Archive for the ‘video’ Category

Halloween Horrors: Know Your Yokai

Tuesday, October 20th, 2020

Yokai is a very broad category of Japanese supernatural entity that can include demons, ghosts, monsters, and just about any other creature from folklore, from microscopic monsters than infect your spleen to dragon-sized titanic snails. Many, but not all, are malevolent, and a goodly number are extremely specific, such as Karakasa kozo, the one-eyed, umbrella-shaped yokai that likes to sneak up on people and lick them with its long tongue.

Here’s a brief guide on identifying various yokai:

There’s also a live-action film featuring 100 of them:

Other Japanese Halloween topics:

  • Japanese Hell Temple:
  • Sokushinbutsu, the self-mummifying Japanese monks.
  • Halloween Horrors: Fleischer Cartoon’s Swing You Sinners

    Tuesday, October 13th, 2020

    In this one, Bimbo is menaced by a veritable legion of phantoms in a graveyard.

    (Hat tip: Don Webb.)

    The Bizarre Story Behind Space Mutiny

    Friday, October 9th, 2020

    A perennial Mystery Science Theater 3000 favorite, Space Mutiny is a grade Z science fiction film feature bad acting, a bad script, bad direction, ludicrous sets, thoroughly incompetent continuity, and special effects licensed from the original Battlestar Galactica TV series.

    Here the people behind The Bad Movie Bible (which I may need to pick up) take a look at the story behind the film:

    I didn’t realize that ostensible director David Winters was also the choreographer for The Star Wars Holiday Special. While that’s an awful lot of evil to pack into one career, any teenage boys whose parents had The Movie Channel in the 1980s are certainly willing to forgive a lot of sins for producing late night “classic” Young Lady Chatterly. (In the “non-evil” department, he was also a Jet in West Side Story.)

    The MST3K episode of Space Mutiny is available as part of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Vol. 4. BLAST HARDCHEESE says you should pick up a copy…

    Halloween Horrors: The Apprehension Engine

    Tuesday, October 6th, 2020

    Suppose you wanted to do the soundtrack for a horror film: What would you use to score it? Synthesizer? Computer?

    Or how about commissioning a custom instrument to make eerie, unnerving sound?

    Behold The Apprehension Engine!

    The Witch is one of the films Mark Korven has scored, and I just noticed that it seems to have gotten pretty cheap as of late…

    Halloween Horrors: 2020 Transworld Animatronics Show

    Saturday, October 3rd, 2020

    Thank God the Wuhan Coronavirus hasn’t derailed America’s Halloween Animatronic industry:

    Lots of zombies, lots of clowns, lots of zombie clowns…

    Halloween Horrors: The Pedophile Living In Your Daughter’s Closet

    Friday, October 2nd, 2020

    Remember the spider man of Denver and the Japanese woman that secretly lived in a man’s cabinet for a year without him knowing?

    Well, the wackiest state in the union manages to one up that one:

    A Louisiana man has been arrested after a 15-year-old Florida girl’s parents found he had been living in their daughter’s bedroom closet for more than a month after he met the teen online two years ago and traveled to meet her for sex.

    Jonathan Rossmoine, 36, was arrested and charged with multiple sex crimes Sunday after the child’s parents learned he had been secretly living in her bedroom at their family home in Spring Hill, Hernando County.

    Rossmoine allegedly confessed to traveling from Louisiana to Florida on multiple occasions to have sex with the child, who described the 36-year-old as her boyfriend.

    Police said he then moved into the girl’s room in August, where he would hide out from her parents in the closet and emerge when they left the house.

    Even creepier: It’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened, a father found a 42-year old man hiding in his 12-year old daughter’s closet:

    See also: Jack Vance’s Bad Ronald.

    So they next time your children ask you to check their closet for monsters, remember that there are some in human form…

    Shoegazer Sunday: The City’s Gates’ “On The Road”

    Sunday, September 20th, 2020

    On the Road” sort sounds like Slowdive crossed with a touch of Mazzy Star, which sounds like a winning combination.

    Shoegazer Sunday: The Telewire’s “Slower”

    Sunday, September 6th, 2020

    Here’s another dose of The Telewire, with “Slower” off their Airport EP.

    Shoegazer Sunday: The City Gates With Krissy Vanderwoude Cover Slowdive’s “Catch The Breeze”

    Sunday, August 23rd, 2020

    Enjoy yet another cover of Slowdive’s Catch The Breeze, this one from Canadian shoegazer outfit The City Gates with guest Krissy Vanderwoude:

    This is off an all-digital compilation homage of Slowdive covers called Just For A Life, which I’ll have to listen to more of…

    Fixed

    Squirrel Ninja Warrior

    Thursday, July 30th, 2020

    A light, diverting video for your amusement…