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AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: My Boyfriend’s Back (1993)

Posted in Halloween, holiday with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, vintage, zombies on October 21, 2013 by Paxton

With all the mostly horror based zombie movies I’ve been covering this month, I thought I’d try a more comedy based zombie movie. I’ve never watched today’s movie. I remember it being released, but I never got around to watching it. Today’s little gem of a movie is My Boyfriend’s Back from 1993.

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The movie is about a boy named Johnny who is in love with a childhood friend from school named Missy. One night, Johnny intervenes in a robbery and takes a bullet to save Missy’s life. Johnny soon returns from the grave as a zombie so he can escort Missy to prom, but he discovers that he’s slowly disintegrating and must eat human flesh to survive long enough to actually go to the prom.

That’s the helicopter view of the plot. There’s also some not-so-subtle commentary on tolerance of people that are different. But let’s first look at some of the stars of the movie. Johnny and Missy, the main characters, are played by relative newcomers (at the time). Neither are really known for anything else. However, Missy’s douchebag boyfriend and his neanderthal buddy are both played by very well known actors.

Check out an impossibly young Matthew Fox and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

At this time, Matthew Fox had only appeared in the TV shows Wings and Freshman Dorm (with Teen Witch‘s Robin Lively). It would be another year before he’d land Party of Five. Hoffman had had small parts in Steve Martin’s Leap of Faith, Pacino’s Scent of a Woman and John Cusack’s Money for Nothing. It’s fun seeing these guys in very early roles. And don’t get me wrong, the roles are small. Especially Hoffman’s.

Another famous face that pops up, in essentially a cameo, is Matthew McConaughey. He’s in the theater scene taunting our hero Johnny.

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Before this, McConaughey had only appeared in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. This movie came out the same year as his breakout role in Dazed and Confused. These are the most famous actors squirreled away in this movie. Other notable appearances include Paul Dooley, Cloris Leachman, Austin Pendleton and Paxton Whitehead.

So, how’s the movie? Honestly, it’s not very good. A little too goofy. A little too dumb. The screenwriter, Dean Lorey, has written other stuff I liked like Major Payne and a bunch of the Season 4 Arrested Development episodes. But this movie is not good. It’s not garbage, but it’s not really good either, I’m sad to say. I thought this would be a fun diversion from the other mostly horror zombies I’ve been covering but it’s sadly not a good distraction.

One bright spot is that the movie was sort of book ended with some cool comic art. I’m not really sure what it had to do with the movie but the opening started off like you were reading a comic book called My Boyfriend’s Back.

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The artwork is done by Tony Gleeson who has worked with Neal Adams’ studio and is still actively drawing today. But again, I’m not really sure what it had to do with the story in the movie. It’s not like Johnny collected comics in any obvious way.

So, no, I don’t really recommend this and I don’t really have any plans to watch it ever again.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: The Plague of the Zombies (1966)

Posted in Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies, pop culture, zombies with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Halloween, Hammer Studios, holiday, monsters, pop culture, reviews, zombies on October 15, 2013 by Paxton

I am a huge fan of Hammer’s gothic horror movies so I try to incorporate them in every one of my AWESOME-tober-fest celebrations. This year, I get to include their one crack at a zombie movie, The Plague of the Zombies.

By the mid 60s, Hammer Studios had run out of Universal horror movies to remake, so they had to start coming up with their own stuff. Hammer decided to do a movie based on the voodoo concept of the zombie. They took inspiration from the 1932 Bela Lugosi movie, White Zombie. So, in 1966, two years before Romero’s genre defining Night of the Living Dead, Hammer released The Plague of the Zombies. Hammer’s zombies, like most zombie movies before it, were created through voodoo and black magic. They are the undead, but they aren’t quite the cannibalistic walking dead you’re familiar with. They are just, “the walking dead”, period. No brain/flesh eating whatsoever. They are animated by black magic to do the bidding of the witch who resurrected them.

Here are the title screens.

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The movie starts with with a voodoo ceremony. We see the grand wizard there in his royal getup. The scene is underscored by this rhythmic drumming that is being performed by actual natives. Presumably from Haiti, as we learn later that this is where our movie’s particular voodoo comes from. Check out that drummer. He is COMMITTED to this role. Get used to this Haitian drummer. He and his friends (there are about three of them) will show up throughout the movie.

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An elderly doctor summoned by one of his former students to a small town to help him diagnose and help stop a rash of people dying with odd symptoms. It seems people have been dying and no one can figure out why. Least of all the young doctor.

So the old doctor’s daughter convinces him to travel to the village to help and at the same time they visit an old friend of the daughter who happens to be married to the young doctor. Things and people seem strange in the village, which they discover is run mostly by a wealthy squire. The doctor and pupil investigate the deaths and uncover many crazy goings on all tied to the enigmatic squire.

That’s the basic setup. Two doctors investigating strange deaths in a small town. Not much else going on. The actors are fairly good, but none of the Hammer regulars are in attendance (ie Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, David Prowse).

Let’s take a look at a few screenshots from the movie.

Here are the good doctor and his former pupil during their investigations of the town.

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The only attractive woman in the movie is the young doctor’s wife who dies very early on.

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The squire in charge of the town looks an awful lot like Guy Pearce.

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Here’s another shot of the voodoo zombie ritual including the gussied up Grand Wizard. Oh, and there are those drummers again. And they are a-drummin’. Hammer Studios must have gotten a good deal on them.

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The young doctor’s wife turns out to be a victim of Guy Pearce up there. So she dramatically returns from the dead. I like the zombie makeup they use. Looks pretty creepy. Very similar to the Exorcist makeup (scratch that, reverse it. This movie came first).

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I read in a few places where the 1985 movie Return of the Living Dead claims to have originated the “zombie clawing itself out of the grave” shot. However, here in 1966, Hammer did it first.

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This was a neat movie. Cool to see this version of zombies two years before Romero released his classic. I like this movie, but I like most all of Hammer’s movies. I like their style and atmosphere. Just something about these Hammer movies are fun and interesting to watch. The colors are always vibrant and the sets are greatly designed. However, I’m not going to lie, the movie is a bit dull in the middle. They try to explain the Haiti and voodoo away in some fast exposition and there are other characters showing up that aren’t really explained. This caused a bit of confusion for me.

However, that aside, while this isn’t as engrossing as either of Hammer’s first Dracula or Frankenstein movies, it’s still pretty good.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: The Re-animator (1985)

Posted in 80s, Halloween, holiday, monsters, movies, pop culture, zombies with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Halloween, HP Lovecraft, monsters, movies, pop culture, reviews, zombies on October 11, 2013 by Paxton

Today I’m going to talk about the 1985 cult horror film classic, Re-animator starring Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton.

I have seen this movie previously. I watched it numerous times during my Fangoria “horror” phase. In the late 80s-early 90s I was a “gore hound”. I loved splatter films. Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead. All of them. Fangoria was my favorite magazine and it clued me in on many other awesome horror movies that were out for me to rent on the burgeoning VHS rental market. This was one I discovered in the pages of that awesome magazine.

Re-animator is based on the original Lovecraft short story, Herbert West – Reanimator. It’s not a direct adaptation, though. The movie takes many of the characters and some of the situations and re-imagines them a bit. While the Lovecraft story is sort of an homage to the original Shelley Frankenstein, the movie is a parody of both the Lovecraft and Shelley stories. It takes the elements of horror and the macabre from Lovecraft’s story and infuses much dark humor into the situations.

Some might think that this movie doesn’t fit into the traditional “zombie” genre. Herbert West is re-animating the dead, so his creations are, in effect, zombies. Though maybe not the mindless brain-eating zombies popularized by Night of the Living Dead and Return of the Living Dead. You could probably also throw this movie into the “mad scientist” genre.

The plot revolves around Herbert West. Newly arrived at the Miskatonic University medical school. He rents a room from Dan Cain, student and boyfriend to Megan, the daughter of the medical school dean. Things start going awry when Dan discovers that Herbert is performing medical experiments with a brand new serum he’s invented for bringing the dead back to life. Dan and Megan are drawn into Herbert’s deadly machinations as the bodies not only begin to fall, but continue to rise up again.

I can see the elements of Lovecraft’s story that were re-imagined as I watch this movie. Herbert constantly wanting fresher dead bodies, Dean Halsey becoming a zombie and being institutionalized and reanimating a head separate from the body. Now that I’ve read the story it’s cool to see this in the movie I know so well. The story in this movie covers roughly the first two parts of Lovecraft’s story.

As the movie started, I was sort of surprised at how blatantly the score rips off Herrmann’s Psycho score with the violins. And, for what is essentially a B-grade horror movie, the effects hold up fairly well. And while the acting is understandably, not great, the performance of Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West is nothing short of awesome. He plays the role with such earnest seriousness it makes the craziness all around him seem that much more crazy.

This film is sort of famous for the “head” scene later in the movie (you should know what I mean). And it’s every bit as awesomely weird and crazy as I remembered. So, yes, this film still holds up pretty well for me. I enjoyed watching it again. The film did well enough that it got like three sequels. I haven’t watched any of them.

However, the title of the first sequel should clue you into how much of a Frankenstein parody this series really is; Bride of Re-animator.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: Herbert West – Reanimator by HP Lovecraft (1922)

Posted in books, Halloween, movies, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Book Report, books, Halloween, holiday, HP Lovecraft, monsters, movies, pop culture, zombies on October 7, 2013 by Paxton

Today I’m going to look at a short story by one of horror’s most celebrated writers, HP Lovecraft. I’ve not really read any of his stuff before, so I thought this would be as good a chance as any to rectify the situation. I found a collection of his stories on Paperbackswap.com last year. That collection is called The Road to Madness: The Transition of HP Lovecraft.

The collection includes Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness which Guillermo Del Toro has been trying to set up as a film adaptation for many years. But the story I was actually looking for was Herbert West – Reanimator. It was this short story on which the classic 1985 horror film The Re-animator starring Jeffrey Combs is based.

I, for one, love that cheesy horror film from 1985. So, I thought that since I was doing zombies for my Halloween theme, I’d not only revisit the awesome Re-animator movie but I’d also read and review the original Lovecraft short story.

And now I’ve read it. To be honest, the story isn’t the best. It’s not terrible, it’s just sort of fast paced and feels more like an outline of a larger story. The short story is broken up into 4 parts. While reading, it really felt like Lovecraft was repeating himself across the four parts as he continually describes Herbert West’s looks (slight in build, glasses, blond hair) and the events of the previous part of the story. In action that only takes place in about 50 pages, it gets a little annoying. I assumed while reading that this must have been originally serialized in a magazine and Lovecraft was just “refreshing” the reader’s memory from last time. And after some research I see that I’m right. The story was originally published in four parts in the amateur magazine Home Brew in 1922.

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The story is very clearly based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. A brilliant but single-minded and unorthodox scientist, Herbert West, conducts arcane and taboo experiments on human bodies trying to reanimate dead tissue. The story is told by a narrator who has been Herbert West’s assistant/apprentice for many years. It starts off with experiments while the youths are in medical school and each part tells a different time in their lives when they begin their experiments anew. The story is told by the assistant from some unknown time in the future as he’s looking back on the events which led to Dr Herbert West’s disappearance.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the story, I guess. There is potential there and this story is much more serious in tone and dark in nature than the movie which infuses lots of humor into the story. I guess, for better or for worse, that I just know the Re-Animator movie so well that the original story just seems odd to me.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2013 starts tomorrow!

Posted in Halloween, holiday, Jones Soda, soda with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Halloween, holiday, Jones Soda, retail, snacks, soda on September 30, 2013 by Paxton

Well, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: ZOMBIES!! officially begins tomorrow. You can expect an article every weekday throughout the month of October. I’m excited for Halloween this year, I think I have a lot of good, fun articles for you so I hope you enjoy it. As you can see, I’ve already decorated for the season!

Today, as sort of a pre-game show, I thought I’d look at a few of the Halloween retail items I’ve found lurking in the local store. Some interesting stuff.

First and foremost, Jones has returned this year after an absence with more Halloween sodas. The flavors this year are Blood Orange, Red Licorice, Caramel Apple and Candy Corn. Two of these flavors I’ve already had in the past. If we look back at AWESOME-tober-fest 2008 I reviewed the Candy Corn flavor. I don’t think I liked it. I believe I said it tasted like “…spoiled maple syrup poured through a dirty sweat sock…” I tasted the Caramel Apple the year before in an article about oddly flavored sodas like Dr Brown’s Cel-Ray and Canfield’s Diet Chocolate Fudge. I believe I said that flavor tasted like “…sun tan lotion mixed with burnt maple syrup…” So, Jones isn’t necessarily hitting it out of the park with these so far. Blood Orange is a tangier orange flavored soda and red licorice is way too sweet and thick to be described as anything but “sugar coma inducing”. So while I love the effort and the packaging, Jones, I’m not loving the execution.

Big League Chew is one of my childhood favorites. And I love this Halloween themed packaging. Howlin’ Original and Gruesome Grape flavors aren’t new or formulated for the holiday, but I like the Halloweeny makeover. I believe there’s another one with a vampire/Dracula character, but I couldn’t find it.

Ghoul-Aid has been around since the 80s. Usually only offered in certain markets and usually only around Halloween. I have some of the original mixes but it seems the flavor is making a resurgence. You can find single packets on shelves again and now Kool-Aid Jammers have their own Scary Blackberry flavor. I was so excited to finally find this. I’ll be sucking these things down all month.