Because, as I'm sure you're all aware, I am a highly intellectual being...I decided the perfect book to feature this week just in time for the approaching Halloween season had to be 'Monster Madness', a grizzly grimoire of garish gags. Alliteration aside, it's a collection of cute (and often very cheesy) monster jokes, riddles, and tongue twisters.
As a theatre graduate, the tongue twisters were easily mastered, but I still can't withhold the immense groans most of these gems produce, jokes such as 'What steps do you take when you're chased by a giant? Giant Steps.' Not to mention, 'What do ghouls wear on their feet in the rain? Ghoul-ashes!'...and that's why I think this is the perfect little collection to feature this week for children and parents alike. If you can't drive the trick-or-treaters away with the promise of treats...you might as well trick them into listening to these.
We promised you guys we'd deliver an episode about the Twilight Zone, we just didn't realize it might take more than one to cover the topic. So here's the first of what will likely be multiple re-visits to one of the best tv shows...ever. The Twilight Zone.
If you guys couldn't tell, I'm participating in the October posting event again this year. As Halloween begins to infiltrate our marketplaces, I decided this was a better time than any to give you a little taste of this year's pin-up post. Here's Dusty Anderson, one of the prettiest wicked witches around.
Discussing the most evil of all figures in cinematic/artistic/written history, the dark lord himself. Also a bit of Shyamalan rambling, but not too much.
This episode is archived on youtube! Watch/listen below:
The video featured in this week's post is of course the Angelheart trailer as well as a -remastered- copy of the old Fantasia sequence.
Madeliene, Julianne, and Chris are joined together for yet another episode. In this featured recording, we discuss a few video games. Outlast, Resident Evil, and Vampire Night. We also mention a few others and chat a bit.
This week's episode can be found on youtube! Here's the video:
Launching into our third episode, I decided I'd attach the video the upcoming Puppetmasters video game to this post for reference. As a gentle reminder, you can also subscribe to the podcast on Itunes by just doing a search for 'Hallow-Holics Anonymous Podcast'.
We finish up this issue with two tales of vengeance and an unheeded warning. The first story was...well they're all fairly predictable. I'm only left wondering where on earth in the US you could find an acre of property with plants as exotic as the ones in this comic?
I really liked the last story, the design for the burnt bird woman was particularly interesting, I think...if a bit sad. Reminds me of a noir fairy tale.
A year after the success of Dracula, Bela Lugosi found himself onscreen in another (though much more independent) feature which featured his piercing gaze at it's best. Oh sure. White Zombie is not an excellent example of acting, most of it is your typical 30s low-budget ham. But...there's a certain charm in this film.
One thing I particularly like is that the heroine shares my name, but a more relevant aspect I'd like to mention is her acting in particular once she becomes zombified. The lead actress, Madge Bellamy, was a relatively popular silent film actress. So her over-the-top gesticulating and posing is really a relic of the previous decade, and it's very clear in this movie how drastic the transition between talkie acting and silent acting was becoming. Now I'm not criticizing the style at all, I actually love it...in a silent movie. Somehow when she's this angelic zombie, though, it really works. I suppose it helps that she doesn't say anything else until the very end of the picture. She's rather like the ghost of the 20s, stepping through into the 30s to give a final good-bye to the old style in exchange for the new.
If you are a fan of zombie pictures, this is an essential...because it's one of (if not) the first zombie movies. Not your Fulci-style corpses, but the old-fashioned voodoo kind. People seemingly dead, put into mental slavery through means of a devilish concoction and...if the lobby card up there isn't a slight hint...the gaze (and I guess hands) of their zombie master.
The combination of some silent film style acting, the music, and the constant close-ups when Lugosi uses his powers...reminds me of ballet. It's really quite beautiful.
Lugosi is great in this, in the way only he could have been, dastardly and disturbing. There's no doubt the man had massive screen presence. Some of the pacing is slow, which is to be expected, but I think anyone who really loves the horror genre really needs to devote some time to White Zombie, if not from an entertainment perspective alone, then at least for the historical aspects.
