Now that Halloween has come and gone, and I can safely venture out of Netflix’s mostly-lackluster horror queue into other areas without feeling like I’m slacking off on my (unpaid) “responsibilities,” I’m finding that there are actually a few interesting things available to stream at the moment, and one of the first things that caught my eye when I wandered into the “indie” section was a Kickstarter-funded (to the tune of approximately $40,000) effort that was lensed earlier this very year and saw release onto so-called “home viewing platforms” on October 6th called Manson Family Vacation, the brainchild of writer/director J. Davis working in conjunction (to one degree or another) with  brothers Mark and Jay Duplass, who are making something of a name for themselves in the world of low-budget independent cinema.

Mark — who recently did a bang-up job in the movie Creep — doesn’t seem to have much…

If you’re of a certain age (that is, mine — or thereabouts), there’s a pretty good chance that the suicide of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was something more than just the most significant celebrity death of your lifetime — for many, it was the nearest thing we had to a, for lack of a better term,  “JFK moment.” It’s not terribly uncommon, for instance,  for members of the so-called “Generation X” to be able to remember exactly where they were when they heard the news that fateful day in 1994.  For my own part, I was on the bus, headed to work (at my second job at the time) when some kid randomly just decided to tell everybody about it, and as I walked home at the end of my shift around 10:00 or so that evening, I came across a small, impromptu candlelight vigil for Cobain in the middle…

It’s time once again to make room on the ol’ DVR! Here’s five films that have their moments, but don’t quite make the “full review” cut.

KING OF THE UNDERWORLD

(Warner Bros 1939, D: Lewis Seiler)

Mediocre entry in Warner’s gangster cycle. Humphrey Bogart had the tough guy hoodlum thing down to a science by this time; here, he plays it mainly for laughs as vain gang boss Joe Gerney. Bogie was definitely on his way up, but co-star Kay Francis (she of the Baba Wawa speech impediment) was on her way down, playing a doctor whose hubby was involved with the gang, now out to prove her own innocence. Plenty of colorful 30’s slang, but not worth wasting your time on. Fun fact: Listen for the scene where Kay calls Bogie “mowonic”!

GO WEST YOUNG LADY

(Columbia 1941, D: Frank L. Strayer)

Cornball comedy Western starring Penny Singleton (on break…

After hearing about DETOUR for years and reading all the critical acclaim, I finally got the chance to  watch it this year, thanks to TCM and the good ol’ DVR. I wondered if it would live up to all the hype, and I was not disappointed. DETOUR is a textbook example of how to make a great film on a shoestring budget. Indie auteurs today could certainly learn a lot from director Edgar G Ulmer’s inventiveness, as he crafts a film noir gem on a six-day schedule and $20,000 budget. Although reports do vary on shooting length and cost, let’s be honest…this is a PRC film, not an MGM prestige production. “Make em fast, make em cheap” was the studio’s mantra!

DETOUR tells the story of Al Roberts, who we meet in an Arizona diner. Al’s a disheveled looking guy who seems to have a chip on his shoulder bigger than the Grand Canyon. When a trucker plays the tune…

Yeah I know, I said right here on this blog yesterday that I was going to take a week off after my marathon “Halloween Havoc” series. But since it’s Burt Lancaster’s birthday (b. 11/2/13, d. 10/20/94) I thought I’d watch his film debut, THE KILLERS. Based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway and directed by Robert Siodmak, THE KILLERS is one of the best in the film noir canon, full of double-and-triple-crosses, great acting, and the beautiful Ava Gardner as the sexy but dangerous femme fatale.

The story unfolds mostly in flashback, as insurance investigator Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien) looks into the murder of Peter Lund, aka ‘The Swede’ (Lancaster). We learn along with Reardon that Lund was really Ole Anderson, an ex-fighter and ex-con from Philly who drifts into a life of crime. Swede falls madly for the devious Kitty Collins (Gardner), whose boyfriend Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker) is…

Frankenstein’s Monster! The Wolf Man! Dracula! The Mad Doctor! The Hunchback! And just about every classic horror film trope you can think of! They’re all here in Universal’s “Monster Rally” HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN! Throwing everything scary they could think of at you but a kitchen sink full of spiders, Universal decided if one monster was good, five is better. Boris Karloff as mad Dr.Neimann leads the parade of horror all-stars that includes Lon Chaney Jr (The Wolf Man), John Carradine (Dracula), Lionel Atwill (Inspector Arnz), and George Zucco  (Professor Lampini).

The movie is laid out like a serial, with the chapters kept moving swiftly along by director Erle C. Kenton. Neimann and his hunchbacked assistant Daniel escape from prison and come across Professor Lampini’s traveling Chamber of Horrors. Lampini claims to have the skeletal remains of the original Count Dracula, and he and Neimann discuss vampire lore. When Lampini refuses to take the pair to…

Halloween just wouldn’t be Halloween without listening to “The Monster Mash”! Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett hit the charts multiple times with his novelty song tribute to Frankenstein, Dracula, and all things monster! From 1964, here’s Bobby (and AB host Dick Clark) with THE MONSTER MASH:

Another rarity from the dark vault of live TV horror! This time it’s Boris Karloff starring in a spooky tale called “A Night at an Inn”! Brought to you  by Auto-Lite spark plugs (“From bumper to headlight, you’re always right with Auto-Lite”), here’s King Karloff in a 1949 thriller from SUSPENSE:

DRACULA is the film that ushered in The Golden Age of Horror. Sure, there were silent films with elements of the macabre, especially those starring Lon Chaney Sr, and the German expressionist films of Ufa Studios. But this tale of a bloodthirsty vampire on the loose in London struck a collective nerve among filmgoers for two reasons. First was it talked…sound films were barely out of their diapers, and the chilling voice of star Bela Lugosi mesmerized the masses. Second, the country was in the midst of The Great  Depression, and audiences were hungry for escapist fare to take their minds off their troubles. DRACULA took them to another world, a world populated by undead creatures of the night, fiends who were ultimately stopped by the forces of good.

No need to rehash the plot of DRACULA…if you don’t know the story by now, you’re reading the wrong blog! Instead, I’ll take a…

Okay, so tomorrow’s the big day, and despite being massively “under the gun” time-wise, I thought I’d take a few minutes to talk about The Steam Man #1 from Dark Horse Comics just in case there are a few (or, heck, even one) of you out there looking for a good new horror comic to pick up at your LCS in honor of Halloween.

Although, in all honesty, it may not be fair to label this as purely a horror series since there are so many sci-fi influences added into the mix, particularly and most obviously of the “steampunk” variety. After all, the premise here is that an intrepid crew of five are “piloting” a gigantic steam-powered robot through the (unpaved) highways and byways of the Old West looking for trouble, so it’s more than fair to say that what we’ve got on our hands here is something of a…