Bad news today. Feeling sort of horrible and exhausted and uncomprehending. The last being ridiculous because it’s not like we didn’t know this was coming. Especially after the recurrence of the cancer in January.

But, oh, that does not make it one bit easier. Not one bit.

*Thanks to a touch of tuesday weld for the link. Laura, I love your stuff.

Life is sort of like that.

We are dealing with the recurrence of Lanty’s lymphoma, just when we’d settled into a new “normal” of remission and every-other week chemo.  He’s okay for today.  We’re all okay for the moment.  But life can change in a blink, so for now, we’re just trying to keep the nachos down.

But look at how precious Lanty is:

We keep holding on to that.

Me?  I am so ready for a pie that’s bigger than a manhole cover. Oh yes. And then, I’m plunging my entire head in a jar of mince.

Bring it, Thanksgiving. Bring. It.

Let’s explore this uncomfortable phenomenon.

First, let’s take a moment to remember what the real rappers were doing in the late 80s.  Enjoy Eazy-E, and note that by no means is the song after the fold safe for work:

I mean, oh my god, Eazy slapped a couple samples of Get Smart in there.

So, from the sublime (or at least sublimely violent) to the ridiculously uncomfortable.  And I’m not just talking Vanilla Ice uncomfortable.  I’m talking Bedrock uncomfortable.

My first offering is a little number that has haunted me for about nineteen years.  Barney Rubble, DMC.

Barney’s got everything here: the out-sized, thick gold chain, a styling pair of Adidas, and an embarrassing number of rings on his white, white fingers. And speaking of embarrassing, I find that nearly two decades later, I know all of the words of this horrible “rap.” Does that mean that it’s actually catchy or just another diabolical ear-worm designed to brainwash kids?  No matter – I was fifteen when this first aired.  There’s no excuse.

And similarly terrible is a more Kid-N-Play-esque Barney, “rapping” as if his life depended on it. Of course, with the way Fred treats him in all of the Fruity Pebbles spots it might.

Did Barney actually say, “break it down!” at 0:19?  Is he talking about the cardboard cereal box,  because that’s not a bad idea, especially before recycling.  In any other context, and ESPECIALLY in this one, there is no reason for Barney Rubble to say, “break it down.” Not while wearing pink M.C Hammer pants.  No.

You know something?  To this day, I’ve never had a bowl of Fruity Pebbles.

Of course, lest you think I have some strange grudge against Fred, Barney, or the entirety of the Bedrock music industry – worry not.  There are many more offenders to come.  There’s more cereal, of course, but also 90210’s David Silver, He-Man, and a certain Super Bowl winning team that was just doing it to feed the needy.

It’s still no excuse.

But ohmygosh, it’s fun to watch a horror movie every day.  Fun, fun, funnity fun.  Even if you end up looking a little like this toward the end:

Halloween night, we watched the original Ju-On (2002) film, just to round out all the Ju-oning we’d been doing all week.  It was pretty scary and very enjoyable.  I love a good ghost story and Ju-on delivers. There were great performances and darn good effects for a lower budget.  And I really liked the way the ghosts could screw with space and time. Very creative storytelling.  If only they could make October last a little longer, I could have seen all the movies I’d planned.

So, how did I do?

Movies watched: 31 in 31 days.
Movies with Christopher Lee: Five
Movies with Peter Cushing: Four
Movies with Boris Karloff: Three (more next year, darn it)
Haunted Houses visited: two plus a haunted hayride!
Desire to do it again: 100%
Lesson learned: Organization! I didn’t get to see a number of the movies I meant to, and resorted to dashing around a little too much.  And Boris Karloff, more Boris Karloff.

But what funnity fun it all was. October, you’re the best.

Monday, October 26:  Mausoleum (1983): D was out of town, so I eschewed watching John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) which was on AMC that night.  Even after seeing it approximately 6.8 million times, I still cannot watch it alone. A classic is a classic for a reason, right? Anyway, remakes are for losers.

So, I settled instead for a bucket full of crazy from 1983, Mausoleum.  Somewhere, I have both audio and video tapes of all of the host segments from a Commander USA showing of this movie.  (Audio taping from tv, specifically Commander USA, used to be a big thing with me.  I was a lonely child.)  So, I’ve had a special place in my heart for Mausoleum for a long time, even though I couldn’t remember a thing about it, except that it inspired The Commander to make a rash of cemetery jokes, and even turn his Video Vault into a temporary morgue. But the movie was a vague memory to me.  I figured it was because I was really only into the host stuff that I just discarded what I’d seen of the movie, rendering what I could remember as a hazy mish-mash of scenes and dialogue.

But no, I learned from finally seeing the movie in its entirely again that it wasn’t just my twelve year-old attention span, it was the editing for TV that did it! Mausoleum is so full of boobs and demon-possessed sex scenes that to air it on basic cable required quite a hatchet job to the (admittedly thin) story.  It’s not like we had a lot to begin with, either.  It’s your basic early 80s Exorcist rip-off: Bobbi Bresee (owner of the much-filmed boobs) is possessed by an evil demon named Nomed, and it causes her to turn from a sweetly naive housewife to a rampaging vixen who has a lot of sex with her husband, that actor with my favorite name ever, Marjoe Gortner.

When Marjoe turns out not to be enough (no surprise there), Bobbi starts in on her gardener, the guy who delivers the landscaping supplies, and her therapist, I think (all those early 80s guys look alike to me).  Oh, and she gets more demonc and a bit more kill-ish which each guy.  It’s very gory and ripe with the stench of a Madonna/whore backlash theme (paging Susan Faludi).  But, it was good to finally see the whole thing, I guess, though it left me wondering where my Commander tapes are.

Tuesday, I watched  Horror of Spider Island (1960), the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version, because that’s the only way to watch this really crappy movie.  After an uneccsarialy long audtion sequence (which gave ample screentime to a gaggle of women in huge early 1960s bras), a seedy producer and his dance troupe set off for a show in Singapore. Their plane crashes en route, and the whole kit and ka-bra-dle is stranded on a remote island – Spider Island, to be exact. The seedy guy is bitten by a comically oversized spider, and turns into a slightly uglier version of himself, basically.

The girls (and their bras) spend most of the rest of the film looking for him, and a couple of them get killed, naturally.  And then some guys show up and (spoiler!) rescue the rest.  And that’s pretty much it.  Do not try to watch this without Mike & The Bots.

We tried something a little different on Wednesday night.  We played and finished Wii game based on the 2003 Japanese film, Ju-on: The Grudge. And despite some problems with the controls (you feel like you’re walking through mud, for one thing) we had a lot of fun.  Ju-on has this cool multiplayer mode where player two can use his or her controller to make things pop out on the screen at random times.  The game already has you searching dark and decrepit buildings (for your dog in one episode, to deliver a package in another) with only a flashlight for illumination (and your batteries are about to die), and creates a generally scary atmosphere.  So when the other player throws a cat-boy at you, it can be really effective.  It can also get really repetitive. But really, it was good fun.  And since we spent something 3-4 hours at it, it totally counts.

So it shouldn’t surprise you, then,  that we had to watch the real film on Thursday.  My library didn’t have the Japanese version in, so we settled on the American remake, The Grudge (2004).  And it was pretty darn good, far surpassing my expectations.  I’m telling you, the creepy horror noise that the ghosts make, the cat-boy, and the use of as little CG as possible in creating the very scary ghosts made for a really decent scary movie.  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a modern horror film that is able to really scare you without resorting to derivative gore shocks or torture porn (or both).

Friday, I still hadn’t returned Countess Dracula (thank you Interlibrary Loan!) and on the other side of the disc was a weird little gem, The Vampire Lovers (1968).  After a visit to a local haunted house (fun, but the actors were really agressive.  SO. MUCH. SHOUTING!), we settled in bed to watch Ingrid Pitt do her stuff in this Hammer adaptation of Le Fanou’s Carmilla.

There was some excellent imagery here, some lovely atospheric set pieces, and a frightening tension toward the (typically abrupt) end of the film.  Ingrid Pitt is fun to watch as Carmilla.  She’s not a subtle actress, but she has an incredible face that can transform from one emotion to another in a moment.  The women really own this one, with adorable Pippa Steele and the terrific Madeline Smith as Carmilla’s objects of obsession, and Kate O’Mara as a stalwart governess who can be controlled by a broach.  Wait, what?  Yes, the logic is none too clear most of the time, but The Vampire Lovers delivers what Hammer does best – great costumes, solid acting, and fabulous scenery.

And then it was Saturday.   Halloween.

Sunday October 19 – Sunday October 26

Brainiac (El barón del terror (1962): My goodness, what a strange movie.  I stretched my rules a touch and watched this one twice this month; first was back around the 5th or so, and I watched a version with dialogue dubbed in English.  I was so befuddled by the impenetrable plot that I hunted down a version in the original Spanish and watched it again.  It did not help.  This movie defies an easy synopsis:  there’s a 300 year-old revenge plot, a guy who eats brains, a female astronomer who makes coffee for all of the men in the movie, and a skeleton with no feet.  Really, a must-see.

The Devil’s Hand (1962) - Sort of fun little film about Satan, starring Alan Alda’s dad.  Poppy Alda is a good actor, and he elevates the really lame material involving his joining a cult, the members of which couldn’t seem to get enough of using the word cult, which I found funny for some reason.  Sample dialogue went something like:

Cult Leader: You must be loyal to THE CULT!
Member: I am ready to go to the meeting of THE CULT!

Plus, all the members of THE CULT wore very smart late 50s business suits. The spinning knife chandelier was fun, though.

Horror Hotel (1960) – This time there’s witches along with Satan, and Christopher Lee makes a “surprise” appearance toward the end (which really isn’t much of a surprise at all).  I sort of loved the lead actress though, and her kind librarian friend, who ends up pulling the facts together – go librarians!

Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) – combine most of the above elements – Satan, Christopher Lee, weird cults that emphatically call themselves cults, – add Dracula, and you have this sub-par Hammer film.  Fun to see The Fanged One in modern (well, 1973) day London, with an office in a high rise. And Peter Cushing is great, of course.

Phase IV (1974) – Wow, I can’t explain this.  I really can’t.  Ants, 100% yellow, a scenery-gnashing Oliver Reed substitute, and a mantis or two.  It’s sort of arty and very 70s, and it hurt me. But I owed it to D after some of the things I’ve put him through this month.

Bug (1975) – Continuing with the insect theme here, Bug is a doozy of a disaster-monster-message film (Don’t tamper in God’s domain. Think about it won’t you? Thank you). I love love love when the super-atomic roaches spell out WE LIVE on a wall.  Of course you live! How else could you have spelled it out?  Sheesh.

Countess Dracula (1970) – Oooh, if you like costume horror, get your hands on this.  Lots of fun, some naked blood baths, Ingrid Pitt, and a whole lot of crazy.  Loosely based on a real legend of a Hungarian countess, it’s fun to see evil chicks get their due once in a while.

In Search of Dracula (1974) – This is one of my favorite films of all time.  If you’re at all curious about the origins of your favorite vampire films, or about the real-life myths and facts which swirl around them, you might love it, too. Christopher Lee narrates and is wonderfully solemn and a bit scary. The evolution of folklore into cinema is truly fascinating, and it’s all surrounded by campy, slightly gory, 70s-style reenactments.  And the section on Vlad the Impaler is just one of the best things I’ve ever watched. It gets a might slow when it veers into the very early history of vampire films, but pays you back with Vlad Vlad Vlad!

Well, the trailer says it all.  Enjoy, won’t you?

Whew.  More soon…

I mean, I know we need November (D’s birthday, and all that big old turkey feed) and December and everything, but my gosh, I love you and I want you to stay.  I’ve spent each of your days watching fabulous (or fabulously awful) movies and doing those little things that only seem, well, social appropriate in this one month a year: eating mini Reese’s cups by the bucketful, using the term “spooktacular,” and screaming at men in the dark.

Case in point?  A couple of Saturdays ago, we went to a pumpkin farm (only in October) which boasted a haunted house or two (screaming), a haunted hayride (more screaming), and fair food (funnel cakes!).  It was pretty darn fun, despite a completely lack of farm-grown fall favorites (the cider was from Michigan?!), a lot of mud, and cold funnel cakes.

I just love hayrides, I do, and I’m not (too) ashamed.  This one was a lot of fun, twice as long as I thought it would be, and not completely infested with chainsaw guys.  There were a few incongruous items, though, like a cutesy ghost thing, probably bought at Walgreens, stapled to a tree and with a big HAPPY HALLOWEEN speech bubble above his cutesy head (oooo, scary kids!).  Oh, and like three of those mirrored light things Spock had in his quarters in Star Trek: The Movie.  It was gone by The Wrath of Khan.  I guess even Spock can spot when a trend is over.

Of course, this wonderful – dare I say SPOOKTACULAR – farm was in a suburb way, way south, so we had a long muddy ride home, punctuated by a stop a Portillo’s (the onion rings married well with the stomachache I’d later get from the cold funnel cake) and a missed exit which almost made me miss my 11:59pm deadline except that I can u-turn like nobody’s business. We got home around 11:30pm – plenty of time for my movie: Night of The Living Dead (1968).

Okay.  I’m going to say something here that might upset those in the audience who are sensitive: this iconic, trendsetting, most influential zombie film of them all is, well, sort of boring.

I mean, yes, there’s a whole lot of groundbreaking flesh-eating going on here, but, my gosh, there is a whole lot more shouting in this movie than I remembered.  Shouting, and people nailing boards over windows.  Admittedly, part of the problem for me might have been the crappy colorization in the Legend Films DVD release I watched; another barrier to terror may have been the fact that I watched it with a commentary by Michael J. Nelson, of MST3K and Rifftrax fame.  So, while I wasn’t as scared as I wanted to be, I did get recipes for three different kinds of zombie cocktails.

Still, it is a classic.  I love how we’re just thrown into this living dead outbreak with little explanation, and no need for characterization.  Our protagonists are nearly anonymous and about as likable as anyone would be under horrific circumstances.  And I have to give it up for the dreadfully depressing ending.  I knew it was coming and I still felt awful.  It shaped a million movies to come and remains an important part of horror movie history.

Plus, it has one of the best lines in any movie, ever (at about 1:39):

For instance: music videos.  In the spirit of the season, D & I stayed up way, way too late the other night finding scary music videos online.  For me, it was like revisiting those years long ago, when MTV played nothing but videos (as crazy as that might sound) and I was frightened to death by the haunting vision of Grace Jones in her Demolition Man video:

I mean, I couldn’t sleep after watching this! What nine year-old wouldn’t be terrified by an army of Grace Joneses marching toward you? They could blind you with the glare from their collective cheekbones and then eat you, raw.

For animal cruelty-themed videos, nothing is better than Peter Gabriel’s Shock the Monkey, but it just seemed a little too easy.  Instead, we settled on Games Without Frontiers, which is sort of a scary song to begin with, and then there’s that revolving baby head. Argh!

And I must note that until, um, last week or so, I thought the chorus of the song was “She’s…so popular.”  Turns out it’s not.  So, I guess she isn’t.

The Talking Heads could not be left out of Scary Video night. Burning Down The House has a pretty freaky video, but it really can’t hold a candle (har har) to Once in a Lifetime. This video had me afraid of David Byrne for years. Years.  I mean, what is he doing in this video?  The arm thing!  The head smacking thing!  The tiny-Davids-all-dancing-in-the-background thing!  And now the song is in top rotation on my ipod.  I’m just that way.

The hands down winner of the night, though, was Nine Inch Nails’ Closer. D had never seen it, so boy, was he in for a treat. I’ve seen it something like a million times, but I was surprised that I was shocked and creeped out all over again on viewing it that night. Maybe it was the late hour. Maybe it was sharing in D’s genuine shock over some of the images. Maybe it was the revolving pig’s head.

Good times, right?  What do you think we missed?  I’d love to hear how MTV scared you.  In the meantime, you can check out our entire playlist: