Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

sol_se and I are slowly working our way through Season 1 of Star Trek: TOS. Kirk and Spock are so in love. I'm also replaying Fallout 3 on PS Now.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

The Wolf Man (1941)
Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943)
House of Frankenstein (1944)
House of Dracula (1945)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Roman Holiday (1953)
Big Business (1988)
The Invisible Man (1933)

Sol_se wanted to watch the "monster mash" Universal films, so as our way into that, we watched the entire arc of Lawrence Talbot, werewolf. Even as the films became increasingly goofier, Lon Chaney Jr. really brought the pathos all the way through as a fundamentally decent man cursed to violence.

After that, we wanted something a little lighter, so we watched Roman Holiday, which is still a great, fun film.

Then, sol_se remembered a film from her youth that she really wanted to rewatch about two pairs of twins separated at birth. Big Business is a lot of fun, running on an engine of misunderstandings and mistaken identities. Weirdly, this movie is on Disney+ of all things.

The Invisible Man is one of my favorite movies that I sometimes forget is one of my favorite movies. Claude Rains really gives the gusto and director James Whale builds an intriguing picture of what a world with an invisible man in it might look like. Fun fact, the design of Classic-Horror.com is largely based on the poster for this movie.

Basically, in late 2010, I was filmed for a documentary on makeup artist Greg Nicotero, as one of their makeup history experts. This was a huge deal for me, as you can imagine, and I spent hours researching to make sure I had all my facts straight. I flew out to LA (I was living in Phoenix at the time) and was filmed at the Weekend of Horrors con. It was super-exciting and they said they were going to send me some films to look at and then film me again discussing them specifically.

However, I didn't hear anything after that and their website didn't really update much afterwards, so I assumed the whole thing had been lost in funding limbo or something.

Cut to yesterday, when I randomly found out that the documentary was not only completed, but it aired on Canadian TV in March 2011. And my name is not on the IMDb page and it is not mentioned in any of the reviews online. It looks very much like I didn't make the final cut.

Cue massive disappointment. I was already having a super crappy day (just a bunch of little things that culminated in a foul mood) and this just dropped the bottom out from my stomach. I do not handle rejection well? And this was like massively time-delayed rejection.

I, um, acquired the doc (it's never been released on DVD) and checked it today. As I suspected, I'm not among the interviewees. I did get a "Thanks" credit, however.

Now that I've had a day to process it, I'm fine with it and I'm a little embarrassed about the cryptic post I made yesterday. When you're making a documentary, it's like vidding in a sense. You have to shape a story from footage that may not always go the way you want it to. Sometimes stuff gets cut, because you already have it in another place or it will gum up the flow. Plus the "Thanks" credit went a long way.

Also, fan_eunice promised to shun them.

The last post of Classic-Horror.com went up today.

I'll admit, writing that post was easier than I thought it would be when I decided to just be grateful. And I am. I am grateful for the experience, I am grateful for the people, I am grateful for the giant pile of writing that exists that would not have otherwise. Once I realized that my primary emotion in all of this was gratitude, it was... easier. But not easy.

Also, there's a vid. It's a huge clustereff of horror movie images and I'm not sure how successful it is, but it's heartfelt, at least.

Edit: Complete vidpost

You know, I try my hardest to attribute quotes and information, but I've gained an all-new appreciation for it since I started finding people pulling quotes from Classic-Horror.com without providing their source.

This post inspired by an awesome Wil Wheaton quote that popped up on my Tumblr feed that seemed really familiar. And then I remembered that I'd heard it with my own two ears when interviewing him years ago. 

Vid Title: Love Shack of the Evil Dead
Length: 4:06
Song: The B-52 - Love Shack
Source: Evil Dead and Evil Dead II
Warnings: Violence, spurting blood, spurting demon fluids, bodily dismemberment, bodily self-dismemberment, ocular trauma, copious Bruce Campbell abuse.

Summary: If you see a faded sign at the side of the road... run for your life.


Download 39.7MB MP4 file (right/ctrl-click and "Save link as...")

Notes: Let's take a moment to applaud random circumstance. After working on this sucker for over a year, I found that sol_se had been working along similar lines (same song and source) at the same time, and in fact debuted her vid at Club Vivid back in August. However, we talked it out and agreed that the world totally had room for two Evil Dead Love Shack vids. So here's mine.

Also, I couldn't have done this without my (occasionally squeamish) betas echan, jmtorres, lizbetann, diannelamerc, and killerweasel.

So I had Social Fail at the July 4th party I went to, which I feel guilty about, so I'm taking a cue from qkellie and listing some stuff that makes me happy.

• Having an apparently telepathic connection with my wife, wherein we are already in agreement on propositions that neither of us have brought up (i.e. whether to leave our stuff in boxes after the recent fiasco).
• The best coffee in the Phoenix area is a flight of stairs away from my apartment.
• Classic-Horror.com is back and better than ever.
• Babylon 5 has been rocking more awesome into my world over the past month (just four episodes left in Season 4).
• I have great friends who I love and trust.
• My niece and I have a mutual admiration society going. She thinks I'm the bee's knees, man.
• Doctor Who Season 5. I wasn't sure about it at first (and I'm still not 100% on Matt Smith), but Moffat makes me go, "Rusty who?"
• Mandatory daily cuddles. 
• Being a member of the horror blogging community. These are some of the most intelligent, friendly, and down-to-earth people I've ever dealt with.
• Watching "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers" (an episode of Faerie Tale Theatre) for the first time in many, many years. It stars Peter MacNicol, Christopher Lee, David Warner, and Frank Zappa. Narration by Vincent Price. Fun times and just as delightful as I remember it being when I was much shorter.

Title: Boris Karloff: Frontier Psychiatrist
Author: Jetpack Monkey
Song: The Avalanches - Frontier Psychatrist
Fandom: Classic horror movies

Summary: Starting with The Man They Could Not Hang, Columbia released four mad scientist films starring Boris Karloff in an eighteen-month period between 1939 and 1941. The other films in the series were The Man with Nine Lives, Before I Hang, and The Devil Commands. As a tribute, I created a short video to illustrate the general shared tone of the films and their similarities in structure, casting, theme, and direction.

The song I chose, The Avalanches' Frontier Psychiatrist, is constructed from audio clips and samples from previously recorded materials. I picked this song in particular because it calls attention to the fact that the Columbia Mad Scientist series was itself constructed from "used" parts, taking elements from Karloff's past successes in films like The Man Who Changed His Mind, The Invisible Ray, and even The Walking Dead.

Password: therapy

Download 17.4MB MP4 (right/ctrl-click, "Save link as...")

Notes: This vid was created as Classic-Horror.com's contribution to the Boris Karloff Blogathon over at Frankensteinia.

In which I get a little navel-gazey about Classic-Horror's upcoming tenth anniversary and contemplate exactly what running the site for 10 freaking years means for me. I'm of two very different minds on the subject.

Stuff from Phoenix Comicon:

Zombie Events
My Panels

and as an extra-special bonus:

My interview with Wil Wheaton

Incidentally, he's just as geeky and just as awesome and you'd expect from reading his blog. Maybe moreso.

So much stuff going on. Some of it I can control, some of it I can control but don't seem to have any desire to do so, and some of it is out of my hands.

Credits Addict: ( This bit is boring )

Book: Based on a promise that kenobi  extracted from me -- crafty lady -- this year I'm properly starting work on some sort of horror film related book. It was meant to be a book on comedic represenations of cannibalism in film, but it turns out that another author is working along similar enough lines that I need a new idea. I'm still pondering.

Web Design: Designing a website for Dad right now. It's... going.

Work: Busy.

Phoenix Comicon: Not quite sure what's going on here, because the coordinator in question is clearly very busy, but I'm fairly certain I'm doing a panel on classic horror there in a few weeks.

Fun: I do have time for that. And it's been awesome.

Anyway, in the next week or so, keep your eyes peeled for my annual "A Great Many Things I'd Like To Do This Year" list. And of course, next month we'll have my annual birthday mix CD and Top 25 films list.