DAMNED IF I DO

Just received my first new Damned shirt since the GRAVE DISORDER tour (2001), and it's superb. The staring Bride was enough to sell me on it, but the icing on the cake is the quote of "Two close but two worlds away," from "Plan 9 Channel 7," the song that instantly turned me into a Damned fan for life back in the fall of 1986. I'd already heard "Nasty" on THE YOUNG ONES, but "Plan 9 Channel 7" genuinely touched the soul of this horror kid. Oh, joy!!!

CALL ME, MAYBE...

While heading back to Brooklyn from the Fulton Concourse, I stepped into the elevator to the 4/5 train platform and was joined in the conveyance by a very pregnant young woman who had her android phone at the ready. The moment the door closed and it was just me and her. She began loudly talking into the phone with a nasal, ultra-ghetto accent and I swear to god this is exactly what came out of her mouth: 

"Ah'm in the Bronx an' lookin' faw a main dat wants ta watch me play wit' mah toys through mah panties an' watch me while ahm cummin'. Ah charge $200..." 

This was uttered without a second though about there being anyone else in the elevator, and when she disembarked I just stood there speechless before cracking up laughing. I tried to picture my mom having witnessed that and her head subsequently exploding, a la SCANNERS.

And why did she lie about the Bronx?

McDONALD'S IS THE KIND OF PLACE

After finishing the day's errands, I suddenly came over all peckish, so I stopped off at the Atlantic Terminal's ultra-ghetto McDonald's for a double quarter-pounder with cheese (no onions) and a big Dr. Pepper. Upon receviing my order and fighting my way through the throng of families with wild, utterly out of control children, I found a solo seat near the window at the place's front, right next to a low wall where on the other side a vacant-looking twenty-something security guard — translation: "employed loiterer" — was stationed.

As I put my bags and food down and sorted myself out before sitting down to eat, I set down the book I am currently reading, the comprehensive THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF SLASHER MOVIES, on the table. It's cover caught the guard's eye and his face was split by a grin like that of the village idiot in medieval times, and he observed, "Tha's a nice book you got there." I acknowledged him with an affirmative and tried to settle in with my meal, but he leaned over the wall, practically leaning over into my face, and began reading the cover copy. "An A-Z Guide to More Than 60 Years of BLOOD AND GUTS! It's got all the blood and guts, hunh?" Imagining how stultifying hours upon hours in his job must be, I was patient with him and I answered, "It discusses pretty much every slasher movie you could think of but there are no pictures." With that, here's the exchange that followed, as he leaned even closer into my space:

Security: I bet it doesn't have A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET!

Me: It's in here. If it's a major slasher movie from the past six decades and even earlier, it's in here.

Security: I bet HALLOWEEN ain't in there...

Me: It's in here. If it's a major slasher movie from the past six decades and even earlier, it's in here.

Security (completely oblivious to anything I'd said): Bet there ain't no FRIDAY THE 13th movies in there...

Me (clearly tired of the "conversation" and stressing the words I was repeating): It's. In. Here. If it's a major slasher movie from the past six decades and even earlier, it's in here.

Security: I bet PUMPKINHEAD ain't in there...

Me (finally obviously fed up): PUMPKINHEAD is a monster movie. It's not a slasher film, so no, it's not included.

The idiot was about to continue but halted when he saw me paying him no mind as I devoured my sandwich. He then returned to looking bored while surveying the mass of screaming kids whose parents were ignoring them.

"THE SENTENCE IS..."

The one and only Judge Death. NOT a feel-good kind of guy...

I love it when people get the obscura that I often sport. Case in point: As I crossed the strret during today's errands, a guy and his girlfriend were out walking their dog and the guy focused on my badge. He turned and said "Thank you for sparing us, Judge Death!" I looked back at him, scowled, and said in my best Mercedes McCambridge intonation, "THE SENTENCE IS DEATH!!!" We both cracked up as he waved goodbye.

WHEN DIM SUM GOES AWRY

The business card to a special level of Chinese Hell.

I just got back from the single worst dining experience of my life. Allow me to elucidate:

Feeling the call of Saturday dim sum, Eryn, Dennis, and myself made our way to Chinatown, anticipating seating at the fabulous Jing Fong. What all of us failed to remember, however, is that it's Chinese New Year, so the place was so packed by the time when we arrived — around 11am — that some of the massive crowd had been waiting for an hour simply to get a shot at a seat, and the place simply stopped letting people in. Undaunted, we figured "any port in a storm," and after a couple of false starts we found ourselves at a joint called Ken's Asian Taste and were seated downstairs. 

When we arrived, the downstairs area was packed but there was an empty table near the kitchen, so that's where we ended up. We were the only non-Chinese in the place and the majority of the staff spoke little or no English, but I was able to place an order for a few items from the dim sum menu, plus a Coke. Before my friends could order straight entrees, the lady who took my order vanished, never to return, and we waited for a number of short eternities before a visibly annoyed waitress came by with random dim sum items of wildly varying desirability. We made do with a handful of those selections, mainly subsisting on so-so crystal shrimp dumplings and pork gyoza, and I'm glad we ate that stuff because the items I ordered never showed up, not even the Coke. Dennis eventually ordered the seafood lo mein, and when it finally arrived it was below the quality of what one would receive at the shoddiest of local hole-in-the-wall takeout joints.

Time crawled by as I awaited my order and my friends half-heartedly attempted to choke down their order, and every once in a while the disgruntled waitress might drop by to offer us dim sum items that were clearly the afterthoughts of what had been served upstairs. I asked for a Coke two more times, saw the order jotted down, and yet nothing ever showed. After over a half hour of waiting for anything that I'd ordered, I asked where my order was, pointing out the sticky rice that was offered o the menu. The waitress did not understand me, so she called over the disinterested waiter and asked him what I was indicating. When he twigged that I was talking about the sticky rice, he shook his head and firmly stated "No more." If I had not asked, I could have sat there all fucking day waiting for rice that would never come.

Though we tried to make the best of it, it was apparent to all that we were getting the "Fuck you, gweilos" treatment and that the excursion was a complete and utter bust, so we asked for the check. We were considerably over-charged for the amount and quality of what we ordered, but we were just glad to get the hell out of there and make on more attempt at getting into Jing Fong. Alas, when we got there we were informed that the place was simply too crowded, so they'd cut off admittance entirely. Defeated, we made our way back to Brooklyn...where the first thing I did was buy myself a goddamned Coke!

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016)

ROGUE ONE — sub-headed as "A STAR WARS Story" — is a well-made, visually spectacular, action-packed adventure set in the galaxy far, far away that we all know and love so well. So why didn't I like it? Allow me to explain.

The first of an announced ongoing series of stand-alone STAR WARS flicks that are not part of the serialized main saga, ROGUE ONE squanders the vast galactic toybox that is the STAR WARS realm by once again relying too much on fannish nostalgia and not moving forward. The basic story has to deal with a group of Rebel heroes stealing the plans for the Death Star, the aftermath of which mission leads immediately into the original STAR WARS (1977, and fuck you if you think I'm going to call it "A New Hope"), so we already go into the film knowing that the heroes succeed in their mission, thus killing what suspense may have been generated. The Death Star is trotted out yet again, thus revealing a certain bankruptcy of ideas, and the heroes who seek to thwart it mostly fail to generate any sort of interest because we're simply thrust into the narrative while getting to know little or nothing about them.

The protagonist, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), is the daughter of the designer of the Death Star, as seen in the opening segments, and when we meet her again as an adult, she's in prison for reasons that are given only the merest scrap of explanation. She's broken out of jail by Rebel forces who want to use her to connect them with a guerrilla leader (Forest Whitaker) who may be able to help them locate her dad, who years earlier was press-ganged into helping the Empire build its "planet-killer" of a battle station. Other than Jyn's longing to be reunited with her father, we know absolutely nothing about who she is as a person or what motivates her actions, so her coming to care about the Rebel cause comes from out of nowhere and carries zero weight toward the growth of her character.

The rest of the Rebels that we meet are basically ciphers about whom we are told nothing, and they are so unmemorable that their individual names are almost instantly forgotten by the audience. Other than a few familiar faces from the original STAR WARS trilogy that were shoehorned in here to little or no narrative effect, Jyn Erso, Imperial weapons developer Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) and reprogrammed Imperial enforcer droid K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk) are the only characters whose names stuck with me once they were verbally identified. And the only standout among the Rebels that I cared about was the blind warrior Chirutt Imwe, played by my man Donnie Yen, whose character believes strongly in the Force but is notably not a Jedi, despite wielding a stick with speed and skill that makes Stormtroopers his bitches.

 My man Donnie Yen, whom the whole movie should have been about.

Cool though he undeniably was, Yen's character is given very little by way of backstory to explain why some random blind dude who is, again, not a Jedi whips ass with his walking stick like a deep-space Zatoichi. That's a damned shame, because he totally ruled during the moments when he's given something to do, including being given the film's funniest line — in a film sorely in need of some levity — but the real point of his inclusion was so that the film would have a star who's drawing power with put asses in seats in the Chinese market.

With no developed characters for us to be invested in, the story trusts in the audience's nostalgia and love for previous STAR WARS movies to do all of the narrative heavy-lifting, which just struck me as lazy. For a film about which much was made of its intent to break new ground and bring audiences a "different" kind of STAR WARS movie, it's basically just more of the same, a soulless piece of corporate product of the type that less-demanding moviegoers will eat up and thus pour billions into the coffers of Das Uber-Disney. I won't presume to speak for most of the audience out there, but I was bored during most of ROGUE ONE and had to resist the urge to check my phone's clock multiple times. It's two hours and fifteen minutes of pretty much watching a filmed version of some kid making up a STAR WARS adventure in his backyard with some action figures and vehicle accessories, and I found its dour, "more realistic" war movie tone to be as dull as dirt. Sure, it looked amazing — the special effects are nothing less than stunning — but where were the characters to engage me? Where was the movie magic that transports the viewer? And, most importantly, where was the fun in all of this? I wish I could tell you, but I got nothin'.

As I left the theater, a family followed close behind me, discussing the movie amongst themselves. The mother was clearly not impressed but tried to put a positive spin on things, while her three kids — apparently ranging in age from seven to twelve — all expressed how boring they found it to be. The one enthusiastic voice was dad, who countered their arguments of being bored with "Well, I wasn't bored, because I recognized a lot of stuff from the other movies!" Like I said previously, the filmmakers relied on the audience's nostalgia to do all the work, and more's the pity. And while a similar argument could be made for last year's THE FORCE AWAKENS, I found that film to be far more engaging, complete with characters I gave a damn about, both old and new, and a sense of plain and simple fun entertainment that I felt ROGUE ONE was largely bereft of. Your mileage may vary, probably depending on just how much of  STAR WARS zombie you are, but ROGUE ONE just didn't do it for me. Sitting through it once was enough for me, and I earnestly pray that the subsequent stand-alone films in the series provide us with something a lot more worthy of our time and money. It was a noble experiment but I call it a dud.

Oh, and while Darth Vader does indeed appear during two sequences — one of which is really cool — his inclusion is both short and virtually meaningless to the film's overall plot. He could have been left out entirely and it would have made not a lick of difference to the story. If you're planning on seeing it in hope of a serious Vader fix, forget it.

Poster from the theatrical release.

R.I.P. CARRIE FISHER (1956-2016), THE TOUGHEST PRINCESS IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY

I can't speak for the rest of us first-generation STAR WARS kids, but when I first saw the original film at age 11 (a month shy of turning twelve) I fell in love with Princess Leia precisely because she didn't just sit there waiting to be rescued. In fact, it can be argued that she was hands down the toughest "good guy" character in the movie. Yes, Han Solo was cooler than a snowman's dick and Obi-Wan Kenobi was the space-samurai I wanted to be, but it was the Princess who stood out as the story's trope-defier, and I will go to my grave loving her for that. Plus she was refreshingly rude.

 Requiescat en pace, Carrie. Your influence was tremendous and meant a lot more than you may have appreciated.

31 DAYS IF HORROR 2016-Day 31: MAD MONSTER PARTY? (1967)

The Monster enjoys an electrical pick-me-up.

When Dr. Frankenstein (Boris Karloff) decides to retire and name a successor to his position of the world's monster elite, he announces a gala event on his remote island/laboratory and invites an all-star who's-who of baleful creatures of the night. Along with his infamous Monster and its mate (Phyllis Diller), the Invisible Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Hunchback, the Mummy, the Werewolf, and of course Count Dracula all show up, some with their eyes greedily fixed upon the successorship. But Frankenstein throws an unintentional curveball by inviting his nebbishy pharmacist nephew, Felix Flanken, to the proceedings, with the lad firmly in mind as his replacement.

Felix Flanken and his uncle, Dr. Frankenstein (Boris Karloff).

That does not sit well with the glitterati of monsterdom, especially not with Dracula and the Monster's mate, plus to say nothing of Dr. Frankenstein's impossibly gorgeous redheaded assistant, Francesca. The hapless Felix swiftly and utterly unknowingly finds himself the target of multiple half-assed assassination attempts, but an even greater threat looms in the form of a titanic uninvited guest who seeks to wreak vengeful havoc...

A grand monster rally.

Finding appropriate fare for the wee ones around Halloween can be a bitch, since much of the scary movie material about there would be considered wholly inappropriate by most parents. (But not by uncles of my stripe, let me tell you!) That's where the magic world of Rankin/Bass Productions comes to the rescue. Renowned and beloved for their now-classic annual holiday television specials, such as RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER (1964), SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN' TO TOWN (1970), THE YEAR WITHOUT A SANTA CLAUS (1974, which features the fan-favorite "Heat Miser/Snow Miser" numbers), and the excellent L. Frank Baum adaptation, THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF SANTA CLAUS (1985), the company crafted charming and fun stop-motion animated specials and features brought to life by skilled animators in Japan, and this theatrical feature film was always a favorite and must-watch offering whenever it aired on television during the youth of those of us who are now of a certain age.

The narrative is basically a case of "What if Mad Magazine made HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN?"— an aspect driven home by character designs courtesy of Mad stalwart Jack Davis — with no classic monster trope left untouched and lampooned, with Dracula pretty much stealing film with his snobbish, assholish treachery. He's a riot whenever he's onscreen, and his questionable alliances come back to bite him on his pallid ass.

Dracula and Francesca: Strange bedfellows?

It should also be noted that MAD MONSTER PARTY? features Francesca, the Doctor's buxom redheaded assistant, and if ever there were an animated puppet who gave little boys their first crush, she was it And there's more to her than there seems to be upon first glance...

Little Tibea and the Fibulas performing "It's the Mummy."

The film also features the signature musical scoring of Maury Laws, whose brass-heavy compositions are instantly recognizable to all who grew up on Rankin/Bass' output. MAD MONSTER PARTY? is replete with memorable theme tunes for its characters and a number of great songs, including the quasi-psychedelic "It's the Mummy" (to which the Mummy and the Monster's mate rock out) and the moody, evocative title song by Ethel Ennis. "The Monster Mash" is long overdue for dethroning from its lofty position as the go-to Halloween anthem, and I herewith nominate "Mad Monster Party?" to now bear the crown. Judge for yourself:

In shirt, the family simply cannot go wrong with MAD MONSTER PARTY? and no childhood of true "monster kids" is complete without it.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2016, FROM THE VAULT OF BUNCHENESS!!!

Poster from the original theatrical release. Art by the legendary Frank Frazetta.

HALLOWEEN: SOME WORDS TO THE WISE

NOTE: This one's a few years old but nonetheless relevant. Enjoy!

In case some of you somehow failed to notice, Halloween is just twenty-four hours away, and on that most fun day of the year there are many things to enjoy, even if Halloween is in actuality "Satan's birthday" as postulated in the unintentionally hilarious Jack Chick tract "Boo!" (1991).

From the Jack Chick tract "Boo!" (1991): a chainsaw-wielding and pumpkin-masked Satan bursts in and demands a completely different kind of pussy than what's being offered.

But along with the freedom of expression allowed on the mighty 'Ween, there are some things we would all do well to remember. I don't want to get all lecturey here, but in order to make sure we all have a safe and fun Halloween, I'm willing to go there. Because I care.

• Don't allow your single-digit-aged or tweener daughters to dress as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Bratz, or any of the other pop culture icons (or permutations thereof) that promote creepy and inappropriate visual sleazery among girls under the age of eighteen. Unless you want to get arrested for pimping a child prostitute, that is.

Oh, HELL no!!!

• If you're going to escort your little ones on their trick-or-treating rounds, show some decorum ferfucksake and don't do it while drunk. There's plenty of time for the boozing at grownup parties; don't make bad memories that your kids can look back on as adults and see you, clear as day in a scarecrow costume, walking haphazardly door-to-door on the street where you live, "discreetly" sipping from a thermos full of Harvey Wallbangers. (Do people still make those?)
• And while we're on the subject of Halloween drunkenness, DO NOT under any circumstances drive drunk. I have zero tolerance for this even on my best day, but on Halloween, a time for fun and creative expression and sharing of such with our loved ones and friends, I am especially hard-assed. This is a time you'll want to look back upon with fondness, so don't fuck things up by killing yourself or others. If you're too smashed to drive, admit it and call a cab. There's no shame in not being a dumbass/potential vehicular murderer; a hangover will eventually fade, but a serious injury or a life taken due to inebriated stupidity is a whole other ballgame. And let us not forget that sometimes there are situations worse than death that the innocent are forced to live with thanks to someone else's carelessness. If you don't have a strong constitution, DO NOT click here to see what I mean.
• Steer clear of exotic Halloween-themed drinks concocted by creative bartenders and stick to the poisons you're familiar with. Many feature grotesque food-coloring that can dye your mouth and fuck up the makeup or costumed look that you worked so hard to achieve, and these drinks also can contain combinations of different hard liquors that should never be imbibed in mass quantities unless your goal for the evening it to become the anal/oral/vaginal pincushion of scruples-free predators out looking for an easy target. Reference the classic Mentors song "Sleep Bandits" for more on the dangers of this.

"The Brain Hemorrhage" or simply "The Brain," a visually splendid concoction of Peach Schnapps, Irish cream liqueur, and a drop of Grenadine. During my truly stupid days in the mid-1980's, one of these made me projectile vomit like Mr. Creosote.

• Couples costumes always suck. Either the guy or the gal or both look like ass, so don't do it! Some examples of said suckness:

Not cute, not romantic. Simply appalling, especially that last one.

• Carefully choose your location and specific context if intending to rock blackface, unless you're looking for an ass-kicking.

Sarah Silverman: one who hilariously got away with it.

• Don't give out "gimmick" candy to the trick-or-treating kids. Candy manufactured to resemble bugs, eyeballs and assorted other gruesome seasonal items may look interesting, but they often taste like mildly-sweet PVC. The kids want recognizable brand name confections, those little bite-size candy bars and such, so stick with that stuff. And no candy apples, homemade stuff (unless you're giving it out to kids you know and whose parents know you and are cool with you doing it) or those crappy popcorn balls.

Visually appealing, virtually guaranteed to taste like plastic.

• Don't give out candy corn or Peeps, for they are Satan's own dingleberries, retrieved from the actual Devil's ass-crack hairs. You know I'm right about this.
• Wanna prove to kids how much you genuinely hate them? Give out wax lips. 

Hey, if you want the neighborhood children to look like pint-size Jocelyn Wildensteins, then by all means proceed, but also bear in mind that these insidious, disturbing, and utterly taste-free anti-treats can be put to very questionable use indeed...

• Don't rock Nazi gear. This one's still quite understandably a touchy outfit and there are even Jews who take umbrage with fellow-Semite Mel Brooks for the brilliant "Springtime for Hitler" number in THE PRODUCERS (1968) so it's best not to go there, even when taking the piss out of the filthy Hun. Seriously, if a member of Britain's royal family couldn't get away with it, do you think you've got a chance?

Way to go, genius!

• Ladies, fairy tale characters or the Disney-style princess thing is great for pre-pubescent girls but kinda creepy on grownup chicks with tasty curves. Thus, as grownup wimmern folk, please do your level best to corrupt the wholesome angle of the classic princess. Make Sleeping Beauty look like a ready-to-rock, tarted-up porn whore! Turn the fairy princess into a burnt-out, hungover skank!

Little girls everywhere wept: my old buddy POWER GIRL artist Amanda Conner as the "Fairy Fuckin' Princess."

And if it were legal, wouldn't it be great to go out as Topless Tinkerbell? Just puttin' it out there...

• Last and definitely not least, if at all possible, make sure to have sex with your significant other while still adorned with as much of your costumes as is conducive to such acts. Perhaps not in costumes as straight to point as this,

but instead imagine the twisted scenarios that could be enacted between a spear-brandishing Brunhilde the Valkyrie and the re-animated, smiling corpse of John F. Kennedy! That's just the first thing that popped into my head while writing this, so who knows what you can get up to in real life, dear reader? I'm going stag this year, so please rock the costumed Osh-Osh on my behalf.

So keep all of this in mind and have a bitchin' Aitch-Ween!!!

Just in case you didn't know.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2016-Day 30: JAWS AT 40

NOTE: This piece originally ran back in June of 2015 but I felt the need to break it out for those who missed it.

There are some movies that are sheer perfection when seen properly projected, and JAWS is one of them. Arguably the first true summer blockbuster, as we have come to understand the form, the film has been re-released for limited screenings during this, its fortieth anniversary, so I hauled myself to the temple of the flickering image to take in an all-too-rare revival of a horror masterpiece.

Seeing it on the big screen (at the Union Square multiplex in Manhattan) for the first time in 40 years transported me right back to being a few days shy of turning 10 and my embracing of it as my favorite movie for a couple of years. In my early years I had my career goal set on being a marine biologist with a concentration on shark studies and I dragged my parents to every shark-related activity that I could gain access to, so seeing JAWS was an inevitability. Though rated PG, the film's poster featured the ominous tacked-on caveat, "MAY BE TOO INTENSE FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN," which only guaranteed the attendance of this budding gorehound, so considering that and the fact that it all boiled down to a story about a huge goddamned shark merrily munching its way through summer season beachgoers (and a hapless dog), you had a recipe for perfect entertainment. (And as long as we're keeping it real, whatever would transpire onscreen couldn't be any more intense or emotionally scarring than the daily witnessing of my parents' marriage rocketing down the bowl.) And when I finally did see JAWS, I fucking loved it. It was a perfect "man versus force of nature" yarn, sort of an ancient seaman's legend writ for the late-20th century, and it's that primal simplicity of the narrative, coupled with some stunning sequences of suspense and stellar characterization, that so resonates. 

It was great to see JAWS again with an audience and when the lights went down, it was like settling in as a skilled elder storyteller wove a yarn to scare and enthrall kids while also instilling in them the strong and basic lesson of taking what lurks in the depths seriously. There were some audience members who were clearly veterans from the first go-round but the majority of attendees were thirty or younger, most of whom had seen the movie numerous times on cable or DVD, and the few who who had never seen it before were easy to spot, thanks to their sudden vocalizations of shock in all the places that scared the motherfucking shit out of us back in the summer of 1975.

The horror from the deep revealed.

For the record, my favorite moment is still the part where Brody chums the water and meets the shark — sea monster, really — face-to-face, after which he backs into the Orca's interior, his face a frozen, stunned mask of horror as he matter-of-factly states, "You're going to need a bigger boat..." Also of note, you could have heard an amoeba fart during Quint's chilling recounting of his experience following the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, so all-consuming was the silence in the auditorium. The moment when Quint describes reaching over to wake up his friend, only to have the man tip over to reveal that he had been devoured from below the waist by one of perhaps a thousand tiger sharks... *SHUDDER*

Quint (Robert Shaw) makes with one of the most riveting and horrifying speeches in the annals of cinema.

Seriously, if it's playing anywhere near you, hie your ass to the theater and pay your respects as a true cinephile by seeing JAWS again as it was intended. I'll never watch it again unless it's projected and you can bet your ass I'll be there for the 50th anniversary.