Tom Savini putting finishing touches on
Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th)
Photo from Wikipedia
Horror movie fans know the answer to the question: “Who is Tom Savini?” For the rest of you, here’s a quick summation: he’s one of the most well-known and highly respected special effects make-up artists in the movie industry. His filmography of effects work is impressive, including the original Dawn of the Dead, Maniac, Friday the 13th, Creepshow, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Trauma, and many others.
If you’ve haven’t seen the original version of My Bloody Valentine from 1981, you’re missing out. If you haven’t seen the uncut version, you’re definitely missing out. The 2009 reissue contains almost five minutes of footage that wasn’t in the original, theatrical release. Five minutes doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but after an hour spent with members of the cast and crew of the film, I now understand why they meant so much.
As a film fan, I’m an unabashed lover of the 1970s. In the introduction to Horror Films of the 1970s, film and television critic John Kenneth Muir describes why in two words: “savage cinema.” There truly was something different about films of that decade, and horror films of the ’70s are no exception. In fact, sometimes lines between horror and non-horror were blurred so successfully that it’s difficult to define the exact genres of films like Deliverance or Straw Dogs, both of which are discussed in Muir’s book.
Part of what makes the “savage cinema” so unique and thrilling, claims Muir, is that it presented viewers with a universe in which there were no answers. Yet, he quotes documentary filmmaker Adam Simon, who says that horror can be “open to the traumas of the world” in a way which will “naturally convey truths.” This nexus between no answers and universal truths is precisely why horror films of the 1970s are so unique and so thrilling.
It’s young Lucie’s first day as a trainee in-house caregiver. She visits Mrs Jessel, an old woman who lies in cerebral coma, by herself, in her large desolate house. Learning by accident that Mrs. Jessel, a former dance teacher of repute, supposedly possesses a treasure somewhere in the house, Lucie and friends William and Ben decide to search the house in the hope of finding it. At night, they get into the house, which reveals itself to be increasingly peculiar. Their hunt for Mrs. Jessel’s treasure leads them into a horrifying supernatural series of events that will change Lucy forever . . .
You may have already heard that PJ Harvey has won the UK’s 2011 Mercury Music Prize for her most recent album, Let England Shake, but what you may not know is that she is the first person to win the award twice. Additionally, she was the first female to win the award ten years ago for her outstanding 2001 album Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea.
Watch her performance of “The Words That Maketh Murder” at the Mercury Prize ceremony on September 6.
We reviewedLet England Shake on the Popshifter blog back in February, with J Howell saying that it “will likely stand the test of time as one of the finest, perhaps even one of the most important, records of the early twenty-first century.”
On September 12, 2011, PJ Harvey will release an exclusive iTunes Session which can be pre-ordered on the iTunesStore. The EP features seven recently recorded live tracks along with an interview. It also includes four songs from Let England Shake as well as three of her most widely acclaimed songs from past albums.
iTunes Session track listing:
1. Let England Shake
2. The Words That Maketh Murder
3. The Last Living Rose
4. Written On The Forehead
5. Angelene
6. C’Mon Billy
7. Down By The Water
8 – Interview –
Says Harvey of her win, “I feel surprised and astonished that I’ve won twice and I do feel proud, it’s amazing, I can’t quite take it in but at the same time I feel that making music and words is very important to me and I’ve always tried to make it the best it could possibly be and I hope to continue doing that. I hope to be back here again in another 10 years’ time with another record because it’s very important to me to keep making word that is of relevance, not just to myself but to other people.”
Check out the latest video from Iceage, whose album New Brigade we reviewed in June, saying, it “teeters on the thrilling precipice between the purity of the band’s nascent talent and future brilliance.”
Comments Off on Brand New Video From Iceage, “You’re Blessed”
Horror fans of a certain age surely remember the 1973 TV movie Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark. To me, it was always known as “the movie about the things in the fireplace,” which was enough to keep a scaredy-cat kid away for many years. Although I didn’t see it until more recently, I quickly became a big fan; the movie still provides plenty of genuinely creepy moments which make me glad I never saw it as an impressionable youth.
Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who produced the terrific remake that’s out today in theaters, has called the original “the most terrifying on earth.” But the new Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark isn’t a movie full of jump scares like the also-terrific Insidious, which came out earlier this year. It’s more of an old-fashioned haunted house movie, where the unease and dread build slowly and inexorably towards a horrible climax.
“Incidentally, which one of you bitches is my mother?” has become an iconic piece of television history, especially to anyone who grew up in the 1980s. This infamous line of dialogue—spat, rather than spoken, by Phoebe Cates—from the 1984 TV miniseries Lace, is hardly the most ridiculous thing that takes place during one of the most notorious television miniseries.
“This motion picture is based on the authentic diary of a 15-year-old American girl. The only alterations have been those necessitated by considerations of length and acceptability for family viewing.” —Opening credits of Go Ask Alice
Based on “Undercover”—the first song I heard by The Chain Gang Of 1974—I was excited, fully expecting the album Wayward Fire to be crammed with lush, moody, ’80s-influenced synthy dance pop. (Even the cover art reminds me of Echo and The Bunnymen’s Songs To Learn And Sing.) Since my teen years were spent listening to the original incarnation of that style of music, I’m glad that so many bands are redefining the sound as a genre of its own, not just some passing fad. Yet, Wayward Fire is not what I expected.
