#Blogtober 30 - Trailer of the Week - From Beyond the Grave

Since I've nearly finished Blogtober, the big day of Halloween is tomorrow, and the Justgiving page has been my most successful yet (BTW, please consider throwing a few pennies in).  Therefore, for today's trailer, I've picked something appropriate that I know I can have a lot of fun writing about.  Wasting no time on pre-trailer waffle (I'll just waste the time afterwards instead!), here's 1974's From Beyond the Grave...

#Blogtober 29 - Halloween Bloggery - Dr. Terror's Vault of Horrors

Remember the BBC's own horror host?  On Halloween night 1992, the same night that the legendary Ghostwatch aired, there was a horror night on BBC2.  It was hosted by Dr. Walpurgis, a character played by Guy Henry (who after being buried in make up for this role, would be buried in CGI for playing Tarkin in Rogue One), with dialogue written by horror author and film critic Kim Newman.  He was such a hit that, after being rebranded Dr. Terror, there would be several horror showings on BBC One hosted by him, across 1993 to 1996.  Recently, thanks to various bloggers, such as VHiStory, many of these have been put up on YouTube, including over an hour of the interview segments from the 1992 Halloween night, so I thought I'd share a bunch of ones I could find on here.  I've also arranged a YouTube playlist to have them in order.  Ah, we need more wisecracking demons to spice up film screenings.  Enjoy!

#Blogtober 28 - Thoughts on Doctor Who News

I'm planning on a bunch of Doctor Who related blogs for next month, in time for its anniversary date on the 23rd, but for now I thought I'd do a little look at a few cool things related to Doctor Who that have happened this month.  As the great podcast Verity puts it, these are the little nuggets of Doctor Who delight that fill me with glee.  Before I get into things, no this won't include spoiler stuff from next series; there have been some location pictures circulating recently, showing something pretty major that's turning up, but I'm not going to casually let that one slip.

#Blogtober 27 - Book Review - Ghoster by Jason Arnopp

It's safe to say that a lot of horror creators have not adjusted well to the existence of mobile phones, often trying rather contrived ways of avoiding characters easily calling for help.  Now some more astute creators have simply worked out that being able to make a call might not be as much help in some situations.  For example, the show and film Ghost Stories has a great section where a character on a phone constantly doesn't harm the tension one little bit, not least for it giving us the classic line "Fucking O2!".  Others have realised that the ever presence of not just mobiles but social media connections can be in and of itself a source of terror.  There's actually a film out this weekend, Countdown, which is basically "What if Ring or Final Destination but with an app?".  For a more thoughtful take though, there's the recently released novel Ghoster, by Jason Arnopp.

#Blogtober 26 - Halloween Bloggery - Misty Early Channel 4 Memories

Who else here has a vague memory from childhood of some weird, forgotten bit of TV?  You know, one of those things where you're not even sure if you was something you actually watched, or if it was something you dreamt up?  Well, for years I've had something like that; I can't be sure of exactly when I saw it, but I was pre-Primary School definitely, so about only 4 or 5 years old.  What makes this thing so vivid was the fact that I only came in at the end of... whatever this show/film was, so I had no context for what was happening.  I remember a kid in a normal suburban house (like mine, to add to the paranoia) being menaced by some huge, amorphous mass of stuff, at one point getting out of a scrape with a He-Man figure, and there being something disturbing about the ending.

#Blogtober 25 - Halloween Bloggery - No, not that one...

I've been thinking a bit about cases of films and shows having similar titles recently.  A while ago at a pubmeet, someone mentioned liking the show The Good Wife, which led me and a friend down a tangent of discussing Vyvyan's rant about The Good Life until we realised the mistake.  Well, with the horror genre, this could lead to some hilarious issues, as there are a few cases of kids films with very similar or identical names to fright films.  This almost certainly did lead to quite a few traumas for children when parents didn't have a close enough look at what the video store gave them back in ye olden tymes, or if they just click on the first thing that a streaming service suggests when they type in the word today.  So I thought I'd have a quick look at a few notable examples of this sort of thing; consider this perhaps a warning to look very carefully at exactly what categories Netflix lists a film under before you put something on for the kiddlywinks...

#Blogtober 24 - Canary Duty - Terminator Dark Fate

I have been burned by the Terminator franchise before.  I saw this on the horizon, and whilst the trailers looked promising, my enthusiasm for this series has been long worn down by the likes of "talk to the hand", Christian Bale's orphan voice, and a "COPS" montage.  So I approached this up until the first reviews came out more out of curiosity than excitement.  When those articles dropped though, I was still thinking "OK, maybe it's just a case though that after Terminator Mega Dryve anything would seem better".  Well, now I have seen it, and I won't beat around the bush; not only are good Terminator films back, but there's a lot in here which might just make this (after a bit more time for reflection and rewatching) my favourite one since the original.

#Blogtober 23 - Trailer of the Week - The Mutations (aka The Freakmaker)

This week, it's a trailer for a film I have an interesting history with.  I finally got to see it about this time last year for my October Challenge, and whilst it was far from a satisfactory cinematic experience, it was a good feeling to wrap up a long standing little loose end in my life, one going back two decades.  This is the story about me, and... THE MUTATIONS!!!  First, the trailer, that will give you a very solid idea of the plot and contents of this film....

#Blogtober 22 - Halloween Bloggery - Apocalypse of the Blood Freak

It's a free film recommendation today, for a new indie low budget horror project.  And when I say low budget, I mean a £200 budget.  From a London based film collective, Tite90 productions, this takes a very experimental approach, with particular notice to horror tropes and cliches, not really making fun of them like Darkplace, more having a dialogue with these elements.  It's partially inspired by a pair of cult titles; Blood Freak and Troll 2.  For the first, it's in the way that even in many old exploitation horrors, there was a definite attempt to make a real heartfelt point.  From the second, it's from the way you'd sometimes have sequels that have no real connection to the originals.  Following its own  particular DIY Filmmaking manifesto, nicknamed DOGGO, this has a "decentralised" approach, with several members of the crew creating their own sections, within the resources available, and the whole thing linked together with careful editing. With inventive visuals, in a nightmare logic narrative, which goes all the way from pastiche to genuine mindfucks of the highest order, this is a real treat, and I'm not just saying this because a friend of mine made it and narrated it. So, for free on YouTube now, just in time for Halloween, enjoy Apocalypse of the Blood Freak!

#Blogtober 21 - Halloween Bloggery - Commercial Break

Something a bit different today, with a help from a few friends, I decided to put together a little compilation of terrifying/creepy/grotesque adverts from our childhoods.  Let's start with the most obvious one; a while ago (geez, it was over a decade ago!), Channel 4 did their list of The 100 Greatest Scary Moments, and this little tribute to German Expressionism was one of the only commercials to make the list.  They actually went all in on this, using old-fashioned hand-cranked cameras to give it that uneven, unnatural movement silent films often had.  Beware the Judderman my dear, when the Moon is fat...

#Blogtober 20 - Canary Duty - The Day Shall Come

Real on the ball film criticism round here, getting to this a week after release!  I know, real life stuff and this whole challenge thing getting in the way.  Anyhoo, Chris Morris is one of the great satirists of our times, and his 2010 film Four Lions is one of my favourites, a biting take on the war of terror highlighting the uncomfortable fact that many that go for causes such as IS do so because... well, because they're kind of idiots.  It makes the point that a lot of fanatics, ready to use violence to achieve their aims, probably don't understand all that much about their causes in the first place.  The Day Shall Come makes for a good companion piece for Four Lions, as it's also about a rather inept revolutionary, but here it's all about the role that government forces do to make such people look a much larger threat.  Whilst I don't think that this one is as successful as Morris' first film, this is still a great slice of comedy with a powerful point to make.

#Blogtober 19 - October Horror Movie Challenge - Canary Vs. The Halloween Franchise

Woo, it's all done!  I've finished the whole Halloween franchise for the Challenge this year!  I have a complete view of this series in entirety as a phenome- wait, sorry, what's that YouTube?

Oh.  Huh, more next year then.  Well, in the meantime, having gone through all of the films released so far, here's my ranking for the series, entry by entry.  I'll go favourite to least favourite, as I don't think number 1 is going to be any kind of surprise.

#Blogtober 18 - Halloween Bloggery - Scream, Misty, and The Thirteenth Floor!

Hey kids, COMICS!!!  Yeah, going a bit different today, talking about the funny books.  Now Rebellion, the current publishers of 2000 A.D. have been buying up the rights to a few older British titles in recent years, for republication after a long time in limbo.  Two major titles included in there are Misty and Scream.  Misty was an interesting one in that it was intended for girls, but had excellent stories of terror and the supernatural; full points to them for recognising that yes, people other than teenage boys liked horror way back in the seventies!  Scream was another anthology, from the mid-eighties, which had a more general mix of horror themed strips.  Rebellion have been releasing some collected trade editions of quite a few of the strips from these, but the last few years they've gone a step further, and produced some special edition comics for Halloween featuring all new stories!

#Blogtober 17 - Trailer(s) of the Week - Elm Street Oddities

Time for a little reel of extended trailers related to the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, as discovered by The Duke Mitchell Film Club.  First of all, who here remembers the Freddy Krueger TV series?  Called Freddy's Nightmares, it ran for a couple of seasons, and was basically an anthology show.  There were a few episodes connected to the Nightmare on Elm Street storyline, including the pilot, but mostly they were unrelated horror stories, with Freddy acting as a greek chorus, basically being this show's Cryptkeeper (although the Tales from the Crypt TV series started after this began.  Hmm, I wonder...).  Now there isn't a full DVD boxset out there; there was only one, three episode DVD released in the UK yonks ago, but you can see a couple of episodes as they are bonus features on the Nightmare on Elm Street complete collection Blu Ray set.  But well before that though, a bunch of episodes got released on VHS in the UK; here's an advert from the time...

#Blogtober 16 - October Horror Movie Challenge - The Two Curses of Michael Myers

So one of the things I was wondering whether or not it would be pulled out of the Pumpkin for my horror movie challenge this year was in fact one of the first to be drawn out; the entire Halloween series.  Yep, all of the films they've done so far, and I suppose I was tempting fate when I got all of those blu rays together, for as soon as I did, they announced that two more of the things are being made.  Well, at least I'll be all caught up for them.  Now I'm going through all twelve so far released Halloween films for this.  Some of you may be going "hey wait a minute, there's only 11!", and you'd be right, but so am I.  See, Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers was the first one made by Dimension Pictures, under the supervision of the Weinsteins, back when they were infamous for messing with films in post production, and not infamous for other, more serious matters.  The film has a tonne of reshoots, and re-edits, to the point that the film that got into studios had almost 70 minutes of different footage to what was originally intended.  For years, the original version, called The Producer's Cut, was something of an oddity amongst bootleggers, but recently the full thing has been restored and is now fully available on Blu Ray.  Therefore this post is about me having a look at both the versions I've seen, to say what works or doesn't about each version, which is better, and overall are either versions actually good movies, or even good Halloween sequels.  Going to get a bit spoilerly for this, including giving away how Halloween 5 ends (but that one is really not a loss; seriously, don't watch Halloween 5!), let's begin.

#Blogtober 15 - Fun with Sci-Fi Trivia

So I was cleaning up some stuff, getting ready another batch of things for my eBay, and I found this little thing.

This is a classic Sci-Fi trivia set... and by "classic" I mean it was printed in 1996.  I've actually used this thing in preparing some quizzes before.  I took a bit of inspiration from The Technical Difficulties podcast, which had the challenge of "if this is an answer from a 1984 Trivial Pursuit set, what's the question", and made comedy gold out of it.  Seriously, need a proper deep belly laugh, go check out their podcast and later videos.  Finding this particular set though made me decide it would be fun to have a brief look at the wide world of geekdom, and see what exactly has changed in the realm of SF & Fantasy since these questions were written.

#Blogtober 14 - October Horror Movie Challenge - Canary vs. Twilight

Well, I did it.  I kept the promise made when I started my fundraiser this year, and have sat through all five Twilight films.  I am still recovering.  Before I take the discs along to Computer Exchange, let's have my final thoughts on the franchise, film by film followed by a general overview.  Now before I start, let's be clear that I am focusing on the films specifically, I haven't read the books (I'd need to have gotten a lot more in the fundraiser before I give up that much of my time to them!), but I know of one or two things that are different in the films, so I might make reference to those.  So let's get to it, in lots of spoilery detail; hang on tight spider monkeys!  (I can't believe I just typed that!)

#Blogtober 13 - Canary Duty - #LFF2019 Round Up Part Three

As I speak, London Film Festival 2019 is wrapping up with the closing night film The Irishman.  I was tempted by that screening to the honest, but I am all wrapped up in this October Challenge thing, and it's three and a half hours long!  So with another successful line up coming to an end, it's time for me to wrap up my own coverage of what I've seen; three titles left, let's get into it.

#Blogtober 12 - Halloween Bloggery - Podcast Recommendations 2

Well, my first podcast recommendations episode went down well, so here's a few more favourites.  This was definitely the plan all along, and absolutely not at all because I realised I completely blanked on a few obvious titles, honest gov'!

#Blogtober 11 - Theatre Review - Mites

Oooh, something a bit different today, going a bit cultured with actual theatre, with real people in front of me and stuff!  Yep, a friend of mine let me be a +1 to a performance of Mites, a new absurdist play currently on at the Tristan Bates Theatre at the Actor's Centre in London.

#Blogtober 10 - Silly Movie Trailer of the Week - Bloodbath at the House of Death

I have strayed far from my roots, going for trailers that are far too respectable, we need something utterly ridiculous.  Help us out Kenny Everett!

#Blogtober 9 - Canary Duty - Knives Out (as seen at #LFF2019!)

I was just going to have this as part of another general post of rounding up London Film Festival titles, but this is a very big title, I'm still buzzing about it the morning after seeing it, and I have a lot to say.  That said, I should point out that this is of course going to be completely spoiler free, although given this is a very twisty murder mystery, with some surprises and revelations coming thick and fast at points, that's quite a hard task.  I am bigging this one up, even though it's already quite a high profile release this year, because I genuinely want this to succeed as best it can (not least because Rian Johnson has said he'd love to do more Benoit Blanc mysteries if it succeeds).  So without further ado, let's plunge the blade into Knives Out!

#Blogtober 8 - Canary Duty - #LFF2019 Part Two

Keeping my London Film Festival coverage going in manageable chunks, and definitely not just stretching things out to make sure I have enough things to make blog posts about for this month, honest gov'!, let's carry on going through my LFF journey.  Three more films to discuss, let's get cracking!

#Blogtober 7 - Halloween Bloggery - Alien War

Short one today, as I have a few other things going on, I just want to share something very cool I found on YouTube.  So this weekend, amongst other things, I had a good time at the Namco Station arcade in London; nice evening, I won enough tickets to get a stuffed Pac-Man ghost, but that got me thinking about the fact that there just aren't a lot of good arcades anymore.  I know why, rise of online multiplayer games and such, but it's still a shame, video arcades were great social venues.  One I used to go to a lot was the top of the Trocadero in Piccadilly Circus, Funland.  As I'm writing this, I'm actually getting a bit nostalgic for a day when Street Fighter IV had just been launched; I remember the line for the arcade cabinets, the guys who had obviously already figured out all the combos and supermoves, and getting my arse handed to me first time I got on.  Good times, but it's not that exhibit at the Trocadero I want to talk about today.

#Blogtober 6 - Canary Duty - #LFF2019 Part One

I've been very busy this week with screenings at the London Film Festival, a whole bunch of fascinating titles, so let's have a look at the first three films I've seen.  I've included as much detail on their release dates as possible, so let's get to it, there's a lot to talk about.

#Blogtober 5 - Halloween Bloggery - Podcast Recommendations

Today I'd like to recommend a few horror related podcast series and/or episodes.  I've been getting very much into podcasts the last few years, they are especially good for doing the long walks that are my main form of exercise, and it's clear that their popularity is not weaning at all.  It does make the old-school radio fan in me happy that the audio medium is still going strong, just in a different form.  So let's have a good selection for Spoopy Season.

#Blogtober 4 - Canary Duty - Joker

It's safe to say that this has been something of a controversial release, and I'm not just referring to director Todd Phillips pumping lead into his feet every time he opens his mouth whilst on the press junket. I've already done a whole article talking about some of the reactions to it, so I guess today we're going to see whether all the palaver from both it's pre-emptive supporters and detractors has been worth it.

...:One viewing later:...

No.  No it was not worth it.  Nor is really worth going to see.

#Blogtober 3 - Trailer of the Week - Intruder

I was a bit hesitant about having this one, as the trailer is a bit spoilery, but it's been on my mind recently, so I want to have a chat about it.  What I'm going to do is have a 100% spoiler free first paragraph, recommending the film, and a deeper discussion, trying my best not to give the game away, after the page break.  So to start, if you want a fun retro slasher this Halloween season, I definitely recommend tracking down 1989's Intruder, it's available on pretty good blu rays from Synapse Films in the States and 88 Films in the UK.  It's got good acting, fun camerawork, pretty damn spectacular gore effects, and you get to see the future director of Spider-Man being murdered.  Plus it deviates from slasher cliches in some notable ways, including avoiding the sleazy, somewhat misogynistic areas that this sub-genre can fall into a little too often, and delivers a real gut punch of an ending.  Now that shock ending isn't given away in the trailer, but the identity of the mystery killer is (even though it's really not too hard to figure out in the film), so if you want to go in really fresh, just go find a copy and check it out!  (Heheh, check it out, it's set in a supermarket, it's fu- nevermind.).  Some more details and hints at spoilers after the video and page break.

#Blogtober 2 - October Horror Movie Challenge - Faces of Death

For the last few years I've been doing this challenge, I often have on the list one of the infamous Video Nasties, so I can work my way through most of them.  Thing is, for a lot of the ones on the main Section II lists (the 72 films that were charged under the Obscene Publications Act, 39 of which were prosecuted, 33 weren't), I've reached the point where what I have left are some of the more extreme titles, and a lot of the utter crap that got lumped in there.  So for the one on this week's list, I decided to make my watching of it directly linked to the fundraiser, as an incentive to get through it, as it's directly for a good cause.  I think this is perhaps the only case this particular title has done some real good, as it's one of the big ones in the field.  So in the mindset of "let's get this done quickly", here are my thoughts on the truly infamous Faces of Death...

#Blogtober 1 - Blogtober Begins and Creepy Puppetry

What's this?  Two crazy daily challenges this month?  Yes, in what I can only assume is some sort of cry for help, as well as my regular #octoberhorrormoviechallenge, I'm taking the #Blogtober challenge too.  The rules of this are very simple; post new blog content every day in October.  What will I be posting?  Well my main thoughts about the films I'm viewing for the OHMC I'll be putting on my Instagram feed, which will also show up on my Twitter and Tumblrs too, but I may have on here a few discussions about what I've been seeing on here too, if it's something special I have a lot to say about, and if it would count as a "Canary Duty" title.  There are a few other non-horror things I'll be seeing on regular release, and at the London Film Festival, too, so I'll have my thoughts on them here too. But mostly though, since it is Spoopy Season too, I'll be having on here some fun little Halloween and horror related links.  I've been tormenting anyone following me on the socials with them every year for a while now, complete with the Silver Shamrock jingle, so I might as well use them to bulk things out on here.  Right, one post a day for a month, let's see if I can commit to at least something regular on here for a change!