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:
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!
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!
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!!
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!
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!
We’ve all heard the rumor mill this week about all things Star Wars all the damn time 24/7. To be completely honest I’m trying to avoid as much of all that as I possibly can-I would really like to see Episode 7 without knowing the whole damn plot and every one of it’s secrets ahead of time! Remember when you used to see a movie and it was a total surprise? Now days every website is trying cash in on spoilers & rumors on our favorite movies. However when I saw the rumor posted that Hayden Christensen is in training to return as Darth Vader in Episode 8 I couldn’t resist.
I’m really hoping that this is just one big fat lie. Not because I dislike the prequels (which I totally do) but I really think it’s time to let go of good ol’ Lord Vader. Yeah he was an amazing villain, one of the best, most iconic of all time. But let’s face it his story has been told and his demise was perfect, bringing him back from the dead would only diminish how important his role was in the entire saga!!
It’s a “do it merely to cash in” move that puts pleasing the fans above a compelling story. Let’s face it too, Darth Vader IS dead! We even saw George Lucas replace Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Chistensen’s version of “ghost” Anakin back in his “improved” version of Return of the Jedi.
I’m also totally ok with bringing back Actors like Ewan Mcgregor to play Obi-Wan Kenobi in spin-off flicks. So no I’m not just prequel hatin’! Let’s move forward with Star Wars, keep little bits of the old but we really are fully capable of having a new villain again who’s just as potent as Darth Vader! I mean I’d like Hayden to get one more chance to really redeem himself in the role – But what do you think? You want to see Darth Vader back from the dead in the flesh? Could they do it tastefully?
There’s been a lot of talk lately about another rebooted Nightmare on Elm Street flick getting ready to be made, hell we’ve even had Robert Englund telling us he thinks it’s going to be a “Dream Warriors” remake. Well you know how I feel about it, just get Robert Englund back as Freddy dammit! What’s the problem Hollywood are you all braindead?!
Anyway thinking about good ol’ Fred got me thinking about the old 1980’s and how when you got bored on a Saturday night you always had the option of giving the dream demon himself a call on the telephone! Yep that was thing back then call up Freddy and have him tell you some scary ass stories! Of course I never actually called, but I always wanted to!! So I checked on Youtube and sure as shit there were the commercials! 1-900-909-FRED! Yeah he really was always there for us teens back then!!
Oh yeah and in the 1980’s Freddy even appeared on Dramarama records! Whatta guy!
We got word today that Hugh Jackman suggested Tom Hardy take over as Wolverine when he exits after his final appearance as the character in the upcoming movie set to be released in 2017. This sounds like a decent enough idea to me but isn’t the real reason Jackman is quitting the role is because of his age? Jackman is now 46 years old and Hardy is 38.
If you think about it by the time they actually get around to rebooting the character it will likely be 2018, Hardy will already be 41 years old. So while it seems like a good idea it would’t be long before Hardy is also an “Old Man Logan” himself. I do agree with Hugh, Hardy is an excellent choice and totally shined as the replacement for Mel Gibson (who I actually always though could have been a good Wolverine back in the 1980’s) in the ever so epic Mad Max Fury Road.
Plus if you ask me Hardy is STILL too tall! The comic book character is 5 foot 3 inches, isn’t it about time we get a short dude to play Wolverine? So who though could fill the shoes? A younger shorter Wolverine?
My vote here (as far as more mainstream actors goes) is cast for Kit Harrington who’s most famous for his role of Jon Snow on Game of Thrones. Yep Kit would be the perfect Wolverine, he’s ten years younger than Hardy and could fill the role for much longer if needed. He’s also not a tall guy either he’s 6 inches shorter than Hugh (but still a whoppin’ 5 inches taller than the comic book counterpart) and as it stands he already looks the part! He’s a great actor as well and would be more than capable of capturing the grit of Wolverine.
I really can’t think of anyone else in Hollywood that’d be a better choice. You never know though they could find another unknown to take the role, Jackman back in 2000 was totally new on the scene. Who do you think should be cast as the iconic character?
One thing i love is an old vintage commercial! Here today we’ve got one from the 1960’s for Chips Ahoy cookies that features the original superhero Cookie Man in all of his glory! I love that he protects cookies from all the evil weird ass puppet monsters of the world! Those monsters are truly things of nightmares!! Damn! Check it!
Make a move bub!
Universal Dork 