Movie Night

No Bad because this night is so good.

The best horror movie franchise villains of all time (meaning after 1968 [and no bullshit crap like Dracula]) are, in order:

1. Freddy Kruger
2. Jason Voorhees
3. Michael Myers
4. Leatherface
5. Pinhead
6. Chucky
7. Angus Scrimm
8. Jaws
9. Leprechaun
10. Dead, wet Japanese girls



We're going to see number 5 but, personally, my favorite cenobite is Chatterer:



The worst cenobite ever? CD from Hellraiser III, a former DJ that throws compact disks at people. Who'd think hell could run out of ideas?



And who'd think there would be a toy?

The Thing will be our fourth John Carpenter movie, a record for directors at (B)MN. It's also the second Kurt Russell/Carpenter pairing after Big Trouble in Little China. It's in the top five of best horror movies ever.

Hey!, check out an interview posted today of Jess "Bloody Moon" Franco, last week's horror director legend over at the AV Club.

Bad Movie Night

If there's one person who's legendary for making bad horror movies, it's Ed Wood. And it can only help your enjoyment of Plan 9 if you watch Tim Burton's Ed Wood. In case you haven't seen it here are some things you should know:

-The movie was funded by Baptists, some of whom are in the movie.



-The Baptists objected to Tor Johnson having lines because he was unintelligible.





-The movie was written around 8 minutes of footage Bela Lugosi looking at a flower because...
-Lugosi died before production began so Ed Wood's wife's chiropractor takes his place, holding his arm over his face the whole time.

So that got me to wondering who the new Ed Wood is. If that's measured in amount of movies then the answer is Jess Franco (190). If it's measured in aliases:

Joan Almirall | Rosa M. Almirall | Rosa Maria Almirall | Rosa María Almirall | Clifford Brawn | Clifford Brown Jr. | Clifford Brown | Juan G. Cabral | Betty Carter | Candy Coster | Terry De Corsia | Rick Deconinck | Raymond Dubois | Chuck Evans | Toni Falt | Dennis Farnon | Jess Franck | J. Franco | Jesse Franco | Jess Franco | Jesús Franco | A.M. Frank | Adolf M. Frank | Anton Martin Frank | Jeff Frank | Jess Frank | Wolfgang Frank | Manfred Gregor | Jack Griffin | Robert Griffin | Lennie Hayden | Frank Hollman | Frank Hollmann | Frarik Hollmann | Rick Deconinck in Italy | B.F. Johnson | J.P. Johnson | James Lee Johnson | James P. Johnson | David J. Khune | David Khune | David Khunne II | D. Khunne Jr. | D. Khunne | David J. Khunne | David Khunne | David H. Klunne | David Kuhne | David Kunne | David Kühne | Lulu Laverne | Lulú Laverne | Franco Manera | J. Franck Manera | J. Frank Manera | Jesus Franco Manera | Jesús Manera | Jeff Manner | Roland Marceignac | A.L. Mariaux | A.L. Marioux | John O'Hara | Preston Quaid | P. Querut | Lowel Richmond | Dan L. Simon | Dan Simon | Dave Tough | Pablo Villa | Joan Vincent | Robert Zinnermann | Cole Polly in French version | James Gardner in French version

It's Jess Franco as well. Or should I say Lulu Laverne!

Bloody Moon (AKA Die Säge des Todes [translation: The Saw of Death]) is only our third Video Nasty. Video Nasties was a list of films deemed unsuitable for UK audiences. In fact, people in the UK wouldn't see the movies on that list uncut until 2001 or later. Unless they could find a bootleg. Ten of the 72 movies on the list still have not been seen uncut in that country. We've seen The Burning (Cropsy killing people with hedge trimmers) and Night of the Demon (Bigfoot killing people by pulling off their penises).

Bad Movie Night

Legends of Horror month continues with the sub-theme of the siege movie. That's when you're in a place and other people want in your place but you don't want them in your place so you try to keep them out of your place while they try to get into your place.

Assault on Precinct 13 is John Carpenter's second movie, following the sci-fi spoof Dark Star. Did you know John Carpenter scores most of his movies, including the iconic Halloween score? Look:



I mean listen.

I mentioned that watching a non-horror movie by a legend of horror may be a little like watching the George A. Romero romance There's Always Vanilla. Maybe we should watch that, judging by this video I found:



Speaking of, Romero executive produced his own remake of NotLD and had make-up artist Tom Savini direct. They're still coming to get Barbara, they still hole up in a farm house (zombies are excellent siegers). Ending's different though.

Bad Movie Night

Dario Argento in '85! ...made these two movies that are super Italian-y with their weird dubbing and faulty logic and beautiful murder set pieces.

Creepers is the shortened version of Phenomena for American audiences because they thought Americans were too stupid and impatient to sit through the long dialogue scenes. This is good for us because those scenes are boring and I don't understand them. It stars pre-Labyrinth Jennifer Connelly and post-Halloween Donald Pleasence.



I haven't seen Demons. I hear it's gory and there is nudity. Mario Bava's (Black Sabbath) son directed it just after the MST3K movie Devil Fish which is about a shark octopus hybrid and stars Massacre In Dinosaur Valley's Michael Sopkiw. I'm disappointed they didn't call it Shocktopus!

I checked my Netflix to make sure Demons was on the way and it got skipped even though it was available "Now". That hardly ever happens. So I decided to send the invite anyway and order the movie from Amazon. If it doesn't arrive in time we'll watch the movie that got shipped instead: Kung Fu Zombie.

Burgers

i'm hosting trivia, and the first question of the night was: "What united states forest service mascot's name and image is protected by federal law?"

and a team just came to complain that i didn't give them points for their answer, but they put "Smokey the Burger". i guess the guy was thinking about what he was gonna order, but i just think its really funny.

Don't Miss Lists

beHold!

Movies and TV

Violent City - Someone at the Madison Public Library loves Charles Bronson. They add a new movie of his every month. Anyway, it's Italian and the Italians don't do anything wrong except when choosing sides in a World War.

Disco Godfather - I mean, it's called Disco Godfather! I've been really interested in blaxploitation since finally seeing Coffy recently and finding out that it is awesome.



The Brothers Bloom - From the guy who did Brick, the best movie of whatever year that was.

Night of The Living Dead - The eight millionth copy of NotLD the library has gotten, this is called the "40th Anniversary Edition". I find it funny that someone else released a DVD under the same name but bragged it was a "2 disc Collectors Edition" but the reviews on Amazon say they just divided the movie over two discs. Of course, who would think that a quality copy of the movie would have a cover like this:



There's a lot of terrible design when it comes to DVD covers but come on.

Funny People - I was trepidatious when I heard the new Judd Apatow movie starred Adam Sandler. And even more so since it got mixed reviews but I have to try. Hey, wouldn't be funny if someone was looking for this movie and accidentally got Funny Games?



Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 - Documentaries about people who are passionate about stupid things are some of my favorites. Anyone see the crossword puzzle documentary?

Music

Feels by Animal Collective - Worst future best of the year album ever.

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix by Phoenix - Best future overrated album of the year.

That's confusing.

Post-nothing by Japandroids

Popular Songs by Yo La Tengo - Have you ever liked an album and thought, "yet another great record by these people" and therefore been underwhelmed?

Abbey Road by Beatles - This is the only re-mastered Beatles the library got. I want to hear how much better it sounds but I'd prefer the White Album.