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AWESOME-tober-fest 2014: Fangoria #67 – Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987)

Posted in Fangoria, Genres, Halloween, holiday, horror, magazine, monsters, movies, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2014, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, horror, magazine, magazines, movies on October 8, 2014 by Paxton

Today I’m going to show you one of the more “colorful” Fangoria covers. Check out Fangoria #67 featuring Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. I actually just watched Hellraiser for the first time this year. It was originally going to be one of my Fangoria Movie Fridays but I decided on another movie. It was definitely an interesting watch, especially because Pinhead doesn’t have as big a part in it than I expected.

As always, click to see it on Flickr, BIGGER.

Also in this issue, was a pretty gruesome picture gallery celebrating the release of Lightning Pictures’ underground gorefest hit, Street Trash. While I decided not to pick Hellraiser as one of my Fangoria Movie Fridays, I did pick Street Trash. And I’m going to review it on Friday.

So enjoy this gallery of crazy melting hobos.

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

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2014: Fangoria Scream Great #23 – Day of the Dead (1985)

Posted in Fangoria, Genres, horror, magazine, monsters, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, zombies with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2014, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazine, magazines, monsters, movies, zombies on October 7, 2014 by Paxton

Last week we saw the very first Fangoria Scream Greats pull out poster which featured the movie The Incredible Melting Man. Today let’s take a look at our next Fangoria Scream Greats Poster. It’s #23 featuring an image from George Romero’s Day of the Dead, the second sequel to his classic Night of the Living Dead.

This poster was from Fangoria #48 (1985).

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

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2014: Don Post Halloween 3 masks (1983)

Posted in Fangoria, Genres, Halloween, holiday, horror, magazine, movies, nostalgia, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2014, Fangoria, Halloween, magazines, movies, nostalgia on October 6, 2014 by Paxton

Welcome back to week 2 of AWESOME-tober-fest 2014. This month I’m celebrating the bloody best of Fangoria magazine.

Let’s start this week off with a mask ad. Ads for prop masks were not rare inside Fangoria. As a matter of fact, each issue had at least two or three ads for masks every month. By different companies. As a matter of fact I showed you a few Fangoria mask ads during last year’s AWESOME-tober-fest.

Here’s an awesome color ad for some Don Post masks. But not just any masks, they are the three Silver Shamrock masks from the infamous Halloween III: Season of the Witch. This ad was found in Fangoria #25 (1983).

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

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2014: Review of Rawhead Rex (1986)

Posted in Fangoria, Genres, horror, monsters, movies, nostalgia, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2014, Fangoria Movie Friday, Halloween, holiday, horror, movies, nostalgia, vintage on October 3, 2014 by Paxton

On Wednesday I showed you the cover to Fangoria #61 with a cover story on the movie Rawhead Rex. And I told you I’ve been fascinated with that movie since 8th grade. Yesterday I showed you the guts of that Rawhead Rex feature story (pun intended). Well, for my inaugral Fangoria Movie Friday I finally watched Rawhead Rex and now it’s time to see if it stands up to what I thought it was going to be.

As I’ve mentioned, Rawhead Rex was written by Clive Barker and released in 1986. Here’s the terrible and confusing poster for the movie.

What the hell is going on with that poster? Needless to say, that didn’t clear up anything for me about the nature of this movie before watching it. Horrible, horrible poster.

As background, I enjoy some of Clive Barker’s early stuff, but I’m not really a devotee. So his name alone on this movie isn’t really doing anything for me. The movie will have to stand on its own. Unfortunately, bottom line, it’s not very good. Very low production value. Very low kitsch value. Not a lot to love. Sort of straight forward slasher monster movie. No subversiveness. Really just a by-the-numbers job. Very disappointing.

The story is about an ancient pagan fertility god, Rawhead Rex, who is awakened in a small town and starts going on a killing spree. That’s basically it. And I’m seriously giving more information than the movie gives you. There’s long stretches of no killing and long stretches of no boobs or nudity. So, as an 80s monster/slasher flick, this really kinda blows.

You want to know how bad this movie is? They actually put the below sentence in the plot synopsis on Wikipedia:

“On the road, Howard’s daughter needs to go to the bathroom, so Howard pulls over and lets her go by a tree.”

Someone wrote that. Specifically to be published online. For the movie’s plot description. Seriously. However, they had to put it in there because that scene is a crucial part of the movie. THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.

While I can’t really recommend it, let’s look at a few things worth mentioning.

RR_000 RR_001
Here’s the title card and a face shot of Rawhead Rex after he’s awoken from his thousand year slumber. The makeup/costume work on Rex is not good. You can’t tell by this small static picture on my blog, but it’s pretty bad. His design would be cool in a comic book, maybe, but on the screen, it’s less than stellar. And his big reveal during the awakening, which you see in the poster above, looks like complete dogsh*t.

RR_004
This is a stained glass window found in a church discovered early on by the main character played by David Dukes. At first glance he doesn’t find it odd that a church would have a giant red monster with huge fangs and bones and skulls all around him captured in a stained glass mural. I mean, I’d be like “HOLY SH*T! WHAT THE F**K IS THAT AND WHY IS IT ON YOUR WINDOW?!”

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A clear Easter Egg for fans of Angus Scrimm and the Phantasm movies. The first of which was released in 1979.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2014: Rampaging with Rawhead Rex (1987)

Yesterday I showed you the cover to Fangoria #61 with the feature on Clive Barker’s Rawhead Rex. I mentioned that I’d been fascinated with this article since 8th grade as well as the movie. I always wondered if it was any good. However, due to never actually finding the movie to rent anywhere, I have never watched it. That changes tomorrow. For Fangoria Movie Friday tomorrow I’m going to review the movie Rawhead Rex and see if it lives up to what I have been fantasizing about for the past 27 years (oh, and HOLY S**T IT’S BEEN 27 YEARS!?). So check back tomorrow for this historic review.

Today, I leave you with the Rawhead Rex feature article from Fangoria #61. It was called Rampaging with Rawhead Rex. You can click any of the images to make them BIGGER.

A few tidbits to note. This article mentions that Rawhead Rex was a cannibal king, but, in actuality, he’s supposed to be an ancient fertility god who also happens to be a cannibal. I think some of the fertility stuff was cut out of the movie for obvious reasons. I think I even read somewhere that Rex was supposed to look like a giant anamorphic penis. That would have been an interesting movie.

Also, it seems the studio as well as the director, George Pavlou, had very high hopes for this movie. The director starts talking about incorporating ancient Gaelic texts into the story and character driven horror as well as pulling back on gore in a Hitchcockian way of upping the suspense. That’s a lot of big talk. We’ll see tomorrow if that pays off.