Doomed Movieblog

Does your pop culture need a kick in the throat? Look no further than Ghosts In The Machine: The Dark Heart of Pop Cinema. Author Michael Atkinson attacks numerous topics from the Planet Of The Apes movies to Hollywood blondes to the animated Aeon Flux series in his collection of darkly humorous and intelligent essays. Even subjects as disparate as the lost art of the road movie and the films of the Brothers Quay. This is the way that all culture studies should be written. The book reads like it was written inside a hurricane or a meat locker or both. Highly recommended.

Tonight at midnight (eastern time), Independent Film Channel is showing House. No, not the 1986 Steve Miner flick. They are showing a movie I’ve been trying to get a hold of for years now. It is House AKA Hausu. This bizarre horror movie was released in 1977 and from what I’ve read about it (and judging from the trailer) it reminds me of the pop horror classic Uzumaki. So tonight at midnight and then again at three in the morning. Do not miss this!

Why so tense, guy? No, seriously what’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong! I have signed up for National Novel Writing Month this year and here it is the middle of the month and I’m only at 8,500 words (out of the 50,000 word goal). So yeah, I’m going to be taking a break from all moviethon activities for about two weeks. But don’t worry folks, I won’t be leaving you for fame and fortune just yet. I have not one but two unfinished moviethon articles already in progress and a whole mess of half-finished reviews to do so December will be a big month of new content, I swears. So, yeah I gotta go work on my masterpiece. What’s your word count, duder?

I’m already in love with Turner Classic Movies (and I promise I don’t work for them) but they have been kicking 16 tons of ass lately. My DVR is still filled with their awesome Halloween Lovecraft film lineup. They just earned even more street cred by playing Dario Argento’s Suspiria. So late this coming Friday night/early Saturday morning at 2:00am, you must either watch or record Suspiria. What’s that? You’ve already seen it/own it? I don’t care, you must grab this bad boy and revel in its awesomeness again. This isn’t the first time they’ve played Italian horror on TCM but we need to encourage them to play more! As an added bonus, TCM tends to play things uncut and commercial free. So yeah, you have a reason to stay up really late Friday night.

Oh my God! What did I eat? What did I drink? Forget Thanksgiving and Christmas, as far as decadent eating and partying goes, I think Halloween is where it’s at. Without touching so much as a drop of alcohol this year, I still get my ass handed to me. Thanks to a work Halloween party, our yearly Halloween moviethon, and a Halloween/birthday party the wife and I attended on November 1st, I feel really awful. Good times but oh, the repercussions. Oh yeah, the above photo is from the party on Saturday. That’s me in black metal form.

Although we watched more Halloween TV specials and Halloween-related horror movies than humanly possible throughout the month of October, we still had a few leftovers. While it rained and rained pretty much all day on Sunday, the wife and I stayed in to see if we could milk the holiday just a little bit longer. We watched another of the many Sabrina The Teenage Witch Halloween episodes, the disastrous episode of No Reservations where Anthony Bordain goes to Romania (and spends Halloween in Transylvania), and we viewed the Rankin-Bass animated classic Mad Monster Party.