Tagged: george romero
3 MUST See 80s Halloween GEMS from ‘Tales From The Darkside’!
Ok it’s ON!! Halloween time viewing is in FULL effect here at U-Dork so naturally we’ve gotta get our groove on with some often forgotten gems of Halloween that are an absolute essential watch- Especially if you’re a big fan of eighties horror! One of my favorite shows of that era, the brilliant horror anthology TV series Tales from the Darkside!
This 4 season series contains 3 of my all time favorite Halloween horror stories & they’re so well done that if you put all of them together in a film anthology with a wrap-around plot line it’d make for probably one the best Halloween themed movies of the 1980s! So find these streaming this year or go do yourself a favor and buy the whole collection on dvd. Make sure though to bookmark these 3 this year and watch them all in a row.
First up ‘The Cutty Black Sow’ from Season 4 (1988).
This is easily gotta be one of the most terrifying episodes of of the series & also one of the strangest titles to boot. During Halloween a family is hit with the tragic death of a beloved grandmother. Just before she passes though she relays a cryptic warning to one of the children to beware of ‘the cutty black sow’ on All Hallows Eve, an evil demonic creature that seeks harm to the family and steal souls. This episode is filled with the sense of dread as a thick impending doom oozes through Halloween night air & the children wonder if their great grandmother’s warning is indeed one to be taken seriously. A creepy taut Halloween gem with a horrifying ending!
Second is ‘Halloween Candy’ from Season 2, (1985)
Again one of the best episodes of the series hands down and directed by make up wizard/horror icon Tom Savini! This tale features a grumpy old man who absolutely loathes the Halloween season and more-so those pesky trick or treaters. However this Halloween he gets WAY more than he bargained for when an evil troll comes to his door asking for Halloween candy! This little monster is an absolute delight to behold, It’s clear that Savini has his FX work cut out for him as it’s one of the coolest little troll/goblin like creatures to hit the big or small screen. It’s also an incredibly creepy Halloween themed slice of horror, with a bit of a moral lesson at it’s core. It’s best not to be an asshole on All Hallows Eve especially if you live alone on a dark street & a weird trick-or-treater shows up in the dead of night. Filled with tense atmosphere and crafted by an icon, it’s no wonder this episode is a such TREAT!
Lastly is the very 1st episode of the entire series ‘Trick-or-Treat’ (1984) and in my opinion probably the best of the entire series altogether.
Co-written by George Romero and directed by well known actor Bob Balaban who also directed the 1989 cult horror film ‘Parents’, they give us a truly wicked Halloween adventure! A greedy old scrooge like miser basically runs a small town where everyone seems to be suffering and in debt to him. Every Halloween he opens the doors to his house of horrors where he geefully sits at a control booth, triggering terrifying sounds, traps & puppeteering animatronic creatures rigged to scare small children. This isn’t done to entertain the kids, it’s however a challenge to the smalltown children to search for the debts of their parents. If they find them, their families are forgiven of their monetary burdens. The old codger takes way too much sadistic pleasure in terrorizing the kids which makes this episode truly grim and unforgettable. He loves Halloween but for all the wrong reasons. Luckily in a turn of events he himself is faced with true terror and all bets are off this Halloween! Filled with incredible iconic horror imagery, thrills, heart and some amazing practical effects work this is the absolute standout must see episode of the series! It would also be the perfect finale for a Halloween horror anthology-This year don’t sleep on these episodes they’re essential viewing every damn year for one of the greatest holidays of all time!!
Weird, Forgotten Thanksgiving Themed Viewing Straight from the 80s!
So if you’re like me you’re most likely quite sad that the Halloween season has finally ended. Now we head quickly towards Thanksgiving and very rarely do we see much in the way of kick ass Thanksgiving themed viewing that us huge Halloween horror fans can get behind! Don’t fret though because I’m on the case to solve this crisis! In this first installment I’ve got three recommendations that will make your Thanksgiving nice and weird and slightly creepy as well. Check these out to switch things up this year…
Amazing Stories (1986) ‘Thanksgiving’:
This is hands down one of my favorite shows from the 1980s. Steven Spielberg brought the star power and the budget to craft some of the coolest TV episodes of all time. This episode, takes place right around Thanksgiving, hence the title and features David Carradine and Kyra Sedgwick in a strange little tale that takes place in the barren, lonely desert. It involves a bizarre hole in the ground where it appears, far below, lives a strange race of beings who they accidentally begin communicating with. Carrdine though let’s his greedy tendencies get the best of him when he realizes these beings offer treasure for random items they lower below the surface on a rope to them. An intriguing and creepy episode that is a true delight to watch around the Thanksgiving season!
Tales From the Darkside (1986) ‘The Last Car’:
‘Tales from the Darkside’ is probably the best horror themed TV show of all time in my opinion. Luckily they produced an episode in Season 2 called ‘The Last Car’ that features a young woman on her way home from college to meet family for Thanksgiving late one night. One of the standout episodes of the second season this one oozes with dread as she rides rides a the last creepy train car into the night and meets all sorts of bizarre characters along the way. The true question though is will she make it back for that sumptuous turkey dinner? Slip this creepy atmospheric horror tale into rotation this year for the whole family!
The Incredible Hulk (1979) ‘Homecoming’:
Why not brighten things up a bit with an awesome episode of ‘The Incredible Hulk’ series from the late seventies? I just can’t get enough of the big green guy and had to add this this one to the festivities. Lou Ferrigno remains my favorite on screen Hulk and Bill Bixby my favorite Banner, who’d have thought huh? This episode we see Banner head back home for Thanksgiving to a small town where he ends up on a mission to save his family farm. Of course we know that there’s someone who’s gonna be fuckin’ with Banner. We’ll of course get to see the Green Goliath once again kick some ass on the holiday, you just can’t go wrong mixing The Incredible Hulk with Thanksgiving!!
That 1982 TOM SAVINI Hong Kong Horror Flick?!
I’m willing to bet that even if you’re a huge fan of fx legend Tom Savini that you likely never knew in 1982 he was flown to Hong-Kong to do special fx on an obscure horror comedy called ‘Til Death Do We Scare’! I never heard of it until a month ago & was completely intrigued. For good reason too, this is one wacky bizarre little mess of a damn movie!
Directed by Lau Kar-wing this essentially follows the story of a down on her luck widow whose husbands keep dying in mysterious & slightly stupid ways on their respective wedding days. For instance one dies by way of random bird flying directly into his freaking mouth at the altar!
Well, I guess, lucky for her the ghosts of her 3 dead stooge husbands all meet in the afterlife & team up vowing to watch over her. What we get here is a totally moronic misadventure, with her 3 former lovers for some reason trying to set her up with a wacky yet I’m assuming unintentionally creepy radio DJ dude. Yep he does his fair share of stalking the beautiful widow, with surprisingly positive results! Who knew stalking could be such a turn on?!
For some reason the three zany ghosts spend a lot of the time in the movie fucking with him, moving chairs around and making him physically unable to take off his pants when getting ready to get some sexy action! They also spend a little time scaring him thank god and that’s exactly where the film’s real star imo, Tom Savini finally enters the scene with those impressive 80s special effects and creepy makeup stylings everyone loves him so much for. In fact part of me kinda wondered, maybe Tim Burton watched this one, because some of these ghost’s wild scare antics combined with Savini’s make up effects bring to mind his classic film Beetlejuice.
On second thought I’m pretty certain Burton never saw a peep of this one! The film kind of shifts gears in its 3rd act and involves our creepy lover boy along with his pathetic best buddy being exiled off to an extra dimensional island of the dead. There everything seems strangely to be made of paper mache(?), paper mache cars, paper mache walls, paper mache staircases, which are NEVER a good thing. But none the less a full on paper mâché nightmare!
So there the two of them (for some unknown reason), face off against the dead’s annoying overlord who’s followed by a gang of well dressed partying ghosts. The finale of the movie is where Savini clearly unloads his trunk of extra props from Creepshow! OOOOH YEAH! Where he helps bring to life a giant blue Chinese vampire and his horde of wicked zombies! I’m guessing Mr. Savini was working with a shoe string budget here, as the fx work is fun, it def does look a bit unfinished. I’m not sure if I was just too stoned to understand the plot correctly or if this thing was just a crazy giant mash up of weird lost in translation mayhem! By the time it was done I was so confused with what I’d seen, but at the same time completely satisfied. Sure I’d hoped Savini was working on a bonafide gem of a lost Hong Kong horror flick of the 1980’s that I could shout on the mountain tops to my fellow cinefiles! Instead I just relished in all the fun Tom Savini must have had while filming this ridiculous mess in 1980’s Hong Kong….
Six Underrated Bad Ass Slasher Flicks You Need to See This Halloween!
So you’ve seen all the ‘Friday The 13th’ movies, every installment of the ‘Halloween’ franchise, Seen all four ‘Scream’ films and all of the Child’s Play/Chucky flicks-What the hell’s next? Well don’t fret because there are some awesome lesser known slasher flicks you may’ve never heard of that you’ve gotta check out this Halloween. Let’s face it too, as far as slasher movies go, there are A LOT of terribly shitty ones you really don’t want to waste your time watching! I’ll save you the boredom of trudging through a bad 80’s slasher movie. If you’re looking for quality, here are 6 awesome ones you probably haven’t checked out yet, just in time for Halloween!!
1.Strange Behavior 1981 (AKA: Dead Kids)
This cool Aussie horror movie is definitely NOT your average slasher fare, which is all the more reason to check out this gem. 1981 hailed as the golden years of the slasher hurled a ton of forgettable genre movies in our direction but ‘Strange Behavior’ in my opinion remains one that’s got a lot more going for it than what appears on it surface initially. This campy mystery mixes the slasher with elements of sci-fi and 1950’s horror. It’s also got one of the most incredible teen party dance scenes in movie history! Dig it!
2. The Prowler (1981)
Worth it alone for the special fx work of master Tom Savini, The Prowler is a ton of fun and also has a cool mystery within it’s gory plot. It even features a memorable slasher dressed head to toe in WWII army fatigues that’s hell bent on hunting down horny teens. This movie has a lot more character than most of it’s peers, has some awesome spooky settings as well as some excellent moments of extreme tension! The Prowler is top notch when it comes to classy ass slasher movies.
3. Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
You see a trend here? 1981 everyone was competing to make the coolest slasher movie and ‘Happy Birthday To Me’ is considered by many to be one of the best the genre had to offer. This one’s beautifully filmed, filled with cool special fx and even stars Melissa Sue Anderson (Mary Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie) in the movie’s lead role! For it’s rather long run time (1 hour & 51 minutes) it never becomes dull and one of the reasons this one’s so damn charming is because of the incredibly ridiculous plot twists throughout that are played totally straight and serious- Scooby Doo and his gang would feel right at home in this one!
4. The Burning (1981)
Dang! 1981 AGAIN!! Here’s hands down on of the best, most entertaining slasher movies of all time. Although feeling incredibly similar to ‘Friday the 13th’ at first, this one’s a total classic that deserves far more praise. It’s filled with awesome gory, truly inventive kills, a cool disfigured monster-y slasher & most interestingly stars Jason Alexander (Seinfeld’s George Costanza) in his first movie role! A ton of fun and filled with ridiculous 80’s nostalgia, The Burning is a great time.
5. Tourist Trap (1979)
This one’s an interesting one for sure, for a PG rated movie it sure packs a weird creepy ass punch. It’ll make you develop a serious fear of mannequins, as a gang of traveling teenagers stops at a spooky roadside attraction that’s jam packed with em! To make matters worse there’s a masked slasher on the prowl who’s got telekinetic powers in which he uses to animate the freaky mannequins. Tourist Trap is filled with ultra trippy imagery and is a truly bizarre, utterly unique installment into the genre!
6. Popcorn (1991)
Enter the 1990’s!! Popcorn is a truly underrated gem of a flick that brings a disfigured psycho into the theater during a horror movie marathon. It’s filled with some neat-o plot twists, cool fx and and a unique story that twists in and out of the schlocky horror movies our onscreen characters are watching. It also stars Jill Schoelen, who’s a total 80’s horror movie cutie icon and legend Dee Wallace Stone for some extra added horror cred. Oddly the movie was shot in Jamaica which is why the people in it are always listening to reggae. Check this one out it’s got a lot of charm for an early 90’s slasher flick.
Comic Cover of the Week: DEADWORLD #1, When Zombies Were Punk as F#ck!
There was a time when zombies were fucking awesome & not like how they are “awesome” today. That time was way back in the 70’s & 80’s before everyone and their mom and dad were watching ‘The Walking Dead’. Today the zombie craze has brought us countless shitty zombie movies, comic books & merch but back in the 80’s all of the zombie mayhem was quite a bit more underground. I was watching Frank Henenlotter’s ‘Brain Damage’ last night with a group of people and noticed someone in the movie was reading ‘Deadworld’. I was surprised that no one in the group had ever even heard of the comic book. I’ve blogged several times in the past about the book which still remains my favorite zombie comic of all time (at least the first 12 issues or so). Deadworld is punk as fuck and featured some truly stunning undead art from the gore master Vincent Locke who’s done artwork for bands like Cannibal Corpse. The 1986 book featured a prominent villain simply referred to as ‘King Zombie’ and his gang of undead who’ve developed intelligence while still lusting for flesh. He was a total badass who cruised around on his motorcycle and terrorized a gang of teens who’s bus broke down on a desolate highway. The books a treasure trove of totally amazing, legit zombie tattoo designs by the way. There’s been a collection done pretty recently of all of the old issues and they even tried to reboot it a some years back. I suggest hunting those down, they’re a unique read and embody the dirty grit of grindhouse 80’s style zombie flick to perfection. This was the issue featured in ‘Brain Damage’ it remains today one of my favorite pieces of zombie art to date!
And of course here’s ‘King Zombie’…..
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!
George Romero Blows & So Does Peter Vincent!!
Ok here’s the deal. Last night I finally decided to give George Romero’s “Survival Of The Dead” a chance as it was just released on dvd. You hear that? I finally decided to give the NEW Romero Zombie flick a chance! Ten years ago saying that would have meant I was completely crazy as imagining a new zombie movie from him back then being released would have been a gift from god. I was less than impressed with his last two movie quite honestly and this one seals the deal for me for good. I just don’t give a shit about new Romero movies. I actually got more enjoyment from the latest Direct to dvd Kevin Costner horror movie!
I can tell you honestly I didn’t even finish the movie. I am putting my foot down and refusing to watch anymore zombie movies with shitty cg bood and gore. Especially one made by George. Believe me this one’s got cg gore galore-it’s effects look like they came straight out of the first Resident Evil game! Continue reading
The Walking Dead Officially Filming!
Hell yeah! The news on the street is that Frank Darbont is offically finally filming the first 6 epsiodes of The Walking Dead as I type this! The best comic book series out there is, I guarantee it, going to become the best tv series ever. They couldn’t have found a better director either as Darabont knows how to give the tension the tv series will need to become a masterpiece. The Mist is good proof of what he can do, I mean quite honestly the cgi used in that film was pretty damn pathetic yet the acting and direction was so well done it made me forget how fake everything looked.
I also read on at Bloody Disgusting that Darabont is basing alot of the zombie action on the original Night of the Living Dead. Continue reading
George Romero’s “Survival of the Dead” Trailer released…
The new trailer for George Romero’s new Zombie flick has just been released to the world today-the only question is does anyone really care anymore? I have to be honest the last couple Romero Dead flicks weren’t very good. Land of the Dead was a big let down and I really don’t know too many people who thought it was anything more than passable. Diary of the Dead? Well that one just plain sucked. It made really think that perhaps George was done with the Zombie Genre for good.
Well that was definately not the case as we now have “Survival of the Dead” Continue reading
The Crazies and the Descent return..
Here’s another remake (of course) of a classic George Romero movie called “The Crazies”. I have actually heard alot of good things about this one and the trailer looks pretty decent as well. I’ve been itching to see a new horror movie in theaters but to be honest now days they have too look pretty amazing for me to spend ten bones at the theater! This one looks like it could maybe be worth the money.
Universal Dork 