Enter...If you dare!

Enter...If you dare!
Big thanks to "Diamond" Dave Wheeler for the bitchin' logo!

Monday, September 29, 2014

Hey everybody; welcome to the basement; push aside that stack of Shock Cinema mags, watch out for rats and bodily fluid stains and make yourselves at home!  This is the debut entry of my new, (hopefully) weekly blog in which I will share with you, dear reader, my love of trashy cinema. 

As a bit of background, my obsession with the underbelly of cinema probably began when I read the first edition of Kim Newman's seminal Nightmare Movies in fifth grade.  I was enthralled by the lurid descriptions of gut-munching, chainsaw-mutilating and crucifix-masturbating.  I started seeking out these movies at every dingy mom-and-pop video store I could get a lift to, I'd tape them off of late-night television (USA Up All Night!) and I'd seek out bootleg videos at comic conventions and record shows.  Eventually, I discovered two essential magazines, Michael Weldon's late, lamented Psychotronic Video and Steven Puchalski's still-going-strong Shock Cinema and was introduced to even more obscure oddities.

This is not meant to be an ongoing work of scholarly criticism; I don't have the time or desire for it to be such.  I'll try to keep the entries short, including a brief summary of the film, my thoughts on/reaction to it and possibly throw some little tidbits of trivia at you.  I'ma try to keep the tone conversational and funny, as I don't want you to be bored out of your minds.  Also, so that we're perfectly clear, this is my fucking blog; I MAKE THE RULES!  I'm going to try to stick to b-movies, but if I get a wild hair up my ass to write an entry on The Empire Strikes Back, I'm damn well gonna do so.  I'm going to try to cover a wide variety of genres, from spaghetti westerns and post-nuke movies to porn parodies and obscure 80s teen comedies.  I'll look at films from undeniably shitty directors (Jess Franco, the Findlays, Doris Wishman), respected masters (Cronenberg, Lynch, Argento) and underrated geniuses who never quite got their due (Larry Cohen, Ruggero Deodato, Frank Henenlotter). 

So I hope you'll take this trip with me.  I'll be your guide through post-nuke America, the Amazon jungle, American cities that look suspiciously Canadian, the bloody old west, pre-Giuliani Times Square and the far-flung reaches of space.  You'll witness torture, dismemberment, cannibalism, adult infants, animal attacks, rubber-suited monsters, breast mutilation (that's for you, Ben!), penis eating, all-girl rock bands, frat pranks gone awry, prehistoric beasts, satanic rituals, epic car chases, creative uses for power tools and SO much more!  You'll meet cowboys, zombies, cannibals, inbred families, serial killers, cultists, punks, demons, aliens, robots and maybe even David Hasselfhoff.

Grab a stiff drink and turn down the lights...It's showtime!

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