In 2004, BBC 4 aired Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, a horror parody series satirizing the cheapness of 1980s BBC TV shows, created by Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade, all supposedly the work of “Garth Marenghi” (Holness), “the only writer to publish more books than he’d read.” Last year, I showed these as the Halloween offering for our regular Saturday movie group. Dwight took that as a license to buy these two signed “Marenghi” firsts and give them to me as a birthday gift.
Once upon a time, there was a great little web series called Making Fiends that turned into a swell TV series. Both versions told about the dynamic between Vendetta, an evil little girl that makes fiends, and Charlotte, who thinks Vendetta is her best friend despite the latter loathing her.
Here’s a video of the Halloween episode.
Alas, Nickelodeon cancelled the TV show after only one season. I’m glad I bough the DVD when it was available, as its now out of print and people are asking ridiculous amounts for it…
I manage to fill one of the few gaps left in my Jack Vance collection.
Vance, Jack. Bad Ronald. Underwood Miller, 1982. First hardback edition, #63 of 200 signed, numbered copies, a Fine- copy with a very small bump to top rear boards, in a Near Fine dust jacket with slight age darkening to top of spine, and a trace of same along edges. Suspense novel originally published as a paperback original under his legal name of John Holbrook Vance, and the basis of a well-regarded 1974 TV movie of the same name. Hewett, A.43.c. Cunningham, 5.b. Chalker/Owings, page 434. Hubin, page 404. Supplements copies of the text in Volume 12 of the Vance Integral Edition and the Subterranean Dangerous Ways omnibus (which I have both lettered and trade states of), but I still lack the 1973 Ballantine PBO. Though overgraded as Fine/Fine, I can’t really complain since I bought this at a bargain $35 price.
This sketch comedy TV show from 1979 features what is probably the first ever TV appearance of Spinal Tap. I was planning to post this right before Spinal Tap II: The End Continues came out, but I got distracted by shiny objects and the movie came out last week.
Alas, the sequel seems to have done very poorly at the box office, so I might just have to wait for it on DVD…
You may have noticed that Joel Hodgson and MST3K gang are having a new kickstarter for the next season (for values of “kickstarter” that include “not on the Kickstarter platform”). There are five days left and they are only 38% of the way to the first goal of $4.8 million, which will be six features and six shorts.
The last two Kickstarters they had blew past their goals.
This one? Not so much. Despite announcing that Plan 9 from Outer Space will be among the riffed films.
Donor fatigue? The Biden Recession? Not doing enough promotion? Not enough boost from a non-Kickstarter platform? Disgruntlement over how long it took people to get their promised rewards from the last campaign?
I think it may be some combination of all the above.
Maybe the usual Turkey Day festivities will kick it into higher gear. But if they don’t, this may be the first MST3K fundraising effort to fail.
Not sure if this quite qualifies as a Halloween Horror, but it includes monsters, and it struck my fancy.
Basically, it’s an anime series focused on a guy who’s crappy job is to clean up after kaiju attacks.
It’s basically Damage Inc. meets Godzilla. Plus the teaser trailer is giving off a tiny bit of a FLCL vibe.
I don’t subscribe to Crunchy Roll (or any streaming service), but I’d seriously consider buying the DVD set when it eventually comes out.
These two items came from a Kickstarter.
And here’s my review of the original The Night Stalker TV movie.
For a while, there was an “X, but it’s Y” trend on YouTube, where people would take something familiar and alter it in presumably amusing ways. (I think “every time they say bee it gets faster” is one of the better known examples of the trope.)
The Skinner-Chalmers “Steamed Hams” scene from The Simpsons has been the source of a lot of these videos. Most of them don’t do anything for me, but for some reason, “Steamed Hams, but it’s the French New Wave” tickled my fancy.
I was looking through a bookseller list of signed books when I saw Stephen J. Cannell’s name. “Huh, the Rockford Files guy! I wonder what signed firsts from Stephen J. Cannell are available?”
Turns out a lot, some of which are available quite cheaply. (Hypermodern mystery firsts are doing much worse, on average, than hypermodern SF/F/H firsts right now.) This was available online as one of the cheapest signed firsts, and it turns out it’s the only one of his books (he did a whole series of Shane Scully mysteries) that had its own entry on Wikipedia, and the plot sounds interesting, so I picked it.
Cannell, Stephen J. White Sister. St. Martin’s Press, 2006. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, signed and dated (“9/12/06”) by Cannell. Bought off the Internet for $5.
I think I posted a live version of this song, but not this album version. And as a bonus, this version features footage from the Domo Kun stop motion animated show, of meme fame.