Regional Flicks on Disc

I've been neglecting the blog for awhile, but hope to get back on track in the new year. Since some of you may have some Christmas money burning a hole in your pocket, I thought I'd start by catching up on some recent and upcoming DVD and blu-ray releases.

Code Red's release strategy and distribution methods have gotten increasingly erratic and confusing over the past couple of years, but for the time being over at the Big Cartel store, you can pick up the loopy, Florida-lensed and incredibly amateurish kung-fu/blaxploitation flick The Guy From Harlem (on a double feature with Force Four). They also a released a (now sold out) three pack of Andy Milligan films on blu-ray that included Bloodthirsty Butchers, The Man with 2 Heads, and Torture Dungeon.

You can also get the Arkansas film Psycho From Texas on a six-pack set with a bunch of non-horror titles.

Vinegar Syndrome, meanwhile, released a DVD/blu-ray combo of Lewis Jackson's Christmas Evil, and a limited edition (now sold out) DVD of the lost Alan Ormsby film Murder on the Emerald Seas. They've also got downloads available of Silent Night, Bloody Night, Guru the Mad Monk, and Fleshpot on 42nd Street.

Scream Factory/Shout Factory continues to impress, with From a Whisper to a Scream (The Offspring) coming in March, along with a special edition Blu-ray of Scarecrows. They join an already strong slate of releases that includes Sleepaway Camp, The Burning, Squirm, and The Town that Dreaded Sundown.

Fred Olen Ray announced that his Retromedia imprint would unleash an Andy Milligan triple feature in March, with Guru the Mad Monk, The Ghastly Ones, and The Body Beneath, in widescreen with extras.

Finally, Synapse has announced that it will be releasing the HD restoration of Manos, the Hands of Fate (see more here) later this year, along with one of our faves, The Creature From Black Lake.

Trailer of the Week: Nail Gun Massacre (1985)

Terry Lofton's ridiculous The Nail Gun Massacre is out as a limited edition Blu-ray from Code Red. My review of it will be in the next issue of SCREEM magazine.

Code Red Delivers Silent Night, Bloody Night

Everyone knew Code Red was planning to release a new version of Invasion of the Blood Farmers on disc, but I was certainly surprised to see that the company had paired it with another New York horror film, Theodore Gershuny's Silent Night, Bloody Night (here under its Death House title), creating a double feature that veers from ridiculous to sublime and back again.


Silent Night, Bloody Night is an excellent low-budget film, but for years has only been available in murky, full-frame versions via public domain DVD collections. Code Red has released it in a much-improved 1.85.1 transfer clocking in at 85 minutes.

Blood Farmers is presented at 1.78.1, and includes a feature-length commentary by very funny producer Ed Adlum, who I interviewed for my book.

For more on Blood Farmers, see my Jack Neubeck interview. For more on the Gershuny film, see my write up here.

More Regional Horror Flicks Coming to DVD

New DVD announcements have been piling up, but I've been too busy to parse through all of them. Here's a quick rundown:

First, Code Red continues to blow our minds with God's Bloody Acre and Tomcats due out in July, along with The Witchmaker, a runaway production filmed in Louisiana by L.Q. Jones.

The company will also release a bonanza of low-budget oddities under its "Maria's B Movie Mayhem" banner, with former WWE eye candy and Playboy model Maria Kanellis hosting. Regional titles in the series slated for September will include Mardi Gras Massacre from Louisiana and the Arizona film Haunted, along with double bills of Scream/Barn of the Naked Dead and Love Me Deadly/Curious Case of the Campus Corpse.


Future titles in the series will include the killer bigfoot flick Night of the Demon, Vampire at Midnight, and a double bill of Teenage Hitchhikers/Teenage Tramp.


Scorpion Releasing (which you may recall is run by Code Red honcho Bill Olsen's brother Walter), meanwhile, has announced its own line of low-budget horror films hosted by a former half-naked WWE/TNA starlet, "Katarina's Nightmare Theater." Katarina Leigh Waters will introduce films like the North Carolina slasher flick Final Exam, along with The Incubus, Humongous, House on Sorority Row, The Carpenter, the promisingly titled American Nightmare (sadly, it's really Canadian), and the ludicrous killer baby film The Devil Within Her.


Something Weird will release its first Blu-Ray offerings via Image Entertainment: Basket Case, the H.G. Lewis "Blood Trilogy" (Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs, Color Me Blood Red), and Frank Henenlotter's recent H.G. Lewis documentary Godfather of Gore. Basket Case will be sourced from the original (previously lost) 16mm negative, so it will look even better than when it was first released to theaters as a 35mm blow up.

Over at VCI, the 12-film Scream Theater package was finally released after being held up by "rights issues." Not sure what those problems were, since the one title that is definitely no longer public domain, the New Jersey film Alice, Sweet Alice, is still on the set. S.F. Brownrigg's Don't Open the Door is also included.

Finally, Synapse Films has announced DVD/Blu-Ray combo packs of Frank Henenlotter's Frankenhooker (New York), Maniac Cop (not technically a regional, but filmed partly in New York), and the James Glickenhaus film The Exterminator.

March Odds and Ends

It's time to clear the inbox of all those various bits of flotsam that are spilling over onto my already-cluttered desk.

First up, magazine news:

* The upcoming issue of SCREEM magazine will feature my review of Joe Spinell's final film, The Undertaker, along with my interview with American Grindhouse director Elijah Drenner.

* The latest FilmFax (#126) includes a lengthy piece (part 2 of 2!) on the making of Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster.

* Horror Hound's November issue (released during the Cincinnati convention) included a retrospective on Joe Spinell's Maniac, as well as an article on Oklahoma-based video pioneers VCI.

Speaking of Horror Hound, that mag's upcoming Horror Hound Weekend convention in Indianapolis (March 25-27) will feature a star-studded horror host tribute to New York movie host Zacherley (who appeared in such regional oddities as Brain Damage and Geek Maggot Bingo), featuring appearances by Joe Bob Briggs, Rhonda Shear, Count Gore De Vol, Akron's Son of Ghoul, Sammy Terry, my Kansas friend Gunther Dedmond, and Columbus, Ohio's own Fritz the Nite Owl (more on him below).

Attendees can meet the cast of The Boondock Saints, along with Corey Feldman, Tom Atkins, Barbara Steele, Ken Foree, Greydon Clark and Don Post.

* Fangoria, meanwhile, celebrated its 300th issue with a look at the 300 best horror films of all time (as selected by staffers), which included a ton of notable regional horror flicks, highlighting the importance of backwoods filmmaking to the genre during the late 20th Century: Alice, Sweet Alice, Basket Case, The Blob, Blood Feast, Brain Damage, The Brain that Wouldn't Die, Carnival of Souls, Death Dream, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, I Drink Your Blood, I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, Maniac, Night of the Living Dead, Street Trash, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Not to mention the almost-but-not-quite regional flicks like Martin, Sisters and Squirm that made the list, along with newer indies like The Blair Witch Project.

DVD NEWS:

* First up, one of Al Adamson's only bona fide regional flicks, the bizarro Carnival Magic (1982), made in conjunction with Teenage Strangler producer Elvin Feltner down in North Cackalacky. Once thought lost, it is now available on DVD (and Blu-Ray!) from the fine folks at Cultra/Virgial Films and packed with extras.


Code Red canceled their release of God's Bloody Acre because of technical issues (but not before a number of copies made it onto the market and eventually to eBay), then announced it would be released later on a double feature with another Wayne Crawford flick, Tomcats, and then announced again that it would be released on its own sometime this month. Which is pretty much the most action that film has seen in decades.

Code Red IS releasing Harry Thomason's not-quite-as-interesting-as-you-remember-it Encounters with the Unknown on a double feature with When Time Began later in March, and has announced they'll be releasing Mardi Gras Massacre (Louisiana), Michael de Gaetano's Haunted (Arizona), and the berserk bigfoot classic Night of the Demon.

Virgil Films, meanwhile, is supposed to finally deliver on the nutty made-in-Georgia hick flick Poor Pretty Eddie on April 26. The Nesting is due out from Blue Underground on 6/28.

Shout! Factory also released the allegedly made-in-Hawaii Demon of the Paradise which, it turns out, was actually made in the Philippines, which makes slightly more sense.

THE RONDO AWARDS ARE BACK!

Don't forget to cast your ballot for this year's Rondo Awards. We weren't nominated for anything this year, but some mighty fine folks we know were, including Daniel Griffin, The Drunken Severed Head, and The Good, The Bad and Godzilla.

CARNIVAL OF SOULS ON THE BIG SCREEN

Horror fans who grew up in Central Ohio were weened on to the scary stuff by the one and only Fritz the Nite Owl, the smooth voiced movie host who ruled the roost here from the early 70s until he was unceremoniously dumped in 1991. Fritz has been off and on TV and local radio for more than 50 years (!) now, and of late he's been hosting live film events at the Grandview Theater once a month. The March film is the Kansas-lensed public domain classic Carnival of Souls. See it on March 19 at Midnight.

ANOTHER Trailer of the Week: Horror High (1974)

Code Red's special edition Horror High DVD finally arrived this week. I'll be writing a review of the new disc for an upcoming issue of Screem magazine this fall, and my full interview with director Larry Stouffer will be featured prominently in my upcoming book, The Dead Next Door.

High on Horror High -- Plus, a Cinema Wasteland Update!

Have we mentioned lately that Code Red is rapidly becoming one of our favorite DVD labels? In addition to unleashing Slithis last month, the company has finally announced the specs for its upcoming Horror High DVD: a brand new widescreen transfer, an interview with actor Austin Stoker, bonus TV footage shot for the Twisted Brain version of the film, and an uncut theatrical trailer.

On top of that, the company plans to unleash the obscure swan song of actor Joe Spinell, The Undertaker (a.k.a. Death Merchant, 1988) in October. Although videos of this otherwise unreleased film have been circulating for years, this will mark the first legit DVD release of the title. Our friend Steven Puchalski over at Shock Cinema wrote a nice article on the film for Fangoria a few years back (issue #229).

Joe Spinell in The Undertaker

Getting back to Austin Stoker, we mentioned here that he would be at the October Cinema Wasteland show in Cleveland.

Since then, the folks at Wasteland have updated the guest list to include Ohio filmmaker Jim Van Bebber (who made the jaw-dropping Deadbeat at Dawn in 1988), along with frequent collaborators Mike King and Marc Pitman (who also appeared in Van Bebber's The Manson Family).



And that's not all -- Texas filmmaker Matt Devlen, co-producer and director of Tabloid (1985), will also be on hand to discuss his work with Bret McCormick on Ozone! Attack of the Redneck Mutants (1986) and The Abomination (1986). Joining Devlen will be actress Barbara Dow and fellow Texas director Glen Coburn, who also worked on Tabloid, but who is better known for directing the inventive Bloodsuckers from Outer Space (1984).



All and all, the next Wasteland is shaping up to be a cornucopia of regional horror, and we plan to make the trek north to drink it all in.

Book Update: We finally wrapped up the intro to the book, and a gaggle of horror historians is currently reading through it to check for errors and, later, mock me mercilessly for making them. I've also begun the laborious task of writing captions for the photos. Next up: copy editing the whole thing. Again.

February Odds and Ends

We're only a few weeks into the month, and it's already time to do a little housecleaning around the crypt. Here are some random bits of news and updates that have been piling up on my already cluttered desk:

* The Al Adamson Channel: Independent-International Pictures's founder and president Sam Sherman called us a few months back to let us know that he had launched a free YouTube channel called iipAlAdamsonMania. While a good many of late director Al Adamson's exploitation pix are available there, Sherman has also posted a number or rarities from the IIP and Hemisphere libraries, everything from THE ALFRED NOBEL STORY to FIGHTING RATS OF TOBRUK.

And, of course, there are a few regional titles in there as well, including John Russo's MIDNIGHT (filmed in Pennsylvania) and the oddball 1961 Barry Mahon flick BLOOD OF THE ZOMBIE (shot in New Orleans). You can watch the full-length films online (there's a brief commercial) and access all of the trailers.

* Big Changes at Fangoria: A number of blogs and message boards have been buzzing about this for a few weeks, but word on the street is that longtime Fangoria editor Tony Timpone has stepped down (after an astounding 20-plus-year tenure), and former Rue Morgue writer Chris Alexander has been tapped as his replacement. Timpone will apparently continue working with the mag in some capacity, and managing editor Mike Gingold is still on board. The mgaazine's Web site, however, is has been down for awhile.

* DVD Updates: Watch out for the Jack Weis-Herbert Janneke Jr. film QUADROON (1972) from Code Red in March. The Louisiana-lensed plantation pic stars frequent S.F. Brownrigg actor Bill McGhee. Code Red also recently released the previously unheard of Canadian picture NIGHT OF THE DRIBBLER (1990) from Jack Bravman, who was (I think) the same guy who made JANIE (1970) and who helped Ed Adlum come up with the idea for INVASION OF THE BLOOD FARMERS. Alpha Video, meanwhile, is having a half-off anniversary sale, so you can get that KEEP MY GRAVE OPEN DVD even cheaper now.

* Exploitation Movies in L.A.: My friends over at the Temple of Schlock have teamed up with Cultra DVD to present "The Art of Exploitation" at the Cinefamily theater in Los Angeles. They kicked things off with the Georgia oddity POOR PRETTY EDDIE (along with THE LONERS).

This week (Friday, Feb. 12) they're playing two films from New York director Andy Milligan, FLESHPOT ON 42ND STREET and THE BODY BENEATH. You can see the rest of the schedule here.

* Hello, Chesty: Mark Nelson posted a link over at AvManiacs to a tampabay.com article profiling former burlesque performer and Doris Wishman collaborator Chesty Morgan. It's fascinating reading -- as are the accompanying reader comments.