10/29/2007: "AMC MONSTER FEST"

Hi All,

Is anyone else as glued to this as I am? The American Movie channel---no. 47 in my cable pack, right up at the high end of the cable universe---has been running horror movies all day the past 8 days. It goes on until Halloween. Just fantastic stuff. Usually my TV "homepage" would be channel 25, the trusty ole Food Netwook. But until Halloween, AMC trumps it.

I guess why I'm liking it so much is it's such a nostalgia trip. As some of you know I started out writing horror (I don't know why I've taken to saying "started out"; certainly I plan to write horror again; just no ideas for the past little while), and watching AMC I'm seeing some of the flicks that made me want to start writing in the first place. THE FURY, all the HALLOWEENS, Hitchcock stuff, CHILDREN OF THE CORN (He wants you too, Malachi ... he wants you, too.) There's THE EXORCIST, which is killer---but the great thing is, it's followed up with THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, which is an utter piece of crap but still, I was into it for reasons I can't quite pinpoint. EXORCIST III, on the other hand, is remarkable for a handful of truly freaky scenes including this one ... wait for it ... waaaaaaaaaiiit ...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH8ynu0jRvY

Oh, yeah! I tried to find the second scene, the one where the old lady's crawling around on the hospital ceiling wile George C Scott looks around all baffled in his skinny tie, but no dice. Oh, shit! I spoke too soon:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjFHigs7Sl8

You creepy old broad! Get down off the ceiling! You'll break your hip and that ain't gonna be covered under MedicAid.

Hey, why don't I turn this into a YouTube link-o-rama? See how many scenes I can find from the flicks I've been watching lately. Let's start with the Hellraisers. I had no clue they've made 8 of those! But listen, one and two were awesome. II especially freaked the hell out of me when I was 10 or whenever it was I saw it. Which, by the way, got me thinking: is there a more talented artist---and I mean just overall talented, across the range of the artistic scale---than Clive Barker? He's a friggin' fantastic writer, just unbelievable (if you haven't read him, try Everville to start, or the Books of Blood), plus he's an artist, a playwright, a children's book writer, a comic book writer, a director (he directed the first Hellraiser, plus the under-appreciated NightBreed; plus he wrote CANDYMAN, which was a freakout flick par excellence), he's a video game designer, he's made a toy line with Todd McFarlane, etc, etc. Just take a gander at his Wiki page and see all the stuff he's done and I mean, across the board in so many different disciplines. It's staggering:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Barker

Plus he created Pinhead, leader of the cenobites---well, hell, he created all the cenobites---who you'll recall from such scenes as this one, where Doug Bradley (who, along with Robert Englund as Freddy Kreuger, holds the cinematic record for most appearances by a single character in a film franchise; there've been lots of Michael Myers' and Jasons, yes, but the actors have changed):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61WrIuKaD7k

Egads! Gadzooks! Bru-tall! You couldn't look away, could you? Well, that's good---only a wuss would've looked away. That scene provided many a nightmare, and nightmares build character! Not as many nightmares as this scene, also from Hellraiser II: Hellbound (you can watch it all or fast-forward to the good bit, which comes at 4:58-5:24. Hey-yo!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RDiBjkne9I&NR=1

What, I'm sure the more sensitive of you are asking, are you only going to show clips of disgusting gory bloodlettings? Well, okay, one from the vaults:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFuBHx_n1mE

Not in all my days of prank calls could I ever have pulled one off like that. Okay, so, that should've appeased all the bleeding hearts. On with the gore. How about Creepshow? I forgot that Stephen King actually starred in one of the five original vignettes; I love Stephen King, think he's hugely talented and always love when he pops up in movies (the cemetery custodian in SLEEPWALKERS; Dr. Bangor, hyuk, hyuk, in THINNER, etc) but man, he's not really got it as a thespian. Then again, in Creepshow he plays a gormless farmer who ends up covered in voracious green fuzz, so it's not that big a deal he's not got great acting chops. Still, a lot of fun, that flick. You got Leslie Neilsen, Ted Danson, scream queen Adrienne Barbeau, a monster that looks like a gorilla on Ritalin and of course, the scene that anyone who's seen that movie will remember with skin-crawling keen-ness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRPDarzH0sk

Yeah, baby! You nutty old man! Thought you could keep the bugs out of your apartment? Fool! You fool!

What other good flicks? Oh, Peter Jackson's THE FRIGHTENERS. Some people don't know Jackson started out directing horror flicks; this one is sort of a middle-career piece; half-horror, half not. Memorable for the inclusion of Jeffrey Combs as the excitable paranormal investigator best known to fans of hard-core splatterpunk horror as Dr. Herbert West in Stuart Gordon's classic RE-ANIMATOR. Here's a classic scene from that classic movie. Do I need to tell you it's hideous?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP0Km-KT8pw

You go, Jeffrey Combs, with your psycho badass self! But THE FRIGHTENERS. Oh, screw THE FRIGHTENERS. I mean, no, it's a cool flick but if you know your gore cinema like I know my gore cinema (and certainly I've left many good ones off this blog) one of your faves has to be DEAD ALIVE by Peter Jackson. How can you go wrong with the story of a rabid sumatran rat monkey that infects a guy's crotchety mother, turning her and most of the town into horrible pus-oozing zombies, and includes one of the classic lines in all cinematic history, captured here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcMKJa1eknk

My whole career. If I write one line that good, my soul will depart my corporeal form without a regret.

I KICK ASS FOR THE LORD!

The final scene I will leave you with is also from DEAD ALIVE. For my money, one of the most hilariously over-the-top, grisly as hell and funny-fun scenes in all horror movie history. Not surprisingly, it's age restricted so if you're not signed up on Youtube, you'll need to in order to check this one out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl03m53RlX8

All of this is to say that, apart from Christmas, I'd say Halloween is easily my favorite time of the year. Check out AMC if you, like me, love a good horror flick this time of the year.

All best, Craig.