Halloween 2025: Group Photo #16

 October 16

    Sometimes They Come Back (on LaserDisc) is a 1991 TV movie. Its plot is based a Stephen King short story from the book Night Shift. In the film, Tim Matheson plays a newly hired English teacher who has a class of seniors that become so wild that he loses his temper on his first day. 

    I can relate. 

    The first class I ever "taught" was Journalism One. The room was full of seniors who were expecting a different teacher (I was hired on August 24), and they became hostile when I wouldn't let them leave to go get breakfast. To make things worse, I had under-prepared my first lesson, and they had too much downtime. Soon they were loudly laughing, swearing, and shouting across the room at each other and also completely ignoring my pleas to quiet down. I eventually pulled an elementary teacher's trick and turned all the lights off to get their attention. I honestly was afraid that my principal was going to walk in and fire me on the spot. What a terrible experience.

    When the bell finally rang, I went next door to the boy's bathroom. I looked around to make sure that I was alone, and then I clenched my teeth and side kicked the metal wall of the stall as hard as I could. 

    The dent was there until the school was torn down 14 years later.

Halloween 2025: Group Photo #15

 October 15

    It's a Pumpkinhead-theme day. The Nightmare Before Christmas is represented because, "Cartoonist Tim Burton has acknowledged Jack Pumpkinhead as an inspiration for the iconic character Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas." IMDB

Then there's this guy hanging out in front of our house.

Halloween 2025: Group Photo #14

 October 14

    Today's shelf is dedicated to the "unexpected horror" in some of the kid shows I watched when I was little. The Wicked Witch of the West and the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz made me run out of the living room when I first saw them. 

    I was too old to want to see Return to Oz when it was first released (I was 16), but I was intrigued when I heard it had been described by a critic as "a horror movie flying under the flag of family entertainment."     

    The boat ride and what happens to Augustus Gloop in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is the stuff of nightmares. 

    The Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang always freaked me out. 

    The TV stations in our area when I was growing up didn't air H.R. Pufnstuf, so when I first saw it at my grandfather's (my mom's side) dark and dreary house, I thought I was watching a fever dream. I  was done when the flute started talking.

    These were all purchased with the intentions of entertaining our daughter, but I don't think she has watched any of these. She did see Tim Burton's remake of Willy Wonka, though. 

Halloween 2025: Group Photo #13

October 13 

  Putting these shelf displays together has turned out to be a pretty fun exercise. I'm combing through boxes and digging out stuff I haven't looked at in years. I'm also realizing that I should start thinning the herd. 

    Okay, from left to right: Frankenstein Double Header DVD, vintage Frankenstein Old Maid card, Frankenstein from the Film Classics Library (over 1000 film frames plus all the dialogue from the film), Frankenstein playing card that I found in the book, VHS tape, DVD, and a Frankenstein's Monster cartridge for the Atari 2600. 

        Here's what the book looks like.

    This Old Maid set is from 1964. The original Frankenstein came out in 1931. Thirty years later the kids in the 60's thought the Universal Monsters were cool again. Pop culture circles were a thing back then, too. These are before my time, by the way.

    Perforated card from a game given away by the French Paper Co. Someone thought it made a good bookmark for the Frankenstein movie book. I have to agree. 

Halloween 2025: Group Photo #12

 October 12

    I'm really glad Trick 'r Treat found an audience so I can at least watch it at home. This has to be one of the best "direct-to-DVD" Halloween movies ever made.

Halloween 2025: Group Photo #11

 October 11

    I saw The Lost Boys in the theater in the summer of '87, and I've seen it plenty of times at home since then. When Flix Brewhouse had a The Lost Boys Fan Fest featuring a souvenir glass, I bought a ticket, grabbed a glass, and promptly went home. Been there, done that.

    If you live near a Flix Brewhouse, you can see it on the big screen today, too.

    Hard to believe that Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland was only 17 years old when the film was shot.

Halloween 2025: Group Photo #10

 October 10

    The Grindhouse movie was presented as a double feature of exploitation films that could have come straight from the 1970s. The presentation was supposed to replicate the vibe of going to a seedy New York theater on 42nd street back in the day. 

    I didn't see Grindhouse in the theater when it was released in 2007, so I don't know if the illusion worked, and I regret that. I suppose that's why I kept buying Grindhouse stuff. I've been trying to visually replicate at home a visual replication in the theater that might not have replicated an experience at all. Writing that sentence made my brain hurt.

    That Tarantino ranks Death Proof as his worst film somewhat softens the blow. 

    Hard to believe that was 18 years ago.

    P.S. If they ever have a Grindhouse revival, I have my shirt picked out.

Halloween 2025: Group Photo #9

 October 9

At first I thought I'd write about finding the Crawl DVD at the dollar store and then finding the soundtrack at Half Price Books, but then I stopped myself. Wait a minute. I can do better than this...

    There. That's better. 

    The only thing scarier in the water than a shark fin is a pair of gator eyes skimming the surface. Of the five movies, Lake Placid gets my vote for most fun. I remember watching it in the early 2000s with my buddy Rob. Man we laughed. Every time I look at that cover I think of that.

Yikes. 

Halloween 2025: Group Photos 1-8

    Daphne and Charlotte took a girls' trip to Minneapolis last summer to shop at the Mall of American and IKEA. They returned with new clothes and new room decor items for Charlotte. I helped with mounting Char's new white IKEA shelves on her wall, so I knew exactly what I was looking at when I found a black IKEA shelf at Goodwill. 

    I mounted it in our basement so I can display the sleeve of whatever record is currently playing and what record is up next. 

    Last week I was looking at my different collections and thought it would be fun to also put movies and books together on the shelf. I put eight displays together, and now I want to see if I can get to 31: a different display for each day of October. I'm going to take a picture of each display, and write something about what is on the shelf. I'm not writing reviews,  just random comments. 

I think the Local H concert poster sets the tone nicely. 

October 1

    This is where it all starts for me. 

    In the fall of '83, the TV was running commercials that proclaimed, "FROM THE MIND THAT GAVE US 'SALEM'S LOT, AND THE VISION THAT BROUGHT US HALLOWEEN, COMES FEAR ON FOUR WHEELS: JOHN CARPENTER'S CHRISTINE!" Man, I wanted to see that movie! A high school kid who fixes up a really cool old '50's car and uses it to get the girl and get revenge on his enemies? I was in! 

    Too bad Mom was out. I was 13, the movie was rated R, and there was no way my mom was going to let me see it. She did buy me the book instead, and that's it on the right. It was my first time reading a Stephen King novel, and it was longer (and thicker) than anything I had tackled before. I was really proud of myself when I finished it, and I think that's why I've kept it for so long. When I finally did get to see the movie, I realized that the book was way scarier, and way raunchier. Yay! (sorry, Mom).

    The soundtrack for Christine was the first album that ever I bought. My sister and I had a small stack of 45s to share, but this was my first LP. Pop culture circles back about very 30 years or so, and the record is full of songs from the 50's which my friends and I thought were cool. I bought the soundtrack at the Musicland store in the Empire Mall in Sioux Falls, SD.

    I might get rid of the Christine DVD. The Blu-ray is an upgrade that I just purchased last weekend. I'm glad I had the DVD for this display, though. 

October 2

Another first. The Night of the Living Dead VHS tape was the first actual movie that I owned. I bought it new in 1984 at the Walmart in Sioux Center, IA. 

   Due to a missing copyright notice on the title card, NOTLD has been in the public domain since it was released in 1968. Finding a cheap, scratchy transfer on DVD was easy, and the "Millennium Edition" on the left was a revelation when it came out in 2001. The movie looked good for once, there were all kinds of extras, and Stephen King wrote the liner notes. As you'd expect, the Criterion Collection's Blu-ray release on the right is far superior to the DVD. The DVD has different extras, so I'm hanging onto it.

    In the middle is the colorized DVD edition. It's interesting, but the added color is not my thing. Mike Nelson of MST3K fame does a commentary track. Meh.

    Inside DVD was a monthly publication that only came out on DVD. One side had trailers, movie shorts, interviews, and other promo materials. The other side had a full movie that was either an indie film or a movie that was in the public domain like NOTLD.

October 3

1973's Psychomania is another 80's VHS tape I purchased from that same Walmart. It's a weird movie with non-gory zombies who ride in a motorcycle gang called The Living Dead. I'm a sucker for horror/ transportation mashups. The middle DVD is from a dollar store. It has a murky, non-anamorphic widescreen transfer. The Severin DVD on the right is the winner. The owner of the label intros the film, and he talks about the VHS tape that we both own. I want to get the Psychomania soundtrack on LP. I just bought it! Yay Discogs!

October 4

In the early 2000's someone donated a collection of movie novelization paperbacks to the Animal Lifeline Thrift Shop in Des Moines. I bought quite a few of the horror books for a quarter each. Here's three novelizations of Amicus horror anthologies. Tales from the Crypt has a segment that's fun to watch during the Christmas season if you like seeing a deranged killer in a Santa Claus suit. I have no problem with that.

October 5

Some more novelizations with their DVD brethren. If I remember correctly, in Blue Sunshine, Billy Crystal's older brother Richard runs out of from a party screaming when it's discovered that he's wearing a wig. Then he returns screaming and pushes a woman into a burning fireplace. Say no to drugs, kids.

October 6

    Whew. That's a big jump in quality. I went from having a 80's track team slasher movie on CED and jumped right to the same movie on Blu-ray. I guess I couldn't find it on Betamax.

    If you don't remember what CEDs were, you can click ----> here.

October 7

    Speaking of Betamax tapes, there's Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge on Beta. It's on DVD there, too. I'm not a huge Freddy fan, but I'll pick up a film if it's in the wild (cheap in a thrift store, I mean). The novelization is interesting as it's a combination of the first three films. It also has a bonus chapter: "The life and Death of Freddy Krueger." I don't know if the book is any good. To paraphrase Rob Gordon, "I haven't quite absorbed that one yet."

October 8

    The Return of the Living Dead on Beta tape, DVD, and Blu-ray. All three were found in thrift stores over the years. I'd have a pretty hard time replicating that today.

Okay, that's eight displays. I'm all caught up. Let's see what I can come up with for tomorrow.

A Turntable Rescue: Part 2, Finding a Twin.

I did a double-take when I spotted this turntable at the West Des Moines Goodwill on Saturday. It's a Technics SL-B2 turntable which is exactly the make and model of turntable that I've been working on. What are the odds of that happening? I hardly ever see turntables at Goodwill, and now I've seen two of the same pieces of equipment in almost the same condition? Am I stuck in a time loop?

This turntable was just as dirty as mine was, but overall it was in a bit rougher shape. There was no headshell, and the broken tonearm looked like it had been used as a handle. I would have bought it anyway if the dust cover was intact, but it wasn't. Someone had inserted one of the cover's tabs under the hinge instead of into the hinge. The tab snapped off when they tried to close the lid. That's a bummer.

As for my dust cover, I bought some plastic glue that is supposed to dry clear and be "an ultra-strong adhesive." To test it, I used a small paintbrush to apply the liquid glue to the bottom inch of the crack. I tried to get the glue to wick into the crack from both sides. It dried to a "cloudy" finish. That's not a big deal. I'm going for stability, not for looks. It does feel sturdier when I open and close it.

I was disappointed that I forgot to take "before" pictures of this turntable project, so I took some pictures using the TT at Goodwill as a dirty stand-in. The grime on this turntable isn't exactly the same as what was on mine, but it's really close, and you'll get the idea of what kind of results you can get with a deep cleaning.

Okay, back to my player.

The inside of the base was really clean, thankfully. There's also a lot open space. That's nice because it makes getting to parts much easier.

A common reason that a turntable's speed fluctuates is because the pitch-control assembly is dirty. Two screws attach it to the base.

The pitch-control is the black mech on the left. There is small slit in the bottom that allows me to spray some DetoxIT inside. Then I work the wheel back and forth to clean the contacts. The speed switch on the right was sprayed with DetoxIT and worked back and forth as well. 

I added a drop of lube to the motor. The metal tip that came with the oil makes it easier to be precise.

I bought a digital stylus force scale just for kicks. I was curious how accurate the markings for the tone arm's counterweight are. I have it set at 1.5 grams. Looks like it's actually under that.

That's better.

The eBay seller who sold me a replacement spindle gear threw in a 3D printed overhang gauge for free.

That was nice, but I had no idea what a overhang gauge does. Turns out, the gauge tells you how far out the turntable manufacturer wants the cartridge to be in the headshell. You can't really see it in the photo, but it looks like mine is just a hair short. That's okay. I don't feel like adjusting the cartridge again. 

And that wraps it up. It's time to put this turntable in my lineup, and see how well it plays. A few tests runs have been successful, so I'm feeling good about it.

This was a fun project. I probably saved a turntable from the landfill or a parts bin. I also learned about cartridge alignment and overhang. I applied both of those lessons to my main turntable, and I have to admit that these adjustments made a big improvement in that turntable's performance. 

Big shoutout to YouTube and eBay. Thanks for all the help.