Monday, February 26: Flying Giant Heads

I made a fairly last-minute decision to go to the NYC Comic Con this past weekend. Yes, I am a nerd.

The show is only a fraction of the size and importance of the much more established show in San Diego, but if you're in the neighborhood, it isn't half bad, although quite crowded. Which is why I like to go during the "Industry Professional" period of the showon Friday. (Note to a guy I saw walking around during this "Industry-only" period: There's nothing "professional" about showing up wearing a giant Doctor Who scarf.)

Okay, I'm just being a jerk, because while it's nice to be free of the crowds, you're really only getting half the show. The fun is when the kids (many of which are in their forties) show up in elaborate costumes once the show is opened up to the general public.

The big show Super Friends

I don't have a whole lot to say about the show, as I mostly just walked around, looked at the displays and the costumes. I will say that Chuck D was there, as was Gary Coleman (sitting next to 7'3" tall Peter Mayhew -- tell me that wasn't planned), Stephen Colbert, the Cheerleader from "Heroes", Kevin Smith, Ray Park, a bunch of people who I guess used to be on "Buffy", the three finalists from "Who Wants to be a Super Hero?" and a ton of comic book folks like Stan Lee (who's actually much funnier than he is corny), Roy Thomas, Gene Colan, Frank Miller, Brian Bolland (who I actually waited in line for a long time to meet and have him sign some issues of Judge Dredd -- like I said, "NERD!"), Neal Adams, Jeff Smith, Ken Kelly, Jim Steranko and dozens of others.

The Man A huge backdrop and nothing to show for it. I wanted to buy this sooo badly!
Hitler can do so much to brighten up a room!

The above are all photos that I took with my cell phone. I know they're awful, but I hate carrying a real camera around all the time.

After all of the "excitement", I drove back to the mountain hideaway last night. While the rest of the world was watching the Oscars, I fell asleep watching Sean Connery on cable TV as he ran around in a red diaper and thigh-high boots in John Boorman's awesomely bizarre psychedelic science fiction fantasy Zardoz (1974). That's just the kind of guy I am.

 


Thursday, February 15: Exciting and New

If you aren't completely sick of me already, there's a brand new interview with yours truly here. This one is at the Icons of Fright site and was conducted by journalist and fellow filmmaker Adam Barnick.

Back in September of 2005, I talked about a fun little film by Taikan Suga called Blister (2000) which focused on the life of a fanatical toy collector. Suga's latest film, The Last Love Song on This Little Planet (2005) is a live-action adaptation of the Saikano manga series by Shin Takahashi about a teenage girl who has been cyberneticly altered by the government to be the ultimate killing machine.

Even though it's set in the future and the girl has the ability to sprout giant robotic wings and fire missiles from under her skirt, the film is first and foremost a love story. Our heroine is a teenager after all, and is in love with a boy at school. When this boyfriend finds out that she is a killing machine, the young couple struggles to cope with the morality of the girl's job and her commitment to her bloody duty.

The sci-fi elements and futuristic battle sequence are conservatively peppered throughout the film, to reinforce the nature of the girl's situation, but it's the story that this film rests on, not the effects, which has alienated some viewers, particularly males.

I disagree. I feel that once again, Suga has used geek culture to deliver a nice little relationship story framed inside a futuristic epic. And that's okay by me.

 

Thursday, February 8: A Very Special Film

Take a look at this interview with me on Bill Cunningham's site, DISContent. If you've never been there, the site is Bill's blog where he talks about all aspects of the Direct to DVD and genre film industry. Entertaining AND informative!

As I continue on my quest to please the handful of you that read this site, I'm reminded of a something someone posted in the forums here, back when we had them. She suggested that I cover more "family films".

Hmm.. I'd argue that a lot of the movies I talk about here are fine for the whole family: the classic monster movies, Godzilla films, Star Wars and Doctor Who. I'd actually say that aside from the horror stuff, MOST of the films discussed here are suitable for all ages. Maybe she wanted something from the heartwarming "movie of the week", After School Special mold. You know, where someone with some sort of disability or whatever overcomes adversity and finds love.

I've got just the film for her. It's the story of a mentally retarded girl, called Ming-Ming, who loses her father and has to live in a group home for the mentally challenged. She's pretty traumatized at first, but things get better when a world-weary social worker finds love in her heart and takes poor little Ming-Ming under her wing.

Unfortunately, for them, there's a maniac on the loose and he works at the group home. He'll rape and murder anybody who happens to be wearing the color red, regardless of age or mental capacity. But he doesn't kill Ming-Ming. Instead he falls in love with the girl after brutally raping her. I'd love to say that this film has an uplifting ending, but it doesn't.

I'm of course, talking about the Category III classic from Billy Tang, Red to Kill (1994). This film has to been seen to be believed. Ben Ng gives a beyond-insane performance as the psycho-rapist. He's so wound up; he looks like he's going to pop. He delivers of moments of face-contorting brilliance that are so astonishing; that you'd swear Rick Baker was involved.

A bizarre and incredibly graphic film. Okay, maybe it's not for the WHOLE family, but I'm sure that creepy uncle of yours will love it.


Wednesday, February 7: More Gnus

Our man Larry Fessenden is all over the South by Southwest Film Festival this year!

First, the latest entry in his ScareFlix series, Trigger Man (2007), written, directed, shot and edited by Ti West. Will be having its world premiere at the festival. Yours truly has a small "acting" role in the film. Around the same time, Ti will be well into filming on Cabin Fever 2 (200?). Congrats Ti!

Also showing is Doug Buck's Sisters (2006), a remake of the Brian DePalma film. It's already shown at several festivals, but I haven't seen it yet, despite all of Doug's promises. You hear me Doug? I'm waiting!!! Larry is a co-executive producer alongside Edward R. Pressman.

And finally, Larry will meet one of those grizzly ends that he's so good at in a scene shot right outside of the Glass Eye Pix offices from Jim Mickle's rat-monster film, Mulberry Street (2006).The festival runs March 9 -18.

You may notice that I've added a new feature over there in the left sidebar, just under the monthly movie demands. I've been unpacking boxes in the new house and am shocked at how much unwatched film and video I have just sitting around doing nothing, so I'm going to start putting some of these things up on YouTube on a semi-regular basis:

See! Angus Scrimm perform an alternate version of his song "Prairie Dogs" not available on The Off Season DVD!

See! A "movie" I made with my toys when I was a youngster!

See! A short film I made in college starring Buddy Bolton!

See! Trailers for all three of the MonsterPants feature films, including Lionsgate's "kick ass" trailer for The Off Season (2004)!

See! Dave being set on fire and Noah shooting me in the eyes with a fire extinguisher!

See! A horrible interview with me from German TV!

Okay, I have to stop and explain that one. It was at the Oldenburg Film Festival where Automatons (2006) had its world premiere. I had been at a party until about fiver or six in the morning. I get a call at some ungodly hour of the morning (for a Saturday, at least), saying that they'd like to do this interview and could I be there in a half an hour. I was a mess and could barely keep it together. My whole tactic to get through the interview was to just stay awake and keep smiling. I ended up coming across as sort of smug and creepy... not what I was going for. I also answered all of the questions beginning with the pronoun "I", as if nobody else but me had worked on the movie. Unforgivable. But still, I had to post it. "Look ma, I'm on TV -- In German!"

Luckily for me, each part of the two-part interview is about nine minutes long, which means that YouTube kind of struggles with loading it properly. I'm guessing that most people will give up after watching the first few seconds and imagine that it was an amazing interview.

Anyway, go on over to YouTube, Check out the vids, and please subscribe to the MonsterPants channel, so you can be the first to see my next masterpiece: Turkey Fight!

 

Friday, February 2: Last Chance!

The final showing of Automatons (2006) in Chicago is tomorrow night: Saturday, February 3, 11 pm at The Facets Cinémathèque.

 

Thursday, February 1: Turning Over a New Leaf

People like to suggest to me ways that I might make this site better. As a rule, I ignore them, as there's only about five of you who look at this thing anyway. But last May when I started this thing up again, my better half suggested that I expand the scope beyond movies, because I "have so many other interests." Yeah, really nerdy ones. Anyway, I'm going to take her advice and embarrass myself by talking more about toy collecting, comic books and other geeky stuff. Just not today.

Maybe I'll change the name of the site to "The Bad Living Habits of James Felix McKenney." Nah, this thing has gone through enough name-changes already.

Angus noted that I use this page to relentlessly promote various screenings and things, but never report on the events afterward. He says that it gives the impression that the event was a failure. I never thought of that. I just didn't think anyone cared. Of course, I realize that that isn't true, because I always get emails from folks asking me how this or that screening went. I'll try to be better about all of that in the future.

Here's a picture from last December's NYC premiere of Automatons (2006), which went very well. See? I'm starting already:


AUTOMATONS stars Brenda Cooney, Christine Spencer & Angus Scrimm

You'll notice that I removed my mailing address from the sidebar. I'm spending 96% of my time these days in our mountain hideaway working on DVD bonus materials for Automatons, pre-production for Satan Hates You and a few other projects, including the CanniBallistic! (2002) Prime Cut DVD. So I'm almost never in Brooklyn anymore and only get my mail once every few weeks. If you'd like to send me something to review or whatever, email me and I'll give you an address for where I'm at.

If you're one of Don Wood's many fans, you probably want to contact him about getting his current mailing address, as it takes forever for us to get together for a package hand off. Speaking of Mr. Wood, he just sent me this link to the official site of We Are the Strange (2007). I am now dying to see this movie.

On to this month's recommendations:

Written and directed by Nobuo Nakagawa, arguably Japan's premiere master of horror, Jigoku (1960) gives us nightmarish glimpses into two different types of hell. The first is Hell on Earth, where we follow the life of a guilt-ridden student as his idyllic life goes quickly down the crapper.

About two-thirds of the way into the film, our hero is finally crushed and it's off to the real Hell. That's when things get really bad for him, and we get to watch as he undergoes all the never-ending tortures and torments that one is subjected to in Hades. These theatrical, surreal and dream-like moments are what folks tend to remember about this film, although the main character's suffering in the first part of the film is equally effective. This is a beautiful and bizarre film, if you haven't seen it already, run out and get the Criterion Collection release right now. Go.

Stalker (1979) is Andrei Tarkovsky's other science fiction masterpiece. The film is almost monochromatic in both palette and tone, taking place in a futuristic Russian wasteland. Here we meet "Stalker" who's job it is to lead a couple of men, known only as "Writer" and "Scientist" into a forbidden zone. The goal: a secret room that gives those who enter their heart's desire. That's the story line in a nutshell, but isn't really what the movie is about. This is a Tarkovsky film, after all.

Just in case you're thinking that I'm getting all highfalutin with the movie choices this month, I give you Pulgasari (1985). It's a monster movie. I like monster movies. This one was produced in North Korea. Ignore what the VHS box says; this movie was never "BANNED for a decade!" Actually, the director (who was a prisoner of the state and forced to make films) escaped to the U.S. while Pulgasari was in post-production and the film sat on the shelf for several years.

Which is a shame, because there are some amazing 14th century battle sequences in this film, as the giant Pulgasari joins forces with some rebels to take on the armies of an evil tyrant. Tons of extras fall under the giant feet of our monstrous freedom fighter. As awesome as these scenes are, some of my favorite moments of the movie are early on, when Pulgasari is just a four-inch tall baby, walking around amongst oversized everyday objects. No CGI involved. Pulgasari rocks it Jack Arnold-style.

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