C’mon People this Halloween Give the 90’s MISFITS Another Chance!

It’s Halloween….TOMORROW! The time of the year has never been more ripe than now to be cranking one of my favorite bands of all time..The Misfits! Yes I’ve been playing the shit out of the classic Danzig Fronted Misfits albums but I’m also giving the 1990’s Michale Graves version of the band some play as well!

I get it, I get it, The Misfits will always really be with Glenn at the forefront but come one, the 90’s Misfits deserve some cred too! They released two super fun horror punk albums “American Psycho” and “Famous Monsters”, with a compilation called Cuts from the Crypt as well.

Ok so they aren’t lyrically as vicious or evil as the Glenn stuff but who can resist cheezy songs about 80’s flicks like Pumpkinhead, Poltergiest and weird obscure 80’s horror like Boxing Helena and Hell night from 1981?

Hell they even appeared in the George Romero movie “Bruiser” (ok yeah so that movie kinda sucked but still!) and also had Romero direct their video for the song “Scream” and also had the legendary Basil Gogos of Famous Monsters magazine & Pushead do their cover art!

Anyway 2015 marks 20 years since this version of the band formed way back in 1995. I saw them in 1997 and well as much as I kinda wanted to diss them they were pretty great live…

So bitch all you want  about The current version of The Misfits fronted by Jerry Only but how about this year giving the classic Misfits the usual play and also adding the 90’s ‘Fits to the mix! It’s been 20 years now..get over it people! Crank this shit!

The Benefits of Gusbandry: Gay or Not Gay?!!

The Benefits of Gusbandry dropped it’s second episode yesterday online and the plot begins to thicken quite a bit! I really enjoyed the first episode which I was lucky enough to catch at the Portland Film Festival in September and I’ve been waiting for the second to really kickstart the whole “gusband” thing into gear. A “gusband” fyi is a gay husband but you won’t find much in the way of romance in the second episode, at least involving the main character Jackie. It’s no secret that she’s clearly crushed out on the wrong dude.

Just when she thinks she’s finally found her Mr. Right we get to watch it all awkwardly come tumbling down. That’s not say it doesn’t happen without some laughs. Still, I’m already hoping that somewhere in this series Jackie’s “Mr. Right” will eventually pop up, though I fear for her the journey won’t be an easy one! This episode really sets up the premise of the series and by the end of it you’ll be wondering where it’ll go next or should I say just how far it will go. It’s playing out so far a bit like Will & Grace if it would’ve been aired in 2015 on HBO and that’s a damn good thing. I’ve got a feeling things are bound to get pretty wild & crazy along the way. I’m curious to see where the wind blows our two main characters and if for some reason neither of them find the love they’ve always hoped for, well at least they’ve got each other…

if you missed the first episode here it is:

Even better now you can watch the second one right after:

Halloween Horror Movie Pick: ‘Deathgasm’ Will Rock Your Socks Off!

Looking for a cool new Halloween Horror flick to watch this year and are all out of new ideas?! Well I’ve got a fun one for you, ‘Deathgasm’ will deliver the mayhem and then some as the perfect Halloween party flick this year. This new movie, straight out of New Zealand delivers the blood and guts in the same vein as Peter Jackson’s classic splatter flick ‘Dead Alive’. Yep what you’ll get here is a full on black metal gore fest brimming with comedy and heart. This one would play quite nicely next to the 1986 classic “Trick or Treat” as it’s quite similar actually in many ways. Which is always a good thing of course.

It’s the story of teenage metal head who’s mom goes crazy and he’s sent to live with his uncle in a small town. His new surrogate family thinks he’s a total freak and his meathead cousin has got in in for him big time. At school he’s picked on and develops a crush on his evil cousins preppy girlfriend. Totally down on his luck he finally meets a fellow metalhead and starts a metal band eventually leading them to playing an ancient song that awakens vicious demons that run rampant all over town. From here things get super crazy as the band must find a way to reverse the spell and send the pesky demons straight back to hell!

As you might guess this is no easy task and the band has to slaughter of fuck ton of demons in the process. There’s a ton of crazy gore, heads flying, bodies sliced in two, weaponized twenty sided dice, dildos and of course anal beads. Yeah you heard that correct. This is a party movie above and beyond being a gory ass horror flick and is really the perfect flick for a wild crowd at a Halloween party this year. The movie delivers some pretty excellent practical effects as well and doesn’t skimp on the laughs either. It’s really more of Comedy than anything else which might be my only real gripe with it.

I totally dig horror comedies but I think this one might have benefitted a bit more in playing it’s story a bit more heavy handed. Sometimes the modern horror comedies play a bit too heavily to keep the fans too in on the joke. However this is one of the stronger flicks of the genre I’ve seen recently.

It reminds me a bit of the awesome 2007 flick Jack Brooks Monster Slayer (another great choice of a movie for Halloween), especially a scene in Deathgasm that’s almost a total rip from Robert Englund’s amazing performance in ‘Jack Brooks’. Lastly any fans of true metal will likely dig the music and the references to many classic death, grindcore and black metal bands. So if you’re in the mood for the perfect movie to crowd around with your buddies and a bunch of weed and booze this Halloween make no mistake Deathgasm IS your flick!! 

Kick Don Bluth in the Butt and Kickstart The DRAGON’S LAIR Movie!!!

Yes! It’s such a pleasure to do a blog post that I really am totally hyped about these days! This morning I got wind of the brand spankin’ new Kickstarter page for Dragon’s Lair: The Movie and this is something I’ve always wanted to see since the 1980’s.

First let me state that Don Bluth was responsible for my favorite animated movie of all time, The Secret of Nimh, a movie from 1982 that still easily holds up today against the mass produced CG animated movies which have flooded the market. If you’ve never seen it you’re missing out big time. Anyway a year later in 1983 we got quite a surprise in the Arcades, when Dragon’s Lair was released-it was the first hand drawn animated video on the scene and it was a true wonder to behold. Yes the 1980’s were a wonderful era.

 

I know many people these days don’t even remember what a video game really arcade is, but back in the 80’s it was the place to be. We’d head off to the mall on a saturday afternoon and spend hours there playing video games and then maybe catch a movie afterwords. Ahh, yes, those were the days. I would spend hours watching my brother play Dragon’s Lair and besides it being a very difficult game it was, for me, just fun to watch the incredibly inventive action sequences & adventure unfold before my very eyes. Dragon’s Lair was total eye candy, I was never very good at it myself but I loved it.

So here we are in 2015 and (the now retired from animation) Don Bluth is being challenged by fans to make Dragon’s Lair into an old school style animated feature film via Kickstarter!! The good news is that Don Has officially accepted the invitation. Bluth started out working as an animator with Disney in 1971 having films like Robin Hood & The Rescuers under his belt, he later left and started his own animation company.

So fans we all need to support this venture, get a full on Don Bluth revival going on here, How amazing would it be to see a classic animated Dragon’s Lair feature movie? Who knows maybe if this happens we could get him to do a ‘Space Ace’ movie!!!

I’ve really been missing those classic hand drawn animated feature films, they had so much damn character, I think the world just might be a little better place if we could get this one made, check out the Kickstarter Page right HERE-let’s head into the Dragon’s Lair again!!   

Comic Book Cover of the Week: The Ultimate Halloween Super Villain!

I just love those old Charles Vess “Web of Spider-man” comic book covers from the 1980’s! Here’s one of my favs featuring the Hobgoblin in all of his menacing glory. Him and The Green Goblin are the in my opinion the ultimate Halloween super villains, everything about them screams of Halloween. This incredibly cool and simple cover from 1985 is one of my all time favorites of The Hobgoblin. Pure perfection for the season at hand. I mean what screams of the creepy holiday more than pumpkin bombs?! Check this one out:

VHS Verdict: ‘The Kiss’ is Full of Campy Glamorous 80’s Horror!

I pulled out a pretty sweet VHS the other night called ‘The Kiss’ and it totally delivered the goods! This cool 1988 flick is not exactly what I’d call a great movie by any means but it definitely delivers the just right amount of inventive charming cheez to please any true fan of 80’s horror. I’d say this movie also gives us a genre I’d like to coin here as “glamour horror”. The movie follows a suburban family as they cope with the sudden and mysterious death of their mother. Soon on it’s clear some serious paranormal foul play is afoot as the flick opens with a bizarre scene on a train in the Belgian Congo set back in the 1960’s and involves you guessed it “a kiss” that seems to carry with it some sort of crazy ass occult voodoo charged curse. 

Well things get weird after the mom dies her gruesome death and we see her truly odd but totally glamourous cover girl sister burst onto the scene seemingly out of nowhere. The motherless daughter played by total 80’s babe Meredith Salenger, whom you may recognize as the object of affection in “Dream a Little Dream” immediately gets a bad feeling from her new Auntie played by Joanna Pacula (the classic 80’s model-babe), while her father seems to be pretty down right away with her basically moving in and THEN some!

Yeah from that point it become a bit of a erotic thriller for a moment as she seduces the Dad and starts stalking the daughter and her new cool guy boyfriend. This one really could’ve been edited down about 15 minutes to keep the story moving a little quicker but if you hang in there ’til the half way point things really start cookin’.

Yep this one gets pretty damn awesome, jam packed with ridiculous voodoo, a crazy ass demonic cat and some good solid 80’s gore. The third act of the film is where this one really delivers, the final showdown is pretty awesome and action packed. It’s a great suburban family battle against the glamour gal, a over the top ferocious puppet cat and the ridiculously awesome creature behind or should I say “inside” it all.

This is one of those cheezy gems that make me love collecting vhs tapes, the 80’s was a great era for horror and this one seems to have slipped under the radar for many-so seek this out and get ready for some campy fun that was meant to be a serious affair!

Cool Comic Debut: Paper Girls #1 Brings us an ‘Amblin’ Style 80’s Mystery!

I just finished ‘Paper Girls’ #1 by hotshot writer Brian K. Vaughan and it’s one of best debut issues I’ve read in a long time. What’s even better is at it’s $2.99 cover price it’s a double sized issue filled with a great little story just waiting to burst into a retro ‘Amblin’ style adventure set way back in 1988. Not only do we get an intriguing story here but also some great artwork by Cliff Chiang. We follow twelve year old Erin as she heads out onto the streets to do her paper route in wee hours of the A.M. after a extremely peculiar dream, involving apples, aliens, winged astronauts and classroom demons speaking what seems to be gibberish. I love the way the dream sequence is played out in the pages here, with a ton of strange symbolism, conversations that seemingly make no sense and some frightening creatures, it really feels like an actual dream which is quite nice.

The setting in the morning is the night after Halloween, so as Erin hits the streets with her sack of papers she encounters some neighborhood bullies still roaming. Luckily three other paper girls arrive on rad bmx bikes to the scene to her defense. From this point Erin decides to ride with the girls on her route and discovers that the three of them too had been jumped by some strange “people” dressed as ghosts who stole one of their walkie talkies.

I don’t want to spoil any of the story as there are some cool surprises that develop along the way. But what I will say is this has the perfect setting for a lost 80’s flick and puts some cool supernatural elements in the mix that leave you longing for issue #2. A super solid debut and just the kind of comic book story that I love even if for some reason we get a bit of prominent product placement by the way of Apple computers. Check this one out, this issue gives you more bang for your buck too as it’s twice the normal size. A great scheme to get people to drop their hard earned cash these days on a comic book!

‘The Final Girls’ Transports Us Back In Time to a 1980’s Supernatural Slasher Flick! !

Have you seen the full trailer for the upcoming horror comedy “The Final Girls”!! This one’s been on my radar for quite some time now and with Halloween around the corner I’m super pumped on some great new horror flicks! This one will be released October 9th! Tomorrow!!

Here’s the synopsis:

“When Max (Taissa Farmiga) and her friends reluctantly attend a tribute screening of an infamous ’80s slasher film that starred Max’s late mother (Malin Akerman), they are accidentally sucked into the silver screen. They soon realize they are trapped inside the cult classic movie and must team up with the fictional and ill-fated “Camp Bloodbath” counselors, including Max’s mom as the shy scream queen, to battle the film’s machete-wielding, masked killer. With the body count rising in scene after iconic scene, who will be THE FINAL GIRLS left standing and live to escape this film?”
 
This one looks like a damn good time bringing the characters back actually into a movies from the 80’s that they’ve seen many time before, however do they really have the skills to survive? I’m seeing a full on mother/daughter team up in the end hence the title “The Final Girls”. I’m a huge fan of 1980’s horror and most of the reviews out there say this one not only delivers the chills but also great comedy and some real heart. Sign me up I’ve been waiting  to see this one for a long time!! 
 
 
 

Comic Cover of the Week: When John Byrne Tried to Draw Every Marvel Character EVER!!

One of my favorite comic books of the 1980’s was “The Official Handbook of The Marvel Universe” (Deluxe Edition)! Yeah it wasn’t a real comic book per say but damn was it amazing! Back in 1985 all the way through 1988 Marvel released this 20 issue deluxe edition which featured EVERYTHING you could ever want to know about pretty much EVERY character in Marvel comics. This included their real names, specific powers, how much they could bench press, their history, their hometown, yeah I mean EVERYTHING. I spent hours and hours of my time reading these and brushing up on my favorite characters history. This must have taken some serious time to document as it listed the main life events of the heroes and villains that took place in the pages of the comic books. A complete history up until that point. This was a time when Marvel was truly an amazing company…

Each character was drawn by a different comic book artist and it included pictures of the characters in action taken from panels in the comics they’d appeared in. But my whole point here was to talk about the covers which the majority of them were drawn by my personal favorite John Byrne! The cool thing about the covers was that they could all be connected as one super duper long cover of the characters running. So Byrne pretty much tried to include all the characters from each alphabetical issue!! I’d love to see a video montage that follows each issue until it’s end! But until then I’ll include as many of these covers I can find right here! Check this out! 

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Somebody Take Me to “Marvel Universe Live”!

Maybe I’m out of the loop here but I recently discovered this whole Marvel Universe Live! thing by accident on Youtube! Anyway this is like a dream come true for the 10 year old me…..and… the current day me too it seems!

Well Marvel is all the rage these days with all of the movies still drawing absurd amounts of money so this here I guess isn’t  that much of a surprise I suppose. The whole Marvel Universe Live is like Ice Capades but jam packed with Marvel Comics characters both popular and rather obscure-minus the ice skates. This has become a touring show and this trailer was was recently released check this shit:

Looks pretty fly huh? Well check out this live footage of The Hulk looking pretty awesome & doing some serious battle! Now THIS is fun:

The whole thing follows a story loosely inspired by the movies but we get a bunch of villains as well as a more classic look of costumes ripped from the classic comic books!

                                  Wow they finally nailed a live action Green Goblin?! WTF?

Anyway call me crazy but this looks like damn good albeit totally ridiculously stupid time, so check your local listings because Marvel Universe Live is on tour now! It look s like it costs around 25 bucks. It hits my city, Portland, Oregon March 3-6th at the Moda Center!