Today is the last day of TCM’s month-long celebration of Drive-In Double Features and if you’re anything like me, you’re going to miss spending your Thursday evenings with radioactive monsters, space aliens, sea creatures, giant women and mutant men. When viewers tune in tonight they’ll be able to enjoy some of my favorite ’50s science fiction flicks including THE BLOB (1956), THE H-MAN (1958) and X THE UNKNOWN (1955), which all explore our primal fear of the primordial ooze.

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We start here: Seven passengers on a yacht.  There’s the millionaire who owns it, his hired skipper, and the weirdo first mate.  Their passengers include a sexy starlet, a virginal country girl, and a professor.  The ship encounters a terrible storm, and the travelers are soon shipwrecked on a Pacific island with no hope of rescue.  And that’s when things start to get interesting.

I could be talking about GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, the amiably stupid CBS sitcom (1964-1967).  But as it happens I’m talking about the 1963 Japanese horror flick MATANGO.

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I spent this morning watching a compilation DVD that was sent to me by filmmaker/artist/musician Cory McAbee. It was titled “TnT” (which stands for Titles and Trailers), and it was the focus of a presentation he did a few months ago for the UnionDocs Collaborative in Brooklyn in conjunction with Rooftop Films (whose byline is: “Underground Movies Outdoors”). Their program notes that short films have now become a predominant form of entertainment, thanks in part to the growing popularity of video-sharing websites. But long before everyone was glued to YouTube or their cell phone, we were (and are still) watching short films on the big screen in the form of trailers and credit sequences – both being made, for the most part, by “outside parties (who) were hired to create a short interpretation from the film itself or from unused elements.” Cory’s TnT collection were specific “short films” that had influenced his own work in meaningful ways. While I can’t think of title-sequences that have influenced my life, I can certainly think of more than a few trailers that had a big impact on who I am now.  READ MORE

I have a special place in my heart for horror hosts. I grew up watching programs like Creature Features in the San Francisco Bay Area with hosts Bob Wilkins and John Stanley.

Creepy KOFY Movie Time is a throwback to the early days of live TV where hosts would show classic horror films and cult oddities late at night to an eager audience of fans like myself. The show currently airs every Saturday night at 11PM on KOFY TV20 or CABLE13 in the Bay Area and they’re about to kick start Season 5 of the show. Hosts Balrok and No Name introduce the movies and during breaks colorful guests including local bands, erotic dancers, comedians, magicians and ghost hunters entertain viewers. It’s a fun program and local artist Nicolas Caesar has been a guest on the show numerous times. He’ll be appearing on Creepy KOFY Movie Time February 19th and I recently had the chance to talk to him about the program as well as his art, which is often inspired by the movies he watches.

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It’s that time of year when families gather around the TV to watch their holiday favorites.  It’s a Wonderful Life, The Charlie Brown Christmas, Miracle on 34^th Street… comfort viewing.  Movies in which people gather together against the cold and dark outside, to seek warmth and companionship and the comfort of tradition.  Movies about faith tested, and magic creatures from the snow whose visitations prove so vexatious to the small souls among us.

Movies like… Howard Hawk’s The Thing From Another World!

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Most of us are familiar with the Yeti or Abominable Snowman. This large ape or man-like creature has populated animated films, television shows and movies for decades. Unlike it’s North American relative Sasquatch or Bigfoot, the Yeti is rumored to inhabit the snow covered Himalayan mountains and it’s often depicted with a white furry coat, which gives the Yeti the ability to easily blend into its natural surroundings. When I was growing up in the ‘70s I was bombarded with news stories and fictional depictions of the Abominable Snowman and Bigfoot. Like a lot kids I became fascinated with these man-like monsters so I watched and read everything I could about them. Unfortunately this led to a lot of disappointment. The Yeti will always be one of my favorite monsters but the movies and television shows depicting this mythological creature rarely lived up to my high expectations. In fact, most of them are abysmal and have undoubtedly sullied the Yeti’s questionable reputation over the years. As bad as many of these movies are they still maintain a soft spot on my heart and during the winter months when the temperature starts to drop and snow begins to cover the ground I always start thinking about the elusive Yeti.

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There’s nothing like a monster movie from your childhood to keep hold of your imagination LONG after you’ve grown up — waaay up!  Though it isn’t a horror movie per se – not a mummy or a ghost in sight — Universal’s 1956 feature The Mole People has some creepy scaly reptilian underground monsters that give the Morlocks of The Time Machine a run for their money.  

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“I detest the expression ‘horror film.’ I make films on the supernatural and I make them because I believe it.”  - Jacques Tourneur, Positif

The lead character in Tourneur’s Night of the Demon, psychiatrist Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews), declares that he is “not a superstitious sucker.” He is a sardonic skeptic of mystical powers and things that go bump in the night. Unfortunately for him, Tourneur is a master of visualizing dread, at uncanny images that disturb the orderly corridors of consciousness. So Night of the Demon, my selection for this week of supernatural selections at Movie Morlocks (it airs on TCM on October 29th at 6PM), finds Holden’s self-righteousness crumble in the face of Tourneur’s terrifying control of the medium. As Raymond Bellour wrote, Holden’s “problem is trying not to believe in the devil, while ours is trying to accept belief in the cinema.”

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I was reading The Onion and took a peek at my horoscope. It said “You will make medical history this week as the first person to recover from smallpox only to die from a never-before-seen strain of enormouspox.” My actual fate was not so dire, but that printed and malignant prophecy did manage to land in the ballpark of my reality. Last Friday several doctors confirmed that what I thought was a cluster of spider bites along my neck, cheek, and head was, in fact, shingles; a painful rash of blisters that can flare up in anyone who’s ever had chickenpox. At the moment, I feel like a sparkler on the 4th of July, all dancing pinpoints of fire and itchiness. I’m trying not to scratch at anything as I type, and had to cancel plans to attend both a birthday party and a Fruit Bats concert. As I pose a risk to anyone who has either never had chickenpox or is pregnant, I’m under self-quarantine and feeling very much like a freak. And as I try to think of cinematic comparisons to describe my state, I’m surprised to realize that only a few titles come to mind. READ MORE