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AWESOME-tober-fest 2014 is coming!

Posted in Halloween, magazine, nostalgia, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2014, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazine, magazines, nostalgia on September 4, 2014 by Paxton

It’s the first week in September! Which means we are now officially 1 month from October 1st, which is the beginning of my annual AWESOME-tober-fest Halloween celebration. Needless to say I am hip deep in preparations for this year’s festivities.

Technically, this is my EIGHTH year doing a Halloween celebration as I started in 2007 with a few posts during the month of October. However, the daily AWESOME-tober-fest as you’ve come to know it wasn’t really born until 2009 when I did Frankenstein. Which means this is my sixth year of doing the full blown AWESOME-tober-fest celebration.

Since Frankenstein in 2009 I’ve covered; wolf men, vampires, movie maniacs and then zombies. My original plan was to do ghosts as my theme this year, but you know what, I thought it was high time I paid special attention to one thing that really had an effect on me in my high school days. And it crosses all these boundaries. This year I want to focus on Fangoria magazine.

I’ve used scans from old Fangoria magazines throughout each year of AWESOME-tober-fest, but this year I’m going to be doing an entire month of only Fangoria goodness featuring covers, articles, ads, pictures, Scream Greats movie posters, the Video Eye of Dr Cyclops and the Nightmare Library.

Video Eye of Dr Cyclops
Nightmare Library

I’ve got a stack of magazines and I’m going to comb through them all and bring you some of my favorite content from all of my favorite issues of horror’s greatest magazine.

And, as a bonus, every Friday in October is going to be Fangoria Movie Friday. So it’s not just all scanned magazine content I’m going to review old B-horror movies that were featured in 5 of my favorite issues of Fangoria. These won’t be the A-listers like a Nightmare on Elm Street or a Friday the 13th. I’m talking something more along the lines of The Reanimator (which I reviewed last year). I’m looking forward to those reviews because I’ve picked 5 movies (one for each Friday in October) that I’ve never seen before but have always wanted to watch. And the movie will definitely have been featured in some way in an issue of Fangoria. It should be a lot of fun.

So gird your loins, ladies and gents, and head back here on Oct 1 and, you know what, that’s a Wednesday, I’m making an executive decision, AWESOME-tober-fest 2014 will start two days earlier on Monday Sep 29. Holy crap, I’m starting AWESOME-tober-fest in September! I hope I don’t get cited by the Halloween police. The staff here at the blog just looked at me with murder in their eyes. Oh well, hopefully I’ll see you back here at the end of the month!

And, as always, I’ll be a part of the giant Countdown to Halloween celebration as well.

Check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more information on how you, too, can join in on the fun.

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Nerd Lunch Episode 112: Secret Santa Gunpoint Review

Posted in Christmas, holiday, movies, nostalgia, podcast, pop culture, Santa Claus with tags Christmas, holiday, movies, Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcasts, pop culture, Santa Claus, The Atomic Geeks on December 18, 2013 by Paxton

Welcome to our annual TAG Christmas crossover. CT, Jeeg and I are visited by The Atomic Geeks; Digio, Downs and Christian, for a friendly round of Gunpoint Reviews.

Secret Santa Gunpoint Review

For this week’s show, the Geeks assigned us a secret Christmas movie and we assigned them a secret Christmas movie. We both watched the movies and had to review them to each other on the show. We assigned the Geeks the Mexican holiday movie classic Santa Claus (1959-60) and they assigned us Santa Claus vs The Martians (1964). Much fun is had trying to describe the absolute lunacy of the movie plots to the other members of the show. Come on over a take a listen to some holiday hijinx courtesy of the TAG network.

The closing song in this episode was done by none other than former Atomic Geek Andrew Bloom!

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

Or listen to this train wreck online here.

Ninja Day 2013: Scene by Scene: That Transformers episode with the female robot ninja

Posted in cartoons, holiday, Ninja Day, ninjas, Transformers, TV shows with tags cartoons, Ninja Day, ninjas, pop culture, Transformers on December 5, 2013 by Paxton

Today is Ninja Day, my friends. I celebrate it every year. It’s one of my passions. So, in the spirit of the scene by scene movie reviews I did for Revenge of the Ninja and Ninja III: The Domination, today I’m going to do a scene by scene review of the Transformers episode “Enter the Nightbird”. You know, the one with the female robot ninja.

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This is Season 2, episode 6. Here are the opening titles and title card.

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In the beginning of the episode, we see the Autobots installing new sensor pads on their floors. Wheeljack tests them by saying, “Look how they react to metal”, he touches the surface and then the sensor pad lights up. So the Autobots are putting metal detecting sensor pads in their headquarters? METAL DETECTING SENSOR PADS IN A HEADQUARTERS FILLED WITH ROBOTS. That makes sense.

Nightbird 004
This is Dr Fujiyama, “the famous scientist” (all the explanation we are given). He calls the Autobots because he needs their help guarding his newest invention, an advanced form of robot. Optimus Prime is talking to Fujiyama on a standard two way video communicator you see in TV shows and cartoons all the time. However, they way it’s drawn, it looks like that’s a window and Fujiyama is in the next room.

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What is Fujiyama’s secret robot? Fujiyama introduces it as “The world’s first female ninja robot”. He actually says that. Not sure why the sex needs to be addressed since it is, you know, a f**king robot. And maybe in this universe a MALE ninja robot has already been created.

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This is the moment in the cartoon in which Optimus Prime awesomely says, “What is a ninja?” Prime, you’re adorable. Jazz actually explains it to him. Not one of the human characters.

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During the Q&A, this guy stands up and asks, “Why build a robot ninja, doctor?” He is then promptly escorted from the premises and beaten amongst the head and shoulders with heavy clubs.

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Here’s the full pan up of the ninja robot. Thought this was a cool shot. The robot is christened Nightbird. The Autobots are here to protect Nightbird from being stolen by the Decepticons. How the Decepticons know about this robot or why they would even care when their own robotics are light years ahead of anything even in this robot is never really explained. But it is a ninja, so, I can’t blame them for wanting it.

Continue reading →

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Happy Halloween!

Posted in Halloween, holiday, personal with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Halloween, holiday, monsters, zombies on October 31, 2013 by Paxton

This is it! Another year of AWESOME-tober-fest comes to a close. I’ve had a blast. Hope you guys have enjoyed it as well.

Well, it’s Halloween, so what did I dress up as? My costume is a Black Lantern version of myself.

And if you don’t know what a Black Lantern is, then you didn’t read my review of DC’s Blackest Night back in week two. Shame on you. Get back there and READ IT!

Hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween.

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

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: Four vintage Fangoria magazine ads

Posted in advertising, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazine, movies, music with tags advertising, AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazines, monsters, music, vintage, zombies on October 30, 2013 by Paxton

Fangoria had a lot of great merch that you could purchase directly through the magazine. We saw the masks/costumes collections yesterday. Now let’s take a look at some of the other awesome items you could buy through the pages of Fangoria.

One of the first places I’d usually go, and the place I usually lingered on after I’d read the magazine, is the two page back issue order form. Checking out previous issues and what movies were covered was amazing. I love that they included many of the covers as well. You can see in the lower right I filled out the order form back in the day. I was optimistically hoping my parents would let me send away for some of the issues. I checked off issues #50 and #55 in the form. Issue 50 was the issue featured in the picture on the right with Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). I always lusted after that issue and never got it. The other issue, #55, I’m less sure why I wanted. The cover pic is above the description with the Invaders from Mars remake on the cover and some first looks at Psycho III.

This ad showed up in Fangoria for many years. One of my favorites. I never wanted to own any of these shirts, I just liked the idea that they existed. I would never have been able to wear one of these shirts to school, so what was the point? Plus the shirts were $25 which was A LOT, even then. But the ad was very eye catching and fun. I like the guy in the luchador mask. WTF?!

Fangoria sold everything to make money within its pages. Here are some horror movie soundtracks for sale. Some of these I would imagine are pretty rare now. Some of these might possibly have been made custom. That Troll soundtrack couldn’t have sold too well. The Return of the Living Dead soundtrack is pretty great. But check out that list of eclectic movie soundtracks on the right. Teen Wolf? Warhol’s Dracula? The first Evil Dead? Transylvania 6-5000?! Wow.

The Gore Store was always a great stop in the magazine to see what cool books and props were being offered. This particular Gore Store is from 1987. Some cool film books about Night of the Living Dead and Stephen King. Also this page was a chance to order the annual Bloody Best of Fangoria issues. In this one you could order all the current 5 volumes of Bloody Best right there for $18 plus shipping. A little over $3 each. Not bad.