Howl of the Nightmare!

Still on Blogger Vacation™ for a least another week or two-- trying to wrap up our MUSIC VIDEO, our NEW RECORDING, and get prepped for our second gig with KID CONGO POWERS! All very exciting things, and all things which, combined with the screenplay, are keeping my free time completely OVERBOOKED.

For now, please enjoy this awesome monster we made this summer. My daughter wrote it AND stars in it--I like to think she has a real future as a multi-media personality ahead of her (maybe as a late night horror host?)... Ladies and germs, I'm proud to present HOWL OF THE NIGHTMARE!!!!

Tough On Hippies

Hey, remember that time our cat ran for mayor?

Also:

I finally tracked down a decent-looking copy of HUMAN HIGHWAY-- can't wait to watch it again! I haven't seen it since high school, when a particularly deranged friend of mine screened his dad's bootleg VHS tape for me.

The top review on Amazon pretty much sums it up: "I like acid, devo, and rock n'roll. I like this movie. That is all."

Goodbye, Year of Death ™

My own personal memorial reel for the year:










Obviously I'm leaving out something good, but these were the ones at the forefront of my mind, and obviously the ones that affected me most.

A Little Something to Tide Me Over

I would like to post some images form these old issues of CONFIDENTIAL and SUPPRESSED magazines that I found over the weekend, but for various reasons I don't have access to a scanner right now, so those beauties will have to wait.

In the meantime, enjoy a little BEAT GIRL:

Teen-Age Strangler (1964)

Your movie for the weekend:

Opening Night!

I can't believe I missed an entire week without posting a single update. I feel like the victim of UFO-influenced time loss or something. I'm surprised the universe didn't fold in on itself during my absence. Perhaps it did, and what I'm experiencing now is no longer reality, but the overlap of dimensional sheaves as our existence is wadded together like a ball of paper... What an exciting time to be alive!

Anyhoo, last week was entirely consumed by the movie-- wrapping up the final edit, polishing up the press releases, getting some last-minute handbills cast around town-- which all pad off on opening night, which began with a three hundred-deep line pouring into the theater and ended with a standing ovation from the balcony. Hot stuff! Hot stuff!





EDIT: There's a whole slew of new images from the premiere--including the drunken fiesta that happened afterward-- up to browse HERE.

I tried to get pictures of scenes projected across the BIG SCREEN-- while I was to drunk to capably adjust our camera in the dark, I think the end result is something more interesting:






From what I remember, a good time was had by all (although the theater attendants had a difficult time removing us from the theater in our drunken stupor-- we wanted to stay and watch it all night!), and I can't wait to do it again in another 2-3 years when we've finished the next movie.

The Diabolical Dr. Z (1966)

Your movie for the weekend:

It Starts With Murder!

I've never really been a fan of sports. I directly attribute this to being beaten up by jocks through most of my formative years. Watching those same jocks get the academic glad-hand for possessing basic ball-handling abilities didn't help my attitude much, either. It's the classic high school story: musclebound boneheads get all of the privilege, while trod-upon weaklings become angst-ridden delinquents. Get John Hughes on the Ouija Board, please.

Anyhoo, as an adult my attitude hasn't changed much. Many of my former "punk rock" friends have grown into rabid sports buffs-- a side effect of living in one of the most successful college sports towns on the map, I guess. That situation tends to have the opposite effect on me. Whenever Game Day approaches our fair city, I find myself enveloped by a cloudlike misery that hovers over me for most of my waking hours. Everything in town grinds to a halt so that we may cater to this infestation of rage-addicted knuckleheads and their tailgating, half-witted followers. And what do we get in return? A sharp spike in date rapes, bar brawls, and hit-and-run accidents. Fratboys puking in our yards. Sounds like a fair trade to me.

Organized sports seem to encourage a specific kind of passive participation, one that is encouraged on a mass scale. I somehow doubt that the average sports fan would rush out and join an athletic team-- their swollen livers and hardened arteries would probably prohibit this, anyway-- and why should they, when the most active way to support your favorite team involves sitting around a keg with your buddies, stuffing hot wings in your face, and shrieking at a plasma screen TV?

"Now, Mr. Manilow," you may say, "For someone who spends much of their time sitting around and watching movies, you sure seem to sling a lot of mud at the televised sports industry." As true as that may be, there is a key flaw in your reasoning: televised sports encourage most people to sit on their asses. Watching movies encourages me to go out and be creative.

Which brings me to THIS (a point that has absolutely nothing to do with my previous rant):




Our first movie-- three years in the making!-- is going to screen locally at Liberty Hall!

Shot for the low, low price of 500 bucks (700 if you count the price of the camcorder), IT STARTS WITH MURDER is much less than low-budget-- it's ZERO BUDGET. The image and sound quality are a little rough-- we had no money for film or boom mic, so we shot on a handheld DV camera and beefed up the audio in post-- but I really think that's part of the charm. This is an UNDERGROUND movie, after all-- anyone who shows up expecting Michael Bay-style production is going to leave sorely disappointed.

Here's a trailer-- NSFW, by any stretch of the imagination:



Thanks for tuning in. You may now continue with the rest of your day-- enriched, I hope, by what you have just seen here.

It Starts With Murder!

The Monster and The Stripper, aka The Exotic Ones (1968)

Your movie for the weekend:

A Whistle, A Wink, and a Smile....

Details from an old grindhouse poster book I picked up for a quarter at Lost Eras in Chicago:

Introductions all around.

This is ME:



This is my GIRLFRIEND:



This is OUR BAND:



These are our movies:




This is my DAUGHTER:



These are OUR CATS:



This is MY BIKE:





Welcome to the inside of my brain.