Suspiria

Tuesday evening was spent with my good friend and fellow film afficionado Mike McKenzie at the GFT in Glasgow watching Dario Argento's "Suspiria" with a surprisingly good audience in tow! Although at times a scratchy looking print and with some of the violence trimmed, it was a fun experience watching a classic film in the cinema with like-minded fans! Hopefully a precursor to the forthcoming "Weekend of Italian Terror", with hopefully another good attendance! Remember go buy tickets! Like now!

Weekend of Italian Terror: Tickets are Go!

As per my previous post, tickets for this fabulous weekend of great Italian horror classics and special guests, Mr Bava and Mr Deodato, are now on sale over at the GFT. So show your support for events like these and get yourself up (or down) to Glasgow for the weekend! Plus you might get to see yours truly translate some of your questions for our special Italian guests!

Edinburgh Zombie Club!

Just heard about this from some Edinburgh based cult movie friends that the Edinburgh Zombie Club will be meeting as usual at the Brass Monkey pub in Edinburgh next wednesday the 27th May with this months movies being Abel Ferrara's "Ms.45" and Frank Henelotters "Basket Case". Everyone is welcome to come along an enjoy the fun! For more info go to their MySpace. Think I'll head along and see what I've been missing!

Bava and Deodato coming to Glasgow!

Now, how exciting is this! Ruggero Deodato and Lamberto Bava are both coming to Glasgow, more specifically to the Glasgow Film Theatre to introduce "Weekend of Italian Terror" on June 27th and 28th. In association with Arrow Video who are releasing their new "Masters of Giallo" collection, both legendary directors will be in town to do intros and a Q&A after screenings of Deodato's "Cut and Run" and Bava's "Macabre". Hopefully I can score a little interview with them as well, more on this to come!

June 27th - "House by the Cemetary" 9pm
June 28th - "Cut and Run" 5.30pm followed by "Macabre" at 8pm

More info and tickets - Glasgow Film Theatre

Source: Fangoria

Big Trouble on Blu-Ray

Coming soon to Blu-Ray, well August 4th to be exact....my geekness has gone into overload!!

Week 5 - Contributions

"What has been your best experience watching a genre/horror/cult classic in a movie theatre that otherwise you'd perhaps only seen on VHS or DVD?"

Erin

I saw Blue Velvet as a college assignment freshman year (1992) at the student union theater. It was supposed to be shocking us out of our conservative mindsets, creating new Weltaunshaungs, ways of seeing, blah blah blah. I loved being the only kid who had already seen it, probably 10 times or more by then, and watching everyone else get offended while I laughed at some of Frank's more outrageous statements. Fun to make the snotty professors (there were two of them) realize that all of us weren't bumpkins to whom they were bringing fire for the first time. My parents always let me watch whatever I wanted, so I didn't realize I was supposed to have been offended; it was just an awesome movie!

Kim (Cinebeats)

Seeing Argento's Suspiria in Berkeley sometime in the mid '90s was a pretty memorable experience because I just loved seeing it on a big screen, but the print wasn't that good and the audience was annoying. Another great experience for me was seeing the classic Jacques Tourneur film Night of the Demon. The print was terrific and there was practically no one in the audience but myself and the few friends who came with me. Everyone should experience Tourneur and Argento in a theatre.

Holger Haase (Hammer and Beyond)

The films didn't matter, but the company did so I have to say the fun filled weekend in Baltimore that I spent with the Eurotrash Paradise folks a few years ago (3?) in Baltimore.

Kingmob (Dear Bastards)

Bearing in mind that I live in a rather small town, exciting theatrical experiences are few and far between, but one in particular does stick out. I recall attending a midnight screening of Heavy Metal that was a lot of fun, as the crowd was composed of a nice cross section of fans, some who had been waiting to see the film again in a theater for a good long time, others who had seen it on its initial run in the early 80's; it was a great experience. I honestly can't recall the circumstances of the theatrical showing, perhaps in anticipation of the VHS release of the film? This would've been in the late 90's when it happened. It was a fun film to catch on the big screen, with an audience that was there to enjoy themselves.

Matthew (Double O Section)

Seeing The Wicker Man in a packed house at Los Angeles' Egyptian Theatre, I remember being awed that the movie was so unsettling, put people under such a spell, that there was Christopher Lee in a dress and a wig leading a crazy procession and no one was laughing! They were all too entranced or too creeped out. That's the power of cinema in action!

Ian Price

When in my youth I'd often sneak
Into a flea pit there to seek
A fantasy of creepy thrills
Designed to give the punter thrills.
Bela, Boris, Chaney all
Were welcome friends in the front stall
But as time flew - as needs it must
I found myself desiring just
A change of pace - a hint of colouTo satisfy my love of horror
And so it was, I must relate
I saw an X certificate.
Lee and Cushing made a mark
As I sat gibbering in the dark
Whilst watching with a rictus grin
My eyes devouring every sin.
Excired to a nervous stammer
I realised I'd witnessed Hammer.

And nothing was ever the same again.

Keith Brown (Giallo Fever)

Seeing the Grindhouse releasing print of The Beyond, complete with the trailer reel for Massacre Mafia Style, Cannibal Ferox and so on at Dead by Dawn horror film festival many years back.

RIP: Captain Chaos

Sad news reaches DVD Trash that Dom DeLuise, who will forever be Captain Chaos to me from the Cannonball Run movies that I made my Grandpa rent from the video shop every weekend, has sadly passed away!

Anyway enjoy some Captain Chaos and Kato! Daaannn, Daaaannn, Daaaannnnn!

Week 5 - The Roundtable

Following on from my post about watching Zombi in a movie theatre, this weeks Roundtable question is simply as follows:

"What has been your best experience watching a genre/horror/cult classic in a movie theatre that otherwise you'd perhaps only seen on VHS or DVD?"

Zombi Q & A

I very much enjoyed a screening of Lucio Fulci's Zombi at the Glasgow Film Theatre last night, with the added bonus of the star, Ian McCullough introducing the film and then doing a little Q & A afterwards! One snippet of nice info was that while he was over in the US doing the Chiller Convention, he was told that Zombi would be heading to Blu-Ray very soon!

Week 4 - Roundtable Contributions

Thanks as always guys, much appreciated. Week 5 might be up a little later than usual as it is my brothers stag weekend coming up at Loch Lomond, so I might need some recovery time.....

Joshua Lew (Cinema Cafe Podcast)

This one’s easy. Hands down without a doubt the greatest horror/genre movie icon is...Pumpkinhead, or maybe it's the movie villains with my favorite tagline, Rats: Hide the Cheese. In all seriousness though my favorite horror icon has always been Michael Myers. Sure most of the Halloween films are pretty terrible, but the ones that are good are great. So yeah, my vote goes to the man who wears the inside out William Shatner mask.

Kim Lindbergs (Cinebeats)

I really love super kriminals like Diabolik, Sadistik and the female Satanik. They're very iconic and represent a lot of what I love about Euro trash cinema!

Michael McKenzie (Land of Whimsy)

For me it's going to have to be the quintessential black-gloved killer who terrorised many an Edwige Fenech and Nieves Navarro in the scores of giallo movies produced in Italy in the late 60s and early 70s. I know that strictly speaking that isn't a conventional "killer icon" in the Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers tradition, since there were as many individual giallo killers as there were gialli, but I think it says something about the image of the unidentified killer dressed completely in black, often with a matching fedora, that it reappeared in so many films and even had an influence outside the genre. Think of the killer in David Fincher's SE7EN, for example, in the scene where Brad Pitt chases him through the rain-drenched alleyways of New York. Who is is he if not the iconic giallo killer reborn for a new generation?

Holger Haase (Hammer and Beyond)

Clearly Dr Fu Manchu in all its incarnations. I love the original books (at least the ones I have read so far) and I follow the good Doctor along in all his appearances whether it is on film, on radion or in comics (Master of Kung Fu). You just can't keep a bad guy down. Where's my elixir of life when I need it?

KingMob (Dear Bastards)

Of the Modern Era of horror films, I would honestly have to go with Leatherface, in spite of all the cross-dressing nonsense in TCM: The Next Generation, and other variations that the character has gone through in the remakes. The Leatherface of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a chilling creation, a leather-aproned psycho who could be lurking in any creepy old house you stumble onto in a remote area, ready to lay you out with a hammer to the head and string you up for meat.

Douglas Waltz (Divine Exploitation)

Okay, if I understand your question, you want me to not choose from the Universal classics or the slasher icons from the 80's and 90's. If that is correct, are there any true horror icons that stand up to the reputations of any of these characters? I mean, there is Jigsaw. I imagine he would count. But, one character that has been in multiple films like all these iconic characters that stands out?
I'm going to have to go with the answer that horror hasn't recently cultivated any character that deserves the same sort of respect that the aforementioned icons receive.
My answer is that I do not have one.

Ian Price

Bruce Campbell as Ash in EDI, EDII and Army of Darkness.
Tim Thomerson as Jack Deth in Trancers.

Keith Brown (Giallo Fever)

Beyond Jigsaw from the Saw franchise – none of which I've seen, so can't comment on – I'm not too sure who's left to choose from.

Damien from the Omen films, Regan from Exorcist and Exorcist II, the Sawyers from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre films and Hannibal Lektor are all recurring and or iconic characters, but might also be too mainstream to count as alternative.

Many of the other figure that come to mind are either one-offs or representatives of a type, like the zombie, the werewolf, Barbara Steele's dualistic monster-victims, and the black-gloved faceless killer.

A couple of figures that do come to mind beyond this are Dr Freudstein in Fulci's The House by the Cemetery and The Red Queen in Edouardo Mulargia's The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, both of whom I think have an interesting look and back-story / mythology.

Another, in a more reality-horror / arthouse than genre direction is Philippe Nahon's Butcher in Gaspar Noe's Carne, Seul contre tour and Irreversible.