Alright gang, once more with feeling! Unless I decide to get my act together and do a post about my favorite comic-reading experiences of 2018, this will probably be my last recap post. On one hand, it’s been fun looking back at everything I watched and read last year, on the other, I’m reminded of why it’s fun to do these sorts of posts as they happen. Here’s hoping I do more of that! Anyway, this last batch of horror movies features a five-pack of movies that not only deal with the complexities of childhood both during and after that stage of life, but also emotionally devastated me (well, all but one). Alright, let’s dive in!
Continue reading My Favorite Newer Horror Movies Of 2018 Part 2The Midnight Comic Club Episode 5 – Halloween Comics
Well, Halloween is just barely in the rearview, so it’s the perfect time to not only call another meeting of The Midnight Comic Club to order, but also talk about comics based on one of my all-time favorite horror franchises Halloween!
I’ve written a ton about my relationship with these movies here and there on this blog, most recently here. That might help give a little more context to the episode as it goes. Also, if you’re curious, like I said in the intro, these issues are very hard to find for a reasonable price, so happy hunting if you’re interested. Without further ado, here’s the episode.
Here’s the Stefan Hutchinson JoeBlo interview I mentioned.
If you’re wondering why I don’t mention the artist of Halloween III: The Devil’s Eyes, it’s because he’s a gross dude whose name will not be mentioned here. I didn’t realize it when I recorded the episode itself, otherwise, I would have probably approached it differently.
Halloween Scene: Old School Round-Up
As I mentioned yesterday, I got to an early start when it came to watching horror movies this fall. So, I’ve got a lot to talk about! First, if you haven’t already, check out a pair of lists I wrote for CBR. One’s about movies and shows to follow Stranger Things up with while the other focused on the best classic horror movies to stream on Netflix and Amazon Prime!
Halloween Scene: 2015 Horror Recap
Usually around the end of a year I take some time to go through my favorite albums of the year and I still might do that, but I also felt like looking back at my favorite horror experiences of 2015. Thanks to Netflix, the library and a gaggle of fun freelance assignments around Halloween I got to see a good mix of old and new films this year that I wanted to look back on one more time before moving on to the new year. Continue reading Halloween Scene: 2015 Horror Recap
Halloween Scene: My Halloween Watch List
Goodness gracious! I was looking through my unpublished drafts and found this post about the rest of the horror movies I watched during October. There’s some good stuff in here, so let’s jump back in time a few months and think scary thoughts!
After a super busy September and October, I’m still catching up on all of the movies I watched for work and fun. After focusing on new films early on in the season, I decided to go through my movie collection and Netflix to make a list of films I wanted to watch leading up to Halloween. The list had a total of 26 films, though I wound up removing five. All told, I watched 13 plus the seven films making up the original Halloween franchise. I’m saving a few of them for another post, but I did want to throw out a few thoughts about what turned out to be a major rewatch experience.
As it turned out, zombies were a huge part of this year’s list. Dawn and Day Of The Dead easily made the list along with Dance Of The Dead, the Dawn remake and World War Z. I didn’t get to those last two, but I keep seeing more and more things in those two Romero movies that I love. I’ve been seeing a lot of people dump on the zombie genre lately. To them I say, watch those two movies. They are amazing films, not just horror flicks. Meanwhile, I still have a great time with Dance which is just super impressive when you take into account it’s a low budget film that doesn’t look it. This is easily one of my favorite zombie movies from the past few decades. Continue reading Halloween Scene: My Halloween Watch List
Casting Internets: My Halloween Writing
Hi All, you might have noticed that I haven’t posted much here on UnitedMonkee.com recently. That’s because I’ve been pretty darn busy between work and the home buying process (which officially ends today!). I pitched a lot of different Halloween-themed freelance ideas this month, many of which got picked up. Now that they’re finally coming out, I wanted to share them with you.
I worked on two lists for Spinoff Online focusing on horror movies from this decade. I was super impressed with everything I saw. Hopefully I can get to a roundup post soon.
5 Recent Slasher Flicks to Take a Stab at For Halloween
5 Recent Indie Supernatural Horror Movies Worth Watching
Over on Marvel.com, I write four Halloween Spooklights on various scary characters from the Marvel U:
Halloween Spooklight: Morbius
Halloween Spooklight: Dracula
Halloween Spooklight: Man-Thing
Halloween Spooklight: The Legion Of Monsters
Finally, I did two lists for Topless Robot that took a lot of work (if reading comics and watching movies can be considered as such):
John Constantine’s 10 Nastiest Moments from the Early Days Of Hellblazer
Michael Myers’ 10 Craziest Kills From the Original Halloween Franchise
Casting Internets
Every morning I go through my RSS feeds for my day job. My main goal is to figure out what will make for good stories over on Spinoff, but I also keep an eye on toy news and look for fun stories to read later. I have a ridiculous backlog right now that I’m slowly going through, so you’ll see a few older interviews and news bites here, but I’m still jazzed about them.
The Raid 2 is getting a US release! We don’t know when yet, but that’s awesome! (via Variety)
TVLine put together a list of 15 questions they’d like to see How I Met Your Mother answer before ending this year. I agree with about 10 of them, but still a fun rundown.
I’m a big fan of the Ramones anthology that Rhino put out several years back, but I’ve got to say, this box set that Rolling Stone talks about bringing their first six records into one package for under $40 is awfully appealing.
I’m a big fan of the National Treasure movies, so when I read this brief interview on Collider with director Jon Turteltaub about one filming in the next few years, I got pretty stoked.
New Led Zeppelin tracks? That’s not enough for me to re-buy all the records, but I’m definitely intrigued by this Rolling Stone story about songs with John Paul Jones vocals.
I’ve become a big fan of the Duplass Bros. in the past few years, so I enjoyed this interview with them about what they’re up to these days over on Variety.
It would have been pretty cool to be at that small, career-spanning Blink-182 concert they talked about in this Rolling Stone interview.
I’ve always enjoyed reading about wacky bootleg action figures like the one I found above. The Fwoosh contributor TheManInTheAntHill did a pretty great one recently that’s worth a look.
Dave Grohl opened up to Rolling Stone about the waning days of Nirvana. I’m alway up for a Nirvana interview, you guys.
Halloween is one of those movies where you’re never quite sure which version to buy, so I’m glad that HMAD got around to not only reviewing the latest offering, but saying that it’s the one to buy. Much appreciated!
Little Ms. Sunshine was a really emotionally honest film, so I think it’s directors are great choices to make a Mister Rogers biopic. (via TheWrap)
I discovered this old Mental Floss article about the 10 coolest Disney park attractions that never got made while doing some research for a story. Fun stuff!
Whoa, Rolling Stone is reporting that Norah Jones and Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day have joined forces to cover an Everly Brothers record. It’s called Foreverly and I’m incredibly intrigued.
The CW sounds like the perfect place to set a drama revolving around California’s emerging surf scene in the 60s. Scheduling conflicts aside, I’m…on board. (via Deadline)
Halloween Scene: Ten Notable Movies That Scared This Jaded Horror Fan
I’ve seen a lot of horror movies since I started getting into the genre around the age of 16. Like a lot of horror fans, I feel like I’ve become somewhat jaded over the years. Once you see enough of these things, you can see the Matrix a little bit and know when a scare is coming — if you can tell the difference between an impending jump scare and a legit one, you’ve got the super scardar. And yet, there are still the scenes that scared us when we started out and even though they’re fewer and farther between these days, the new films that still give us the willies or come out of nowhere to spook us. I figured with Halloween still in the air — and inspired by awesome horror blogger Stacie Ponder doing something similar over on her excellent Final Girl blog — I’d run down the ten movies that scared me over the years. I’m sure there’s more out there in the world, but these are the ones that came to mind, either because they entered my life at just the right time, scared me for a moment or created an atmosphere that still ooks me out to this day. So, in no particular order, here’s the ten movies the still spook me in no particular order. Consider yourself warned, spoilers abound after the jump!
Continue reading Halloween Scene: Ten Notable Movies That Scared This Jaded Horror Fan
Halloween Scene: Scream Factory’s Halloween II
Seeing as how it’s Halloween, I wanted to watch a few new horror flicks today, but instead decided to stop wasting time with something that might suck and watching a movie I already know I like presented by the best DVD-makers around, Shout Factory. I actually got the Halloween II Collector’s Edition from their Scream Factory imprint back when I got the one for Halloween III: Season of the Witch, but was saving it for a special occasion. Today seemed appropriate enough, so I went with it.
Before getting into the bonus features, of which I only got through about half, I want to say a few nice things about this movie. I reviewed this one way back in 2008, and while that post is filled to the gills with spelling errors, I still agree with it. ,mv I think this is an underrated sequel. It doesn’t come near topping the o/. riginal, but I give it a lot of credit for mixing things up, getting into a different location and keeping the horror a lot more tight and claustrophobic.
I didn’t realize before how important the setting is to this film. In addition to giving Michael Myers one specific place to haunt for a period of time, you’re also dealing with a lot of the inherent fears that come from being in a hospital. While in a hospital you’re by definition not feeling well or something’s wrong, so you’re altered emotionally, but then you’ve got all these strangers walking in and out and doing things to you you might not understand. Who’s to say all of those people have your best interest in mind? Put a masked killer on top of all that and you’ve got a pretty great recipe for scares.
Okay, now on to the bonus features. I haven’t watched the second disc which contains the TV version of the film, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, so that’s something to look forward to. I also didn’t have time to re-watch the movie with commentary, but will keep it in mind next time I need something to listen to while working. I did watch the documentary The Nightmare Isn’t Over: The Making Of Halloween II which is a great viewing experience, just like its brother over on the H3 Scream Factory release.
One of the most interesting pieces of info I learned from the doc is that they actually shot an ending where it’s revealed that Jimmy lived. The interesting part isn’t that it got cut, but that director Rick Rosenthal didn’t know it got cut. He said there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen and he didn’t know who cut it. They then talked about the TV cut, which was apparently done more under John Carpenter’s direction and included newly shot scenes with the cast when Rosenthal wasn’t there.
I also once again enjoyed an installment of Horror’s Hollowed Grounds with HorrorHound‘s Sean Clark. He’s not joined by the director like he was with the H3 version, but he’s still full of info and it’s always neat to see locations from the flicks and how they’ve changed or, more interestingly, not changed over the decades. Clark’s attention to detail is always impressive. It’s also fun to see locations from other movies right next to these shooting locations.
Once again, Shout’s Scream Factory arm did an awesome job putting together the kind of presentation that the second best Michael Myers movie deserves. This is far better than the single disc version I already had in my collection and will take that spot with ease.
Casting Internets
It’s been way too long since I’ve done one of these, so I’ve got a few old links in here. Ah well, I think they’re still worth checking out.
First off, I’m sad to hear about Steve Jobs passing away. To my mind he was the Walt Disney of our generation. He might not have build the iPad or MacBook Air with his own hands, but he amassed an amazing crew of people, gave them some ideas and let them invent to the utmost of their ability. Same goes for Walt. My thoughts go out to his family.
Onto a few more light links. A few folks got drawn onto variant covers of Amazing Spider-Man #669, check out the story I did on them over at Marvel.com. I also wrote about Beast’s many costumes for the site and my monthly Earth’s Mightiest Costumes feature!
For CBR, I talked to Frank Cho about Guns & Dinoes, Nathan Edmondson about The Activity, Jon Goff about Blood Red Dragon, Jim Zubkavich about Skullkickers, Denton & Keene about Pilot Season: Fleshdigger and Doug TenNapel about Ratfist.
I also did a list for Topless Robot, this one about the nerdiest set decorations found on The IT Crowd, a show I quite liked.
Speaking of Topless Robot, my pal Rob Bricken wrote a pretty amazing and hilarious FAQ for the Star Wars Blu-ray you should absolutely read.
I saw the following N64 commercial a ton of times while watching my tape of Real World: Boston. It’s quite strange, to say the least.
I’ve been a Red Hot Chili Peppers since 7th grade and never read a solo Chad Smith until this super entertaining Rolling Stone one.
Dan Hipp mashed up Willy Wonka and the Fantastic Four. Beauty.
X-Men Destiny looks kinda awesome. My interest will depend on how much RPG stuff is in there. The less the better. (via CBR)
As a novice food blogger over on Monkeying Around The Kitchen, I found this Will Write For Food list of ways bloggers have changed food reviewing to be pretty darn interesting.
Ript Apparel‘s Mad Men/80s slasher mash-up was pretty amazing today. In fact, I liked it so much, I bought it! (via Shirtoid)
