Month: June 2016

Midnight Movie Icons

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One Friday morning in April of 2008 I remember I was waiting in line for the annual Public Library Book Sale. I am kinda of a dork and like to hit book sales when they first open so you have or at least get first dibs on what you are interested in buying.

So when the doors first opened it was no surprised that the first section I walked quickly too was the Movie section. I saw the usual suspects on the shelf ( five million copies of Titanic, cooking videos, instructional  videos on how to check out library books and how to knit) but I always like to look around for movies that you usually do not get to check out at the library.  For some reason I noticed every year that I have gone to this particular book sale that whoever is in charge of putting the movies in the stacks likes to put the interesting stuff at the bottom racks. I am not sure if this is just by chance or they are saving them for themselves. In any rate that’s where I start my search and that year I was lucky enough to find two gems. One movie was called “Killer Nun” starring Anita Ekberg and the other one was a documentary called “Midnight Movies.”

I remember hearing about this documentary  before from a friend (plus it got major points for cool ever art!) So it was the first thing I watched when I got home from the sale. It is directed by Stuart Samuels and it talks about a range of low budget movies in the 1970’s that gained a cult status. These showings were at midnight; they would play for months, sometimes years at the same time.

The following movies are Midnight Movie Icons:

El Topo

Night of the Living Dead

Pink Flamingos

The Harder They Come

Eraserhead

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

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A lot of these movies have huge followings. I have been to a lot of midnight movies over the years and I have seen a lot of hardcore fans at these screenings. Some people will dress up as their favorite character from the movie, sing to the soundtrack or recite every piece of dialogue from the movie. In many cases they will do all three.

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The main point of going to midnight screenings (well at least from my point of view) is to have fun, let loose and be part of something special. You feel like a cool kid geeking out over things that you thought no one else was into.

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I feel like you haven’t live your life fully until you have gone to at least one midnight movie in your life. I kind of enjoy knowing the fact that someone shares my taste of seeing Pink Flamingos or Eraserheard a dozen or more times and does not get tired of it. These kind of movies are more than movies when you go to a midnight screening it becomes an experience.

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What is your favorite midnight movie?

 

Until Next Time!

Arrow Video arrows directly in my Film <3!

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In early fall of 2013 I remember looking at my netflix’s saved queue and realizing that the titles from my saved queue section actually outnumbered my queue section. I decided to jot down a top ten list from my saved queue and look at other places like Amazon and Ebay to try and find physical copies of the movies.

I remember some of the movies on my list were: Possession, Phenomena, The Clowns

Possession was on the top of my list. I remember seeing stills from it and being really confused but intrigued. So I added it to my Netflix’s list earlier that year and it automatically went in the saved queue section. I waited and waited for months hoping one day that movie would pop into the queue section but no luck. I was getting bored with the movies I was receiving through Netflix’s so I decided if I found a copy of that movie just to buy it.

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I was so excited to have found a copy through Amazon and without hesitation I ordered it immediately. When I received it later that week I was so happy to have that movie in my hands that I literally dropped everything  else on the floor and ran to my blu ray player put and popped the movie in. I sat down….. andthen nothing happen except for a screen that popped up and say INVALIDED REGION CANNOT PLAY.

I was confused what does even mean??!?!? I went to google to find out. As much of a film lover that I am I had no knowledge about DVDs and BLU RAYS having different region codes: some had numbers and letters; some had a combination of both. In order to play these movies with different regions I had to get a region free player. So the more research I did about a month later I settle on a blu ray region free player that could be multiple regions and was so TRILLED to be able to watch this movie.

I told one of my Instagram friends about finally being able to watch this movie with the region free player and he was like ” You made a great investment…Now you can start getting Arrow Video movies!” I had no idea what Arrow was at the time so I looked it up. I went to their website and saw the roster of movies that they had on their label. Needless to say how impressed I was with their list!

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Arrow Video is one of the coolest movie labels ever! I am rarely disappointed with their blu rays and dvds. Everything from their cover art, to their the movies are release is every cult movie lover’s dream! It makes want to watch all of there supplements and display them as work of art rather than shoved them in a corner somewhere. This label has introduced me a lot of movies I have never heard before like Society, Spider Baby and Lifeforce.

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They also have brought out a lot of my favorite movies like Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Videodrome, and Black Sunday. They are the kind of label that by cover art alone it just makes you want to get the movie even if you never heard of it before. I feel fairly confident when I blind buy a movie from arrow video because I know I am getting something weird and unique that I probably will not regret seeing and having as part of my movie collection.

Future Releases from Arrow Video that I am looking forward to:

Return  of the Killer Tomatoes

Slugs

Microwave Massacre

Dead in Drive In

Matinee

Crimes of Passion

What future titles are you looking forward too?

 

Until Next Time!

 

 

 

Ro-bert’s midnight movie obsession 

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Hello all! Ro-bert M. Verbot here! Today I am here to talk about one of my favorite movies ever! House!!!!!! (Hausu 1977). 

 
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi it is a Japanese horror movie about a young girl takes her six friends and goes to visit her father for the summer. Upon arriving she is introduced to her new stepmother. Upset by this news she decides to leave and visit her aunt instead that is where the  craziness ensues!  

The first time I watched this movie I was just a teenage Verbot and Clarissa just got it in the mail when it was first released by the Criterion Collection.  When I saw the cover of the movie I had to admit I was kinda scared but intrigued! It was a picture of a scary looking cat.

And the cat did not look too happy!   I asked Clarissa if we could watch it right away but she said like it looked like more of a midnight movie kind of thing.  

So that night she popped in the movie and I had no idea what to expect! There was so many crazy images. 

This one of the craziest movies I have ever seen! After we watched it I made Clarissa play the movie again! It was even crazier and wonderful the second time around. I am so glad I watched it late at night because I think it capture the tone of the movie even better. After watching the movie I had the music stuck in my robot memory for days! So I was so trilled when I saw that Clarissa found the soundtrack on vinyl. 

We played the soundtrack so much that we also got it on cd too so it made it easier to play it in the car. It was hard to listen to the vinyl  on the open road!  

This is one of Clarissa’s favorite movies too. She liked it so much that she got a t-shirt. I wonder if it  comes in Verbot sizes too…

whenever I am undecided on what to watch or have a hard day in the robot world this is on my list of movies to pick up my mood.  

Thanks for checking out my post. Until next time!

I want my Old Mtv!

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When I was growing up one of the main things that my dad was vocal about in having in our house was cable TV. Having that box hooked up to our TV brought us countless hours of pure entertainment. It brought my dad and mom all the sports, news, and Spanish channels, my brother could stay up all night and watch the late night movies (USA and TNT were his choice late night fare) and HBO or Cinemax and my sister would come rushing from school and turn on  MTV.

My first interaction with the channel was when I was seven years old. I was home from morning kindergarten and was watching PBS ( for some reason I was really into British comedies when I was little) and I vividly remember watching “Are you being Served?” and just heard Mr. Humphries say: “I’m free!” when I noticed the channel have been changed on me to this image:

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My sister said to me “I’m taking over the remote! You can stay if you want or go outside.” I decided to stay since going outside and being with nature was not really my thing (nor was running or jumping) . My sister was really into this one show called “Remote Control” I remember it kind of reminded me of a pop culture version of “Jeopardy” but with comfier looking sofas and

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a way better set. This was her daily ritual after school was to torment me and then afterwards watch this show. After that show was done and the lack of motivation to move from my sofa I decided to continue watching MTV way after my sister left the room and started watching the music videos. That is where I was first introduce to early 90’s hip hop, alternative music and early grudge music. It was then and there that I started watching less PBS and more MTV.

It was not until I started getting older and becoming more of an impressionable youth. I did not fully get hooked onto this channel until I came across this show:

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I would often stay up late and watch a lot of grow up cartoons without realizing it was not meant for children. But these segments were different, short and most of all weird!

One cartoon in the series that really caught my eye was a big guy, he was a bit of a loner and purple all over….

No it was NOT Barney it was THE MAXX

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He was my favorite segment on Liquid Television and I thought he was as awesome as Swamp Thing!  A close second in my list of favorites in the Liquid Television world was Beavis and Butthead and Dangerous Puppets.

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Watching MTV opened up a a whole new world of weird but entertaining cartoons. The Head was also a huge show for me.

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After those shows were cancel I thought nothing would replace such awesomeness but then I found other series like Daria and Celebrity Deathmatch. Those two shows was a hot topic in middle school and early high school. It was hard to talk about anything else the morning after one of those  shows were on because it was just one of those things that made you cool. It became a middle school social status thing because you were allow to stay up late!

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Fast forward to today I do not watch a lot of MTV, I feel like it does not have the appeal of what it had when the channel first started out. Or maybe I am just out of touch with the new MTV generation.

 

 

 

Until next time!

I dream of Argento…

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I have a major love for Italian movies. When I first got Netflix it recommended me to watch Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. After I watched and returned it I gave it five stars. It was my first five star rating I gave so I was pretty much open to whatever Netflix had to recommend me from that rating. It gave me three movies I thought I might like: one of them was this 

Intrigued I decided why not give it a chance! I’m pretty much open to any movie and that poster looked pretty cool!  

I remember I got it the movie through the mail on the morning of my birthday and decided that I wanted to watch it right away before I started any b-day festivities. I popped in the movie and what caught my eye at first were the colors! 

Never have I seen such a beautiful color scheme in a movie. It kind of reminded me of a fairy tale like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. But with horror! After watching it I decided to find out more about the director and give myself some of his movies as a gift to myself 

What also amazed me about Argento movies was the music! Goblin provided a lot of the eerie and danceable tracks to his movies 

 Although if I had to pick a favorite movie of Dario Argento it would probably be Tenebre.  

Like a detective novel Dario Argento creates a beautiful world filled with mystery, great music and horror. It’s the kind of world I dream of…

 What is your favorite Argento movie?  
Until next time!

My late nights with the CryptKeeper

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When I was about 11 years old  I thought it was really cool to stay up late on school nights, and watch TV. I had a thought in my head that all the cool forbidden shows were shown after the ten ‘o’ clock news. The kind of shows that I thought were extra special that they could not fit into the regular evening time slots. One channel that always seemed to delivered that promised for me was FOX.  At first I was a huge fan of this show called “STUDS”. I am not really sure why my 11 year old self was fascinated by a dating game show with a bunch of cartoon hearts  but I was and was always pumped up to watch it. Until one night I turned on the TV and saw this:

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And then I was introduced to this guy:

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I was confused for a second because I was thinking what happen to STUDS?! I was about to  turn off the TV until I decided to give this show a chance. I mean I was up late anyways and gulped down two cans of cherry coke so sleeping at that point was not an option…

My first thoughts about the show was that the Cryptkeeper was no Mark DeCarlo (the host of STUDS) but after watching the first two minutes of the show I felt like he had the same wit and humor as him. By the end of the show I was hooked! This show had everything to offer a great host, scary elements, dark humor and most of all it gave me another reason to stay up later at night! Which I thought was super cool! I quickly forgot about STUDS after the first week of watching this show and started to looked forward to spending my nights with the Cryptkeeper instead.

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However I did not learn until years later that they had a short run cartoon series and most importantly that a line of toys from the cartoon was out in stores to buy.

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I am slowly in the process of collecting most of the action figures from the cartoon show because even though I never watched it when I was little I still had nostalgic feelings about the HBO series. I am not sure how many kids would say that they spend a chunk of their nights with a funny and witty skeleton but I did!

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Until next time!

 

 

A Robot’s Guide to the Video Nasty…

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And it’s time for Ro-bert’s Corner:

Hello Everyone! Ro-bert M. Verbot here and today I am here to talk about one of my  favorite subjects: Movies from the Video Nasty Era. During the early half of the 1980’s in the United Kingdom there were a bunch of movies that were considered really offensive and violent by bunch of a uppity people and religious groups. So they made a list of 72 films that were in violation of a something call the Obscene Publications Act 1959. Which basically meant that any kind of  material that the government consider improper (ie… anything with boobs, naked butts, gore, violence, and/or sexual) went to a review board to see if it was ok for the public to have.  For movies it was something called the Video Recordings Act (1984) which meant movies had to go into certain categories after being heavily reviewed and approved by those boards and if those movies did not fit in to any of those categories then it was illegal to sell or own those movies. Which stinks because I think a lot of movies on the list are awesome!

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In June 1983 the first list of video nasties (39 titles) was made known to the masses. The movies on the list got in big trouble and were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act; which resulted these movies to become heavily edited or just banned throughout the United Kingdom.  Which means it was impossible to buy or rent a copy ( I cannot imagine what my robot life would be like if I could not rent or buy movies like The Deadly Spawn!) It also caused some people to go to jail or go into debt because they were massively hit with fines for wanting to sell and/or rent horror movies!

The book I have next to me have really cool posters of the first 39 films that were on the list:

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(Look how badass that Blood Bath poster is!  Small side note: The Beyond is one of Clarissa’s favorite movies.)

I did not know much about the Video Nasty Era until Clarissa showed me these two documentaries:

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I recommend both of these documentaries because it taught me a lot about these movies. It is chalk full of information and the interviews on it are great. They even have trailers for all of the Video Nasty movies. After watching these two docs I have made a long list of  movies to watch.

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Here are some movies I have watched so far from the full 72 Video Nasties list. I want to try and watch all of the movies from the list this year. But the two movies pictured next to me below are probably my favorite so far from the list.

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What is your favorite movie from the Video Nasty Era?

What movie do you want to watch from the list?

My top five are:

The Love Butcher

Mardi Gras Massacre

The Werewolf and the Yeti

Midnight

Nightmares in a Damaged Brain

 

This is Ro-Bert M. Verbot saying until next time! (*Beep* Boop*)