An Ode To Spirit Halloween!

Because what better way to commemorate Oct. 31 than a photographic essay reliving the wonder and the whimsy of a 15-minute shopping trip I took in late August? 

Read More

B-Movie Review: Transylvania Twist (1989)

In the late 1980s, Jim Wynorski directed a horror parody in the vein of Saturday the 14th. And despite the appearance of Angus Scrimm as a Phantasm-sphere slinging baseball pitcher, it’s still a pretty disappointing picture.

Read More

Comic Review: 'Evil Ernie vs. The Movie Monsters!' (1997)

You want "random ass Halloween-themed nonsense," you've got it! Presenting a sucky one-shot comic from the late 1990s starring a whole host of unlicensed cinematic creatures getting done in by a ripoff of the Iron Maiden mascot!

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@JimboX

By the time 1997 rolled around, I was pretty much through with comics. I was an avid collector (but not really an avid reader) of all the hot titles of the polybagged era, but once I was in middle school I just stopped giving a damn. Oh, I would pick up the occasional issue of Wizard and maybe scoop up an old back issue or two of The Untold Tales of Spider-Man, but my adolescent love affair with funny books was rapidly nearing its terminus - primarily, because I required more time to focus on other geeky (but slightly less culturally-maligned) bullshit, like pro rasslin' and PlayStation 1 games. Besides, next to being seen wandering the action figure aisle at the local Walmart, there was no quicker way to lose your coolness at my school than being caught reading a comic book, even if it was some weird, indie goth shit like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac; sorry, but eschewing the old four panel adventures was a necessary undertaking if I ever wanted to catch a whiff of what high school was like (which, yeah, involved way less sex and way more vomiting than the movies had led me to believe.) 

But with stuff like Evil Ernie representing the bulk of what was going out there in the world of comics at the time, maybe I picked the best time possible to exit the hobby. EVERYBODY these days likes to shit all over 1990s comics as being nothing but grimdark, convoluted, hyper-gimmicky bullshit with everything looking like Rob Liefeld drew it and everything reading like Todd McFarland wrote it, but there was certainly plenty of good stuff out there, pending you knew where to look. Even Marvel and D.C., at quite possibly their respective nadirs as publishers, were still pushing out relatively fantastic stuff like Major Bummer, The Infinity Gauntlet, Hitman and Skull Kill Krew, and of course you had all the indies out there flooding the market with top tier tomfoolery a'la Milk and Cheese and Give Me Liberty, so - for the most part - the ceaseless comic book nerd antipathy of the decade remains largely displaced and unwarranted.

But then you remember just how popular shit like the Chaos! Comics oeuvre was back then, and you just want to ball up your fist and punch the nearest windowpane right off its fuckin' frame. For those of you in need of some exposition, Chaos! was one of those fly-by-night comic imprints that (momentarily) hit it back during the "bad girl" era with its flagship wank-rag Lady Death. Alas, they just HAD to expand their universe beyond sordid tales of some white haired chick with humongous boobs fighting the devil, and lo and behold Evil Ernie was born (and yes, before you autists start sending me angry letters, I know Evil Ernie debuted before Lady Death, so go on ahead and just cram it.)

Next to Orbitz soda and NAFTA, nothing reeks of desperate 1990s-ness more than Evil Ernie. I mean, goddamn, that character was such a creation of its times - a zombified psycho killer with a haircut like Howard Stern who talked like Bart Simpson and was apparently modeled after the iconic Iron Maiden mascot Eddie. This thing was tailor-made for the 14-year-old, aspiring school-shooter set that listened to White Zombie but couldn't buy their CDs at Tower Records because that meant making eye contact with the 16-year-old blonde behind the cash register while simultaneously holding in their chubs. Evil Ernie is pretty much the comic book equivalent of Saved By the Bell: The College Years - hokey, cheesy, and so utterly cemented in its own cultural zeitgeist that today it's virtually impossible to ingest it as anything other than an unintentional self-parody. Some relics of yesteryear produce nostalgia, but Evil Ernie produces what I like to call nost-nausea ... the sudden recollection of just how vapid, empty and utterly pointless most bygone things actually where. And if you thought the mainline Evil Ernie series was nost-nauseous, just wait until you get a hold of its 1997 Halloween special!

Eh ... I still like it better than just calling him The Gill Man.

The title Evil Ernie vs. the Movie Monsters pretty much tells you everything you need to know, don't it? It's a one-shot special guest starring a whole bunch of parodies of classic horror stock characters, all of whom are given high-larious roman a clef names like Teddy Leugar and Jensen Vorhead. So basically it's nothing more than a gigantic unlicensed monster movie bash, so how in the world could it possibly suck, right? Well ... you'll see, and I'll just leave it at that. 

OK, so the Evil Ernie backstory. He was this one kid who was constantly abused by his uptight parents so one day he started killing people and he got caught and these scientists hooked him up to some sort of experimental dream-monitoring device and somehow he got astral projected to the netherworld and he made a pact with the living embodiment of death (who, naturally, had Dolly Parton-sized jugs) and he died in the real world only to come back as an unkillable lord of the dead who can resurrect corpses and command them to do his bidding. Oh, and he's trying to literally kill everybody on the planet because when he does, he can finally have sex with Lady Death. Wait, did I leave the part out about Smiley, his talking jacket lapel button? Well, he has one of those, too, and it's annoying as fuck.

So with that out of the way, I suppose the coast is clear to hop smackdab into the middle of this 'un. We begin the comic with Ernie playing golf at Cosmic Studios in Florida, where he recounts his abusive childhood while knocking balls into the hollowed out eye sockets of severed heads. After awhile Ernie gets bored, even though Smiley tries to motivate him to keep playing by telling him Iggy Pop is an avid golfer.

So he walks around the theme park, making fun of the rides based on the My Lai Massacre and Dirty Harry, then he thinks about the time his parents wouldn't let him go see "Exterminator 2"(*) because it was too violent and eroded their Quayle-ian family values (cue flashbacks to his parents making him watch National Velvet and The Sound of Music while taped in a chair with his eyeball lids pried open, A Clockwork Orange-style, and lamenting never getting to see all the old Hammer horror movies until he was institutionalized ... long story.) 

(*) Oddly enough, there is indeed a real movie called Exterminator 2, but methinks the writers were trying to make an oblique homage to T2 here. [THNX, MGMT.]

So, uh, I take it the writer had no idea two REAL Saturday the 14th movies actually got made?

Ernie takes a ride on the Ghost Train attraction and he's attacked by Dracula and the Wolfman (with Smiley, naturally, taking a chunk out of the Wolfman's hide.) Then a Jason wannabe whacks the head off Evil Ernie's cameraman (just like a reality TV star, he has a big entourage running around filming all of his nefarious activities) and then Ernie gets attacked by a mummy that apparently has Robocop's chassis underneath all that gauze.

Meanwhile, one of Ernie's zombie chums is captured by a rotund (and, presumably, mad) scientist. Ernie's fisticuffs with Dracula resume and the former tosses a giant candle holder through the latter's heart. Then Ernie throws Frankenstein into an electrical grid (ironic - that's what gave him life, and that's what gave him death) and encounters the Creature from the Black Lagoon ... who, for copyright reasons, is referred to as "the Gill Beast from the Haunted Lagoon." It isn't long before old Gill turns on Dracula, allowing Ernie to slam a giant tree through Drac's sternum, presumably killing him. 

Then the cast of Them! attacks and Ernie kills the oversized ants by blow torching 'em with hairspray (that was one of his favorite pastimes as a kid, you see.) Then a turd-shaped alien called What the Unconquerable (I have no idea what this guy is supposed to be a parody of - readers, do send me a line if I'm missing something here) shows up and puts Ernie to sleep with some kinda' mind control ray. He wakes up in the mad scientist's lair and he tells Ernie he needs his "green energy" - I guess it's an offhanded reference to the elixir in Re-Animator, maybe? - to turn his pet lizard into a giant Godzilla pastiche. Smiley the button escapes (complete with a "to infinity and beyond" quip), and frees Ernie, who immediately kills the scientist by tossing acid in his face. 

Speaking of acid-spewing no good-niks, some hive creatures (coughCOUGHthexenomorphsfromAliencoughCOUGH) arive and Ernie picks up a pulse rifle that was conveniently just laying there and blows them all to kingdom come. And that's a segue to our all-slasher donnybrook, as expies of Freddy, Jason and Micheal (this one, not this one) rear their collective ugly heads. "Buncha' losers," Smiley comments as Ernie easily dispatches (and dismembers) them, "shoulda' stayed in the '80s!" An aside, but I love how in a comic featuring insane amounts of hardcore, NC-17 level graphic violence, they still elected to replace all the fucks and shits with random, self-censoring symbols a'la #$!%. 

Somehow, that lizard from earlier has indeed grown into a full-sized Godzilla pastiche. Jason - err, Jensen - returns and the Godzilla-wannabe immediately squashed him underneath his toes. Ernie and Smiley shoot the shit for a while and then Ernie suddenly realizes that since all of these monsters are officially dead now, he can resurrect and control them, effectively making him the true "king of the monsters." Then the fine folks at Chaos! let us know the proceeding was a non-canonical Elseworlds/What If style affair and if you want to read a real Evil Ernie comic, they've got this new one out called Destroyer you can pick up. And barely 30 pages in, we are over and out, kids!

That is easily the best non-licensed appearance by Godzilla in anything other than an early Sega Genesis game.

Well, folks, there ain't much to say after that, is there? There just ain't a whole lot of meat to this one, and even as a one-off larf it leaves much to be desired. Nobody really went into an Evil Ernie comic expecting much beyond the usual juvenile instant gratification, but with a premise that at least had the potential for something interesting, I reckon it's safe to say Chaos! royally screwed the pooch here. 

I'd like to say there's some kind of halfway decent Evil Ernie or Lady Death book out there you can pick up for some light seasonal reading, but like fuck I know anything about the Chaos! bibliography (except that they made a couple of comics based on The Undertaker, which in hindsight, I prolly shoulda reviewed instead.) Wait a minute, I just checked out their Wikipedia page - did you know these motherfuckers did comics about Halloween and the Insane Clown Posse, too? Goddamn, those people got around.

So, as much as I hate to say it, this Evil Ernie one-shot (even as brief as it is) probably isn't worth your time or effort. If you're looking for some solid Halloween comic readin' fun, there's a ton of stuff out there - the whole Marvel Zombies line, that one mini-series where Ash, Jason and Freddy K. all fight one another, etc. - that are vastly superior to this totally irrelevant slice of late '90s nos-nausea. Hell, I think you'd be better off sticking with those old Kool-Aid Man comics from the 1980s - after all, unlike this Evil Ernie dud, at least those things had some pretty amusing activity pages.

Read More

An Ode to Zeke the Plumber!

Warm, wistful recollections of the episode of Salute Your Shorts that inspired untold nightmares for Nickelodeon-weaned youths in the early 1990s...

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

Back in the early 1990s, Nickelodeon was a veritable treasure trove of youth-centric, neophyte consumer culture. Yes, the vaunted cable network will always be remembered for Doug and Rocko's Modern Life, but whenever I reflect on the Nick that was, I always dwell upon more obscure fare. Rugrats and Ren & Stimpy, you say? Well, I raise you Hey Dude, What Would You Do?, Nick Arcade and Kids' Court - and don't even get me started on the commercials for Pop Qwiz popcorn, Blow Pops (from Charms!) and all of those wacky ass studio-produced interstitials, like that one claymation bumper about the kid who had his guts flipped to the outside of his body after going backwards on a swing set.

While a lot of old school Nick programming has little to offer outside of that most precious of commodities - gloriously overvalued nostalgia - some of the shows from the early and mid 1990s remain pretty entertaining. While it isn't as comprehensively brilliant as The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Salute Your Shorts is certainly one of the better of the old Nick programs. It's a solid, personality-driven comedy that really captures the kitschy culture of the early 1990s without feeling too detached from the modern world. That's kind of the ingeniousness of the summer camp setting - it's supposed to feel a little alien and isolated and somewhat removed from the rest of society, so naturally, it would have to have a kind of atemporal atmosphere. 

Debuting in 1991, Salute Your Shorts wasted no time at all before getting knee deep into utter wackiness. Indeed, following the precursory pilot which established the motley crew of Camp Anawanna - as well as introduce middle America to the quasi-sex act known as the awful waffle - the series immediately shifted gear to a Halloween special, which, to this day, is considered one of the freakiest things ever permitted by Nickelodeon's upper brass, with many believing it to be even creepier than their legendary "banned" TV movie Crybaby Lane.

Enter Zeke the Plumber. Considering the ubiquity of characters like Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it's not surprising that a lot of kid-centric shows introduced characters meant to mimic and mock the slasher movie stalwarts. For example, there was an episode of Tiny Toons with Plucky Duck having nightmares about "Eddy Cougar" and an episode of Bobby's World in which the eponymous character was tormented by reveries about the plunger-lugging "Mason." No riff on the horror heavies, however, made as big an impact as the first - and to this day, only - media appearance of one Zeke the Plumber, the special guest ghoul who debuted in just the second episode of Salute Your Shorts' very first season. 

Needless to say, transitioning from this to
Clarissa Explains It All was a bit of a
challenge. 

Even now, old Zeke remains one of the most memorable things about the program - in fact, for a lot of people, Salute Your Shorts is remembered as nothing other than "that old Nickelodeon show with the evil plumber in it." Despite his one-and-done showing, the Internet throng clearly hasn't forgotten about the character, and with the Halloween season in full swing, what could be more seasonally appropriate than revisiting his sole media appearance?

All these years later Is Zeke as terrifying as he was back when we were in the first grade, or a quarter century after the fact, does he just come off as pure hokum? Well, how about we fire up our old VCRs and evaluate the situation for ourselves? 

The episode - fittingly enough, titled "Zeke the Plumber" - begins with Eugene "Sponge" Harris, the resident pipsqueak, ambling about in the woods, recording nature on his black and white camera. He encounters camp troublemaker Bobby Budnik - portrayed by Danny Cooksey, who outside of Salute Your Shorts, is perhaps best known for his roles as Montana Max on Tiny Toons and John Connor's best bud in T2 - carving all sorts of rude things about counselor Kevin "Ug" Lee on a tree, so future generations can know just how incompetent he is as a human being. Of course, Ug is right behind him, and he tries to obtain the damning proof-of-guilt from Sponge. That's our cue for the standard Salute Your Shorts opening, which includes that immortal ad lib from Sir Budnik himself, "and when I think about you, it makes me want to fart."

As per every episode of the program, it begins proper with the disembodied voice of Doctor Khan informing campers of the day's itinerary, which this evening includes ghost stories and bingo (with a first place prize of licorice on the line.) At the ghost story telling competition, camp fat-ass Donkey Lips asks Budnik if he still has an irrational fear of spiders (boy, I sure hope that isn't foreshadowing or anything), and our scrawny, Dave Mustaine-lookalike begins spinning the tale of Zeke the Plumber. According to Budnik, Zeke lost his nose in the military, when a Filipino parrot ripped his schnoz right off. Well, one fateful day, he strikes a gas line while digging a ditch, and since he can't smell the fumes, he winds up blowing himself to kingdom come when he strikes a match. All the ever found of his remains, Budnik says, were his upper lip and a plunger. Of course, Zeke's ghost remains on the campgrounds, forever in quest of his lost toilet unclogging implement, and wouldn't you know it, Budnik has that very object in his possession. It is cursed, he tells the other campers, and anyone who touches it will be visited in their dreams by Zeke's supernatural form. If you're thinking that sounds an awful lot like the M.O. of a certain insanely popular cinematic child molester and mass murder from the 1980s, you aren't alone - in fact, one of the characters even remarks how similar this Zeke fellow sounds like our good buddy Freddy K. 

Back at the girls' cabin, sassy black pre-teen Dina laughs off all of the Zeke tomfoolery, while her pink-bedecked revivalist hippie roomy Z.Z. sprays toothpaste around her bed and slaps herself on the forehead with spit-soaked palms to ward off any evil spirits. A few mysterious bumps in the night, however, and both Dina and stereotypical entitled white girl Telly are likewise coating the perimeters of their bunks with cavity-preventing cream. 

Over on the boys' side, personality-less clod Michael wakes up and sees a mysterious figure - wearing a downright ghoulish mask - unclogging a commode. Zeke fishes out a stuffed animal and produces a bullhorn, so he can tell everybody that Michael still sucks his thumb. Right before Zeke plunges more deep, dark secrets out of his skull, Michael wakes up, screaming like a banshee. 

The next day - and after Dr. Kahn lets campers know they need to discard the milk cartons with expiration dates printed in 1983 - Budnik confronts Michael about his night terrors and joshes him for falling for his ghost story "hook, line and stinker," which is deliciously punctuated with Budnik actually passing gas. Over at the other side of the breakfast table, Dina - who couldn't catch a wink of sleep the night before because she was so scared, dozes off. Of course, she has a reverie about a certain nose-less custodian, who promises her he will grant her her biggest wish. She says she wants to play pro ball, and he whisks her away to an abandoned disco hall, where the tomboy is now clad in a frilly white dress. 

Oh, the 1990s; when fat shaming in children's
entertainment wasn't just acceptable, it was
practically encouraged!

She wakes up and meets with Michael, and they both talk about how Zeke - somehow, someway - seems to know their deepest, darkest secrets. So they meet up with boy genius Sponge, who explains to them what mass hysteria is. Enter Budnik, who harasses his camp-mates some more. That's when Michael floats up an idea for a competition. If Budnik can spend all night in the same part of camp where Zeke was allegedly blown to smithereens, then Michael will lug his stuffed animal all over camp and Dina will wear a dress all day. But if he can't muster enough courage, he has to announce to God and everybody that he's nothing but a little chicken. Budnik - as if you expected otherwise - accepts the challenge gleefully. 

After Budnick sets up shop - a lawn chair, a cooler, and enough junk food to keep the cast of Heavyweights at bay for at least a week - the rest of the kids and Ug (no doubt wanting revenge for having his good name besmirched at the beginning of the episode) get together to concoct a prank against Budnik. Budnik's right hand man Donkey Lips - who was brutally mocked for bringing his master non-ruffled potato chips - is given a Jack O Lantern mask to wear, which is noteworthy because it looks just like one of the masks in Halloween III that made the little kids' heads explode. 

Ever the clever little ruffian, though, Budnik anticipates that his colleagues will try something, so he decides to set up a few booby traps of his own. After smashing a spider crawling around on his copy of Wrestling Warriors (not sure if that's an official Apter mag from way back when, but it certainly sounds like one they would've published,) he waits for his would-be pranksters to approach. The kids attempt to give Budnik the willies (interestingly enough, also the namesake of a GREAT early '90s horror anthology that starred the same kid who plays Donkey Lips on this show) by just jumping out of the bushes and screaming, but ha-ha, the joke's on them, 'cause Budnik has instead placed a scarecrow - complete with a marked-up "melon head" - in the lawn chair, and when it rolls off his shoulders, it makes everyone pee themselves a little. Of course, that last little detail is non-canonical, but come on, you know there would be at least some urine if you were in that situation. Admit it. 

So Budnik leaps out of a conveniently placed oil drum and everybody freaks out. He proudly declares that nothing or nobody can scare him, which naturally leads to all of the boy campers trying to ambush him while dressed up like members of the Ku Klux Klan (or maybe they are supposed to just be regular old ghosts, this being a kids' show and what-not), but what do you know, they trigger a tripwire, fall into a ravine and get showered by a homemade six-pack 'o soda rocket launcher. With all of their meager attempts to frighten him thwarted, Budnik calls for all his fellow campers to present themselves, so he can mock them one by one. 

His boasting is short-lived, however, as he is confronted by Zeke walking back to the camp. Of course, this leads to a big Friday the 13th style chase through the woods. But, there is a big twist - you see, Budnik knows that Zeke is just Ug in disguise, and he lures him directly into the old "get your ass caught in a rope and hung upside down until somebody finds you" trick. The dead giveaway, Budnick says? Ug told him he can smell his fear, which is clearly something a man sans olfactory glands is capable of doing - figuratively or literally. 

Whilst en route to retrieve a knife to free Ug - or perhaps sacrifice him to the Dark Lord, you never really can tell with these metal head kids - LOLOOPS! Budnik runs directly into a huge ass spider web, and since it has been firmly established that he has extreme arachnophobia, you can imagine just how much he freaks out, much to the joy of his constantly bullied co-campers. After being "rescued," Budnik is forced to be a pack mule for the rest of the campers, as he takes that long, shameful walk back to the cabin.

How does Zeke the Plumber smell if he doesn't
have a nose? Well, pretty terrible, if
you ask me. (Cue rimshot.) 

Oh, and if you are wondering what happened to Ug? Well, nobody ever came back for him, so he was forced to spend all night with his blood pooling up in his brain (which can be extremely fatal, in case you didn't know it) staring at the mean etchings Budnik made on a nearby spruce tree. And just when things couldn't possibly get any worse for the camp counselor, here comes Donkey Lips, still wearing the pumpkin head mask, barreling towards him at full speed. I got to admit, that's a pretty funny way to wrap up the episode - although, even with some willing suspension of disbelief, I have a hard time accepting that even someone as dumb as Donkey Lips would literally spend all night ambling around the environs totally blind without once mulling taking the damn thing off like any normal person would have. But ... digression. 

And that's that folks. Clearly, the show feels quite aged in many respects, but holy shit, is there just something about that Zeke mask that - even now - evokes pure terror. It's kind of like the original Michael Myers mask in the first Halloween movie; sure, at the end of the day, it's just a William Shatner mask spray-painted blue, turned inside out and with the eye holes widened, but for whatever reason - which I presume touches upon some primordial fear that our advanced mammalian brains are too civilized to detect - such a sight is just creepy as all hell. Well, that human-but-not-quite-human horror aesthetic holds true for Zeke, too. Granted, the dude is basically nothing more than Sam Elliot with a bloody patch on his nose, but sweet Jesus, those eyes. Those bleak, dark, vacant, soulless, shark-like eyes. It's such a simple, simple trick, but it unquestionably makes the character unnerving. 

Yes, the episode is somewhat chintzy, corny and woefully subdued (even as fifth graders, it's hard to imagine teenage campers not dropping casual swear words and talking about how much they love weed), but really, you can make that same criticism of ALL kids-based media between the years of 1984 and 1997. Still, old Zeke here remains one of the most memorable aspects of one of the more memorable TV shows of Nick's golden age. It's nostalgic, it's slightly unnerving, and it just reeks of pure, early '90s pop cultural goodness. 

That, and if there's a better way to get into the Halloween spirit than watching a morbidly obese teenager run around with a Jack O Lantern on his head, pal, I haven't been introduced to it. 

Read More

Five MORE Creepy Music Videos Better Than "Thriller!"

Looking for something to get you in the mood for Halloween? Here are a couple of old-school vids that will have you feeling the All Hallows Eve spirit in no time flat...

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

Around this time last year, I did a post highlighting five somewhat-forgotten music videos that, in my humblest of opinions, were superior horror-themed offerings to Michael Jackson's "Thriller." With the Halloween season in full swing, I reckon now is a pretty good time to do an update for 2015; and frankly, I think this one beats the pants off the already awesome set-list from last year. 

Alice Cooper - "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" (1986)

We're just hitting total 1980s horror cheese shock rock awesomeness critical mass with this one. As quite possibly the only musician in history who could release a full album containing nothing but great songs from shitty movies (lest we forget Mr. Cooper's contributions to such iconic works as "Monster Dog" and "The Class of 1984"), this track chiseled off the "Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives" soundtrack has it all. There's a very Twisted Sister-like, anti-dad farcical comedy intro, which immediately segues to horrible matte painting backgrounds, goofy stereotypes rocking out in a neon-hued movie theater, plenty of live concert shots of Alice and -- of course -- tons of clips of Jason Voorhees doing what he does best. Throw in a really half-assed, super anti-climactic post-video joke, and you have yourselves one of the greatest masterpieces of crap ever shown on Music Television. And hey, speaking of hair metal converging with slasher movie icons...

Dokken - "Dream Warriors" (1987)

Dokken is definitely one of the more underappreciated hair-metal titans of the Reagan and crack cocaine years. I mean, just listen to "All Alone" -- how can that not get your hands curling up into devil horns (voluntarily or involuntarily?) "Dream Warriors," no doubt, is Dokken's zenith, not only because it's a great, atmospheric little song, but also because it -- as the name implies -- ties directly into the best "Elm Street" movie of 'em all. Oh, you get plenty of Freddy in this one, along with quite a bit of Patricia Arquette (damn, I love how the band members themselves are oh-so-carelessly wedged into the film scenes.) With an outstanding post-video Easter egg, this one just SCREAMS "required Halloween viewing" like a deranged mental patient dancing underneath a full moon.

Geto Boys - "Mind Playing Tricks on Me" (1991)

Forget the Halloween qualifiers, this is unquestionably one of my 10 all-time favorite music videos ever -- even now, on the offhand chance the song comes on the radio, I just have to bump the hell out of it. For the uninitiated, the Geto Boys were a pioneering Houston rap group that, at the time of "Mind Playing Tricks on Me," consisted of Scarface, Willie D., DJ Ready Red and, of course, the greatest suicidal rapping midget of all time, the incomparable Bushwick Bill. Eschewing the goofy movie-tie-in horror of the early '80s, this ultra-low-budget video instead focuses on the dual real world terrors of mental illness and having to live in the ghetto, complete with exposed boobies, a spooky proto-Candyman and a scene where Bushwick Bill, dressed like a pirate, runs around stealing Halloween candy from little kids. If there's a more perfect recipe for Samhain viewing than that, I'm not quite sure human eyes are ready for it. 

Ozzy Osbourne - "Back on Earth" (1997)

Ozzy has made a ton of videos that could qualify as essential Halloween viewing -- who could forget him turning into the world's crappiest looking werewolf in "Bark at the Moon," or demonic possession cheese-fest that was "Shot in the Dark?" -- but I ended up selecting this one for its uniqueness. Released in that weird dead zone between "Mama I'm Coming Home" and The Osbournes reality TV show, the video for "Back on Earth" is a throwback to the old expressionistic German horror works, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu. The sepia-tone imagery definitely made it stand out for its time, and you have to give the Ozz-Man credit for repping F.W. goddamn Murnau at a time when Hanson and the Spice Girls were still considered en vogue. That it's arguably the last truly great song the former Black Sabbath frontman ever performed probably doesn't hurt it, either. 

Reggie and the Full Effect - "J Train" (2008)

By the time this knee-deep-in-the-Recession offering was released, YouTube had already eclipsed MTV as the premier source for music videos. Tis' a pity this one never made the national rounds, as it's a great homage to a litany of texts, ranging from the old school Universal monster movies to The Monster Squad. The premise is simple; Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Mummy and the Bride of Frankenstein all amble into a strip club ... and yeah, that's about it. Featuring a cameo by MySpace wash-up Tila Tequila, this thing is so emblematic of its time; it's corny and unsure of itself and just kind of thrown together without rhyme or reason, but at the same time? It's fun as hell and you can't help but smile at the goofiness therein. So, yeah, it's essentially the spirit of Halloween epitomized. 

Read More

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The ORIGINAL Script!

Had Wes Craven had his way, we could’ve ended up with a very, very different movie. Just how different, you may be wondering? Read on, Freddy fanatics…

I’m going to tell you kids something you already know: “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors” is pretty fucking awesome. With all of the hilarious Freddy quips, inventive deaths, big name stars (Morpheus and Patricia Arquette among them!), rockin’ Dokken tunes and a screenplay that’s both energetic and spooky, not only do I consider “Elm Street 3” to be the best of the Freddy movies, as far as I’m concerned, it’s the only Elm Street movie. It’s a film that struck a near-perfect balance between the series’ early, pure horror roots and its latter, self-parodying excesses; as such, it’s one of the most revered slasher flicks of the 1980s, and for very, very good reason.

That said, there’s something that’s always kinda’ peeved me about the film...or rather, the film’s poster. For one thing, the kids represented on the flyer don’t really look anything at all like the kids in the movie (where’s the platinum haired new wave rocker chick and the dude in a denim jacket swinging a mace, guys?), and then, there’s that little two-story ranch home near the bottom of the poster. See it just sitting there, being all ominous and spooky, all out in the woods and stuff? Sure, there’s a mechanic in the final film about a papier-mâché house that looks similar to that, but beyond that, the on-poster home has precious little to do with the film itself.

Now, I’m no cinema historian, but if I didn’t know any better, whoever designed the film’s poster looks like he or she based his or her work on the film’s original script. You kids know all about the original “Elm Street 3,” don’t you? You know, the one Wes Craven and pals ironed out sometime in 1986, with a totally different plotline, redesigned characters and totally different deaths and creep out sequences? Well, if not, perhaps its time I gave you fellows a look at what could’ve been, no?

Picture it: 1985. The second “Elm Street” movie had just been released, and it, for lack of a better term, sucked. An executive mandate for the first “Elm Street” movie pretty much wrested the series away from original director and Freddy creator Wes Craven, whom had nothing to do with part 2. Although the second film did make quite a bit of money, pretty much everybody and their mama knew it wasn’t anywhere near as good as the first flick (despite some hilariously blunt homoerotic overtones), so the guys at New Line Cinema said “you know what? How about we give Wes a call, and ask him if he wants to help out with part 3.”

While Wes Craven didn’t end up directing the actual film, he did have a hand in its production and its script. Before Frank Darabont and director Chuck Russell punched up the script (effectively, giving us the movie we all know and love today), Wes Craven and Bruce Wagner were hired by New Line to deliver an initial script, and hells a poppin’, what they sent in was WAY different than the final filmed product. While there are some similarities between the original script and the final script, there are a ton of changes, which really affected the entire tone of the story; ultimately, the original “Dream Warriors” script was a bit darker and more gruesome, with a greater emphasis on Nancy as a sort of vigilante defender. Oh, and it completely rewrites the entire Freddy mythos, so for those of you that are heavy into canon, you might want to pay attention here.

So, what was the original script like? Here, dear readers, is my official Cliff Notes version of the ORIGINAL “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3”…

First up, there’s a pre-credits scene featuring a fetal Freddy literally ripping through his mother’s stomach in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere. This is followed up by a montage of  “missing kids” posters across America, with the camera panning in on a flyer for a missing redheaded girl.

Then, we jump to Nancy, driving down some country back roads, listening to radio reports about teen suicide trends. Hey, she sees that one redheaded girl from the missing poster, just standing on the side of the road! Naturally, she lets her hitch a ride with her.

Of course, Nancy gets a flat tire. Sans a spare, she wanders out into an open field, where she encounters the same cabin from the intro. And outside it,  there are kids in little tuxes and party dresses skipping rope and singing the iconic “One, Two” nursery rhyme. As any normal human being would do, Nancy approaches the home, as the kids scatter into the darkness. There’s a bunch of tricycles on the porch. And the wind chime has razor fingers on it!

Inside, she finds an elevator with floor numbers reaching up into the 5,000s. She steps in, gets trapped, and it drops down at like a million miles per hours. And it also goes sideways, like the “Tower of Terror” and shit. Then, Freddy’s claw hand attacks her, but she fends it off. Then the HELL-avater stops, and she encounters both a giant tricycle and her elderly dad -- you know, the police guy from the first movie. He gives her the old “We barbecued his ass way back when speech,” pointing to Freddy’s charred skeletal remains. But there’s only a hand left? Hey, where did the rest of his flame-broiled zombie ass go, he asks?

Then we jump back to the redhead sleeping in Nancy’s car. A gigantic snake (with Freddy’s glove for a head!) yanks her -- by the mouth -- through the windshield. She’s sucked up into an oak tree (not an Elm tree, the script specifically tells us) where…well, I suppose its safe to assume not much good can happen.

So back in the cabin, Nancy and her dad chase Freddy’s hand around, until it squeezes through a barred window. He then pulls his eyelids out like Stretch Armstrong and SLICES THEM OFF with a razor-blade lined finger! Then, Nancy wakes up. Oh, I get it -- she was dreaming in her car the entire time! Enter Neil Guinness, a doctor who just conveniently happened to be out in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

Apparently, Nancy fell asleep at the wheel, and crashed her car in a ditch. He checks her out…medically speaking, of course. There’s blood all over Nancy’s car. Apparently, she hit an animal…yes, that’s right, an animal. Guinness said she can stay at his place. Nancy accepts his offer, because she’s the most reasonable person in the history of the world.

At Guinness’ place, Nancy talks about how she’s tried to find her dad, who apparently went AWOL after the first movie. He said there’s this house he’s been trying to find for awhile, though…

So, Guinness, being creepy as hell, peers at Nancy while she sleeps. He notices her RX meds -- something called  Hypnocil. A psychiatrist by trade, he decides to flip through some medical books. It’s some sort of non FDA-approved experimental drug that’s supposed to suppress night terrors or something.

Nancy seems to have a nightmare, with the hitcher from earlier flying through the window. She’s had her hair ripped off her head, showing a bloody scalp a la that one hooker in “Warlock: the Armageddon.”  THEN THE HAIR COMES ALIVE AND ATTACKS HER! Guinness watches Nancy writhe in bed with the invisible force, so he intercedes. He slaps her, and then his fucking jaw falls off and his skin starts melting into putty. Uh-oh…

With a four foot wide mouth, Guinness starts to “digest” Nancy whole (similar to the snake scene from the official ANOES3.) Right before he eats her head, the snake monster’s head transforms into Freddy’s. Then the REAL Neil arrives and wakes her up. She has a fit about the drugs not working anymore. She looks down at her hands, and there’s some charred, flesh-like shit underneath her cuticles…

Next scene, Neil and Nancy drive back to the field, and what do you know, her car is gone. She notes an ominous looking tree, surrounded by ominous looking birds. Last night, she said, was the first time she’s had a dream of any kind in five years.

Neil and Nancy arrive at the hospital. There, he encounters Kristen, a young woman who had just attempted suicide. What unfurls next is pretty much the same scene from the NOES3 finished product, with Nancy singing the nursery rhyme to “calm” Kristen down. From there, we’re introduced to the denizens of the hospital’s “special adolescent ward”: There’s Jennifer, who has a knack for burning herself with cigarettes; Taryn, a black girl that likes to draw pictures of fire; and of course, Kincaid who is pretty much the same character as he is in the final product. By the way: I cannot tell you how much pride I feel knowing that the actor that played him GRADUATED from the same university I did.

Neil and Nancy talk for a bit. For whatever reason, kids from out of town seem to be flocking to the county to commit suicide. And all of the survivors appear to have sleeping disorders.

Hey, they found Nancy’s car…suspended 200 feet in the air over a grain silo, for some reason! And it’s been slashed to shit, by something…

So, Nancy gets hired by Neil as an assistant. They go to Kristen’s parents’ place, and they are complete yuppie scumbags who only care about tennis. They say they’re going to send her to a boarding school in New York. Yeah, that’ll fix her. Nancy goes into Kristen’s room. She finds a photo of Kristen…and the hitchhiker from her dreams!

Then, the local cops find the hiker’s body in the trees. Nancy decides to investigate the mysterious cabin…which wouldn’t you believe it, just so happens to exist in “the real world,” too…and as soon as she steps into the kitchen, SHE SINKS INTO AN UNDERWATER ABYSS! There, she sees her dad, with bloody eyes, at the bottom. She goes upstairs and encounters “baby Freddy,” which turns into the full grown version we’re all more accustom to. A Mini-chase begins, and Nancy escape from house, and Freddy promises to “shit” on her corpse someday.

By the way; the film doesn’t take place in Springwood, Ohio, the canonical setting of the series. As to where the movie textually takes place, the script never tells us.

So Nancy runs to Neil. He tells her the last Freddy dream was all a hallucination. The cops say the cabin out back is the old “Krueger place,” which some locals think is haunted. In fact, just last week, some dude locked himself inside it and tried to burn it down. And hey, he’s one of Neil’s patients, wouldn’t you know it? Holy shit, that lunatic that tried to burn the place down? IT’S NANCY’S DAD! Somehow, he blinded himself in the blaze. He tells Nancy that the house has to be destroyed, because its some sort of metaphysical portal that allows Freddy to enter people’s dreams or some shit like that.

ENTER Joey and Laredo. Joey is a frail kid with spasms who has built a near perfect replica of the Krueger cabin. Laredo is some long-haired Dungeons and Dragons dweeb. We also meet Phillip, whom we are told “sleepwalks.” So, Phil ends up getting hoisted by Freddy, kinda’ like Phil in the final print. Only, he’s not strung up like a puppet, he’s just being kinda’ carried down the hallway, I suppose. Freddy walks him right through a wall, and straight into the path of an oncoming ambulance.

There’s a group meeting after Phil’s death, and the psych department director is a real bitch. Neil thinks all the kids are experiencing “delayed stress syndrome.” Kristen undergoes an EEG. Nancy thinks she sees Kristen disappear while being probed, but Neil thinks she’s still hallucinating. The next day, Kristen’s parents check her out of the hospital.

Cue Jennifer’s death. It’s virtually the same as it is in the movie, only sans the “Welcome to prime time, bitch!” line.

Kristen returns to school, with bandaged wrists, and all of the snobby girls make fun of her. In psych class, they’re having a convenient lecture about dreaming, and Deimos, and the dream world being a interphase between life and death and shit. Kristen falls asleep, and in her dream, yanks one of the tops off the bitchy girls. Except Kristen really does yank the girls’ top off in class, and it’s all funny and stuff.

Next scene, Nancy looks like she’s going to set the old Krueger house ablaze. A cop and his German Shepherd show up, though and prevent her, so she goes back to the ward to probe her daddy for advice. Her dad tells her the only way to get the job done is to burn the house from the inside, and with the help of some “dream warriors,” too.

Back to Kristen. In her room, she’s looking at some St. Girard Catholic School flyers when all of a sudden she develops stigmata AND FLIES THROUGH HER BEDROOM WINDOW IN A JESUS CHRIST POSE. She’s literally flown to New York and through the school, where all of the girls have bloody arm bandages, too. She winds up in the old Krueger house, where Freddy “crosses” himself and blood and shit comes out. She cries to Nancy, who is awake, and gets sucked through a portal in her mattress.

Nancy finds herself in Kristen’s dream, just in time to make the save. Right before Fred gets them, they both wake up in Kristen’s bed. “We have to talk,” Nancy says.

So, the two go back into Dreamland, to burn down the Krueger house. However, they end up attacked by a GERMAN SHEPHERD with FREDDY COLORED FUR AND A FREDDY HEAD! Kristen pulls Kincaid into the dream, and he punches Freddy. Freddy gets all big and stuff and then the trio wake up in the hospital, where the psych director is really, really peeved…and not really asking any questions about how THEY ALL ended up in the secured facility through the apparent magic of teleportation.

In the next scene, Nancy and Neil have sex -- and trust me, it’s about as clumsily written as you’d expect a love scene penned by the dude who made “The Last House on the Left” would be. Nancy has a dream that all of the dead kids offed earlier in the film approach her and ask her to kill Freddy for them. She wakes up. She goes to the hospital, and her dad tells her that all the kids in the hospital are “dream warriors” that have gathered for a final battle against Freddy. They escape into a group meeting, and all of the kids “vanish” during some sort of meditation ritual. Neil can’t believe his eyes!

They awaken on some mystical hilltop, all transformed into real “Dream Warriors.” Joey is now all muscular and shit, for example. Nancy gives them a Patton speech about why they’ve been assembled…a “Seven Samurai,” basically, to kill Freddy. A door literally appears out of nowhere, leading to Freddy’s home, presumably. They all chant “We’re home!” before entering the great unknown…

Back at the hospital, there’s a massive manhunt going on. At one point, Nancy’s dad -- no longer usable in the Dream World, we were told earlier -- runs across the lawn, on fire and shit. Before he dies, he tells Neil that he has to physically go to the Krueger house and burn it down.

In dream world, the kids TRY to set the Krueger house on fire, but nothing happens. So, they all have Molotov cocktails, saying shit about how they’re going to get Freddy. Taryn gets distracted, though, by her “Grandma’s” voice. Of course, it’s Freddy, who yells “Grandma, your black ass!” and EATS her alive with his torso, which has “The Thing” teeth now. “Sometimes, you’re hard to stomach,” Freddy quips.

Joey gets it next. He walks into a room that turns into your typical high school girl's dorm, where he meets up with one of the girls at school he used to have a crush on. She kisses him, but her tongue turns into a snake and rips his goddamn eyeballs out. Then Freddy TURNS INTO A BED and rips his arms and legs off. Some gruesome shit right there, for sure.

Then Neil shows up at the ranch and quotes Shakespeare. Then he looks at the wind chime, which is now made out of human fingers! He goes in, and cuts off one of his fingers, and then puts it back on. Which, I guess, means he’s officially in the dream world now. And Freddy puts out the house fire by simply opening his mouth and spraying the flames with water.

Now, we come to Laredo’s death, and holy shit, this would’ve been something. Freddy shows up disguised as Laredo’s little brother, and tries to guilt trip him about his drowning. Laredo, displaying more sense than anyone in the movie thus far, kicks his “brother” in the balls and says he ain’t falling for that shit, Holmes. And realizing that he can do anything in dreamland, HE TRANSFORMS  INTO A TEN FOOT TALL GARGOYLE! Freddy responds by transforming into A GIANT CROW, to which Laredo responds by transforming into a giant fucking net. And then, Freddy jumps out with a post-hole digger(?!?), screams “screw you,” and he’s dead. Needless to say, it would’ve been a hoot to see how Kevin Yagher and pals would’ve made this one come to life; and considering how shitty the “transformative” battle sequence from the second “Mortal Kombat” movie turned out (which came out A DECADE after this film was released), it’s a pretty safe bet we would’ve seen ourselves some Grade-A lame-oh special effects here.

So, we’re down to Neil, Nancy, Kristen and Kincaid. The script says Kincaid spit’s a giant clam at Freddy (a shellfish or a booger, I’m not sure) and they napalm his ass with Molotov cocktails. Kristen manages to yank everybody out of the dream right before a fire incinerates them in dream world…

…and they wake up RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of her parents’ big soiree. And of course, Freddy follows them into the real world, and we’ve got some CRAZY SHIT coming our way. Freddy kills a ton of guests as collateral damage, and the kids run into Kristen’s dad’s TROPHY ROOM where he has a ton of guns and shit. Kincaid grabs an AR-14 and goes Al Capone on Freddy, but it doesn’t really daze him. The four try to dream teleport once more, and they wind up back at the mental institution. That is, everybody except Kincaid, who is STUCK IN A WALL between the real world (Kristen’s parents’ place) and the dream plane! Freddy then gives Kincaid a razor claw colonoscopy, with his glove popping out of his mouth. Through the aperture, Freddy’s head turns into a crocodile, and he BITES OFF THE HEAD of the bitchy psych director!

“Are we dreaming, or is this real?” Nancy asks. We as viewers have no idea at this point. The surviving three then find themselves back at the ranch home. Freddy calls Neil a “faggot” and knocks him out with a Dhalsim punch. Freddy calls Nancy and Kris the “c-word,” and a boiler room chase ‘tis on. Eventually, Nancy remembers how she beat him in the first movie -- by pretending that he’s not real -- and sure enough, it makes Freddy burst into flames.

In comes Nancy’s dad, all burned up and shit. Of course, its Freddy in disguise, but unlike in the final movie, Nancy KNOWS it’s not really her dad and stabs Fred with a shard of metal. Unfortunately, it also allows Fred to stab her, mortally wounding her. Kristen gets a pre-death lecture from Nancy, and Kristen promises to dream her away to a magical fantasy realm. With the house in flames, Kris drags Neil out.

So, the house burns to the ground, revealing a newer house, circa the 1940s. Apparently, its created a time loop, sending Kristen back to Freddy’s birth. She finds fetal Freddy, slams him up against a wall a few times and stabs him with his own claw blade thingy.

Flash forward a few months, and Neil and Kris are having diner. Apparently, Neil gets to visit Nancy nocturnally now. She bids him adieu, and there’s the little replica of the Krueger house Joey made. And then, right before the credits roll, we see a light mysteriously flick on inside the prop…followed by an ominous metal scratching sound.

So, uh, yeah, there’s a lot of changes there, no? I guess, mechanically, it’s the same film, but the characters (especially Nancy’s dad) and especially the chronology of the Freddy mythos are totally different. Whereas the latter films established Freddy as an actual human being (albeit, one that’s the alleged bastard son of a thousand maniacs), in this film, it’s VERY clear that Freddy was never a “real” human being at all, instead, being some kind of murderous mutant, claw handed freak that, I guess, has always lurked in the shadows. Of course, that opens up a huge timeline paradox; if Freddy has always been this mutant freak-o, then doesn’t that completely contradict the entire mythos established by the first film? I mean, shit, the very first scene in that one was Freddy assembling his claw hand, and here, the movie is telling us that it was something Freddy was born with. The part about Freddy being a molester and getting burned and shit remains canon, but its seriously skewed by the re-invention of Freddy’s background; I’m not saying it’s a complete plot hole, but it certainly muddies what was, up to that point, a fairly cohesive character origin story.

I actually liked Nancy taking on the vigilante role in the film, and I thought the dynamic of her and her loony asylum-bound dad working together to fight Freddy would’ve been awesome. Hey, it’s better than just using him as a drunk that gets killed by a shovel, I suppose. Overall, I also liked the “Dream Warriors” as assembled in this film more than I did the final product “Warriors” -- they are largely the same characters, but the minor tweaks, I thought, really created a more interesting cast.

Furthermore, I really liked the retooled bit players, especially Nancy’s love interest, who comes off as a bit more of a jerk here. I also fucking LOVED the idea of making Kristen’s parents super yuppie scumbag don’t-give-a-fuck socialites, and the “Freddy crashes the party scene” would’ve been all sorts of awesome. I also liked the psych director character, who was excised out of the final shooting script; she definitely made for a great “sub-villain,” of sorts.

The death scenes in the original script I thought were way better than the death scenes we got in the final film -- although as stated above, I’m not sure how good they would’ve looked using contemporary technologies. All in all, the deaths just seemed more gruesome and vicious, and the idea of hearing Freddy yell “Grandma, your black ass!” would’ve been the funniest thing in the history of anything.

As far as the Catholic imagery, I guess it would’ve been cool, even if that “crucifix” nightmare scene would’ve likely looked like shit on the Silver Screen. There’s also a ton of iconography about Deimos and the blind -- an allusion to Greek mythology, almost assuredly -- but it really doesn’t lead to anything too noteworthy. And the ending, I think, set up the series for a new franchise tandem team -- Neil and Kristen -- with Nancy probably in line to return as a “Dream Angel,” sort of a good version of Freddy Krueger, as was a plotline in the old “Elm Street” Marvel comics.

Of course, the “Elm Street 3” we got was just flat out awesome, so I can’t complain too much about the heavy script changes that went on from draft one to the finished product. Alas, in an alternate reality somewhere, you can rest happy, knowing that there exists -- somewhere in the multiverse -- an “Elm Street 3” featuring Freddy Krueger as a giant bird. Lord knows, that helps me sleep a little better, each and every evening…

Read More