Friday, April 30, 2010

Development Hell


A fascinating read regarding the fate of the next installment in the Halloween movie franchise, coming from screenwriter Todd Farmer's blog. Slated for release in glorious three dimensions, Michael Myers has to survive the most murderous, brutal killer of all: Hollywood!

http://wendago.com/2010/01/08/september-rain/

Monday, April 26, 2010

Eternal Chess


Some more cool pics I dug up from our last trip to Disneyland. For those who have visited 'the happiest place on earth,' you might recognize the first picture from the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. I've heard tell that this ride will be getting a major overhaul in the near future (to make it more in line with the movies that were based on the original ride - which is a strange paradox.) I do hope they keep the queue the same, as it is one of the best in the entire park. The last two photos are from the classic Disney's Haunted Mansion, natch. As many times as I've seen this over the years, I always seem to find a new angle to photograph it from.

As a side note, I took my six-year-old daughter on this ride for the first time. Frequent guests will know there are 999 ghosts that haunt the mansion. My daughter was in tears by ghost one, and in near hysterics by ghost 999. I could barely get her on the Pirates ride after that fiasco. I guess I can always try again in a couple of years with my son...

Friday, April 23, 2010

The Scream

There's a certain note the human voice can register that will actually shatter glass. It's not a comfortable note to hear - opera singers train to carry that note - but children are able to hit that note at will, particularly girls (I speak from experience with my own daughter). You know you're doing a good job on Halloween night if you can get a trick-or-treater to hit that note at least once.

The first time I ever scared a trick-or-treater so bad they hit the glass-shattering note was back the mid 90's. At the time my brother and his wife lived down the street from my mom and dad, and I was helping them out on Halloween night. My costume was pretty elaborate. I had a dimestore Frankenstein Halloween mask on, my shabby clothes were rescued from the trash bin (with a bit of subterfuge in mind, I stuffed newspapers into my sleeves and pant legs so they stuck out a bit, making me look like I was stuffed.)

Earlier that day I had driven an old rusty hatchet into a plank of wood. Now it was time to put that hatchet to the test. Laying down on the boulevard between the street and the sidewalk in front of my brother's house, I placed the hatchet board on my chest and then buttoned my old ratty shirt around it. As the first trick-or-treaters came up the block I lay still. Very still. It was a cold, cold Halloween that year and it didn't take long before there was frost on the ground. I felt like I was literally starting to freeze. But I couldn't abandon my job until I had got in at least one good scare.

It was dark now, the streets were busy with kids begging for candy. I heard a group of older kids approaching and knew I had a shot at glory. As they came near I didn't even breathe. It was a group of four young girls - I would guess in the twelve to thirteen year old range. Prime targets for terror.

They walked up to me. They studied me, debating whether I was real or not. One of them even kicked my boot. "It's totally fake," the girl said. That's when I started quivering all over and grasping at her pant-legs.

You could hear that ear-piercing, glass-shattering scream for miles.

Priceless.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Poe Ln.



A friend of mine took a trip to New England recently and snapped me a couple of cool Poe-related pics. There is so much EAP related history I would like to see out on the east coast - from Boston to New York to Virginia to Maryland - but for now I'll have to settle for other people's generosity.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Hot Pants


Picked up one of the last missing pieces of my Hammer horror DVD collection for $9.99 at Best Buy yesterday. I've been holding out buying 'Dracula A.D.1972' for quite awhile now. I just couldn't bring myself to spend $40 on e-bay for a schlocky B-movie bloodbath (even if it DOES star my main man Peter Cushing going up against his arch-rival, Christoper Lee, as the groovy, skirt-chasing Count Dracula). Here's the low-down from Wiki...

Unlike earlier films in the Hammer Dracula series, Dracula A.D. 1972 has a present-day (1970s) setting, in an attempt to update the Dracula story for contemporary audiences — Dracula is brought back to life in modern London and preys on a group of young party-goers that includes the descendant of his nemesis, Van Helsing.

Good times all around, right? This film is the predecessor to one of my all-time favorite Hammer vamp pics: 'The Satanic Rites of Dracula,' so I expect great things from this opus. Sad to think I'm running out of Dracula Hammer horror titles to watch, but this is definitely one of the last. After this I have to track down the great (although Lee-less) 'Brides of Dracula' and 'The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires,' and then who knows where I go from there...