Jun 19 2010

Free RPG Day Is Here!

The Local has covered Record Store Day, Free Comic Book Day, and is now spotlighting Free RPG Day.

Free RPG Day was started in 2007 with the intention of promoting role-playing games to those with little-to-no experience in such matters. To do so, participating stores give out free adventures and “Quick Start Rules” to customers. Besides the fantasy monsters that appear in games like Dungeons & Dragons, horror fans might be interested in the following RPGs (which had free giveaways in prior Free RPG Days):

Call of Cthulhu
Geist: The Sin-Eaters
Hollow Earth Expedition

And to celebrate in our own special way, here are the first two installments of our “Free D&D” series:

Free D&D
Free D&D: Second Edition

For more information on Free RPG Day, the participating stores, and what freebies will be available, please visit the official website and Wikipedia entry.

Happy Free RPG Day!

As always, Gravedigger’s Local 16 is not to be held responsible for anything that may occur (be it good or bad) as a result of downloading or streaming from any links given here. Attempt at your own discretion. Some downloads may not work in certain regions. We make no guarantees about the future availability of the material listed above, so get them while you can. Blah blah blah…

Jun 18 2010

Strange Trip: Friday the 13th – Part 3 (IN 3D!!)

Friday the 13th: Part III

Original Release: August 13, 1982

 

Pre-game Strangeness: Stick in 1.25 and get back 21.72. Multiply that equation by a million and we have the reason for PART III’s existence. can’t blame them, really. It was a movie that didn’t central around a specific actor, so no star could hold out for more money. The set is disposable and so are the teens. The only memorable face for the first two movies is Betsy Palmer.

Part II was a bit harder to handle because I think that Steve Miner, taking over for Chris Cunningham, tried too hard to follow in Cunningham’s footsteps. Part I, now that I’ve had a while to get some distance from it, was nicely shot (albiet, slow for my sugar-soda-rattled brain.) Part II was excissive, with so much cast, drama and attempts to be everything at once. Bad jokes. Good gore. Nudity. You would think I’d be all for piling it on but restraint came be a virtue.

 Not like that’s going to really come into play here. Part III means “3 as in 3D.” Remember to practice excessiveness in equal parts – for every bit that this movie gets dumb, take a drink. It’s like a game, where nobody wins.

With that said, let’s get this trip started.

00:00:00 – Start

00:00:02 – The majestic Paramount, not to be confused with the majestic Parakeet.

00:00:06 – A Gulf-Western Company. Two places currently full of oil.

00:00:15 – ‘Paramount Pictures Present’ Positive Punks Pricing Pickled Pears.

00:00:20 – A Jason Inc./Frank Mancuso Jr. Production. Jason Inc.? Nice to know he went bus

00:00:26 – Part 3 – The Return of Steve Miner!

00:00:32 – Woah, woah -HEY! Wait. Pause.

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Jun 15 2010

Free RPG Day Is Coming!

Don’t forget, Free RPG Day is on June 19th this year! So whether you’re a horror fan that already plays RPGs or are just interested in starting, mark your calendars and get ready for free role-playing game goodies!

Jun 15 2010

Tuesday uEtsy

This week, we’re taking a break while we continue to look around etsy.com for prime candidates for future Tuesday uEtsy spotlights. We want to thank those who we’ve spotlighted before, for each artists and creative person who takes the initiative to put his or her own products out for public sale are pretty cool in our book. Putting your handiwork up for sale, especially on the Internet, takes guts and we want to applaud and thank those who do it everyday.

If you want to nominate someone for a future Tuesday uEtsy, email us here with the subject ‘Tuesday uEtsy Nom.’ We here are the Local enjoy hearing from you. Have a good week and we’ll be back next week with a new Tuesday uEtsy.

Jun 11 2010

Strange Trip: Friday the 13th – Part 2

What happens when half a million dollars makes a TONNNEE of cash? ONE! MORE! TIME!

So here we are for this Strange Trip, going back to New Jersey for Camp Crystal Lake Redux or Friday the 13th – Part 2! 


This is a long one so let’s get it going. Grab some beers, some bug juice, some strip monopoly and snacks. Because we never know what’s around the bend (actually, we do. It’s a dude with a BIG FREAKIN’ KNIFE!)

00:00:00 – Start

00:00:03 – First movie was Time Warner/AOL. Second movie is Paramount.

00:00:05 – Only good joke from Animaniacs was as follows – “The mink is working for Fox; the par of legs is working for Paramount; and the fat guy who needs rehearsal is working for Universal.”

00:00:11 – I should be more ashamed that I watched Animaniacs.

00:00:14 – A New Challenger Approaches! Steve Miner, taking over for Shawn Cunningham.

00:00:25 – Heavy Handed Horror Handguide: Use a kid reciting a nursery rhyme to emphasize innocence. Bonus: tie the kid to your killer by shooting it (in this case, a boy named Jesse) from the knees down right before your killer enters the frame, as you guessed it, shot only from the knees down.

Continue reading

Jun 10 2010

The Bandit That Wouldn’t Give Up

If you’ve been looking up information on Jonah Hex in anticipation of the upcoming (as of this writing) movie, you might have noticed that (in the comic’s continuity) his body was stuffed and displayed in various venues after he died. Sounds far-fetched or something that could only happen in a comic book, doesn’t it?

Think again…

Elmer McCurdy was born January, 1880 in Washington, Maine to an unwed teenager named Sadie McCurdy. The father was unknown, although was rumored by some to have been the young woman’s own cousin! Sadie’s brother (and his wife) adopted Elmer to protect her reputation, with little Elmer growing up thinking that his mother was actually his aunt. Ten years later, he learned the truth and it all went downhill from there. Elmer took to drinking and getting into fights. Moving in with his grandfather, who helped him discover the art of plumbing, did calm him down somewhat. Sadly, this was not to last. After the death of both his mother and grandfather in 1900, Elmer took to wandering and eventually wound up in Oklahoma. McCurdy’s old habits resurfaced and he soon got involved in the world of armed robbery.

His most famous heist (for all the wrong reasons) was the October 6, 1911 robbery of a Missouri Pacific train. Intending to rob a train carrying thousands of dollars, McCurdy accidentally robbed a passenger train instead (due to a delay holding his original target up). The total haul turned out to be $46 and some liquor. A small posse found him in a barn a few days later. After he refused to surrender, they opened fire. Unsurprisingly, Elmer McCurdy did not survive.

Being an unidentified body in a place without any nearby family members, McCurdy’s corpse lay unclaimed at the local funeral home. Having a very well-preserved cadaver on hand (thanks to the arsenic-based embalming methods of the time), the undertaker displayed Elmer McCurdy under the name “The Bandit That Wouldn’t Give Up.” For the princely sum of five American cents, deposited right into the corpse’s gaping maw, visitors could gawk at the deceased robber for as long as they pleased. Attracted by the profits, many attempted to buy the carcass despite the fact that the undertaker refused all prior offers. So when one of the McCurdy clan showed up to claim the body, it seemed like Elmer would finally rest in peace.

The thing is, the “family member” (one source claims it was two people) was actually someone who worked for a carnival and lied about their identity in order to get the body. McCurdy’s stint at the carnival foreshadowed his being sold from business to business and appearing in a long string of sideshows, “crime museums,” haunted houses and the like over the decades. At one point, he came into possession of legendary exploitation film producer/director Dwain Esper, who allegedly used him as a prop in several films! So far, I’ve only been able to confirm his use in Narcotic (thanks to sample pages from Mark Svenvold’s Elmer Mccurdy: The Life And Afterlife Of An American Outlaw on Amazon). In fact, his body was also displayed in the lobbies of theaters playing said film as a “victim of drug abuse!”

According to this, the mummified body later came into the hands of fellow exploitation mogul Dan Sonney, whose father had previously displayed Elmer McCurdy in his “Museum of Crime.” At some point, one of the owners decided to coat the body in wax in order to help preserve it. After seeing how the body looked after the waxing (compare to this page’s “before” picture), it’s easy to see why it’s claimed that one haunted attraction owner passed on buying the body since he thought it was a poorly-constructed dummy. Eventually, it wound up as a hanging man in the “Laff in the Dark” haunted house in California’s now-defunct “The Pike” amusement park, its ghastly nature unknown to all.

That came to an end during the filming of the “Carnival of Spies” episode of The Six Million Dollar Man at the haunted house in 1976. One of the crew members accidentally snapped one of the “dummy’s” arms off and was shocked to see a bone sticking out of it. Further inspection also revealed intact genitals, which prompted the crew to contact the authorities.

The body was brought to the Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles, better known as Dr. Thomas Noguchi. If the name sounds familiar to you, it’s because he was one of the inspirations for Quincy, ME. However, McCurdy was examined by Dr. John Choi by the request of Dr. Noguchi. Although the hole found in McCurdy’s chest was originally suggested by some to have been from a chest tube (used to treat tuberculosis in the olden days), it was confirmed to have been a bullet hole. Opening the corpse’s mouth yielded a 1924 penny and a ticket stub from “Louis Sonney’s Museum of Crime.” These, along with the make of the bullet jacket found in the body, provided the authorities with enough information to research the identity of the mysterious mummified body before them. The trail led them to Elmer McCurdy, but old photos of the corpse in its pre-wax days were superimposed over x-rays of the body in its current state in order to make a definite match.

With his identity confirmed and the case closed, Elmer McCurdy was finally laid to rest under his own name in Oklahoma’s Summit View Cemetery. As is the case with many articles on the man, I’d like to close this by noting that concrete was poured into the grave in order to ensure that he would be able to rest in peace.

Jun 08 2010

Tuesday uEtsy: Monkey Minion Press

[Etsy.com’s tagline is “Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.” Coincidentally, there’s a lot of spooky on Etsy, and each Tuesday, we highlight one of the sellers. If you’re looking to spruce up your look, redecorate your tomb or get a gift for that special something in your afterlife, Etsy.com is a place for spooky econo.]

Monkey Minion Press (http://monkeyminion.etsy.com)

What creeps up on you more unexpectedly than a zombie? Some damned occasion where you need to send out a card. Someone’s birthday. Somebody’s getting married. Hell, you need to say ‘thanks’ for getting Freakshow Bernie to bring his truck around and help you move a six-count of dead hikers from the mortuary to a nice plot over at Hillview.

Either way, the Local here encourages good etiquette and often times, it’s better to send a card than to raise your voice. Plus, union rules dictate keeping a paper trail – keep it legal and legit, right. The work is rotten but the business is clean.

This is where Monkey Minion Press comes in, and they’re the spotlight for this week’s Tuesday uEtsy.

Never again be caught in a jam when you need to express a sentiment through the universal medium of the greeting card. Monkey Minion Press has all your needs, and in tasteful, artistic and undead representation of those emotions you may or may not like to express.

Romance in itself is hard enough, but to bring words into the equation? Killer. And kill you shall with this zombie heart valentine. Why wait for the 14th of February, when love, like zombies, smells strongly all year round.

Perhaps you wouldn’t be caught dead at your Uncle Harry’s wedding? (“Third time’s the charm!” he says.) How better to convey that exact idea with this handsome wedding card. Go with something like ‘Till Death Do You Part” or something off the beaten path, like ‘Love Stinks!’ The card comes blank to let your imagination, what’s left of it, run wild.

Not all zombies eat brains. Most of them do, though. And look here at this gorgeous birthday card – brains! Look at that face. So happy, so joyous. Recreate that face of pure horror and delight with this card.

The brains behind Monkey Minion Press, Dane Ault and Ashlie Hammond, have put out a picture book called ‘The Zombies Next Door.’ We haven’t read it but we can be sure it’s pretty and gruesome and fun for all ages!

Monkey Minion Press doesn’t just do zombies, though. They do zombies rather well, we must admit, but their talents do not stop at just the festering and the putrid. As you see with this, they can bust out the skills recreating prints of classic horror monsters. Classic and classy.

Their etsy site also has prints of various superheroes and science fiction stars that you might find worth putting up on your walls. And they’re rather inexpensive so we could easily say it’s a steal. You can also find Monkey Minion Press at their official website, their Facebook page and even follow them on Twitter. Go on, take a look, take a bite and have a zombastic time!

And join us next week for another Tuesday uEtsy spotlight!

Jun 04 2010

Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales

I'm huge in Japan...

You can find horror anthologies devoted to just about every subject these days. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, Frankenstein’s monster, H.P. Lovecraft, slashers…the list goes on and on. But one subgenre was sadly neglected in the world of horror anthologies: good old fashioned giant monster attacks!

Thankfully, the fine folks at Agog! Press took notice and corrected this terrible oversight with a trilogy of books. Originally intended as a one-off release, the amount of submissions for Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales was so great that the extra material was split off into two other books: Daikaiju!2 Revenge of the Giant Monsters and Daikaiju!3 Giant Monsters Vs. the World. Although the cover art and contributing authors change from book to book (the above cover was made by Bob Eggleton), the fact that they’re edited by Robert Hood and Robin Pen remains the same throughout them all.

Thanks to Google Books, you can read lengthy previews of all three tomes. What awaits you? Complete stories and snippets, both serious and comical featuring original creations and, for all intents and purposes, famous daikaiju with their serial numbers scratched off (if you catch my drift). Some give their monstrous creations names and others opt to leave the creatures unnamed. I prefer stories that opt for the second method, as I feel it reflects the mysterious nature of the gigantic beasts that suddenly spring forth from the dark places of the Earth to trample cities while terrified citizens flee rather than concern themselves with naming something.

So please, give these books a try. I’ll think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the sheer number of ways there are to tell a story about giant monsters (not unlike my surprise when I found that the first book had a story featuring Frank Wu’s “Guidolon the Giant Space Chicken”). There’s radiation, magic and even a zombified Paul Bunyan!

Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales

Daikaiju!2 Revenge of the Giant Monsters

Daikaiju!3 Giant Monsters Vs. the World

If that isn’t enough, here’s Robert Hood’s companion website and another story collection which I suspect was inspired by this series.

UPDATE: There have been some new kaiju story collections published since this article was written! The Mammoth Book of Kaiju features a mix of new material and selections from all three volumes of Daikaiju! and Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters combines new material with selections from the previously noted anthology.

Special thanks to Robert Hood for use of the image!

Jun 04 2010

Strange Trip: Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th was released on May 9th, 1980 and with that, our boy Jason turned thirty this year. Three decades of Jason and a lot can be said about him, his mother and the whole franchise.

But really, I’m not the one to say it. Truth be told, I haven’t seen every single movie. Butt his is the era of the Internet, where it takes an afternoon on Wikipedia or X-Entertainment and you can know all the important details about any major franchise of the last two decades.

But, I’ll admit that is a bad excuse. If I was Catholic, I see it as admitting not knowing who the hell that Ratzinger fuck is, just feigning knowledge as “Oh yeah, the guy in the hat, right? Sure thing.”

And this is the 30th Anniversary (the Pearl anniversary) and I feel that I owe it to the Voorhees clan to actually sit down and watch all these goddamn movies. For Jason, THE Jason.

Welcome to this Trip Report. A Strange Trip. A undead (not live) blog of our fond Summers away at Camp Crystal Lake, Manhattan, Hell and beyond. 2010 eyes here, and admittedly, without an extensive knowledge going into this. If this is a train wreck, then I promise as many casualties as possible. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a horror fiend so you like a little gore. Let’s get bloody and down to business, shall we?

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Jun 01 2010

Tuesday uEtsy: dugshop

[Etsy.com’s tagline is “Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.” Coincidently, there’s a lot of spooky on Etsy, and each Tuesday, we highlight one of the sellers. If you’re looking to spruce up your look, redecorate your tomb or get a gift for that special something in your afterlife, Etsy.com is a place for spooky econo.]

dugshop: The Audacity of Soap (http://dugshop.etsy.com)

We here at Gravediggers Local 16 emphasize good hygiene. Sure, when handling dirt, worms, possible dead bodies to sell to mad and not-so-mad scientists, it’s easy to forget the smaller points of sanitation. Remember – the Plague can happen to YOU.

So, we’re happy to spotlight dugshop on this week’s Tuesday uEtsy. A fine seller of soaps, dugshop is a bone-a-fied treasure trove of horror and spooky theme sudsy assistants for all your germ-killing needs. And germs are the only things killed by this soap – the company says each product is 100% Vegan, so all you killers with bleeding hearts (or hearts still bleeding) can know that no animal biproducts are used in this soap.

Which is pretty damn amazing since some of it GLOWS IN THE DARK.

Yes, and with pictures! Here we see a famous scene from that mod-tastic, goofy classic ‘Mad Monster Party.’ Perhaps you’ve wanted to shower in the dark for a while, and find that candles don’t really do it and fireflies are hard to keep alive. Surely, there has to be a solution. dugshop offers you that. Your soap glows. Get clean in total darkness by the light of this soap bar, all recounting some of your favorite characters from horror and history.

I mean, who WOULDN’T want to take Leatherface in the shower with them?

Perhaps you enjoy the light on while you lather, rinse and repeat? There are soaps for you.

This really can’t be stressed – dugshop has the neatest soaps for anything. There are spooky themed ones, yeah, but they have ninja stars, alien heads, a multi-layered earth. It’s pretty incredible. If you know of a kid who is at that point where they’re not jaded by life and can get really enthusiastic about taking a bath with some bats (bat-bath!) then you owe it yourself for being a reasonably-good human being to purchase said bat soaps. Or, get them some colored skulls.

If you have someone who you think might appreciate either the subtle hint that they smell or might get a kick out of having an imprinted face of Nosterfatu or Dr. Frank N. Furter rubbed up and down their body, hell, this place is for you. Plus, at their most expensive, it’s seven bucks. that’s a steal.

Look at this. You can have that in your bathroom. Tell us you don’t want that right now so we can call you a liar. Or tell us you don’t want the Tiki soap below so we can call you a Double Dog Liar Pants on Fire.

There’s really not much more to say, is there? dugshop offers homemade, 100% Vegan soaps that look better than most of the furniture in your house. We’re surprised that you even got this far without going over there to make a purchase. Or maybe you have, you multi-tasker. Well, let us know (by dropping a note) the soap you just bought.

And join us again next week for another Tuesday uEtsy.

May 31 2010

Mothra Madness

Mosura!

Mothra is actually based on a serialized Japanese novel called The Luminous Fairies and Mothra.

Mothra was supposed to battle the unused monster Bagan in a never-realized 1990 film called Mothra vs Bagan. Elements of that script, along with the similarly never made Godzilla vs Gigamoth, were utilized in the 90’s version of Godzilla vs. Mothra.

Mothra is said to bear a resemblance to an European Peacock Butterfly and Atlas Moth.

During the DVD commentary for the South Park episode “Mecha-Streisand,” series co-creator Trey Parker revealed that his favorite Japanese monster movie is Mothra.

After finishing Gravity’s Rainbow, author Thomas Pynchon was rumored to have been working on a Mothra novel. However, this turned out to be untrue.

Wikipedia claims that Mothra’s distinctive chirp was created by speeding up Anguirus’ roar. That section also claims that Mothra was never realized by a person in a costume, which is disputed here.

In the movie Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior, Mothra’s chirp is used to create Giratina’s cry. The film was distributed by Toho (better known as the studio behind the Godzilla movies) in Japan…

In the American dub of The Magic Serpent, Mothra’s chirp is used as the voice of a giant bird. Similarly, the film’s dragon now has Godzilla’s roar and the giant toad uses Rodan’s cry.

The popularity of Mothra among women in Japan prompted Toho to make the 90’s version of Godzilla vs. Mothra.

When Mothra was released in America, the distributor suggested that theaters should display radioactive materials in their lobbies in order to build publicity for the film!

Eagle-eyed daikaiju fans might notice how the eyes of larval Mothra are red in her cinematic debut, yet they turn blue in Godzilla vs. Mothra (aka Godzilla vs. the Thing in America). In fact, they stay that way for the remainder of the old school Godzilla movies).

If you look at official reference guides, Mothra is much larger than Godzilla when she appeared in Mothra and had to be scaled down for her appearances in the Godzilla franchise.

May 27 2010

Batman: The Stone King

The first one to make an Adam west joke is getting a batarang to the face...

From his appearances on The Adventures of Superman radio show to the numerous “record/tape and comic” releases, Batman has always had a rich history in the world of audio dramas. The latest company to contribute to this legacy is Graphic Audio, with their series of adaptations of novels starring DC comics characters. Some of his appearances are as part of major crossovers, some are solo adventures and the Justice League of America dramas have him as a supporting cast member. Said dramas tend to focus on a single League member, although others argue that these are just JLA stories with a single member promoted on the cover. In this case, I’ll be looking Batman: The Stone King, based on the novel of the same name by Alan Grant.

Why is a horror website reviewing a comic book themed audio drama? Well, let’s look at the plot: a mysterious pyramid is unearthed in Gotham City in the aftermath of a dam burst. Said pyramid is filled with symbols associated with black magic. Needless to say, an ancient evil is unleashed and Batman is the only Justice League member left uncaptured as the entire world is in peril. Horror fans might also appreciate the interesting insights on the nature of fear that are sprinkled throughout the plot. Be warned, as there are minor spoilers ahead…

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May 25 2010

Tuesday uEtsy: HorrorCrafts

[Etsy.com’s tagline is “Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.” Coincidently, there’s a lot of spooky on Etsy, and each Tuesday, we highlight one of the sellers. If you’re looking to spruce up your look, redecorate your tomb or get a gift for that special something in your afterlife, Etsy.com is a place for spooky econo.]

HorrorCrafts (http://HorrorCrafts.etsy.com)

You’ll find a lot of homemade jewelry on Etsy.com, which is great, because no two stores are exactly alike. In fact, it is the uniqueness of HorrorCrafts that makes it this week’s Tuesday uEtsy Spotlight.

One of the more interesting pieces that HorrorCrafts offers in its store is this Ouija board themed bracelet. The photo charms give it a very mysterious look, perfect to complement any gypsy wardrobe or add a bit of spookiness to your work day. Imagine seeing your Vice President walking in, full formal work suit and this baby around his/her wrist. Corporate merger or spiritual takeover? BOTH. 

HorrorCrafts offers many types of photo-bracelets. From vintage horror comics, to classic anatomy drawings, up to non-horror themes like Andy Warhol and Frida Kahlo. One example is the Classic Tattoo bracelet, fror those who want something less expensive (and less permanent) than the actual thing.

But horror fans be not afraid. HorrorCrafts has bracelets with zombies, famous monsters, and even of candy skulls for Dia de Los Muertos. Which brings us to the next object, a Dia de Los Muertos ring.
—

Look at that classy piece of artwork. Seriously, imaging rocking that this coming November. I don’t care what else you have on. That is some serious pull for the Day of the Dead. Get all the skeletons turning bleached-yellow with envy as you come strutting down with this on your finger.

Perhaps you’re a classy gent or lady who thinks that brooches are the way to go. Perhaps you’ve lost your wrists in a tragic accident that has you pursuing your finger-themed revenge on a world that’s done you wrong? You too can look classy and suave with some of HorrorCraft’s wooden pin/brooches. They feature the poster art from classic movies and some of the greater stars of monsterland.

Who wouldn’t want to have a blend of Christopher Lee/Coltrane ‘Blue Train’ on their chest? I’m serious. Look at that. If not your thing, how about some Steve McQueen with The Blob?

We don’t usually say this around here, but that is BAD-ASS.

We were afraid of showcasing this last piece because our coffers are a bit thin at the moment and if we had the right shillings available, we would have gotten it ourselves. Along with the brooches, rings and bracelets, HorrorCrafts offers two-sided pendents. One of their better ones features the late Lux Interior and The Cramps.

Along with the horror-rock icons, there are punk rock medallions (Dead Kennedys, The Clash), Horror stars (Leatherface, Evil Dead) and such. Thankfully, HorrorCrafts also does custom orders so if someone swipes up the pendent before we dig up the right coins.

Head over to HorrorCrafts today. You’ll find that everything is high quality and very reasonably priced. They do custom jobs and customer service is key with HC.

And join us next week for another Tuesday uEtsy spotlight.

May 23 2010

Benediction (of sorts)

Here at GdL16, we are thoroughly against bootlegging, specifically the bootlegging that some companies do when they make reproductions of movies without getting the proper legal right to do so.

But, with that said, I just downloaded an mp3 of a “Weird” Al Yankovic demo that was clearly recorded from an episode of the Dr. Demento show nearly thirty years ago. And the hiss, static and evident sound that someone recorded this on a cassette deck has brought back the sensation of when I used to do the same thing. Just teenage and the radio held all that promise. I had a shoebox full of mix-tapes, actual mix-tapes with songs I had caught off the radio. Wild sounds. Amazing things, these wild songs of radio that could be captured with the press of a few plastic buttons on a very low-end stereo. Promise, though. Each of these cassettes held so much magic.

There’s something to be said of the times lost, mainly that it’s never really lost. There will always be a way to go back. Death is never the ending, perhaps could be theme of this post. Someone will always be able to upload an experience you thought you would never find again, out there for you to easily download in the early hours of a new morning.

Happy Sunday. Happy Digging.

May 21 2010

Spook Show Bela

He's the Post-Yule Ghoul!

While looking through the online preview of Gary Don Rhodes’ excellent Lugosi: his life in films, on stage, and in the hearts of horror lovers, I came across a reference (#57) to a never-realized 1948 spook show featuring Bela Lugosi. The idea of him doing a spook show did make sense. After all, he did have his own coffin and theatrical producers would cast him in plays in order to cash in on his name. These would tie in perfectly with the world of the spook show.

What is a spook show? Spook shows grew out the phantasmagorias of the 18th century, where “magic lanterns” (an early form of slide projector) were used to create images of specters and skeletons on screens (or smoke) in darkened theaters as the show’s host would pretend to summon the dead in fake magical ceremonies. Multiple projectors, often on moving platforms and using glass slides with moving parts, were used along with sound effects to heighten the effect. Fully describing the history of phantasmagoria could easily take up this entire entry, so I instead invite readers to look at the two part “The Lantern of Fear” article at Grand Illusions.

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May 20 2010

Gemora Greatness

In honor of Asian Heritage Month, let’s take a look at the life and works of legendary gorilla suit maker/actor Charles Gemora.

Charles “Charlie” Gemora was born on August 15th, 1903 in the Philippines. Stowing away on a ship headed for America, Gemora arrived in California and made money selling portraits on the street in front of Universal Studios. His talent was quickly noticed and he was soon working in the special effects department. This led to his first onscreen role in 1928, a role that became a defining part of his career: a gorilla.

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