Slater and Buscemi seem to alternate between being protagonist and antagonist.  Which are they in the long run?  I haven't decided yet.  Julianne Moore plays against what would be a sort of type for her in the future, and pulls it off nicely.  I love a good Mummy story, and this one's pretty solid, and very gruesome. 

 It is easy to forget how good Christian Slater's early career was.  From Gleaming the Cube to Pump Up the Volume, to Kuffs.  I still look back on those flicks every once in a while.  It's neat to see a young pre-Reservoir Dogs Buscemi here.  His role here is so different from the thuggery he displayed later, or the goofiness he put out to the world in multiple Adam Sandler movies.  Let's not forget the man directed the oft-forgotten and sadly under-appreciated Trees Lounge. 

The George Romero scripted Stephen King segment, The Cat From Hell is pretty slick.  It brings us one shitheel who turns to another for removal of a revenge-minded feline.  It's darker and funnier than it sounds. I mentioned to Frani during last night's viewing that David Johannsen is pretty amazing.  Not just here, but overall.  To go from the lead singer of The New York Dolls, to Buster Poindexter, to great bombastic performances like the cab-driver ghost in Scrooged, to his pro-style hitter here, is pretty telling of his talent.  I have his solo debut on vinyl, and its one of my favorite records.  

The last segment may be the best.  It's certainly the most compelling, moving and thought-provoking. Personal favorite James Remar plays a bit against his tough-guy type.  His sad-eyed performance as a down-on-his-luck visual artist dealing with the worst and the best night of his life is as intense as the evening in question itself.  Its a night that creates decisions for our hero, as his life is swept up both by a dark supernatural being, and by Rae Dawn Chong.  

Tales has great effects work by the now legendary KNB effects group, in concert with FX hero Dick Smith.  From cringe-inducing gore work to creepy monstrosities, their skills run the gamut, and really, this movie itself is a great audition tape for practical effects work. 

The film has a lot of fun, a little grue, and a heaping helping of the authorship of Michael McDowell, George Romero, and Stephen King.  Director and George Romero vet John Harrison moves it along efficiently and ties the whole package together with a nasty little bow that is the Hansel and Gretel wrap-around story. 

This is the epitome of Halloween viewing, and I think despite the names involved, it is an underrated example. 

SAMHAIN PROJECT SEASON 6: WARNING SIGN

 SEASON 6

Photo by Łukasz Nieścioruk on Unsplash

Well, it's that time of year again!

The Samhain Project has returned.  My musings, reviews, rumblings, and belching about all things Autumnal and Spookyish.   And I'm all pumpkin-spiced about it.  Let's get to it!

28 Days Later scared the bargoovians out of a lot of people when Danny Boyle unleashed it upon the woild.  Until recently, I thought that the concept of "the rage virus" was birthed there.  

I was wrong. 

 

 Frani and I refreshed the memory banks on a little movie from 1985 that I watched with my Mom when we lived in Waco, TX.   That's about all I remembered about it, other than thinking it was solid enough.  Being that I'm a pretty big fan of Sam Waterston, he of The Glass Menagerie fame,  who went on to play Hang 'em High Jack McCoy on Law & Order, as well as genius roles on Grace & Frankie & The Newsroom, I jumped back in on this little curio. 

It seems an agricultural business working on GMOs (and apparently some other shady shit) enjoys a test tube spill and before you know it, despite the best efforts of Kathleen Quinlan, all hell has broken loose.  People get bubbly and violent and start attacking folks in hordes.  Of course, sheriff Sam Waterston and government ace Yaphet Kotto show up and do some stuff.  Waterston pulls his weight nicely, playing his lead less as an action stud than a really worried husband.  He displays some nifty moments of apprehension and stumbling effort that you might not have seen had Chuck Norris or Sylvester Stallone been here in the role. 

Unlike 28 Days Later, the madness stays contained in a building, yet it works for the most part for this flick.  It doesn't feature a ton of gore, but the attacks are nonetheless very violent and there is no doubting the bad intent of our infected dudes here.  Craig Safan contributes a pretty cool synth score that is actually a little bit more effective than Hal Barwood's direction.  It's a bit vanilla, but he gets pretty good performances from a solid cast, particulary Quinlan. She's definitely the damsel in distress here. Unlike a lot of female characters in films of this time period, (outside the slasher movie Final Girls), she's as tough as she is human.

Nice supporters here, but Frank Darabont fave Jeffrey DeMunn steals the show despite some really difficult-to-believe scientific maneuvering that gets leaned upon in the final act. 

Sadly, overall, Warning Sign is not as scary or atmospheric as Boyle's movie, but definitely worth spending some Halloween time with. 

And for reals, George Romero actually gave us the debut of the rage virus, (as he did with the modern zombie in Night of the Living Dead) in his early 70s classic, The Crazies.  A film Aidan and I saw the remake of on its opening weekend, one of the best of the early 2000's horror remakes.  It stars Justified and Deadwood's Timothy Olyphant, whose performance is tip-top. 

I'd watch Olyphant in a documentary about toilet brushes, to be honest.

ANARCHY IN A RED STATE: SEX PISTOLS AT THE LONGHORN BALLROOM

Last night, Frani and I went and saw The Sex Pistols with Frank Carter at the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas.  The last time The Pistols were there, (circa 1978) the show featured a disastrous ending that finished with John Lydon asking the crowd if they “ever felt like they’ve been cheated”. This was well documented in Julian Temple’s masterful documentary, The Filth & The Fury. 

In a touch of serendipity, Merle Haggard's son, Ben, is performing one night after The Pistols, just as his old man did in 1978, at the same venue.

September 11, 2026 brought a return of sorts. We showed up and watched original bassist and key songwriter Glen Matlock, guitarist and Lonely Boy author, Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook, and “supplemental” lead vocalist Frank Carter take the stage and literally rip it up for a good hour plus. 

Jones sounded great, that Les Paul Bollocks tone in full lion’s roar,  Cook drums like he’s 25 years old, tight and smart, (percussion is a physical excursion at any age), and Glen Matlock knows and owns the material inside and out; as well he should, he wrote the shit. 

And Frank Carter policed the fucking stage. He's been there, and led the troops from beginning to end, the boys could not have picked a better lead vocalist for this incarnation of the band.  

Carter is an exceptional showman, a true punk rock athlete, singing “Pretty Vacant” from the pit without losing a note, showing respect to the ORIGINAL CORE Sex Pistols on his stage at every given opportunity, (even honoring them by distancing himself as he did so), shutting everything down and directing traffic when someone had either fallen ill or gotten injured down below, creating the first all ladies mosh pit, and gratefully thanking Dallas multiple times for waiting for The Pistols to return. (Their original appearance was canceled a year ago due to Jonesy breaking his wrist).

Johnny Rotten might be walking around the country right now, callously calling what’s touring as the Sex Pistols some sort of “karaoke“,  but he can eat a lit fart. How can you take seriously someone who once roared against “the fascist regime” of the royal family, that is now flying the MAGA flag?

Regardless, last night was legitimate punk rock;  If anybody out there has a chance to see this group, I recommend taking it in.  They're in Austin tonight and Houston tomorrow, folks. 

Last night's show resonated with us in a big way.

It’s nostalgia, but it’s new. 

It’s emotional, but they’ll make you laugh.  (Both vibes present in their cover of Sinatra’s “My Way”.  Which was mounds better than Sid’s).

It’s still anger, but it now carries with it some sense of hope.

MY TEACHERS: JABBERWOCK & ROLL

 My 8th grade year, 1984-1985,  was spent at Kenosha's Washington Jr. High.  A building that now has gotten the knock down and rebuild treatment.  I suppose it was due in some way, as it was first constructed in 1920.  But still, that brick & mortar construction complete with neatly placed marble, and an early 80's addition that extended out into a vacant lot will be missed.  I will have to ask around if its twin building, McKinley Jr. High, is still in existence. 

Or was it Lance?  I think it was McKinley. 

Anyhoo.  In 1984-85, my English class (not grammar, but Lit in this case) was taught by Mrs. Bergquist.  I remember her to this day because she did this killer reading of Lewis Carrol's Jabberwocky, a genius piece from Through the Looking-glass, and what Alice Found There.  She read it with such enthusiasm and vigor.  She conjured a low throw-down to her voice that brought the words to magical life:

"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

did gyre and gimble in the wabe"

It caught me off guard, pricked up me ears, and brought my attention to attention.  She finished the piece in the same enthusiasm, and did it incredible justice.  The other kids in my class were either irritated or laughing at her, but they obviously didn't get it.  I didn't care.  I thought it was amazing. 

I remember a day or two after, when a friend and I were gathering our Trapper Keepers and grocery-bag wrapped textbooks together, another kid gave his unfettered review of Mrs. Bergquist's reading.

"It's so stupid", he belched.  "It doesn't even make sense."  Then he began his classy impression of the work and performance:

"It was all goobly! and the jingly mobes

were gimblin' and gamblin' up my butt."

My friend and I of course erupted into laughter for a couple of reasons.

1.  The routine was admittedly hilarious.

2.  It was ridiculous.  He was doing exactly what he was mocking Carroll's piece for doing.  Creating nonsense words for the purpose of prose. 

Regardless, Mrs. Bergquist's selection also brought something out of my dusty past.  As a kid, we had these Walt Disney book and record items.  You know the ones.  You listen to the record and hear dialogue, narration, and music as you followed along in the book. 

 We had Peter & The Wolf, Bambi, Jungle Book, among others.   But the one that stuck out for me was Alice in Wonderland.  Terrific illustrations inside, including the one sparked by my English teacher's reading that day.  The Jabberwock himself.  With his pear-shaped Tweedledee & Tweedledum body shape and creepily flaming eyes.  This image was a memory Mrs. B. brought storming back.

That Jabberwocky reading is among the most strong, and definitely most positive moments that I remember happening during my time at Washington.  I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking "If that's the best you got, the rest of it must have been pretty grim." 

You wouldn't be wrong.  It’s scattered all over this blog.

As an addendum:  After my brief 16 month swing through Waco, TX, circa Fall of 1985 through January 1987, Tremper High was the school I attended upon my return to K-Town.   That's right.  The High School alma mater of one Mark Ruffalo.

Now, Tremper was intentional.  My parents gave me the option of which two Kenosha Unified School District High Schools I would wish to attend.  All of my siblings attended Bradford.  And most of the kids that I knew and who would possibly remember me would have gone there too.  But my bestie upon leaving Kenosha in October of 1985 was still my best friend thanks to letter-writing and phone calls. He was also a 10th grader at Tremper. So I made that my choice. 

Bad idea. 

He met me at the campus and shook my hand on a cold January day. He showed me what was what and where was there on the Tremper campus.  Then we headed back to his place to hang out and watch a little television. 

And I never heard from him again. 

He dodged me in the hallways, and never returned my calls.  Don't ask me why.  I have a couple theories, but it has been almost 40 years, I don’t dwell on it.  Anyway, on that day that we re-connected, I dropped into the office to talk to the staff.  While I was in there, I saw a familiar face.  None other than my favorite English teacher from Washington, Mrs. B!

That didn't go well either. 

Despite my enthusiastic introduction and subsequent discussion, she didn't remember me.  Even though at most, it had been two years since I saw her last and was under her tutelage.  I was truly disappointed.  I only attended Tremper one semester, as my folks and I picked up the tent by spring and were headed North. Luckily, Linda & Don, (mentors, both) allowed me to stay with them until June, so I didn't have to start up fresh again at another school with 7 weeks left in the school year.

I recently called Tremper.  For some reason, I had been unable to remember Mrs. Bergquist's name. I know I had it firmly in my mind a few months back but last week Friday when I intended to begin this odd trip down memory lane, it was gone.   

A very sweet individual named Amanda from the Tremper student services office went above and beyond helping me out.  She dug up the 1987-1988 yearbook and assisted with deducing the name.  Even if I weren't writing this piece, Amanda's assistance would have been therapeutic, because my former English teacher's name's dance upon the tip of my tongue was driving me to the brink of insanity. 

Now if I could only remember the name of the Tremper instructor who got me off the hook on 10th grade Algebra.