Nobody Wants to Party with Us, says Mrs. Piss

 

I did not find out about Chelsea Wolfe and Jess Gowrie's new band Mrs Piss until a week or two ago, and since, their debut Self-Surgery has become a record I simply cannot turn off. Available on the always great Sargent House, you can order the record HERE.

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Watch:

 

Having just seen the original Castle Freak for the first time within the last year or two (Thanks, Joe Bob!), I'd read about Barbara Crampton's work producing a remake and became immediately interested. It's not often one of the original cast members in a seminal film take on such a labor of love, and the fact that the cast member in question is possibly the greatest Scream Queen of all time only adds to my interest. Why remake this film? I can only assume Ms. Crampton has good reason to throw her hat into the project, and judging by the trailer, we should have a new iteration of Stuart Gordon's somewhat odd modern take on the H.P. Lovecraft classic in just a few short weeks.

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NCBD

First, the return of Rick Remender and Jerome Opena's dark fantasy epic has become even more exciting now that they've announced Seven to Eternity will be ending in just three short issues. I love this book, and I've missed it incredibly.

We Live is an Aftershock book getting a lot of press. On a whim I grabbed the first issue last month, dug it quite a bit, and now I'm hooked. Love this cover on issue two. 

A 'zombie book' that is very much not about zombies, Dead Day continues to make me smile.

Die! Die! Die! may be a book I've continued to read out of inertia, but that doesn't mean I'm not still enjoying it. "GI Joe but totally nuts" is really the only way to describe this one.

I mistakenly never added Jason Howard's Big Girls to either one of my pulls at Atomic Basement or The Comic Bug, and as such, it has been a pain in the arse to find since I picked up the first issue. If I hadn't stumbled across a copy of #3 last week, I would have probably given up and waited for trade, but since I'm only missing #2 now, I'm making the attempt to go monthly again, just to support Howard, whose art I adore.

And finally, this is a new one I'm considering picking up. A sequel to Vault Comics' Fearscape, which I did not read but keep hearing good things about, I thought I might grab the first issue of A Dark Interlude and the Fearscape trade. 

This is definitely the biggest NCBD is a while. I still have storage concerns, but they've kind of taken a back seat to 'the passion' again.

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Playlist:

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

The Clash - London Calling

The Bronx - Eponymous (I)

Fleet Foxes - Shore

The Foxies - Anti Socialite (single)

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God

Steve Moore - Bliss OST

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Card:

Really, not necessarily a new journey or undertaking, as a direct indictment of how fucking lazy I have been of late. I just can't seem to get my discipline with writing back online at the moment; it's been a struggle now for the last few months, and I really need to do something about it

RIP Eddie Van Halen

 

I'm not really a Van Halen fan, and as revolutionary as Eddie Van Halen's guitar style was at the time Van Halen's eponymous debut hit the world, he really just played 'Eruption' over and over for the rest of his career. That's not exactly true, but it's not exactly wrong, either. Doesn't matter: first rock album I ever owned was 1984, and I've loved it ever since. The singles are all gold, but the deep cuts are infinitely better, imo. I almost posted Drop Dead Legs here, but instead I went with Top Jimmy just because I think the intro guitar is some of the most under-stated playing EVH ever did, and that makes it even more awesome. If there's a stage in Heaven, Eddie's gonna take a turn.

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31 Days of Halloween:

I've been flim-flamming between calling this segment "31 Days of Horror" and "31 Days of Halloween," but I think I'm going to finally settle on the latter, simply because my activities of the last few days have put me in situations where my entries for the day skew outside the realm of Horror. My definition Horror is definitely open to a lot of interpretation, but I feel like I'm really pushing the envelope including Mulholland Drive and Synchronic. So Halloween works a lot better this year.

Monday night, my Horror Vision co-host Ray and I hit our final night of Beyondfest 2020 programming at the Mission Tiki Drive-In with the West Coast Premiere of the looong-awaited new film from Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Synchronic is everything I thought it would be and more, but it also surprised me. These guys are great filmmakers who will no doubt become Nolan-level in time, and I feel privileged to have now seen the film that I believe will bridge the 'Independent' era of their career with what comes next.

 

 

Also, Monday night was a double-feature, and Ray and I were also lucky enough to catch the premiere of Justin Simien's new film Bad Hair:       

Bad Hair premieres on HULU on October 23rd, and it's a damn good time. If you look up in the right hand corner of this page, you'll see my little Spotify widget has updated with our quick-take, spoiler-free review of both these films.

Finally, last night K and I sat down to watch a flick she's been wanting me to see for a few months now, ever since it popped up on Prime. And what I realized once the film began is, even though I'd been seeing the VHS cover art since I was a little kid, I had completely missed or forgotten that Dolls is a Stuart Gordon film! This, of course, won me over immediately, as did the film, which is excellent in that 'the storm forced us to knock on the door of the creepy old mansion and now we're all being picked off one by one' way that keeps coming up lately, whether it be in Dolls, April Fool's Day, or Clue, all excellent films in my humble opinion. Also, I'm really making an attempt to watch some new stuff this year, instead of just filling the month with my standard October films. This and The Wolf Man were good starts in that direction.

1) The Wolf Man

2) From Beyond/Monsterland: Port Fourchon, Louisiana

3) Mulholland Drive/Creepshow (1982): The Crate

4) Waxwork

5) Synchronic/Bad Hair

6) Dolls

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Playlist:

Deftones - Ohms

The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once

Mastodon - Leviathan

Ainoma - Necropolis

Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me

Van Halen - 1984

Mastodon - Medium Rarities

Fear Factory - Demanufacture

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Card:

Cause and Effect: I've been unable to right for about a week, and my self-esteem is in the toilet. Go figure.

Isolation Day 20: Priests!

During a pretty lucrative writing session yesterday I leaned on White Lung for momentum, and in doing so, inadvertently discovered Priests. Great band! The lyrics to 'Appropriate' - the lead song on 2017's Nothing Feels Natural are so insightful they hurt!

**

I sat down and watched Stuart Gordon's Stuck, a film that had been on my list for years, and which until recently I had completely forgotten was Gordon's. Really dark, sometimes funny, overall great. Read my small Letterbxd review HERE.



I'd never noticed it before, and maybe it's not true of Gordon's more phantasmagorical works, but this one really reminded me of Larry Cohen's work. I might try to squeeze in one of his films today, you know, since we have all this bloody time on our hands.

**

Beyondfest's Twitter account has been a bastion in this trying time. Earlier today they tweeted out the link to American Cinematheque Chief Projectionist Ben Tucker essentially giving a tour of the Egyptian's Projection Booth. I've been meaning to join the American Cinematheque for years, and I think now is when I will finally pull the trigger on that.



**

Playlist:

Wire - Pink Flag
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Soundgarden - Bad Motorfinger
Seefeel - Fracture/Tied (Single)
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
The Obsessed - Lunar Womb
Slayer -  Live Undead/Haunting the Chapel
White Lung - Eponymous
White Lung - Sorry
Priests - Nothing Feels Natural
Ennio Morricone - The Thing OST

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Card:

Again. From the Grimoire, "...skill and/or wisdom..." because I'm finally making real headway on what I'm working on. 

2019: January 8th - New Sharon Van Etten!

From her forthcoming album Remind Me Tomorrow, which Jagjaguwar drops on the 18th, same day as the new Thirsty Crows record. Pre-order HERE.

I've fallen back on Gang of Four's Return the Gift pretty hard. I know most folks do not agree with me on this, but I will take the 2012, re-recorded versions of all these classic Gang of Four songs over their originals any day. Part of this is probably because I discovered Gang of Four waaaaay after the fact - early 00s - and only ever knew the album That's Entertainment as one of their albums, i.e. a collection of songs fit together as an overall work, and never knew it that well to begin with. I don't want to belabor the point, but here's an A and B of my favorite song on an album that is pretty much full of "favorite songs."

1982:



And the 2012 version:



I didn't live and love with this original version - from the album Songs of the Free - so I don't have a horse in that race. I just think the up-tempo, almost Pop approach and the slamming recording of the '12 version is a much better representation of what the band seemed to be going for with the song.

The Arrow Video release of Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator contains a feature-length, making-of documentary titled Re-Animator Resurrectus. I can't recommend this supplemental feature enough! I've always loved Re-Animator as one of the stalwart classics of the Horror genre, and more specifically the 80s era of the Horror genre, but this doc has really given me an even deeper appreciation for the film. Somehow I never realized that Re-Animator was Gordon's Hollywood film. The doc talks to everyone: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Bruce Abbot, David Gale... everyone! And of course there's plenty of screen time with Gordon and Brian Yuzna, and a lot of frank discussion about how to adequately adapt  H.P. Lovecraft to film and make it work.

There's a bunch of other great interview extras on the disc (I have the one-disc version), and all of it really opened the film up for me. Can't wait to watch it again.

Playlist from 1/07:

Ben Frost - By the Throat
Nick Lowe - Jesus of Cool
Arctic Monkeys - No. 1 Party Anthem
Gang of Four - I Love a Man in Uniform (2012)
Foster the People - Life on the Nickel
Self - What a Fool Believes
Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
Barry Adamson - Oedipus Schmoedipus
U2 - War
Ben Frost - Aurora

Card of the day:

This, I believe, is a direct reference to the final pages of my book, which despite a somewhat frustrating session yesterday brought on by sheer exhaustion from a very physical day at work, is still coming along swimmingly.

2018: October 4th

K and I continued our 31 days of Horror last night. In spite of a late start, or rather because of it, we went with a shorter flick, specifically Stuart Gordon's entry into the Masters of Horror library. As an adaptation and modernization of H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witchhouse, Gordon's piece works pretty well. It's been a minute since I read the story - going to try and remedy that this weekend - but from what I remember of it Gordon does a good job. Brown Jenkins, in particular, is pretty creepy. And kudos for going all the way with the ending.



I've been in a Gordon mood lately. Chomping at the bit to re-watch Dagon, as it's my favorite by him and I haven't seen it since the big screen at the Warner Grand back at either 2011 or 2012's H.P. Lovecraft fest. Also, ordered Arrow Film's Re-animator, a film I've only seen once and a long time ago. Back also around 2011/2012 I saw Gordon's musical stage adaptation of Re-animator at the Steve Allen Theatre, and I loved it so much in that form I've been afraid the film just won't hold up since. Pretty sure that's unfounded, and Arrow's release is packed with extras, so I pulled the trigger on finally adding that to the collection.

Okay, so that puts our 31 Days of Horror list at:

10/01) Summer of 84
10/02) Rope
10/03) Dreams in the Witch House

Playlist from 10/03:

Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me
Miranda Sex Garden - Carnival of Souls
The Soft Moon - Eponymous
The Soft Moon - Criminal
White Lung - Sorry
Daughters - Satan in Wait (single)
The Ocean - Anthropocentric
Perturbator - Dangerous Days
Sisters of Mercy - First and Last and Always

Card of the day:

The Twos are the pure breakthrough of the Ace into the first stage of practice.