In the late spring of 1981, six years after the death of Larry Vincent (who starred as host Sinister Seymour of a local Los Angeles weekend horror show called Fright Night), show producers began the task of bringing the show back. Deciding to use a female host, producers asked 1950s horror hostess, Maila Nurmi, to revive The Vampira Show. Nurmi worked on the project for a short time, but eventually quit when the producers would not hire Lola Falana to play Vampira. The station continued with the project and sent out a casting call. Peterson auditioned against 200 other horror hostess hopefuls and won the role. Producers left it up to her to create the role's image. She and her best friend, Robert Redding, came up with the sexy punk/vampire look after producers rejected her original idea to look like Sharon Tate in The Fearless Vampire Killers.
Since they were unable to continue with the Vampira character, the character Elvira was used instead. What followed was Elvira's Movie Macabre, featuring a quick-witted Valley-girl-type character named Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. With heavily applied, pancake-horror make up and a towering black beehive wig to conceal Peterson's flame-red hair.
Shortly before the first taping, producers received a cease and desist letter from Nurmi. Besides the similarities in the format and costumes, Elvira's closing line for each show, wishing her audience "Unpleasant dreams", was notably similar to Vampira's closer: "Bad dreams, darlings..." uttered as she walked off down a misty corridor. The court ruled in favor of Peterson, holding that "'likeness' means actual representation of another person's appearance, and not simply close resemblance." Peterson claimed that Elvira was nothing like Vampira aside from the basic design of the black dress and black hair. Nurmi herself claimed that Vampira's image was based on Morticia Addams, a character in Charles Addams's cartoons that appeared in The New Yorker magazine.
The Elvira character rapidly gained notoriety with her tight-fitting, low-cut black gown which showed ample cleavage. The movies featured on Elvira's Movie Macabre were always B grade (or lower). Elvira reclined on a red Victorian couch, introducing and often interrupting the movie to lampoon the actors, the script and the editing. Adopting the flippant tone of a California "Valley girl", she brought a satirical, sarcastic edge to her commentary. She reveled in dropping risqué double entendres and making frequent jokes about her display of cleavage. In an AOL Entertainment News interview, Peterson said, "I figured out that Elvira is me when I was a teenager. She's a spastic girl. I just say what I feel and people seem to enjoy it." Her campy humor, sex appeal, and good-natured self-mockery made her popular with late-night movie viewers as her popularity soared.
Elvira was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and other talk shows. She also produced a long-running series of Halloween-themed television commercials for Coors Light Beer and Mug Root Beer (her trademark cleavage was concealed for the Coors campaign). She appeared in guest roles on television dramas such as CHiPs, The Fall Guy and Fantasy Island and appeared on numerous awards shows as a presenter. Although she is known primarily as Elvira, Peterson has made out-of-costume appearances as herself for television interviews and specials.
In 1982, with the success of Movie Macabre, Knott's Theme Parks hired Elvira to replace Seymour as the host of its annual Halloween Haunt during the month of October. Elvira appeared nightly at the park, live on stage with a Halloween-themed musical comedy revue similar to her Mamma's Boys act from the 1970s.
The Elvira character rapidly evolved from obscure cult figure to a lucrative brandname and "Mistress of all Media", spawning many products throughout the 1980s and 1990s including Halloween costumes, comic books,action figures, trading cards, pinball machines, Halloween decor, model kits, calendars, perfume and dolls. She has appeared on the cover of Femme Fatales magazine five times. Her popularity reached its zenith with the release of the feature film Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (co-written by Peterson) in 1988. She also played many non-Elvira character-roles in other films, most notably Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) with friend and fellow Groundling Paul Reubens (as his Pee-wee Herman character) and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1985) starring Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone.
In September 2010, Elvira's Movie Macabre returned to television syndication in the U.S., this time with public-domain films.
Introduction: The Secret of Monkey Island is a 1990 point-and-click graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It takes place in a fantastical version of the Caribbean during the age of piracy. The player assumes the role of Guybrush Threepwood: A young man who dreams of becoming a pirate and explores fictional islands while solving puzzles.
The game was conceived in 1988 by Lucasfilm employee Ron Gilbert, who designed it with Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. Gilbert's frustrations with contemporary adventure titles led him to make the player character's death impossible, which meant that gameplay focused the game on exploration. The atmosphere was based on that of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride. The Secret of Monkey Island was the fifth game built with the SCUMM engine, which was heavily modified to include a more user-friendly interface.
Critics praised The Secret of Monkey Island for its humor, audiovisuals, and gameplay. The game spawned a number of sequels, collectively known as the Monkey Island series. Gilbert, Schafer and Grossman also led the development of the sequel Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge.LucasArts released a remake of the original in 2009, which was also well received by the gaming press.
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is an adventure game developed and published by LucasArts in 1991. It was the second game of the Monkey Island series, following The Secret of Monkey Island, and the sixth LucasArts game to use the SCUMM engine. It was the first game to use the iMUSE sound system.
The game's story centers on the wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood. After defeating ghost pirate LeChuck in The Secret of Monkey Island, little is known of what happened between Guybrush Threepwood and Elaine Marley. The sequel involves Guybrush's attempts to both find the mysterious treasure, Big Whoop, and win back Elaine's love.
The development team for the game was largely the same as for the first game in the series. The project was led by Ron Gilbert, and he was once more joined by Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman.
These 2 ripper games are just so good, I just couldn't decide which one was better so I selected both of them. I played both when they were released on the amiga and they were just so fun to play. Both of them made you feel like you were apart of the game, inside the game. The story, characters, theme and environments were just so out of this world at the time.
It took me some time to finish Monkey Island 2, to this day I still have not finished Monkey Island 1. I always seem to get near the end and never finish it over the years. I may have to fix this problem soon!
Over the year I have still played the games here and there and they are still lots of fun and enjoyable. One of the best adventures game series ever made.
The Obsessed's self titled album is a dead set gem. Recorded in 1985 and released in 1990 this album has stood the test the time easily. I first heard this album mid 2001 and it always gets a spin and rattles the speakers often.This album is soaked in black sabbath but they have managed to carve out their own sound and style here. Great vocals, riffs and sound that leaves images of a biker gang leaving the marshes and heading to the desert highway. A nice mix of metal/rock/doom with so many catchy riffs and vocal hooks, the songs will plant themselves in your mind guaranteed!Funny enough I could never get into the other releases this band did, only this release seems to work for me.Not sure how hard this album is to get now, maybe still a bit tricky. I think it has been re-issued recently.
See No Evil, Hear No Evil is a 1989 American comedy film directed by Arthur Hiller and produced by Marvin Worth for TriStar Pictures. It stars Richard Pryor as a blind man and Gene Wilder as a deaf man who work together to thwart a trio of murderous thieves.
Dave is deaf, and Wally is blind. They witness a murder, but it was Dave who was looking at her, and Wally who was listening.
One of the funniest movies I've seen, an all time classic film. I've seen it numerous times since it's release and it always brings laughing gas madness and rolls on the floor. Gene and Richard are such great actors and they are really at the top of their profession in this one. I think this one is my favorite movie from the duo. So many classic moments in this film, It really is an all time classic film that never get's old or tired.
First Blood is a 1982 action thriller film directed by Ted Kotcheff. The film stars Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo, a troubled and misunderstood Vietnam War veteran, with Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy) as his nemesis and Colonel Samuel Trautman (Richard Crenna) as his former commander and only ally. It was released on October 22, 1982. Based on David Morrell's 1972 novel of the same name, it was the first of the Rambo series.
Unlike the sequels, which were war adventure films set in foreign countries, First Blood was a post-Vietnam War psychological thriller set in the United States. First Blood lacks the gore and violence that would become a trademark of the series.
Since its release, First Blood has been a critical and commercial success and has had a lasting influence on the genre. It has also spurred many parodies. The film is notable for its psychological portrayal of the after-effects of the Vietnam War, particularly the challenges faced by American veterans attempting to re-integrate into society, something not deeply examined in subsequent Rambo movies.
In 2008, the film was chosen by Empire magazine as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.
One of the all time greats this movie, I grew up on this movie. I used to watch the old VHS tape all the time in the mid 90's, the music and the character is just so good, always stays in your mind and relate to it frequently. The sequels in this series just wasn't as good as the first one in my opinion, with each sequel just getting worse and worse. I don't think Stallone ever topped this performance in this movie.
Even today the movie still goes very well, it doesn't feel dated at all.
Uridium 2 is a Shoot-'Em-Up game, developed and published by Graftgold, which was released in Europe in 1993.
Uridium fans had to wait some long 7 years for "their" Amiga version. It was well worth waiting I'd say these days, yet back then I had already bought me some 50MHz VGA PC when it finally arrived.
Basically Uridium 2 does to Uridium, what Paradroid 90 does to Paradroid. It's been all revamped, with all new'n'shiny sound and vision, Uridium on Steroids one might say.
Core gameplay is virtually identical to Uridium - fly over bi-directional horizontally scrolling dreadnoughts and destroy attack waves. Pretty simple stuff. This time though, there are numerous power-ups allowing the player to unleash all sorts of mayhem on both ground and flying targets. Once sufficient enemies have been destroyed, the player can then land on the dreadnought's runway and then enter the reactor. The reactor stage simply involves shooting the core while battling some rather tricky inertia.
Uridium 2 was a dead set ripper when it was released late 1993 on the Amiga. The gameplay, graphics and the music was right up there and really left an impression on me. Totally wooowww at the time, you had to be there! Fast gameplay, with great controls. One of the best shoot em ups at the time and probably still is. Smashed R-type and all that stuff.
The game gets really hard just over mid way through, I never finished Uridium 2. The original was a classic as well released in the 80's on the commodore 64, But I think Uridium 2 is where it's at. Everything is better in number 2.
Definitely don't make games like this anymore, Uridium 2 will live on forever for me!
