Music Box Massacre 5

I finally am able to do a nice long post about my time at the Music Box Massacre 5. To start off, it was really fun and I met a lot of cool people. We got there just before it started and the lineup for this years Massacre was as followed: The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Isle of the Dead, Bucket of Blood, The Brood, Re-Animator, From Beyond, Pontypool, Dark Night of the Scarecrow, Blood Feast, Maximum Overdrive and Carrie.

For the most part, I enjoyed it and I had lots of fun although because of some seating difficulties we were unable to see The Brood, which was fine because I had already saw it and we missed out on Stuart Gordon reading Edgar Allen Poe and we missed the Poe movie too. Instead, my buddy and I ended up going out to eat before the long night ahead of us. On our arrival back, I was about to buy a $15 original 80s poster for The Blob, but held out and a good thing too.

 Pontypool had to have been one of the best movies I saw there and I know everybody laughed when they saw the made for TV show Dark Night of the Scarecrow because of it’s cheesiness and bad acting, but in all honesty, it was pretty creepy and it had a creepy atmosphere to it. I don’t know why people hated it.

 

Left to right: J.D. Feigelson, Me.

Near the end, the seats were becoming uncomfortable and people began leaving, the pussies that only came for half of the show. Well, during the break between Blood Feast and Maximum Overdrive my buddy and I went out to an alley and burned a film trailer for Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story movie. Because it was really early in the morning I slept right through Maximum Overdrive and watched Carrie in full. And when everything was over, they had us crowd the street to take a picture of the ‘survivors’ of the Music Box Massacre.

This is what we think of Moore's new film.

I think the highlight of that night would be my story: I was walking down the isle and some fat, bearded guy was walking behind me pretty close, so I said under my breath, “fat bearded geezer.” He heard me and muttered, “watch your manners.” Turns out I called Stuart Gordon a bearded geezer. No autograph for me.

 

Left to right: Art Hindle, Me. 

I had a great time and I will be definitely coming back next year. 

31 Days of Halloween - Day 10: Top 5 Zombies

I know this is a delayed post and the reason why it is delayed is because I was at Music Box Massacre 5 in Chicago and I was unable to complete the post before hand. Well, this is a follow up to my post of Top 5 Zombie Killers, and this time around I am going to talk about the top 5 Zombies of all time, these are individual zombies and not hoards or anything like that. I don’t have a specific criterion but rather what zombie captivated me the most. So here they are:

 

5. The Tarman from The Return of the Living Dead: Why is this guy on the list, since, compared to the others he is a flesh eater? Because he is the fucking Tarman! He yells for “BRAINS!” and he totally fucks shit up when he can’t get what he wants. Plus… you gotta love that face.

 

4. Fido from Fido: Probably one of the cutest, innocent, harmless, servent of a zombie all thanks to a zombie collar. What makes him so special is because of exactly that! He slowly falls in love for Helen, he has a relationship with Billy and he is slowly becoming human. Even when the collar is off, he reduces to his primitive zombie needs but then he goes back to his original self because he knows he loves his family. Its touching and sweet.

 

3. Dean Alan Halsey from Re-Animator: Much like Big Daddy and Bub, he is a misunderstood zombie that was brought back to life for an experiment. What makes him so special is because he is conscience but is afraid of everybody around him; he is kept in an institution then mind controlled by Dr. Hill and when he finally sees that he gave up his daughter he snaps out of the mind control and starts to fight back. You are rooting for him because you want him to win, he understands that that is his daughter and she is about to be turned into a zombie for Dr. Hill’s sick experiment.

 

2. Big Daddy from Land of the Dead: Much like Bub, this is a zombie who is unaware that he is not supposed to exist. He learns, and he has feelings for his fellow undead people and that’s what makes him such a strong zombie; he is a leader who is trying to save his people from genocide. You can feel his pain and his rage when a fallen comrade gets shot up. He is slowly learning and for that, you can’t blame him for wanting to take out humanity because in his eyes, we are unwanted trespassers. Plus, since he is slowly learning, it gives him more pity because they are trying to be human.

 

1. Bub from Day of the Dead (1985): Why is Bub my number one favorite zombie you may ask? Because, this is a zombie that we love, we feel for and we want him to win in this case. He is innocent, he doesn’t know any better and he is somewhat conscience of what he is doing. He is the most loveable character in all of the Dead series. When Logan gets killed, you empathize with him because in a way, Logan was his father and he lost him. He just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and it’s just so touching.

Looking back on all of this, I think it is fair to say that most of these zombies are more civilized zombies, except for the Tarman, and I think that is why I love them so much… because they are innocent and they aren’t just mindless killing machines but there is depth and character to them that make them so special. It’s fascinating as well as brilliant to see character development in such a drone of a character. 

Intro To Music Box Massacre

From Blogger Pictures

As many of my Illinois and Chicago based horror friends know, another Music Box Massacre is planed for this October and I will be attending this one. This will be my first Music Box and many of you have already been to these so don’t be surprised if I don’t know anything about it. My friend from Hollywood Havoc will also be attending this as well. From what the website says, Stuart Gordon will be there to sign autographs and if it’s pay per autograph I might give in, but it depends on how much it is.

The movie lineup is as follows:

Re-Animator

Blood Feast

The Brood

From Beyond

Bucket of Blood

Pontypool

Maximum Overdrive

Carrie

Isle of the Dead

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

 

Advanced tickets are $27

Day of tickets are $33

Pictures and updates from the convention will be posted as well as anything that I end up picking up along the way. I am excited for this as much as I am for Flashback Weekend.

Click here for more details.

Soundtracks - Re-Animator (1985)

After re-watching “Re-Animator” I finally realized why the beginning theme to the movie sounds so familiar. The entire piece, which was composed by Richard Band, is identical to that of the ‘Psycho Suite’ by Bernard Herrmann. Although the only things that are identical in the “Re-Animator” theme is the beginning notes and the beginning notes of the bridge of the theme, the rest is very original but still sounds like it was taken from something else. I don’t want to say that it is a rip-off, because I don’t know what the history behind the theme but I will say that it should have been revised.

Even though the theme is similar I still enjoyed the movie and the theme really worked with the movie. It’s very tedious and a bit nerve racking, which compliments the movie. The theme is played over the opening credits in which several multicolored diagrams of the human mind are layered over each other.

Perhaps, in some way, “Re-Animator” was inspired by “Psycho” but I can’t see how. 

Review - Re-Animator (1985)

So, after a year of waiting, I finally saw “Re-Animator,” by Stuart Gordon. I had previously saw this movie once but fell asleep watching it about 15 or 20 minutes into it. So, when I picked it up I thought that it would bore me to death like it did the first time. How wonderfully wrong my assumption was.



The movie was really good. From what I heard, it was one of the most accurate adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories and now after viewing this movie, it makes me want to read the story it was based off of. There was plenty of gore and great creature/zombie effects and some amazing puppetry. The acting was so-so, but that wasn’t why I watching it. It was also pretty campy in the style of “Evil Dead;” combining spoofy humor and real drama along with its overall horror atmosphere. There were points where I was laughing but also disgusted at the same time.

What I especially love is how much it compares to Frankenstein and how it completely reworks the entire ‘mad scientist’ character arc. West is a very brilliant and very driven man whose intentions are for a good purpose but his work has driven him to become unstable, his sanity is diminishing and he lacks any respect for life and death, so is he an anti-hero, hero or villain?

It came to my attention that when I first tried to watching this movie, it was around 3am and I was very tired. It would make sense because movies like this don’t usually put me to sleep.