Marrieds Jonathan and Addie Dade (respectively, Kiss of the Damned‘s Milo Ventimiglia and Bullet to the Head‘s Sarah Shahi) know this, yet answer the door anyway. There stands a young woman in distress (Sara Paxton, The Innkeepers) who says her car broke down and now is being pursued by men in gas masks. It’s a whale […]
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Posted inArts & Culture
Snuff
To make a long story short, in 1971, the notorious New York husband-and-wife team of Michael and Roberta Findlay (responsible for such underground cult items as the Touch of Her Flesh trilogy) made a movie titled The Slaughter in Argentina. It was deemed unreleasable until half a decade later, when some enterprising producer made it […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Nightmare Honeymoon
Dack Rambo (TV’s Dallas) and then-newcomer Rebecca Dianna Smith play David and Jill. He’s been home three days after a two-year stint in ‘Nam; she’s such a Southern belle, all she lacks is a hand fan. The film opens at their outdoor wedding reception, which they surreptitiously ditch in order to get down to bedroom […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Cultish comedy
The film, about a goofy slacker who starts his own indie television station, should have been just another cultural oddity, but Hollywood completely underestimated the collective power of Yankovic’s fans. Twenty-five years later, UHF is more popular than ever, continuing to make generations of geeky kids and their even geekier parents laugh uncontrollably with its […]
Posted inMusic
Come closer
When you are having this much fun, who needs words? That must have been the thought process behind And So I Watch You from Afar, the instrumental rock act from Belfast in Northern Ireland. Armed with cheeky ’80s metal hooks sandwiched between spacious post-rock pillars, the four-piece outfit sounds like Dan Deacon covering Explosions in […]
Posted inMusic
Bread + butter
Yet, for the last several years, the medium has been thriving on the Internet. And LAMAR+NIK — two twenty-somethings from Oklahoma City — are arguably the scene’s fastest rising talents. “I feel like there are two different types of filmmakers: people who want to make artistic stuff and people who want to make money,” Jesse […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fright Night 2: New Blood
Charley (the unappealing Will Payne) and his pal Evil Ed (the even more unappealing Chris Waller) take a class trip to Romania, where low budgets for such sequels go far. Says Charley will all the enthusiasm he can muster, “So … Romania, huh?,” and viewers may agree. But then our show’s vampire, college professor Gerri […]
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Sex Kittens Go to College
1. The character with the silly name of Woo Woo Grabowski? He’s played by the actor with the silly name of Woo Woo Grabowski. 2. Not only has Warner Archive rescued this kooky comedy from nowheresville, but brings us the “extended international version.” That means boobs. Once Orson Welles’ producer, Albert Zugsmith ditched prestige to […]
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Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th
You read correctly. Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th runs for a butt-punishing 400 minutes, which signals two things: 1. It’s not required to be consumed in one sitting. 2. It’s not for the casual Friday the 13th fan. Based on Peter Bracke’s 2006 book of the same name — as indispensable as it […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Corruption
One of the first I added to my list was 1968’s Corruption, a mad, mod thriller starring Hammer horror icon — and later Star Wars‘ Grand Moff Tarkin — Peter Cushing. As luck would have it, Grindhouse Releasing has made my search nonexistent with a Blu-ray/DVD combo that marks its North American video debut. Another […]