Friday, 28 September 2012
Dangerous Recommendations #6 - Satan's Satyrs - Wild Beyond Belief!
Released this year in 2012 this little LP is a dead set ripper. I've been following Satan's Satyrs since their first demo and they just get better with every new release. Wild beyond belief is easily the best output so far from the band, could be even album of the year for me so far. The band have a sound that reminds me off Black flag damaged noisy guitars mixed with venom's welcome to hell craziness.
The feeling of the songs just take you back to the 70's on the out skirts of town near a cemetery where a biker gang is hanging out and causing mayhem. The production on here is even more noisy and fuzzy than previous outputs and this suits them better I feel. Everything on here has improved, for instance the vocals are just a little better and more structured. Great riffs and song passages that will be stuck in your head forever.
The songs are catchy as hell without sounding retro or stupid like so many bloody bands these days. Forget Ghost, Uncle Acid shit, Jess and ancient crap etc Satan's Satyrs is the band that stands above them all.
Classical Visions #6 - Phantasm
Phantasm is a 1979 cult-classic horror film directed, written, photographed, co-produced, and edited by Don Coscarelli. It introduced the Tall Man (who was portrayed in the film and its sequels by Angus Scrimm), a supernatural and malevolent undertaker who turns the dead into dwarf zombies to do his bidding and take over the world.
A young boy and his friends face off against a mysterious grave robber known only as the Tall Man, who keeps a mysterious arsenal of terrible weapons with him.
Mike, a young teenage boy who has just lost his parents, is afraid to lose his brother. This fear causes him to follow his brother to a funeral, where Mike witnesses the Tall Man lift a coffin on his own. Mike decides to investigate and discovers a horrible world where the Tall Man, along with his flying spheres, shrink the to half their normal size and reanimate them as slaves. It is then up to Mike, his brother, and Reggie the ice cream man to stop the Tall man.
Wednesday, 8 August 2012
Elvira Mistress of the Dark
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, 5 July 2012
Gaming Remembrance #8 - The secret of Monkey Island & Monkey Island 2
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 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.
Dangerous Recommendations #5 - The Obsessed - The Obsessed
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.
Wednesday, 4 July 2012
Classical Visions #5 - See No Evil, Hear No Evil
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.
Monday, 25 June 2012
Classic Game Discussion Links
Some real cool information and topics to be read. Enjoy!
http://www.armchairarcade.com/neo/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Matt-Chat/126630270681106?ref=pb
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eye-of-the-Beholder-Game-Series-Fan-Page/296666308275
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dungeon-Master-Chaos-Strikes-Back/169377249775492
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