Monsters Wanted: DVD Review by S. J. Martiene

Monsters Wanted


Review by:  S. J. Martiene

Too early to talk about Halloween, you say? P’shaw, I SAY!!! It is NEVER too early to talk about the second biggest holiday of the year … and even now … preparations are being made to scare the poop out of you, dear reader. Oh yes, plans are being drawn up, and plots are being formed. NO, not the normal plotting that comes from your relatives, but from those hard-working people at your local Haunted Attractions. Do you know that planning has to start in the heat of a summer night? Well, it does, my candy corn chomping friends. Today, we are going to focus on one place. It is a place that exists not too far from where I grew up in Kentucky, but first a little back story.

Long ago, three decades ago or more, your humble servant had a brief stint as a Haunted House Actor. I performed in two separate haunted houses in North Central Kentucky during the early 1980’s. My duties were varied from zombie, to Mad Doctor’s victim, to “screamer”. Though the ones I worked were small-town, and on a much, much smaller scale than detailed in the MONSTERS WANTED documentary, I can empathize with the creators of Asylum Haunts (Louisville, KY). We also had to build our own sets, create our own costumes, do our own make-up, and hope we were not too exhausted at the end to want to do it again the next year.

MONSTERS WANTED is a documentary taking us through the good, bad, and the scary ugly of what it takes to put out a high end haunted theme attraction. The Asylum Haunted Scream Park is NOT just a haunted house….but a 40-acre world borne from the maniacal hard work and creative minds of Richard Treachout and Janel Nash. The time span of the documentary takes us from July 2, 2011 until Closing night October 28, 2011, detailing the openings of Darkness Falls, Zombie City, and Carnivale of Lost Souls.

The viewer is taken through what IS actually a theatrical production. There are stage managers, auditions and fine-tuning auditions. There are production meetings, staff meetings, and problems with logistics, sets, and people. As with any good production, there are always personality clashes, and they were evident here. HOWEVER, it seemed (with one glaring exception – JOE), that most of the people running Asylum Haunts were pretty much trying to stay on the same page despite the pressures of time and money. Oh, and let’s not forget this is an OUTDOORS production so, they had to deal with stuff getting rained on and the heat…and by the end of the movie you could see everyone’s breath when they were speaking. AH, weather in the Ohio Valley!!

As the months pass, we not only get treated to the birth of this HUGE Halloween baby, but we get a peek at several other holiday-oriented events that happened. One is The Transworld Trade Show in St. Louis, Missouri. This show is for proprietors of haunted attractions and premieres the latest and greatest in Halloween gore and more. It’s kind of like a toy trade show for adults. I thought it was pretty fun how Treachout wanted to look at everything and see if they could make it cheaper “with duct tape”. It is fitting that MONSTERS WANTED was shown at the 2013 trade show. Also, I discovered that Asylum Haunts is one of the sponsors of the annual Zombie Walk in Louisville. People get dressed up, there are bands playing, food, and they swarm in on one part of the city each year. I have relatives that go to this each year and have a blast. If I still lived in Kentucky and was about 20 years younger, I probably would attend too, but it does occur on my husband’s birthday each year, so I don’t know if that would work out or not. The documentary also covered other haunted attractions in the Louisville area, such as Baxter Avenue Morgue Haunted House and The Haunted Hotel. There is enough scare to go around for everyone in Jefferson County and the surrounding areas.

As the days closed in on opening night, there was the usual drama one could expect from this type of large-scale event: actors quitting, equipment failing, and the general “idea-in-the-head-not-playing-out-as-well-in-real-life.” It didn’t take long for things to start running fairly well, and everyone was enjoying the job and scaring people, discounting the two concussions of course.

Overall, I really liked this documentary. I thought it was VERY well-done and made me feel good that it was done “back home”. The only parts I didn’t care for was some of the language and getting no warning before a certain artist started stapling and piercing himself. I am probably in the minority on this overall, but if the f-bomb is part of one’s everyday verbiage, allow it to be bleeped so others do not have to hear it. As for the performer, once I realized what the he was doing, I could not watch that part of the documentary … ewww … I mean … ewww …

Aside from those two things, for me, it was wonderful. Richard Treachout, left a well-paying job to focus his entire energy on this project and the fact he and Nash went through their life-savings and were essentially broke after this is not lost on the viewer. They are both incredibly dedicated to this project and I am sure they will have many successful years ahead of them. They have probably created many memories for thousands of people across Kentuckiana and beyond…and not many of us can say we’ve done that in our lives. If you get the chance to see this documentary on DVD, do not hesitate, especially if you love Halloween.

Please check out the links below and show them some support. After checking today, I do not see 2014 dates set, but I’m sure that will be updated soon. And if you happen to be in the Kentuckiana area during the Halloween season and are looking for a scare, visit The Asylum Haunted Scream Park.

www.aslymhaunts.com

www.facebook.com/asylumhaunts

www.facebook.com/louisvillezombiewalk

Bobbie's Movies to Look For: CORMAN’S WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL

Title:  CORMAN’S WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL

Year of Release—Film:  2012

Our story begins in 1954.  A young script-reader for Fox Studios, tired of reading and rejecting bad script after bad script, quit.  Cobbling together $28,000 from friends and relatives, he produced (and appeared in) a science fiction movie titled MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR.  Picked up for distribution by Lippert Pictures, it grossed $117,000.  By the end of the decade, that man directed or produced 30 more movies without losing a dime.  That man is Roger Corman.  His life and career is now examined in a new documentary from director Alex Stapleton, CORMAN’S WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL.

CORMAN’S WORLD is a love letter.  A love letter signed by most of the directors and actors whose careers Corman jump-started throughout those early years, including Ron Howard, Jack Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Fonda, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Robert De Niro and David Carradine, Dick Miller, William Shatner, Quentin Tarantino, among others.  From his humble beginnings to present, Roger, with almost 400 films under his producer-director belt, is fondly lauded by his friends, fellow industry workers and family members.  Now, in his 86th year of life, Roger shows no sign of tiring, still working very much hands-on as a producer.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 5, 1926, Roger William Corman at first followed in his father’s footsteps, studying engineering at Stanford College but, tiring of his chosen profession, he began to develop a budding interest in filmmaking.  He took a job as a messenger at Fox Studios, then became a story analyst and, in 1953, wrote a script titled “The House in the Sea” which was eventually filmed and released as HIGHWAY DRAGNET (1954).  Taking his pay for selling the script, he borrowed some more cash and made MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR (1954).  His next picture was THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (1955).  For this picture, shot for American Releasing, (which would soon become American International Pictures, or AIP), Corman convinced James Nicholson and Sam Arkoff to give him a three-picture deal.  He would go on to become it’s major talent behind the camera and make AIP the most profitable independent studio in cinema history!  Over the next 15 years, Roger made 53 pictures, mostly for AIP, and proved himself the godfather of quick, cheaply made productions.

CORMAN’S WORLD: EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL is an entertaining time capsule of a Hollywood outsider who went from the short shooting schedules and cheap special effects of the 1950’s Drive-in creature features through the Cold War days and man’s first steps into outer space through the so-called “Poe years” to biker movies.  He even had a brief foray into soft-corn porn movies.  The documentary includes film clips of him happily accepting his long-overdue 2009 lifetime achievement Academy Award and then on to his role as executive producer of DINOSHARK (2010).  CORMAN’S WORLD director Stapleton’s structure is fairly by the numbers but provides plenty of archival footage of now-deceased actor David Carradine, director George Hickenlooper and producer Polly Platt.

However, some of the interviews are odd.  Scorsese sits in his Manhattan screening room; Jack Nicholson reminisces on a sofa; Bruce Dern chats while getting a haircut; John Sayles relaxes on a stoop and Demme is shot sitting in the back seat of a car staring out a window.  Long-time actor and friend, Dick Miller, tells of the two-day shoot that was LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960) while his wife, seated near, is more interested in the antics of her little dog.  And why is Ron Howard filmed walking down a street headed for a cemetery?  Also, Stapleton does not give the dates on any of the interviews, leaving the viewer to estimate a time frame.  However, this is fitting.  A movie about Roger Corman should look like a Roger Corman film.  Fast, cheap and a little rough around the edges.  This clip-crammed documentary is filled with Hollywood luminaries, all who seem to genuinely love this quiet, cardigan-wearing gentleman who gave them a chance when no others would.

CORMAN’S WORLD is insightful, informative and entertaining.  I wish there had been more bonus material added and they should have cleaned up some of the movie clips.  (The clip from APACHE WOMAN (1955), for example, looked like it was yanked straight off of Youtube!)  However, it was a fitting introduction to this great man who still reigns as the King of the quickie movie!  If watching CORMAN’S WORLD leaves you yearning for more of Corman’s world, may I suggest How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime by Roger Corman and Jim Jerome.  An excellent read that delves deeper into the life and times of Roger Corman, King of the B’s!

Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzSD-qINVBM

Both available from Amazon.com.

Bobbie

DVD Review: HI THERE HORROR MOVIE FANS!

Title:  HI THERE HORROR MOVIE FANS!

Year of Release—Film:  2011

Year of Release—DVD:  2011

DVD Label:  Horse Archer Productions

[Ed. Note:  If you happen to be a horror-host with a current program, and would like to see it reviewed here, please contact me at unimonster64@gmail.com.]

Readers who recall my delight with the last effort out of Horse Archer Productions [http://www.horsearcherproductions.com], the superb VIRGINIA CREEPERS: THE HORROR HOST TRADITION OF THE OLD DOMINION, will not be surprised that I’m equally pleased with the latest documentary from the team of Sean Kotz and Chris Valluzzo, the tribute to Petersburg, Virginia’s Bowman Body, Bill Bowman.  For more than forty years now, The Bowman Body has been a northern Virginia institution; an inspiration to horror-movie fans who eagerly tuned in throughout the 1970s and ‘80s to see a rumpled, pasty-face ghoul in a tuxedo and sneakers, band-aid prominently affixed to his bald head, rise up out of his coffin to entertain them with his unique style of homespun humor.

He would invariably greet his viewers with a cheerful “Hi there Horror Movie Fans,” a catchphrase that is the title of Kotz and Valluzzo’s new offering.  Being a devoted fan of Horror hosts in general, and having previously been exposed to the Bowman Body through the aforementioned VIRGINIA CREEPERS, I have been eagerly awaiting the debut of this feature dedicated to Bowman’s character since the first announcement of it, and I must say the wait was worth it.

The format is identical to the earlier documentary, including being hosted by Mr. Lobo, of the nationally-syndicated Cinema Insomnia program.  It features clips of the various shows which Bowman hosted during his career, as well as still photographs and audio clips.  By far the bulk of the documentary, however, is given over to anecdotal interviews with those who worked with Bill Bowman, those who were fans of Bill Bowman’s, those who were inspired by Bill Bowman, and with the Bowman Body himself.  The stories told are fascinating, funny, and informative, and give the viewer a good sense of what it was like to tune in to one of Bowman’s programs.  Some of the footage was previously used in VIRGINIA CREEPERS, but that’s not an issue in a documentary; there’s only so much surviving Bowman footage, and as far as the interviews are concerned, those, like testimony in a court of law, have a value and permanence that outweighs any arbitrary desire for ‘new’ or ‘fresh’ material.

That’s not to say that there’s nothing new here.  Indeed, most of the interviews are new, especially much of the filmmakers’ conversation with Bowman himself.  This provides the viewer with much-needed background on Bowman, and his journey from radio station disc jockey to a television icon who was, in 2005, honored for his “… distinguished career in television broadcasting and for his many contributions to the success of the Legislative Studio for Commonwealth Public Broadcasting …” by the Virginia State Legislature.  It is a fitting tribute to a deserving man—as is this documentary.  I heartily recommend it to all who can still recall the joys of curling up in front of the television set on Friday and Saturday nights, as a dedicated cadre of horror-hosts guided our initial explorations into the world of classic (and not-so-classic) Horror and Science-Fiction movies.

DVD Review: HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS: THE GODFATHER OF GORE Special Edition DVD

Title:  HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS: THE GODFATHER OF GORE Special Edition DVD

Year of Release—Film:  2010

Year of Release—DVD:  2011

DVD Label:  Something Weird Video

For more than twenty years, Mike Vraney’s Something Weird Video has reveled in the bizarre, forgotten films that no one else would dare touch.  From driver’s ed staples such as “Highways of Agony,” to Roadshow classics like CHILD BRIDE, DAMAGED GOODS, and MOM AND DAD, Something Weird loves it all.  In that twenty years, SWV has brought its legion of fans exactly what they’ve been craving, and in so doing, Vraney has earned a well-deserved reputation as both the videophile’s best friend and the greatest living proponent of the Exploitation film.  One of that “legion of fans” is yours truly, as I explained in a previous article, “Something Weird on the Screen:  The Wild, Bizarre and Wacky World of Scare-Your-Children Movies, Exploitation Shorts and Stag Films.” [The Unimonster’s Crypt, 11 April 2009]

Recently, Vraney, and Something Weird Video, has branched out into the production end of bringing Exploitation fans their hearts’ desire.  Their first effort, one that is guaranteed to please fans of Exploitation, Grindhouse, and Drive-In movies, is the documentary HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS: THE GODFATHER OF GORE.

Lewis, 82, is one of the few remaining links to the glory days of Exploitation film, the period between the end of the Roadshow era and the 1970s, when anything could, and did, make it on-screen.  The 1960s marked a transitional period in exploitive cinema, as filmmakers worked to push cinematic envelopes apace with crumbling censorship restrictions.  Lewis, along with men and women such as Dan Sonney, Doris Wishman, Bob Cresse, and Lewis’ producing partner David F. Friedman, were in the forefront of that effort, and those efforts would culminate in the free-for-all that was filmmaking in the early 1970s.  Lewis and Friedman were the most polished of the exploiteers of this era, and perhaps the most influential.  Though the pair helped popularize Nudie-Cuties, and created what came to be known as the Roughie with SCUM OF THE EARTH, fans of this era hold them in high regard primarily for their contribution to the Horror genre.  For, in 1963, they gave birth to the gore film with BLOOD FEAST.

While this documentary traces Herschell’s entire career, as told by the man himself, much of the focus is on his well-deserved reputation as Horror’s first ‘goremeister’.  Three such movies were produced with Dave Friedman—BLOOD FEAST, TWO THOUSAND MANIACS, and COLOR ME BLOOD RED—before the partnership ended amicably.  The two remained good friends, and Friedman is interviewed in-depth for this project, perhaps his last filmed interviews [Ed. Note: It’s my belief that Senior Correspondent Bobbie Culbertson had one of the last, if not the last, interview with Mr. Friedman when she spoke with him at length for our co-authored book, Dixie’s Drive-Ins: the Southern Drive-In Culture of the 1950s through the 1980s, shortly before his passing].  Lewis also made several gore films on his own, with titles such as THE WIZARD OF GORE, THE GORE-GORE GIRLS, THE GRUESOME TWOSOME, and of course, SOMETHING WEIRD.  All are examined in this documentary, making it a must-have for Lewis’ fans, as well as fans of gore in general.

Directed by Frank Henenlotter (of BASKET CASE fame) and Jimmy Maslon, this is a loving tribute to Lewis, as well as being both educational and informative, in a very fun way.  I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Available exclusively from Something Weird Video for $14.99, at: http://www.somethingweird.com.