are you a jaws man or an orca man?

The year is 1978. A team of 12 year olds have decided to make a Super8 film of their own based on Jaws...

and speaking of the French...

After doing my regular visit to The Groovy Age of Horror blog (your one stop for fumetti and sexy nurses in distress) I found a link to Zines, a new blog from France (?) filled with scans of French fantasy film mags with lots of saucy and sexy photos (NOT SAFE FOR WORK!) based around the films of Jesse Franco, Jean Rollin, Lucio Fulci, Christina Lindberg, Terrence Fisher and more! Visit often! These are only a few of the pics I found that are "safe". Safe is bad...

morts-vivants et autres monstres

This dispatch comes from the esteemed Hal Kelly, editor Trash Compactor, of one of the best of the wave of deviant film zines that sprung out of Toronto in the late 80s and early 90s (including Kill Baby!, SubTerranea, Panicos, Tame, She and of course, Asian Eye).

In October of 1990 my wife Angela and I spent a week in Paris visiting friends. Close to where they lived at the time was Le Brady, a nice little theatre that specialized in showing horror films and had a suitably fantastic facade. It wasn't very big inside and it probably only sat a couple of hundred or so people. It was narrow, kind of like the old Rio on Yonge Street in Toronto, but with an aisle that went down the side of the house instead of the middle. It was like a regular theatre, clean and in good shape with no riff raft stalking the back rows, but it was still fun! As you can see from the pictures, at the time it was showing King of New York (mostly on the strength of Abel Ferra's splatter reputation after Driller Killer I
suppose) and Demons (this weblink loads up and plays the theme while you read the entry!). I also remember seeing Charles Band's Laser Blast there. Any anybody else ever been there? Does anybody know if Le Brady is still operating? Probably not...

Good news Hal! Looks like Le Brady is still up and running, but it appears to have lost its cool and creey facade. Proof can be found here and here.

drive-in Kowloon style...

Just got this pic and link from a cinema enthusiast that I know in Hong Kong - their first (?) drive-in! Don't have a car? Fear not, they have 40 fixed seats in American classic cars! Plus, coming soon, an outdoor BBQ restaurant! It costs HK$100 ($15 Canadian) for the "parking fee" and the first "patron" and then HK$50 for the second "patron" and HK$40 for any subsequent patrons. So the maximum cost would be around $28CDN for a carload, however they are only showing one film, no double or tripple bills. And I have a sneaking suspicion that it is video projection too. Not knocking it, but I think they still have something to learn. You could have a tripple bill of A BETTER TOMORROW 1-3, CHINESE GHOST STORY 1-3 or INFERNAL AFFAIRS 1-3! That's a lot more exciting than their current feature that is running - NANA 2.
Or imagine getting caught in the middle of a Triad street gang fight while watching a YOUNG AND DANGEROUS marathon...

the Black Dragon speaks!

From kung fu disciple Marc in nyc. Maybe you will see Grandmaster Ron defend the virtue of a yound lady in distress...

Museum of the Moving Image, NYC
Fist & Sword celebrates Black History Month
An Afternoon with Ron Van Clief
Sunday, February 18, 2:00 p.m.

Ron Van Clief, one of the first African-American martial-arts film stars, will discuss his career in a program accompanied by clips from the movies and TV shows in which he starred, choreographed, or served as stunt man including: Black Dragon, Super Weapon, Way of the Black Dragon, The Squeeze, Kung Fu Fever, Bamboo Trap, Fist of Fear, Touch of Death, Fight to Death, Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, Oz, Colorz of Rage, The Sopranos, Blazin, Coalition. Grandmaster Van Clief has trained in and taught martial arts for over 40 years and is a five-time World Champion.

That 70's Drac

The trailer for Dracula A.D. 1972 - Christopher Lee as one of the holy trinity of swinging seventies vampires (along with George Hamilton and Frank Langella). You couldn't see Bela Lugosi or Gary Oldman's Dracula hanging out with Bianca Jagger at Studio 54.

And as I watched the trailer, just as I remarked how much Dracula resembled Z-Man, the narrator says "He's waiting to freak you out!"

Stop The Bus!

(source)

New Years Evil

This one is timely! Good times when Dion Conflict presented this a few years at the Royal and handed out noise makers, instructing us to use them evey time we heard the word "Evil!" A hoot! Dion - still have your print?

what evil does at Christmas...

Okay, a little late with this posting, but look what I found when looking for a trailer for CHRISTMAS EVIL - an ad for a Spanish cable station...

Cops Vs. Thugs!

"Gangsters and cops are the same. They both respect codes and laws. They were drop-outs who couldn’t get good jobs."

the quoteable kinski...

Happy Holidays! We'd like to offer you a Christmas present to you from the cinema staff here at Popcorn and Sticky Floors. Seventy-seven, yes, count 'em, - 77 Klaus Kinski quotes! Christmas dinner painfully slow and dull? Then zip things up by dishing out Kinski quotes! Some truly golden choices here, including:

"I sell myself for the highest price. Exactly like a prostitute. There is no difference."

"I am like a wild animal who is behind bars. I need air! I need space!"

"I am not the Jesus of the official church tolerated by those in power. I am not your superstar."

"I am your fairy tale. Your dream. Your wishes and desires, and I am your thirst and your hunger and your food and your drink."

"I just come from Tokyo, Hong Kong, long flight, I am exhausted. "

"I knew there were, in myself, the souls of millions of people who lived centuries ago; not just people but animals, plants, the elements, things, even, matter. All of these exist in me."

"I make movies for money, exclusively for money."

"I never said money is freedom! I said money buys freedom. BUYS! What does that mean, money is freedom? This is ridiculous: Money is freedom. It means nothing."

hill vs kinski

Just found this clip (in Italian) on youtube of the opening fight between Klaus Kinski and Terrance Hill in A GENIUS, TWO PARTNERS AND A DUPE...

my new fave spaghetti of the hour...

One evening when I was in Barcelona this past October, I hung out with some friends at an apartment and one of the guys popped on a dvd of A GENIUS, TWO PARTNERS AND A DUPE (aka Un Genio, Due Compari, Un Pollo), a Terrence Hill (MY NAME IS NOBDY, TRINITY) Italian western comedy starring Patrick McGoohan (!) as the baddie, Quebecois (aka French Canadian) pop singer Robert Charlebois (in France at this point, Charlebous was an outlandish figure in a Montreal Canadiens hockey sweater who sang to the accompaniment of a jazz-rock group, becoming a novelty in French pop music) as the half Indian bumbler, the sweet actress Miou Miou, and Klaus Kinski as the oppenent in the introduction to Hill's character! Supposedly the opening sequence had been shot by Sergio Leone, but either way, we were all hooked! Fast and funny with a Morricone score I had never heard!

Plus there is a chase scene that I think proves the influence of Hill comedies on Jackie Chan besides the usually referenced Buster Keaton.

As per usual, the film is not available through any legit North American sources. We watched the Spanish release on dvd. Why the bias against Italian Westerns on this continent? Here is a link over at Shobary's Spaghetti Westerns for more pics and info on the film. There are some decent companies like Wild East releasing spaghetti westerns on NA dvdand for more info go to A Fistful of DVDs, a database of releases.

Ennio Face!

Next year's Academy Awards telecast just became worth watching - they're giving Ennio Morricone an honorary Oscar! He was nominated five times but never won. You know they're going to get Eastwood to present it to him.

No Glove, No Love

Mind-boggling lyrics for the opening titles of the John Saxon/Rosey Grier revenge film The Glove!

and on the subject of posters...

Just stumbled across Posterwire, a blog on posters that has some interesting postings:

- The Weinstein Company decision to run a contest to design a Factory Girl movie poster, the downloadable contest kit, and more accurate simulation of the film poster design process...

- 50 Cent is accusing Hollywood of double standards after seeing the new James Bond holding a gun in posters for Casino Royale - a year after billboards of him sporting a weapon caused a furore

- a link heavy posting leading to all kinds of glorious images of film posters where the key art subject matter are the many creatures (and monsters) found in the "wild kingdom"

Will make a point of keeping an eye out for updates on this site in the future.

nasty time two...

Going to make you work for this one. Check out the new poster for HOSTEL 2 and the teaser trailer for THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2. Not adding any opinions on those films, just observing marketing trends...

my Keach post

Seeing Jesse's post about the dynamic pairing of Roger Moore and Stacey Keach brought THE DION BROTHERS aka THE GRAVY TRAIN to mind. I had a copy of this on VHS but don't know where it went to. A smartly scripted working class crime caper film, BROTHERS is an under rated gem. Recently screened at The Best of the QT Fest (and read more about that event here and here), there has been some new buzz about this film scripted by Terrence Malick and directed by Jack Starrett had a great grindhouse track record (RACE WITH THE DEVIL, THE LOSERS, CLEOPATRA JONES) and also did episodes of "The Dukes of Hazzard", the 1978 series "Big Bob Johnson and His Fantastic Speed Circus" (starring Charles Napier and George 'Buck' Flower!), "Starsky and Hutch", the short lived TV spin off "Beyond Westworld", in addition to doing acting in "The A-Team", "Hunter", "Knight Rider", "Hill Street Blues", BLAZING SADDLES and even RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD.


No trailer for the film online, but check out this great monologue by the Keachster in the opening credits and a fun little bathtub scene.

Bondsploitation

I had a Moore-gasm when I stumbled across this - the trailer for The Executioners, starring the wimpiest of the Bonds, Roger Moore, cashing in on his action movie success by starring in this raunchy Italian action film, with Stacy Keach as his sidekick no less! Watch and learn...


Why didn't Roger do any of the voices on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas?

"Sorcerers...Come Out To Play-yayy!"

This goes out to all you Warriors trailer fans... (I feel like that all-night DJ... nowhere to run, nowhere to hide...)

The trailer for William Friedkin's seventies remake of The Wages of Fear starring Roy Scheider; in retrospect, perhaps the wrong guy to be given the keys to a truck full of nitro.

cinema of the damned!

Got these fine snaps sent to me from director Jonathan King, the man who brought the world the gruesomely funny BLACK SHEEP. These were from one of the cinemas at the San Sebastian Horror and Fantasy Film Festival which was terrorized by his bloodthirsty flock! However the film premiered in Toronto and you can check out video coverage of the sheep on red carpet here.

(click to enlarge)

The Nutty Projector

Jerry Lewis was a filmmaking visionary in the sixties. Besides pioneering the use of video assist on sets (and what sets they were), he launched a chain of movie theatres!

Jerry Lewis Cinemas (or The National Cinema Corporation) were franchise operations, almost like a fast-food chain business model - small screening rooms (between 100 and 350 seats) and push-button technology for both the projection and concessions. Ads for the company boasted "an entire theater can be operated by as few as two persons." and the low overhead against potential box office and concession sales were very attractive selling points.

But Lewis imposed an inviolate condition on the chain dictating only PG and G-rated fare would be screened. It was Lewis' attempt to stem what he perceived to be the tide of degeneracy in movies in the late sixties. Predictably, within a couple of years his cinema chain was starved for content. Many theatres closed and many others of course became XXX theatres, resulting in legal battles between National Cinema Corporation and its theatre owners.

I saw one of the remaining Jerry Lewis Cinemas in suburban Buffalo in 1988 - it looked shut down but it was open, showing second-run titles at discount prices.

(photo source)

speaking of needless remakes...

Tony Scott has been threatening to do this for a while, but now the wheels seem to be turning on his next film, the LA-based remake of The Warriors! Says the Tiger...

"I really hate remakes, but the The Warriors is one of my all time favourite movies, and what I'm doing is kind of reinventing it. And rather than a gang it's going to be 30 guys who take on 3,000. It's Kingdom Of Heaven meets The Warriors."

It will be more like

meets

All hail the homogenizing of the North American Moviegoing Experience!

From Grady over at Kaiju Shakedown comes this sad news: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN - THE MUSIC PALACE HAS LEFT THE PLANET.

I've spent many hours of my life in old Chinatown cinemas, an insitution that died at the end of the 20th century. With great movies, cheap double bill prices, and strange snack bar food, they were exotic detours where you could feel like a stranger in a strange land and not leave your own city. Now NYC has lost one of North America's last Chinatown movie theatres, the Music Palace. For some fond memories, read Grady's piece over at Subway Cinema:

I'll come clean: I've done shameful things in the Music Palace. I've eaten dinner, breakfast, lunch. Slept all day, dozed off for a few minutes, worked my way through a pack of cigarettes in one sitting, gotten drunk, dug through their trash, smoked dope, taken speed, had sex, argued with a cell phone user, played with a kitty, and had a party. To be fair, the sex and the dinner were both before they started turning on the lights between shows...knowing what I do now I would've held off.

and also deserving of spankings...

Happy 90th Forry! Forrest J. Ackerman, the man who sparked the imagination of monster and horror and sci-fi and fantasy fans worldwide with his magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland celebrated his birthday on November 24th.

Chime in on the Forrest J Ackerman Blog-A-Thon at Tim Lucas' Video WatchBlog, Flickhead, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule (view his parody of the opening of James Whale’s Frankenstein), Bright Lights After Dark, and MJSimpson.co.uk.

Forry with November 23rd Birthday Boy, Boris Karloff

happy birthday Joe Dante!

(Photo from the World 3-D Expo Sept 8-17 at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood)

Just a quick post to honour the B-Day of Joe Dante. If you haven't seen his Masters of Horror episode, Homecoming, check it out as it is easily the best in the series (I still have to watch Miike's "Imprint" episode).

In the summer I watched CARQUAKE aka CANNONBALL projected outdoors from a super 8 print (at Dion's Wiltshire Drive-In) and spotted his cameo as the grease monkey who kinda saves the day. I got to meet him at the Sitges Festival in Spain in October and meant to tell him that but blanked!

Check out more Dante b-day wishes in the Joe Dante Blog-a-Thon at Tim Lucas' Video WatchBlog, MovieMorlocks.com (who wishes "Joe Dante and John Sayles would get back together"), Nadaland, and at KGB Productions, Inc.

I am killing you because of my "stripper mom"

From Mystery of the Haunted Vampire via Final Girl comes this posting on the characters and casting of the Rob Zombie's reinterpretation of HALLOWEEN

The casting call makes it sound like Zombie is simply going to do a variation of The Devil’s Rejects with a slight Halloween twist. The description of Michael as a stringy-haired kid who likes torturing animals after his school mates mock him for having a stripper mom is banal.
This is going to be the worst Halloween movie yet and that’s saying something.

a marquee and some monsters in the skies

For our neighbours to the south, a discovery made in the fascinating Swapatorium:

A series of photos picked up at an estate sale documenting the 1932 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. The marquee on the movie theater is showing Divorce in the Family with Jackie Cooper. Click here for more details and more pics of the inflatable creatures...

Rootin - Tootin - Shootin - Singin - Yodelin Entertainment

"Also Good COLOR CARTOONS" - more fun images found at Greenbriar Picture Shows
which looks back at a more "Golden" era of film as opposed to the "Rusty Tin" era that we dwell on here...

a birthday cake for Frankie

I just celebrated my birthday on the 23rd of Nov and the grand event involved gathering with a group of friends at a bar, then going over to the Rainbow Cinema at Market Square (in Toronto) to catch the late show of CASINO ROYALE. The new Bond was a treat, more reminiscent of ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE than any of the last installments. For more Bond-age, check out Poptique's BATTLE OF THE BONDALIKES (Part One, Part Two, Part Three and hopefully more in the future...).

As I got toasted and shared pints, people bring up the celebrities that I share birthdays with... Howie Mandel? I think not! I prefer to bask in the fact that I share my birthday with BORIS KARLOFF! Yup! One of the original big screen boogeymen! And I also share my birthday with his daughter Sara and my own sister's name is Sarah... coincidence? I think not! Lots of his works are finally getting decent DVD releases and for the diehard fan, how about an official life size wall mount? And no - that was not a hint of what to get me next year for my birthday.

The inspiration for this post came from stumbling across the Greenbriar Picture Shows blog, a look back at the "Great Days of Film Exhibition" where curator John McElwee has a two part posting on some of Karloff's films from the 30s and 40s including NIGHT KEY, THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG and ARSENIC AND OLD LACE. (Part One / Part Two).

Film Forum in NYC had a great retrospective including THE MASK OF MANCHU, THE RAVEN, THE GUILTY GENERATION (a prohibition-era Romeo and Juliet), THE LOST PATROL, THE HAUNTED of his work including THE HAUNTED STRANGLER, and of course, one of his best, the post modern take on his legacy, Peter Bogdanovich's TARGETS.

His last appearance in a major film, Karloff, plays an old horror film actor at the end of his career who must confront the new, late-1960s monster in the shape of a clean-cut, junior Republican multiple murderer. Although written and shot in 1967, it was released after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy and thus had some topical relevance to then-current events.

On a patriotic note, here is a tidbit of Canuck trivia - "Having married against his family's wishes, as well as incurred some additional disfavor for abandoning an appointment in government service, Karloff refused to use his family's prominence to secure work in Canada, then much under the influence of the Crown. To support himself, Karloff took work as a farm laborer in the province of Ontario, where he first attempted to realize his dream of becoming an actor."

Finally, here are two youtube treats - a 1960's TV commercial from the late 1960's with Karloff applying various torture techniques to his Ronson Comet lighter and Art Carney auditioning Karloff to take over the Chevy Show from Dinah Shore for the summer season, with his "Shiver Show."