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The Exorcist with Linda Blair

The Exorcist - movie poster

In honor of Linda Blair’s upcoming visit to Mad Monster Party in Charlotte, NC in March, I thought we’d highlight The Exorcist this week! The Exorcist was written by William Peter Blatty and directed by William Fiedkin. It was released in 1973. It stars Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow and of course Linda Blair. As many of you know, the film is about a child that possessed by a mysterious entity and her mother seeks help from two priests.

More info including videos and interviews after the leap…
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Año bisiesto – That’s Right, it’s Leap Year!

Leap Year (2010) - movie poster

So I was informed that this year is leap year or año bisiesto in Spanish. I started wondering if there were any horror films about leap year and what is the first thing I find? Año bisiesto a film by Michael Rowe released in 2010. It was co-written by Michael Rowe and Lucia Carreras. It stars Monica del Carmen, Gustavo Sanchez Parra and Armando Hernandez. This film looks pretty interesting. It’s about Laura (Monica del Carmen), who lost her father on February 29th. Through this month she has sex with a stranger named Arturo. Their sex becomes rougher and rougher and builds to more S&M then has interesting ending that leaves viewers with a conflict feelings.

Learn more and watch the trailer after the leap…
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The Seventh Curse or Yuan Zhen-Xia yu Wei Si-Li: Another Classic Chinese Horror Movie

The Seventh Curse movie poster

As we move closer to Chinese New Year, I thought we’d focus on the classic Chinese horror movie, The Seventh Curse or Yuan Zhen-Xia yu Wei Si-Li (it’s Chinese title). This film stars a few people that are pretty much household names (well at least to Hong Kong cinema fans like us here at Mutantville). It stars Maggie Cheung which you will remember from Police Story, Police Story 2 and Supercop with Jackie Chan. It also stars Chow Yun Fat who has stared in many films such as Confucius, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Bulletproof Monk, The Replacement Killers, God of Killers, etc… The movie also stars Ken Boyle, Siu-hou Chin, Yuen Chor, Joyce Godenzi and Shu-yuan Hsu. The Seventh Curse was directed by Ngai Kai Lam. The screenplay was written by Jing Wong, who has 156 writing credits on IMDB including Legend of the Red Dragon with Jet Li, God of Gamblers with Chow Yun Fat, City Hunter with Jackie Chan, Last Hero in China which is another Jet Li film which he also directed with Yuen Woo-ping (How cool is that?). This film was released in 1986.

More after the leap…
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The Eye (Gin Gwai): Celebrate Chinese New Year with a Chinese Horror Movie

The Eye or Gin gwai (original title) 2002 movie poster

As Chinese New Year approaches on January 23, 2012, I thought I’d explore a few Chinese Horror movie classics. The Eye or Gin Gwai (original title) was released in 2002. The movie was directed by Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang. They are also known as the Pang Brothers. They also wrote the film along with Jojo Hui. The Eye stars Angelica Lee, Lawrence Chou, Jinda Duangtoy, Yut Lai So, Candy Lo and Edmund Chen.

Learn more and watch the trailer after the leap…
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Streeborama and the Lost Art of the Movie One Sheet.

Scarecrow At Midnight (2011) one sheet from Mutantville Productions.

Welcome to a special edition of Streeborama as we are going to discuss the lost art of horror movie one sheets!  I expect this to be an ongoing series here at Streeborama.  I want to discuss the good poster art of the past, what made it work and what makes modern poster art so terrible.

Whether you’re a filmmaker or just a fan – we are all extremely familiar with one sheets – or posters as they are referred to in the common vernacular.  I remember being twelve years old with a green apple lollipop in my hand wandering the aisles of the local mom and pops video store and being enthralled by the sights and horrors peering at me from the cover of the VHS boxes lining the shelves.  I was never allowed to watch the movies but they intrigued me nonetheless.  They often featured a mix of blood, skulls and beautiful women but it was always in a way that implied that something sinsiter was at work behind it all.

This was a time when poster art was REAL art.  They were conceived by artists with an actual goal of creating something eye catching to draw a potential viewer in.  Poster art was exciting, mysterious, inspirational and most all of – intriguing.

(Read the rest after the leap!  Posters!!!) Continue Reading…

New Year’s Eve Horror with John Carpenter’s Classic Film – “Christine”

Christine Movie Poster

In honor of New Year’s Eve, I thought I’d do a post on “Christine.” It was directed by John Carpenter and written by Stephen King. Bill Phillips wrote the screenplay. “Christine” stars Keith Gordon which you may also remember from “Back to School” with Danny Elfman in Oingo Boingo (I’m starting a 5 degrees of Danny Elfman game!). Now to tie this back into modern horror, he has directed 10 episodes of “Dexter.” The film also stars John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky, Harry Dean Stanton and David Spielberg.

Christine begins in 1957 in Detroit with Christine on the assembly line. We see that Christine is a bright red Plymouth Fury. She doesn’t even wait to be out of the factory before she starts hurting people. 20 years later we meet our main character, Arnold Cunningham (no relation to Ritchie Cunningham). Of course he’s kind of nerdy and doesn’t have many friends. Arnold (aka Arnie…we’re friends so we can call him that) starts to fix a broken down Christine. He stores her at a local garage to restore her. Arnie begins to change as he works on the Fury. His girlfriend and best friend decide to destroy the car on…wait for it…New Year’s Eve (see how I tied the whole New Year’s thing in? hehe).

Watch the trailer and other cool stuff after the leap…
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Thanksgiving Horror!

Thanksgiving Grindhouse Movie Poster

It’s turkey time again so I figured I’d do a post on Thanksgiving. So what happens when you type “Thanksgiving Horror” into Google? You rip a worm hole in the time space continuum. Ok, not really. I started to find a few things and then made a call to our local horror encyclopedia (aka Streebo). He was able to give me a few titles to look up.

One he mentioned was the 1981 slasher film “Home Sweet Home.” It’s about an escaped mental patient (that’s really original…I wonder if anyone else has ever thought of that) that steals a station wagon (screams 80′s) and makes his way to a Thanksgiving celebration. Then the fun ensues. It was directed by Nettie Pena and written by Thomas Bush. It stars Jake Steinfeld (pretty sure this is the Body by Jake guy), Vinessa Shaw (was in Eyes Wide Shut and the 2006 version of The Hills Have Eyes) Don Edmonds, Charles Hoyes and Peter De Paula. After some searching, I found some clips below!

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Evil Dead 2 (1987)

Evil Dead 2 movie poster

As I was driving through Anson County, NC last weekend, I couldn’t help but think of Evil Dead 2. After all, that’s where it was filmed. The Color Purple was also filmed in Wadesboro and nearby Lilesville. Obviously these films are slightly different but still cool for a small town like Wadesboro, NC (census of 2010, there were 5,780 people). The main set for Evil Dead 2 was built inside the gymnasium at JR Faison Junior High School.

Evil Dead 2 was written and directed by Sam Raimi. It was also written by Scott Spiegel. It stars…you guessed it, Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks, Kassie Wesley DePaiva, Ted Raimi, Denise Bixler and Scott Spiegel as one of the “fake Shemps.” For those of you who may not be familiar with this term, be ready for a slight tangent.

Fake Shemp? How about a trailer?…Click Continue Reading!
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Alien (1979)

Alien 1979 movie poster

Alien is one of those movies that has been homaged, ripped off and copied. Even in movies like Spaceballs. The original Alien was released in 1979. It was directed by Ridley Scott. It was written by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett. Alien stars Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright (no relation to the Cartwrights from Bonanza), Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, Bolaji Badejo and Helen Horton.

This is the story of a space mining ship (the kind you see everyday) called the Nostromo. The crew are awaken from hypersleep to investigate a strange signal from a planet. They discover it is not a call for help but a warning. Dun dun dun!

Go to the rest of the article to see trailers, interviews, reviews and more!
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VHS Collecting & Media Archive Building with Mutantville

Leaving The Old Home

If you’ll note on most of Streebo’s video’s as well as my own modest video contributions to Mutant TV, which of course is located at Youtube.com/mutantvilleplayers, if we’re not in front of some theater movie poster marquee, we’re snug in our home media vestibules to expose the awesomeness of horror movies or whatever we are watching at the moment. 

Hauled Up to the New Space

From time to time the movies or magazines behind us change to match the current topic. In my case, the most recent change was less than sublte. The Mutantville Mothership VHS archive simply outgrew the space it was stored in. To prevent the closure of the BlockBuster video across the street from where I type this article presently from being a complete loss, I capitalized and purchase some of their media racks at some seriously low, low prices.

While this sort of an upgrade has been needed for a long, long time at Brentoville, the results surprised even me. Each rack holds approximately 936 DVD sized items. Once everything is hauled into the new space, VHS will occupy one rack with DVD media on the other. I should be able to get a handle on exactly how many VHS, DVD & Games I own. Knowing that funny little number is a part of the fun of collecting so I’m looking forward to discovering it.

Liam Likes The New Video Store Upstairs

Over the next several days I’ll be adding photos to this article to share the evolution of my new office/creatives pace/ video backdrop/ media library in the newly refurbished upstairs office in my home. Stay tuned.