Who says cute and quirky can’t have bite? Jangly indie musician Elizabeth Ziman of Elizabeth and the Catapult is known for her sweet keyboard driven pop songs.
Yet, the cut Salt of the Earth from Like it Never Happened, her latest release, features ominous and spooky textures and, ultimately, makes the art of romance seem like an obsessive and mysterious culture.
Cue those psychos for love!
Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
If there is anything more shocking than a half naked John Boy in the Autopsy Room 4 entry of Stephen King’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes, it has to be the sight of an obviously computer generated snake as it strikes out at its prey in that very same episode.
But you have to admit that, as a man in his late 50s (when the show was filmed), actor Richard Thomas (Battle Beyond the Stars and The Waltons, as referenced above) is looking pretty good. Spending the majority of the episode with flanks (etc..) bared on an autopsy table, Thomas fills his role, a war wounded businessman put in a death resembling coma by above said snake, with hard won regret and humor.
Greta romances, Thomas sleeps!
Thus, Thomas’ efforts and the elegant presence of Greta Scacchi (as a medical official gone giddy with love) help make this one of the better (if comically drawn out) entries in this occasionally lackluster TNT mini-series from 2006. And, of course, there is always that snake!
Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
Who knew? Mary Hartman is the Queen of Thanksgiving Terror!
Veteran comic actress Louise Lasser may be best known for her iconic run on the late night television soap opera spoof Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, but she has also brought her unique set of skills to such terror gems as (charming 1973 television effort) Isn’t It Shocking?, (the classic) Frankenhooker, and David DeCoteau’s Wolves of Wall Street. 1987’s fairly obscure slasher Blood Rage found her supplying generous helpings of holiday terror, though.
Portraying Maddy, the breathlessly passionate mother of twin boys, Lasser resonates with plenty of grounded, hysterical gravitas here. After one of the boys is sent away, as a child, for a brutal murder, Maddy devotes her life to the raising of her other son.
One Thanksgiving Day, though, Maddy’s world is chopped and sliced apart. Her bad seed escapes from the mental institution and, maintaining that the other brother is responsible for the previous carnage, heads towards home to clear his name. Soon, the turkey is not the only thing being carved and effects artist Ed French (Creepshow 2, Tales from the Darkside) is soon having a ball delivering the chunky goods as characters are chopped in half and hands are disengaged from flailing bodies.
Obviously produced on the cheap, but fast paced and gore stained, Blood Rage, ultimately, rises above the ordinary simply due to Lasser’s presence. She is the film’s emotionally rampaging heart, delivering a justified sense of denial and shimmering fragility. Her Maddy provides the reality in extremely outrageous and gruesomely unreal circumstances.
Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
Horror, She Wrote explores the episodes of the ever-popular detective series Murder, She Wrote, featuring Angela Lansbury’s unstoppable Jessica Fletcher, that were highlighted by performances from genre film actors.
It may be fun to go to the dogs every once in awhile, but there is nothing, dramatically speaking, like a good cat fight! Eclectic entertainment goddess Cherie Currie certainly dives into some fur snarling fisticuffs in the first season episode of Murder, She Wrote entitled (appropriately enough) It’s a Dog’s Life and definitely comes out shining!
Best known for fronting the influential rock band The Runaways, Currie, also, had a varied acting career with roles in such horror and science fiction epics like Parasite, Wavelength and Twilight Zone: The Movie. Here, her co-stars include such genre stalwarts as Dallas’ Jared Martin (Aenigma, New Gladiators), Forrest Tucker (The Crawling Eye, The Abominable Snowman), Dan O’Herlihy (Halloween III, The Cabinet of Caligari), Dean Jones (Two on a Guillotine) and James Hampton (Teen Wolf, Hangar 18).
Playing Echo, the sarcastic daughter of a spiritually obsessed heiress (Soap’s Cathryn Damon who, also, practiced maternal witchiness in the television flick Midnight Offerings), Currie is obviously having a ball as Echo engages in verbal combat with her drunken aunt (played by soap stalwart Lenore Kasdorf). Currie, also, excellently invests the flippancy that Echo has for authority figures with a subtle comic timing and truthfully petulant sass. On the flip side, Currie and Damon do establish a natural affection between their characters, making viewers long to know more about them.
All involved (including the elegant Lynn Redgrave), though, seem to warm nicely to the absurdly fun plotline (which finds a beloved beagle on trial for murder), making this a rather delightful entry in this seminal, femme powered detective series.
Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
“This is where the real monsters live.”
Captain Hook or Gacy? The creatures of Midian or Dahmer? If you’re like me and are drawn to the fantastical elements of horror, your choices are, quite naturally, going to lend themselves to the former in those scenarios. Still, talented filmmaker John Borowski exposes why mass murderers are granted such intense obsessions in his thought provoking, truly intelligent documentary Serial Killer Culture.
Focusing on the artists and collectors who are inspired by the lives of such figures as Richard Ramirez, Ed Gein and Richard Speck, Borowski truly sheds some light on what many may consider a controversial interest. In fact, the people he interviews often acknowledge that their passion is a double edged sword. Rick Staton, Gacy’s former art dealer, frankly admits that these are heinous individuals who should never profit from their acts and recalls how as his boy grew older, his interest in Gacy (and others) waned.
Almost all involved, interestingly, point a finger at modern media and society, itself, for giving them their first, lasting impressions of the criminals that they have developed fascinations with. Oddly enough, Life Magazine is exposed as a primary source of making these men (and occasional women) heroes, by devoting countless layouts and cover stories to their frightening acts.
Amanda Morden and Nicholas Vellman of Milwaukee’s Dahmer Tour, perhaps, most articulately point out the historical ramifications of their interests, as well. Morden stresses how every aspect of the Dahmer tragedy is examined, from the local architecture to pulling the facts away from the myths, with her creation. While vile and unfortunate, Dahmer’s legacy belongs to Milwaukee, and she eloquently proposes that this tour tries to put that fact into perspective.
Borowski, also, lightens the tone a bit by focusing on The World Famous Crawlspace Brothers, a punk edged folk duo who perform humorous songs about the different killers. While some may argue about their choice of material, the group has even found favor with some Christian fundamentalists and they claim that their inspiration sources back to the old time murder ballads covered by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.
Most importantly, though, Borowski allows all his viewers a chance for discovery, here. His subjects emerge in full bodied portraits and even those who would never want to own a Charles Manson autograph glean (at least a glimmer of) an understanding of why someone else might want to.
Interestingly, the serial killer’s influence on queer culture cannot be denied, here, as well. While the (unfortunate) homosexual connections to Gacy and Dahmer are well known, the personal effects of (the less well known) Herb Baumeister, an Indiana father and businessman who murdered multiple men after sexual escapades, are also a primary portion of one collector’s vaults. Thus, it seems an examination of the degree of self hate involved in the acts of Gacy, Dahmer, Baumeister and their ilk would seemingly make a vital and compelling study, as well.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Serial-Killer-Culture
http://www.serialkillerculture.com
Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
If you’ve got some color, use it exuberantly! That’s exactly what new web presence A Splatter of Lavender is doing.
Here, founder Samuel Glass, Jr. explores the queer side of horror by highlighting such directors as Bart Mastronardi and Alan Rowe Kelly and performers like Joe Zaso. He, also, offers up provocative opinion pieces and focuses on up and coming horror hunks. It’s fun!
Give it a look at https://www.facebook.com/splatteroflavender.
Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
This truly calls for some high heels and fishnets! Renowned for his lascivious portrayals in such cult classics as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and It, the versatile Tim Curry, also, released three solo albums in the late 70s and early 80s.
1981’s Simplicity, the last of the three, contains a truly spooky version of Squeeze’s Take Me I’m Yours. Menacing and sexual, this cut is only a little over three minutes, but it is truly one of Curry’s finest hours.
Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan
“Terror Strikes the Trapped Crew!”
A little bit of herb is never a bad thing, right? Well, that is, unless you’re Frank Bonner (who’d go onto television fame playing the obnoxious Herb Tarlek on WKRP in Cincinnati) and you’re playing Compton, an intellectually absent mate on a submarine. Here, Bonner/Compton’s idea of a gag is to smuggle a basket full of highly poisonous fer-de-lance snakes onboard for his next assignment. Naturally, Bonner- Compton and his bunkmate soon wind up very, very comatose. 
Thus begins 1974 television horror-adventure show Fer-de-Lance. Starting out promisingly enough, with Bonner actually supplying plenty of rascally charm, this piece soon turns into more of a choppingly paced action film (as the submarine becomes landlocked between some underwater rock formations) than an out and out source of animal terror. Lead David Janssen even spends a major part of the running time flat on his back in a decompression chamber. 
Best known to terror aficionados for playing the concerned matriarch role in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, the pixie-like Hope Lange does show up as a Naval Commander Elaine Wedell, proving these type of genre flicks did (and do) offer female performers a terrific chance to stretch outside of the typical girlfriend and mom roles. Other notable female roles in this venture include a diving champ (who performs a dangerous rescue mission) and Lange’s trustworthy underling, a lieutenant.
Still, Lange and Janssen are pretty much just phoning it in here with even the slithery yet jokey final shock scene not playing as well as it should. Dominic Frontiere does do impressive work with the musical score, though. He creates a soundtrack that is aquatically majestic and skin-shiveringly slithery. 
Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
Don’t worry, Virginia! Halloween never dies. Especially if you’re the divine Wendi Freeman and your (comic book oriented) podcast is called Double Page Spread!
In one of her latest installments (ep. 98), the winning Freeman interviews Andrew Pepoy, the man responsible for the variant covers for Afterlife with Archie, that splatter-ific take on Riverdale, post zombie apocalypse, and Robert Hack, the genius whose artwork is making many folks take a very different, totally spooky look at Sabrina, everyone’s favorite teen witch.
Be sure to take a listen at:
http://doublepgspread.tumblr.com/
Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
Hell of a Gal explores the many genre credits of the eclectic, eternally glamorous Helga Liné.
Every time I try to float into a room, I wind up tripping over my shoelaces! But, as the sensually foreboding Miss Eleonore (the companion and resourceful assistant of a regal heir) in 1963’s The Blancheville Monster (AKA Horror), the stunning Helga Liné seemingly glides into spaces with creepy panache.
Thus, despite the presence of an ominous nobleman (or two) and the escape of a crazed and disfigured father figure, Line is, ultimately, the most frightening thing on display, here.
Forever wielding needles, knives and glasses filled with potions, Liné invests her creation with such cool mystery that it appears even her cheek bones could kill you, if your trespasses were serious enough. 
Of course, director Alberto De Martino and cinematographer Alejandro Ulloa fill this tale (of a young college woman battling the dangers of a family curse) with shady texture and magnificently ominous shots of mausoleums and drafty castles. (You can even see the actors’ breath in certain shots, determining that this must have been a very frightful shoot for reasons other than haunting predictions.)
But, the arresting Liné, ultimately, cancels out even the ancient architecture. She combines the wide eyed, horrific glamour of Vampira with the elegance of a European duchess to create an indelible role in this minor Italian horror masterpiece.
Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
Big Gay Horror Fan 