Long holiday weekends are excellent reprieves from the daily grind…until they end, that is. Woke up this morning and felt those Monday morning blues big time. Ugh. Then I realized it was Tuesday. Looking at the proverbial glass as half full, that means less days until the weekend. That perked me up a bit. Tuesday…the new Monday.
Never got around to watching the queer-version of House of Usher, but did manage to see (finally) Planet Terror over the weekend – the half of Grindhouse I hadn’t seen yet. Fun stuff. Campy dialogue, over-the-top gore, and retro-stylishly done. And singer-turned-sometimes-actress Fergie gets ripped to shreds early on and becomes Black Eyed Pea road kill. Girl can’t catch a break. You’ll recall that she was also one of the first casualties of the rogue tsunami wave in the Poseidon remake. Fergie’s fate aside, kudos to Robert Rodriguez and company for a fine effort.
The League of Tana Tea Drinkers (or LOTT D) got some nice exposure recently with its roundtable discussion on torture porn at Blogcritics Magazine. Interesting discussion ensued at various Internet stops. Hats off to John Cozzoli from Zombos Closet of Horrors who has done an outstanding job forming LOTT D and coming up with these innovative ways to garner exposure for the LOTT D participants.
One of the best parts of my LOTT D involvement has been my own exposure to new and insightful horror blogs. I’m amazed by the degree of thematic complexity and depth of creativity that some of their creators go to in establishing these Internet watering holes. Over at Kindertrauma, for example, hosts Unkle Lancifer and Aunt John offer a (pop) cultural exploration of childhood fears. Movies, books, toys, and anything else that scared you as a child are topics open for discussion, as is anything to do with children in scary movies. Of particular merit are Kindertrauma’s series of “faux-sters” – or movie posters for sequels that might have been. These wildly ingenious creations come complete with artwork that pays tribute to the original and hysterical taglines like “Roses are red; Violets are blue, what makes you think you can survive part 2?” (for My Bloody Valentine II: Till Death Do We Part) and “Don’t bother showing up for rehearsal…YOUR PARTS BEEN CUT!” (for Curtains 2). It’s a simultaneous jolt of nostalgia and humor that will leave you smiling from ear to ear.
Stacie Ponder over at Final Girl made me laugh out loud last week with her uproarious poll that asked which horror movie characters would make the coolest toys. Of course, Ponder does everything with her tongue firmly planted in cheek, so the choices didn’t include the usual suspects like Jason or Michael or Freddy - but rather Cropsy, the horribly burned camp caretaker from The Burning, the raincoat killer from Alice, Sweet Alice, the nubile coed twins from Friday the 13th, Part IV, and (my personal favorite and vote) Mrs. Kobritz from The Fog (!). Although the poll is closed, the results can still be viewed. Alas, Mrs. Kobritz was not a winner. I demand a recount, BTW.
Some other LOTT D highlights from the last week:
- Both John W. Morehead of TheoFantastique and recent Slasher Speak guest Arbogast of Abrbogast of Film offer two takes on the cinematic merits of the various incarnations of Richard Matheson’s short story “I Am Legend” over at their respective blogs.
- Gary over at Blogue Macabre offer up some helpful hints to surviving with the next zombie outbreak. It’s all about the plan, after all.
- Max over at The Drunken Severed Head takes readers on a two-part tour of the controversial “Bodies: The Exhibition” art exhibit. Fascinating stuff for anyone with the stomach.
- Pierre Fournier over at Frankensteinia celebrates three actors whose cinematic influence on the Frankenstein mythos is legendary – Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee. It should be noted that Pierre has been announced as an inductee into the Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Fame for 2008, as part of the annual Joe Shuster Awards which are named after the Canadian-born co-creator of Superman. Congrats, Pierre, on such a well-deserved honor!
And finally finally, we’ve got news regarding the name-all-the-movies-represented-in-my-new-blog-header contest. (I really should’ve come up with something a bit catchier, eh?) Out of the thousands of entries received (ok…maybe that’s a slight exaggeration), there were only (3) Slasher Speak readers who correctly identified all (12) of the films represented in the new header. Those folks have been contacted and I’ll be posting their names and that of the grand prize winner tomorrow.
For those interested, the (12) films represented in the new Slasher Speak banner are:
- The Howling
- Hellbent
- Maniac
- Sleepaway Camp
- Valentine
- The Burning
- Deadly Blessing
- My Bloody Valentine
- Terror Train
- Prom Night
- Dead & Buried
- April Fool’s Day (this was the deal-breaker for most!)
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