Category: film

The Video Rental That Made Me Weird

I remember a time when a trip to the video rental store was a Friday night must that determined what I would be up to for that night and possibly Saturday night too. The whole process took almost an hour to decide what two hours I would sacrifice my youth on because in a store with nearly ten thousand movies, there was a high probability that you could end up with a doozie. That probably explains why Iron Eagle was rented close to two hundred times.  And Muppets Take Manhattan. And National Geographic documentary on Sharks. Anyway, I had a very particular genre of movies that didn’t leave much room for anything new and looking back, my parents must have really dreaded Friday nights in the living room. Who can possibly take that many volumes of Gallagher stand-up without going a little mad? But all that changed one fateful night in 1991 when I slipped the surly bonds of Blockbuster’s normal selection to touch the face of horror and forever alter my Friday nights…and sleeping habits. This video was True Hollywood Ghost Stories and it terrified me. And perhaps it took hold psychologically because even today in my Youtube search, when I found this on a whim, because everything is on Youtube, I had this overwhelming need to look behind me.

I am not sure why I rented this particular video. My idea of a scary movie back then was Harry and the Henderson’s so it’s a wonder how this ended up in the family VCR. Looking at the cheesy late-eighties graphics, there isn’t much to be too disturbed about but that is where this film takes a turn for the unsettling and really takes on the same creepiness as the popular show, Unsolved Mysteries, with that amazing Robert Stack voice. The cool part about this film is it has a documentary feel to it and it is composed mostly of clips of old to recent horror movies. The kicker, and reason it made my blood run cold, was how it explained the supposed real ghost cases that the movies were based on and behind the scene disturbances while making them. Now imagine, if you will, a young boy who had never seen a horror movie, getting all the scariest scenes grouped together and then learning about how they may be true. Yeah. There was a spike in the utility bill that month from the hall light being left on at night.

Meet the host, John Carradine. He wastes little time in the introduction to shift from zero to one hundred when he begins with how the film, and the scariest thing I have ever seen, The Exorcist  not only had evil happenings on the set but was based on a real event. I had never even heard of this movie until I rented Real Hollywood Ghost Stories so when I first laid eyes on that grotesque appearance and raspy voice of the possessed Regan, I think I just sat on the floor and cried. I’m not kidding, I was a little pussy as a youth. During little league baseball I once dove for cover from a pitch that ended up being a strike. So, seeing the most terrifying movie ever made and learning how it was true all in the time span of ten minutes, I shorted out. And this video rental only got worse from there.

The beginning of The Exorcist part was the author, William Peter Blatty and he described what his inspiration for writing the book that later became a movie many believed actually had the devil imprinted in the film itself. He said he witnessed a phone picking up off the receiver itself and come down onto the table. I am the believer that chairs, dishes, phones, shoes, anything that doesn’t live and moves on their own is so much scarier than a creature jumping out at you. So as a very impressionable kid hearing this account had me captivated. Especially when it was followed by this face:

Even as I type this I hate looking at that picture. It had such a profound effect on my as a child and it was many years later that I finally summoned the courage to rent it during a high school sleep over. But this introduction to The Exorcist  was enough for me at the time. Especially learning it was all based on true events, people died working on the film, it caused audiences to go crazy and not to mention the fact that I was looking at something beyond my comprehension to what I deemed scary. It’s like growing up training ponies and then someone puts you on a bull at a rodeo. I could have used a gradual transition to horror.

The next story was of a real haunting of a house in Hollywood owned by an affluent couple, the Sommer’s and it was so bad they ended up selling and becoming a world-wide media spectacle after their story was published in Life magazine. Even the photographer was a skeptic couldn’t explain why or how his film kept having shadowy figured in motion from frame to frame. I loved the story but of course, as a kid I took it all very seriously and every bump was a ghost and every settling noise was a poltergeist. This didn’t help much, especially when they tied in the story of Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hopper’s, Poltergeist, and how much like The Exorcist, people died from this film and the set even burned down. Great. I don’t think this would have been quite as impacting if it didn’t have detailed accounts from Life magazine and NBC reporters that witness all these events. Even though I was an impressionable kid, I knew the difference between loons and credible people. Especially the next “true” Hollywood account about a woman who was assaulted by what was to be believed to be an entity. Hence the title The Entity.

This didn’t go over well either because learning how the local university recorded and documented this story and it became a constant in the world of parapsychology, even studied at the prestigious Duke University, I did not like learning about rape-ghosts. Nope. It’s as if this video kept trying to out-do itself! Each movie and real case scenario was a segway to the next bone-chilling tale. Like how The Entity was a great shift to the world renown Amittyville Horror. And of course, I got a taste of it by only seeing the most frightening scenes.

Much like the Poltergeist scene, a rocking chair doing what it does best by itself is about as scary to me as it gets. Especially when a kid is interacting with it and when an adult comes interrupts everything goes quiet. That is until the adult goes tot the window only to be met with glowing eyes and pig grunts. From then on I did my best not to look outside at night which proved to be tough because I had an atrium in the center of my bedroom.

Well, this fateful video rental kept up the creeps and went into the legends of Hollywood and their ghostly encounters like Houdini and the original Superman who committed suicide. It’s odd that both the original and the motion picture Superman was named Reeves. Is that a well-known fact? Maybe it is. Anyway, the scares peter down a bit but it is still a pretty good watch, even for today’s standard.  They leave the viewer with a really cheesy music montage of a pretty corny song and truth be told, it’s absolutely perfect. It even manages to leave you with the warning not to take for granted you are ever alone in the dark. I took that warning to heart and kept the lights on almost through middle school.

You can watch the whole series on YouTube and I’ll start you off with the first part. Enjoy this as much as I still do. Sometimes it’s nice to look back and still get the same impression from when you were so very impressionable. Sleep tight!

7

Epic Tales From When TV…

…was everything an adolescent boy could hope for.

Starting out this year’s season of all things macabre, I figured I will write a review or a recap, if you will, of three shows that I distinctly remember getting a case of the heebs over. (heebs- feeling the need to shower after witnessing an event that did not make one physically dirty) I used to love staying up past the surgeon general’s recommended bedtime and filling those late hours with nonsensical television until either there was a disapproving knock at the bedroom door from what I am sure was tattling flicker of luminescence leaking under the said door or Rhonda Sheer’s bubbly personality of USA’s “Up All Night” was replaced by a commercial for a turkey-jerky dehydrator. But of all the nonsensical TV that gave me an allergy to books, there are a couple shows that still manages to stick with me, especially as we creep towards  September and October. Let us take a look at a few, shall we?

Tales From the Crypt was a staple of my teen years and while most of the shows were a HBO platform for many actors to get their feet wet directing without any real reprisals from a critic committee because let’s face it, horror isn’t a critic’s forte, it did produce some of the best casted and fun TV still today and every so often this show would hit a home run in the creep department.

The episode “The New Arrival” starring David Warner and Zelda Rubenstein was a really dark, claustrophobic, disturbing and down right pee-pants oppressing story that left you wanting nothing more than to never chew grape gum or trust anyone shorter than 4 feet.*pours coffee on the floor out of respect for the late Zelda*

David Warner plays a corrupt and arrogant child psychologist that preys on over protective mothers who spoil children with behavioral issues only to boost his failing radio channel.  So in his plan to save his ratings he decides to air a live session at a fan’s house who calls his station. Little does he know that it is Zelda Rubenstein calling him with a case that is most likely not in any text-book or case study he has read before.

When he gets to the house of the caller to begin his radio show he sees how controlling Zelda is and the problematic child is running a terror through the house and is very illusive. Right from the beginning the audience can feel that something is far from routine about this behavioral case. From the screams of the child to the walls caked in grape bubble gum, this reeks of “get the hell out of the house”.  And then we meet the kid.

Where does one even begin to state the things wrong here? Ok, I am not going to go through the entire episode because I’ll post the climactic part below and it would seem redundant for you to watch what I just wrote about so I will just express my feelings.

This episode touched on a few nightmare nerves of mine. The fact that all the creepy shit happens during the afternoon is a big one.  Some people have a certain witching hour and mine was always 4 o’clock. I think it is the way the sun is dimming or the fact that 90% of all horror movies happen at night so when bad stuff happens when Judge Judy is on TV, I just don’t feel right about it. The wallpaper in the house also made me itch. The house had a very dark feeling about it and the wallpaper from the 1940’s didn’t help.

I know those two creeps aren’t creepy to most others but that is what I hung on to. Call me weird but…okay, call me weird. Please watch this. You will see why this episode stands out the most.

Tales From the Darkside was an amazing show that was pretty corny in retrospect but an absolute humdinger when it came to adolescent entertainment of the 1980’s. When I think about Saturday nights as a nine-year-old the theme to Tales From the Darkside is usually the anthem. Back then these 20 minute stories would cause me to sink deep in the covers, never wanting to peer out the window for fear there would be another set of peepers peering back. I lucked out watching this show in an era when kids would be scared over something that makes five-year-olds today laugh.

Of the hundreds of tales, I think the early episode called “Case of the Stubborns” was not just my favorite but also the most unsettling. Along with an amazing cast like a very young Christian Slater, Eddie Backren, Bill McCutcheon and Barbera Eda-Young, this famous story is about an old man who is too set in his ways to realize he died. When every one begs and pleads for him to come to terms with his own mortality he merely scoffs at their insensate nagging all the while….decomposing. It really is awesome.

After Slater’s character seeks advice from the neighborhood witch he returns home to try once more to lay his already deceased grandfather to rest. Only with a sneeze that blew off Grandpa Titus’s nose did he finally realize that perhaps, he was actually dead.

There are so many reasons to love this episode and while I wish it was an original story from the show, it is not. I remember reading “A Case of the Stubborns” as a child growing up in the south. It’s just nice to know Hollywood didn’t muck it up. I will say, the first scene when Grandpa Titus walks down stairs, I would have put my breakfast down my pants because it was going to end up there anyway.

Who wants to be disturbed? I do! I do! Well, for the final segment of the first real kick off of the 10 week count down, I present to you a gift; these three Tim Currys. In another Tales From the Crypt episode, “Death of Some Salesman”, Tim plays all but one role and is even given an Emmy for his performance.

Ed Bagely Jr plays a corrupt traveling salesman who preys on naive customers thinking they are buying what really is an imaginary cemetery plot. He does pretty well too until he happens upon the home of Ma, Pa and Winona Bracket, all played by the infamous Tim Curry. He thinks he knows who they are but he has no idea what they do. They collect salesmen. (As a sales person myself, this speaks to me more now that in it did back in the day)

I love this episode for so many reasons I can’t even narrow it down to just three. All I know is that Tim Curry manages to do what he does best and that is make you squirm. Especially the god-awful sex scene between Winona-Tim and Ed Bagely. Man, that must have been an awkward shoot! Enjoy this magnificent clip!

There was a shorter clip of just the weird sex scene that I was going to post but the guy who made it was videotaping it from his TV with severe asthma. A tad distracting.

Well I hope you enjoyed these three classics in B Television. Whether you can identify with them or not they really are fun. And if you are going to destroy your vision, waste your life or rot your brain, shouldn’t it be a little fun?

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Father and Son: A Rip In Reality

Every so often my perception of reality changes; some for the good and some for the bad. Recently a dear friend and fellow blogger extraordinaire, introduced me to a multilevel retail extravaganza that was so extreme, I left a better person, friend and lover. Okay, maybe not any of those things but it had a profound effect on me that fits VeggieMacabre to a T. I introduce to you an iconic shop that makes the bookstore from The Never Ending Story and Ray Stanz’s spook shop in Ghostbusters 2 look like a Baby’s R Us. Meet “Father and Son” located in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Located right downtown in Raleigh, this store looks like an ordinary retro second-hand store that most cities have but once inside, there is a sort of Twilight zone feeling in the pit of the stomach. You will see what I am talking about very shortly.

The store has a series of floors and rooms, each one a different theme and feel. Sure all the rooms basically offer the same stuff (used clothes and long forgotten items of yester-year) but each has a distinct feel, some feelings of being cluttered, some feelings of oddness and some feelings of down right creepiness. The kind of creepiness like a dream where you scream and nothing comes out as you are trapped in a yellow room with a fat hillbilly family in animal masks while “Moon River” plays in the background. That kind of creepy.

Here we begin with the front room and as you can see, there is no rhyme or reason but rather just random displays of some really weird shit. You can find anything here from stickers of quotes by Dr. Dre to a cross-stitched and framed Sesame Street Grover picture. To get through this part takes no less than a half an hour because just when you think you have seen it all, there are more items behind the items that are behind the items. Much like a fishing vessel, from a distance it looks like a mess until you look closer to find that everything is right where it is intended to be.

It goes without saying that in a Kohl’s this would warrant a Fox News investigative story into witchcraft being thrust into retail therapy but here, it works. A chicken-headed girl works like pastrami and rye.

Of all the items though, this one stuck out the most. A young Hasselhoff can rarely be perfected unless of course his head is superimposed on Mr. Olympia’s body. But put him in space and it now becomes ridiculous. Had the background been in a Wendy’s dining-room, this would be at a frame shop.

Ah, the second floor. I am not showing all the rooms because that level of detail would detract from the mystique of Father and Son so I will stick to the ones that left an impression on me the most. If you stare down this hall too long it seems like it gets longer. Kind of like the scene in Poltergeist when Diane is trying to run to save her kids. God I love that part. Ok, let’s go left.

I think keeping inventory in this store would be more complicated than astro-biology because there is literally one of everything in a four-story store of one million everythings. Get that?

I am not sure why I didn’t take a picture of the whole room because just out of frame is a working tub and shower with an American flag and a shrine to paperback risqué novels that drive women of menopause crazy. I think it was just a system overload of the brain.

Here is another room with an overwhelming smell of old. There is sign that clearly states to be careful not to be rough on the clothes since many of them are from the 1930’s which to me, means the original owners are most likely dead. Does this make anyone else uneasy? I donno. But if you look close enough you can see two bloggers.

This is the room that chilled me to the core and I have no idea why. I am not one to get “feelings” but when I walked into this particular room I stated “something bad happened in here” to the shock of Mandey who later told me she too had the same feeling months prior but didn’t want to concur right then because she felt it would make her seem silly. She is silly but not that kind of silly.

I really can’t put my finger on it but the whole place just seems wrong. Maybe it’s the mannequin parts randomly strewn about or perhaps it’s the oddly way it’s lit, but I really feel that Pazuzu had been here smoking on the couch. Something bad happened here.

Keeping on the track of things that make you shit yourself with no apologies I bring you to another floor and room reserved for the strange and unusual because I myself am strange and unusual. This is the art floor and goodness, artist do art scary here. Look at these Manson pictures.

Yeah. I really wish I could credit the photographer but there were no cards or even a description of the display. I was hesitant to even post these but I feel the true underlining feel of Father and Son may not be represented as well had I stuck to my ethics. I sacrifice for you.

Yup.

It’s a dangerous decision to include a toilet on the same floor as an art exhibit. Living art is always lost on me and there is a chance that I could have made it come alive should I have had one more cup of coffee. I still don’t know if this was art or a public restroom and I have too much dignity to be thrown out over confusion.

It’s weird to see the real world from a place of insanity. I felt like screaming to passing cars and people, “HEY! HEY! I AM IN FATHER AND SON! CAN YOU SEE ME?” only to watch them walk by as if I was in a parallel universe and the store that I think I am in is in reality, a burned out wreckage waiting for demolition. I think I have carried this a bit far.

Keeping with the creepy theme, I found this in a pile of discarded family photos. Have you ever seen such a family? This poor boy never had a chance and I am not a betting man but I am thinking this is the eldest daughters prom souvenir because Mom looks like she would be a tough sell. That statement is chalk for of ugliness. I am sorry.

And finally we are going down to the basement. Another odd fact about this place is Mandey had a dream she went down in this basement before she ever knew this place existed. While it is weird to shop in a basement, it had no where near the creep factor that the said room above had. You do have to be careful though because if you are over 5′ 10″ there is a great chance of a head-dent on a pipe. Six foot me had three.

What can you say? It’s like a dressing room in the basement of a haunted theater with more capes per square foot than any other place in the world. Seriously, this place would make a Shakespearean actor go prose in a rapid fire fashion.

Ok, for some reason, whether it is Photobucket or WordPress, I am unable to load anymore pictures so I will have to continue this report on one of the coolest but definitely creepiest stores in a second installment. Man, I hate when technology wins and fucks with my posts. I know it does this on purpose. Well, anyway, please check in tomorrow to see where I get murdered while looking at a Kenner R2D2 AM radio from 1977.  I will end this post with a picture of South Dakota.

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Ebay Be Damned!

Before I begin on this post tonight, I wanted to let a few of you that still read VM in on the new stuff that has been happening to the WordPress page. It’s changing and soon it will be a “dot com” rather than a “dot wordpress”. Part of the reason is that I have visualized this site into something more grandeur and fun. You know, with videos, interviews, links, articles and pages for….whatever? Anyway, it is finally coming to fruition and as soon as some cascading word and the cool intro is done I, I will launch it. Also will be the collaboration of one of my favorite sites and internet peeps, Brian of Review the World. I think you will notice similarities, especially in the review section. So, keep a heads up and look for your personal invite in the interwebs mail. The contrast will look something like this…

BEFORE
AFTER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now on to the content of tonight’s post; “What I have blown good money on thanks to eBay”. There is no question that I am always tardy to the party when it comes to fads or even really cool life changing items that most everyone has. It’s true! When everyone in high school loved Nirvana I purchased and was enamored with Motely Crue’s Dr. Feelgood album…on cassette. When kids in elementary school had He-Man, I had Star Wars. Call me old school, call me out of touch but to this day I look at the “now” and I stick with “when”. So it should come as no surprise that on Sunday, eBay and I became buddies. Look at the crap I bought!

I have a knack for destroying watches. Whether it is my $32 dollar Ironman running watch or my $3k Swiss watch, all have been put in a box because I guess I sway my arms around like Gilbert’s little brother. I have anthropomorphic images of my watches huddling together and clinging to the one I take out of the box for fear that this will be the last time they see one another. Did you know that I am older than five?

Oh yeah, so I bought the watch you see above for $10. I bought The Last Starfighter watch for $10! I bought a watch, with a picture of Alex Rogin holding a Star League uniform for $10! Granted it is shipped from Hong Kong for almost the same price but…I will have a watch with a mini movie poster of the movie, The Last Starfighter. If it tells time, that will be a bonus.

This is a t-shirt that I really couldn’t say no to owning. Apparently this was a 70’s B-rated action film that is pressed into glorious fashion. I really do pray that I don’t wear this around anyone with…you know…no legs. But still, how could you say no to the movie tag-line, “He’ll cut you down to size”?

Now, this is taken on faith but I bought, er, won the auction for the autographed picture of Bossk, the bounty hunter from Empire Strikes Back. For $15 I figured ignorance is bliss if it’s a fake and it is going to a friend anyway. I like to imagine he signed this in costume because those claws look pretty tricky to write in.

So, that is what this guy wasted $67.oo on this weekend. The t-shirt is shipped from the UK and it came at a price of 17£ which I guess at the current standard equates to around $29 bucks or so. I don’t care, that shirt puts me into a new elite status among my peers.

Goodnight and be well!

 

4

Fall Beer Review 2.5 and Pneumonia

Oh boy did I get it this year! I fucked around and caught a case of walking pneumonia. Burning a fever to the point of complete delirium can be fun but when you have responsibilities and bills to pay, drinking a cup of “coma-doze” doesn’t inspire me to pick up my socks, go grocery shopping, pop in the office or any of the one million things I have to do in a week. So, I sucked it up and went to the doctor, got some anti-bios and here I sit a week later with only an annoying cough and some sniffles. And for that, I am glad I am not a pilgrim.

Poor Mikey had to depart with a tooth. I’ll take a touch of pneumonia over that. I have a horror story about my wisdom teeth that will always make my six month check-ups a lot like my cat’s vet visit; shaking and guttural noises. Anyway, I am rambling and you want another beer review so here it is. This time it’s another cider and one of my new favorites (in moderation), the Skull Splitter. What a name!

This week we are doing a finale with the one and only, Sierra Nevada Tumbler. Really, the only reason I was asked to do this in a vlog form to begin with.

Get ready for the drear because it’s here! Love, peace and beer!

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