Tonight, from 5-8pm, is the Homecoming Street Party at Urbandale High School. There will be games, inflatables, a duck pond, a DJ, and several food trucks in school’s parking lot. The parade starts at 6pm, and Char will be marching with the band along with the floats and the flags. Should be fun for everyone.
Today there are quite a few parties on the Holiday Horror Shelf. Let's check 'em out.
Since yesterday’s Pet Sematary is the real deal in terms of serving up the chills, let’s go the other way today.
I’m sticking with the architectural theme from yesterday’s post. So, let's see what's on the Holiday Horror shelf!
I like how Google’s AI describes the plot of Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond (1981),"The narrative shuns traditional linear logic, opting instead for a fever-dream sequence of graphic, nightmarish set pieces (including acid attacks, blind spectral figures, and a famous, brutal tarantula attack).”
Fulci was nicknamed the Godfather of Gore, and this movie was retitled 7 Doors of Death, given a new soundtrack, and was cut by about five minutes in order to get this Italian film into the American market with an "R" rating.
Today in Des Moines the high is 61 degrees, the sky is overcast, and it’s been raining for over week, So, it doesn’t really feel like the last day of summer, but it is. Fall officially begins at 7:05 tonight. Yay! I love autumn.
Happy Labor Day! Let's see what's on the Holiday Horror Shelf!
In 1974's made-for-TV movie Killdozer, six men on an island are hunted down by a bulldozer that has been possessed by an alien. I know, I know... but I love 70's made-for-TV movies.
In 2011's The Innkeepers, Claire and Luke work the Yankee Pedlar Inn's final night of business. The two leads have real chemistry, and they're fun to watch, but it still doesn't end well for them.
In 2001's Route 666, Lou Diamond Phillips deals with road construction zombies. SPOILER ALERT: His zombie dad comes to his rescue. I like that.
Stephen King wrote Road Work in 1981 under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. The plot deals with a grieving dad whose home and workplace are threatened by an interstate highway extension.
I worked road construction as a way to pay for college in the late 80's. For one week all I had to do was sit at the end of a road in town and tell drivers to to turn around because they couldn't drive across the the soft, newly poured asphalt. I killed time by reading the paperback volumes of Clive Barker's Books of Blood. I still remember one old woman getting freaked out when she read the title of the book in my hand, Nice.
Men at Work's LP Business as Usual came out in the US in 1982. At the time I loved "Who Can it Be Now?," but now I gravitate towards "Be Good Johnny". My favorite Men at Work cover song is Lazlo Bane's version of "Overkill." About two thirds through the song Colin Hay comes in and just kills it.
Don't work too hard this weekend!
I recently came across some pre-production Blu-rays from Arrow Films. Arrow Films is a boutique film distributor and restorer that specializes in world cinema, arthouse, horror, and classic films. Their Blu-rays look great, and they do a good job of adding new special features to their releases.
The Blu-ray "screeners" contain all the features of the official discs (as far as I know), and when you find them they are usually cheaper than the regular release. The trade-off is that you don't get any art work or booklets. The discs come in either paper sleeves or in a thin, clear case like this one.
Before the school year starts, my school has a "freebie" table in the office where staff can put things they no longer want when they are cleaning out a classroom or an office. I spotted a pile of these popcorn bags on the table and figured I could somehow use them for one of our many door decorating contests.
I used a bag to make a cover for the case of this week's "popcorn movie screener".
To me, a popcorn movie is a film you can enjoy without thinking too much. Let's see what's inside.
I stole all this brief info from the IMDB. I think the paper matches the disc's generic vibe. A 6.7 rating on IMDB is pretty promising.
Eventually this disc will be incorporated into one of these cases (probably Wolf Guy), but Doberman Cop will stay as a popcorn movie until I get to watch it. Should be fun.
FYI: I forgot I even had that dollar bin DVD of The Bodyguard. I popped it in my player to see how bad the full frame transfer was, but was pleasantly pleased to see that it was fairly clean.
Hmmm... sounds vaguely familiar...
Also, according to the DVD's opening FBI warning, it is illegal to screen this DVD of The Bodyguard on oil rigs.
Let’s check the horror shelf in memory of Tim Curry.
We've made it to the end of Shark Week! Let's see what's on the Holiday Horror Shelf.
2003's Open Water is an indie film based on true events that happened in 1998. Roger Ebert (a hero) wrote that he wanted to walk around in the sunshine to cheer himself up after seeing this in the theater.
2004's 12 Days of Terror is a made-for-TV movie about true events that happened on the nothern New Jersey shore in 1916. The DVD's tagline said these events inspired the movie Jaws, but I don't know if that really true. I suppose it could be.
Search for the Great Sharks is short documentary from 1995. The most exciting thing about this release is the DVD's cover photo of a great white shark apparently swallowing another shark whole.
2004's Frakenfish was inspired by the actual discovery of northern snakehead fish in a pond in Maryland in 2002. These fish breathe air, can survive on land, can "walk" to other bodies of water, and they can spawn several times a year. Oh yeah, they're also aggressive and have long rows of sharp teeth in their snakehead mouths. Their discovery also inspired the films Snakehead (2004), and Swarm of the Snakehead (2006).
If you haven't noticed, today's theme is "based on true events." But I bet you did.
Parting shots and thoughts:
MEG: a Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Altin came out in 1997. I had a first edition hard cover, but I kept it in my classroom when I exclusively taught language arts, and it got really beat up by the guys who would fight over it during my required reading time.
The MEG movie came out in 2018, and I was disappointed the filmmakers didn't use the same opening as the book. In the book's prologue, a herd of Shantungosauruses are on a beach feeding on a smaller group of dinosaurs when a T-Rex breaks up the party and flips the script by making the herd his prey. But when he stumbles into the nearby ocean, a Megalodon emerges from the depths and kills the T-Rex with it's superior size and jaws. Or something like that... I think The MEG 2: The Trench used this idea for its prologue. Both films used Jason Statham, and that's always a good thing.
Great White's LP Once Bitten came out in the summer of '87. I was working 60 to 80 hours weeks on a road crew so I could pay for my freshman year of college. I had my tuition covered by the end of June. I had enough cash for my dorm room, books, and food by late July. In August I bought a few records to bring with me, and Once Bitten was in that lot. I'm not gonna lie. Working the road crew was zero fun. It's probably also the reason why my dermatologist keeps coming at me with a scalpel.
The Black Demon movie came out in 2023, and the novel Extinct by Charles Wilson was published in 1997. Both also have a Megalodon as the antagonist. I like how the covers echo each other. Extinct's cover says a it was coming to NBC-TV presumably as a made-for-TV movie, but that - spoiler alert!- didn't happen.
When I bought Shark Night from Goodwill, I didn't know the original title for the film was Shark Night 3D. Of the four Jaws movies, Jaws III, or Jaws 3D, is my least favorite. I also didn't know that during the credits the cast was going to be in a music video performing the song, "Shark Night Cast: Shark Bite."
Here's Char hamming it up at Flix when she was about to turn eight
Like the movie Jaws, The Deep also stars Robert Shaw.
Like the novel Jaws, the novel The Deep was also written by Peter Benchley.
Like the novels Jaws and The Deep, the novel the The Beast two-part TV series is based on was also written by Peter Benchley.
Today's LP is Deceptive Bends by 10cc. I chose the album based on the cover art work by Hipgnosis. The LP's title was inspired by a warning road sign in Surrey, England. I assume the art work was inspired by the word "bends" being associated with the decompression sickness some sea divers can experience.
I999's Deep Blue Sea is the only proper shark movie on the shelf today. I saw this film in the theater, and at the time I thought it was the greatest shark film ever after Jaws. I probably still think that.
