http://vimeo.com/3798117

Me being interviewed by Electric Elliot in my studio.

This is a vampire film, which uses vampire film knowledge to battle vampire film vampires while doing an homage to vampire films. A lot of great horror movies came out in the 1980s. And the best, like Fright Night, are filled with clever writing, wonderful characters, and a love for creepy crawly celluloid of the past. I was extremely tempted to give this film a ten. I'm still tempted to give this film a ten. In short, this is a great freakin' film and if you haven't seen it, you are culturally deprived.

More reviews can be found at The Comic Critic.

I love the social commentary that the only folks who end up normal afer the comet has passed, are those wo didn't care to stare up at the night sky in wonder. Talk about a selective survival mechanism. Seaking of surviving, our herine and her boyfriend made it through the night because they were in an old bunker, and yet none of the other survivor's stories sound that plausible. I love the wit and valley girl attitude. and for those watching for the first time, get ready for a big ol' 80's flashback. And check out who the actors were. Hilarious!

Death Race 2000 was one of the very first grindhouse films I ever saw. I believe it achieved cult status because it was timed to take advantage of the high frustration folks were feeling about gas prices and the economy. The storyline is none too subtle about it, either. In the film, a huge crisis occurs in 1978 that radically changed the political landscape, so by the year 2000 one of the means of population control is the Transcontinental Road Race. And the American Resistance Party believes that by messing with the race, they can bring down the immoral establishment. Like any wonderful grindhouse film, the premise was so ludicrous that by adding just a bit of humor to the script, the movie was able to achieve huge, if undeserved, laughs. Nobody cared about the huge holes in the plot or story, nor that the scoring system never made any sense. You just went to see some guy do what you wished you could do, and that's what a lot of movies are about.

An interesting side note to the film is that the Video Arcades of the day were having a hard time. Kids could play Pong at home on their Atari systems, so they weren't putting quarters into the slots at the arcades as fast as they used to. Then the Death Race arcade game come out. The goal was to run over a whole bunch of running figures. Once you did so, a headstone would pop up. The game became more and more difficult as more and more headstones got in your way. Running over a headstone would cause you to lose speed and it made a horrific noise. Anyway, a lot of uptight folks made a hue and cry over this immoral game. It was warping young minds. The story was picked up by the national news, and enquiring television programs pondered how video games were affecting American youth. All of this attention naturally drove kids back to the arcades for a chance at the machines–before it could be banned.

Some might think this to be the first movie-inspired video game, but that honor goes to Jaws. The bloodlust in Death Race was far more compelling to the media than Jaws for some reason. (Neither of the two games was properly licensed.) While it's now de rigueur that a video game is released as a tie-in to a movie, it all had to start somewhere.

This is just one of many movies that Sam Katzman produced. Katzman was all about keeping on budget and increasing the profit margin by getting them quickly in the can. Most of his films are B-Movie classics. He might have worked fast, with an eye for the bottom line, but somehow, most of his films have a solid professional feel. The Werewolf was made fourteen years after The Wolf Man, just a year prior to I Was A Teenage Werewolf. What I love about this film is its location. Sure, the sign on the sheriff's office says Mountaincrest, but every other sign in town reads Big Bear, a nice hunting community from what we can tell. If the scenery around Big Bear City looks familiar, it's because the town is a common filming locale for movies. From classics like Old Yeller (1956) to recent horror efforts like Ticks (1999), Big Bear City has played host to over 200 films. You might want to check out their annual film festivall.

I know that many people will disagree with me about this movie being a ten. But I don't care. I'm a science fiction nut who loves a good time-travel movie with some balls. Here is a poor schlep who finds himself bouncing between two realities. He goes back and forth from knowing that he is in two realities, to wanting to be believe that he is in one, to knowing he is in one. Beaten, kicked, and confused, he does his level best to stagger through both. And the storytelling is great. You almost wish that he were delusional because that would be the easiest route for our poor sympathetic hero. . See all the movies reviews at The Comic Critic Website.

Once again, I took a plane trip. And, once again, I found my in-flight viewing option to be… no, really, not another Nanny Movie! Argh. This time, it was The Water Horse, Legend of the Deep. I can see why they decided to lengthen the movie's title. Just calling it The Water Horse might have implied a simple story (to go with a simple title). Oh, that's a spoiler by the way. I do have to give the filmmakers a little credit for the way they handled its imagery. It's nearly impossible to make a large, smooth, dark gray creature interesting on the screen. Yet, by purposefully lowering color levels, its rich sepia tone created a nice ambiance for the title creature and other characters. The writing, predictable and obvious, is perfectly fine for the young viewer. Since I am an adult, I wanted bit more from the story and decided to have fun with this week's strip by showing that dialog was not the most interesting feature of this film. See all the movies reviews at The Comic Critic Website.

Okay, There’s reason for this review;  I was stuck. Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium is what I call a "Nanny." You can be relatively assured as you set your children in front of the great glass tit that, for the next 90 minutes, they will be peacefully occupied, watching a non-threatening, non-violent, practically non-existent film. Now, don’t get me wrong. I often enjoy G-rated films. But eventually, your kids will agree with me--given a choice between this movie and watching "The Lion King" for the eleventeen billionth time, it would be Simba on the tube. I have a confession: The only reason I watched "Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium" was that I was trapped on a seven hour flight, my laptop’s battery was dead, the earphones were free, and, having an exceedingly high pain tolerance for bad films (perhaps brought about by many years of watching B-rated gore films of questionable caliber), I was really just curious to see if Dustin Hoffman could ever make anything worse than "Ishtar."

Scott Kurtz does a fantastic cartoon called PVP. He also hosts, along with Kris Straub, Brad Guigar and Dave Kellett the podcast Webcomics Weekly. I feel that I’ve become a close personal friend just from listening to him rant and give good advice each week.  This week he has been under the weather. So stalkers like me had a perfect chance to pay him back by sending him guest strips until he feels better, or starts drawing again. Some of you reading this are already fans of PVP. You should check it out. It’s one I take in every day. You can see my contribution to his strip here.

I generally enjoy old British horror films that star Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, but I, Monster left me bored. I, Monster is a version of the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde story. Only in this version, there’s a twist by adding in the element of Freudian psychoanalysis. And apparently, the filmmakers didn’t want you to get it confused with the original story, so they gave the characters different names. Dr. Jekyll is now Dr. Marlow. How lame is that? The Lameness continues as Dr. Marlow’s transformation into the monster leaves a lot to be desired. Personally, I don’t think a fellow walking around his lab like he’s high on weed and threatening a mouse with a scalpel is very scary. Now, if he ate the mouse, it would have been a different story. I did enjoy the props as well as the attention given to the campy décor of Victorian England. If this film did anything, it opened the door for other people to do a better version of the Jekyll and Hyde story--without worries that theirs would be the worst one out there. I give it a three

The film Year of the Dog came out in 2007, and my guess is that it didn't even create a blip on your radar. I blame the mega-movie complexes. They have sixteen screens, but fill four of them with the same highly-advertised movie for three weeks. Meanwhile, the lower budgeted films are given only a half-day slot for just one week before they vanish. You can miss a lot of interesting films that way! And this is one of those interesting films, sort of. I enjoy films that don't talk down to their audiences, and films that stick to one tone throughout the entire film. Sometimes, that tone may be a low-key dry humor that will make you smirk more often than laugh, like this movie. I give it a five because it's a decent movie. It's entertaining in its own subdued-yet-tightly-wound-up way. It has no bad points. On the other hand, it doesn't have any big explosions.