Vampires Keeping Me Up At Night

Nosferatu The Vampire. Warner Herzog's remaining of Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula. This movie is incredibly unsettling. This very well may be the most intriguing, yet scary, vampire film I've ever watched. I added this movie to my collection thanks to Scream Factory. This is certainly a movie to revisit on dark and dreary weather. The entire film, the setting to the characters, makes me feel icky for lack of a better word. The movie opens with enchanting, haunting music over horrifying corpses and dramatic slow-motion cinematography that is so unsettling. The character of Renfield may be one of the most, again to use this word for lack of a better one, unsettling of the character I have ever seen in a film. In all the hundreds of movies I have watched over 40 years, this one character makes my skin crawl and my soul want to leap from my body and hide in the shadows. He's a horrific laughing little man and I'd prefer never to see him ever again to be honest wit

Vampires, the immortal creatures of the night, are the first monsters I can remember being afraid of but also endlessly infatuated with. And what's Halloweentober without the undead?! After all, if it wasn't for vampires I probably never would have developed such a fondness for Halloween in the first place... The 1980s especially hosted a smorgasbord of the undead for me to, uh, sink my teeth into. From the hilarious to the horrific, the vampire films of my childhood were the things that kept me up at night. I was blessed with having my own television in my bedroom at an early age, with parents who were kind enough to respect my privacy and leave me alone when the door was shut. So staying up to watch vampire flicks until dawn was quite normal for me in adolescence. Once Bitten was one the first I can remember staying up late for and was Jim Carrey's movie introduction to me years before In Living Color debuted on Fox in 1990. Jim's affable virgin Mark Kendall, hounded

The wonderful and forever spooky Halloweentober is upon us! Welcome to the 31 days (and nights especially) of Halloween! Here it's dark and rainy, just the way I like it! I started dia uno with WNUF Halloween Special! This still is one of the most unique horror films I've ever had the pleasure of watching. Sticking with the local flavor I put in AGFA + Bleeding Skulls Vinegar Syndrome release of Doug Ulrich's shot on video anthology Scary Tales. Yes, yes, yes this is cheesy horror but that does not mean it's not enjoyable. Now for me personally, like WNUF and Nightbeast, I like this film mostly because it's filmed where I live. There's just something about seeing your home on the big screen. Scary Tales is charming and fun if you like homemade movies. The rest of the night was pumpkin carving with Hubie Halloween in the background... And read some short stories from A Newberry Halloween book. Hubie Halloween came out during the pandemic. It was a pre

At work we just got in the new Icon Airform Dead Serious helmet. This lid is perfect for Halloweentober. Look at this graveyard and corpse art on this thing...it's utterly beautiful. We also received the latest Airflite Trick or Street 4 helmet, the Grim Shredder! I can just heat the guitar wail on the whammy bar! I'm currently without a bike at the moment. But last year I rode with my Airform Trick or Street 2 lid. It's a shame I won't be out this Autumn with my jack-o-lantern helmet. But nothing Icon has done so far has topped their original Airmada Trick or Street...

One of my favorite Halloween movies of the past few years is Curse of Crom: Legend of Halloween. This is a fun, soft-horror movie that has really great characters and fun lore based on Irish mythology. I missed out on backing the first film, but luckily I have a chance to back the sequel. Here's the Kickstarter link to be a part of the sequel.

I'm sitting here in the McDonald's parking lot on Wise Avenue. For the most part Dundalk still feels like the same town I grew up in. But it's not, not really. You can't go home again, so they say. Most of my family and friends have left. So have many stores. The Pizza Hut was razed where I used to play the cocktail arcade game; there was this huge, round fireplace in the center of the restaurant. The Dennys had been here for over 40 years; it's boarded up now and has been since the pandemic, all set to become another car cleaner. I moved out about 10 years ago to get a new house with my girlfriend, though I argued to stay. My parents left over 5 years ago, and my aunt and uncle left years before. And now we've lost our bridge.   I'm not ready to go inside yet. It's nice out, anyway. But I need to make sure I'm cool before I head in. All I want to do is air-punch! I want to let it out, whatever it is. I want to shake this feeling that holds me like a

I found this cool lil Halloween Pumkin man on Etsy months ago and forgot he was in the closet. He's made himself at home here, and honestly, he scared T, and she doesn't want him running around the house. So, he's stuck in my office for the time being. I don't know that I'll be able to keep him cooped up during Halloweentober, however. Really, it's not his fault, it's mine. I had her watch Terrortory with me, a local Maryland horror anthology, and Smiling Jack freaked her the hell out... Smiling Jack could be this guy's dad, the resemblance is uncanny. Smiling Jack is a dark, mirrored pumpkin pail candy bucket-headed supernatural killer in the woods. Terrortory is a film set in a Bermuda-Triangle-like land of horrors in Western Maryland where monsters of all kinds will kill you, if you don't follow the rules. The rules become evident throughout the two films, while the sequel's plot is outright dependent on it. I found Terrortory I and II on Tub

I wanted to talk about Tom Shellenberger. When I was barely a young kid there was a man who would dress up as Dracula and walk around Dundalk, my hometown. Dundalk is like the underarm of Baltimore. Dundalk is the punching bag for the suburbs of Baltimore, always has and always will be. But I don't mind, I love growing up there. I miss it. I love Dundalk. People like Tom are Dundalk. I have always had an affinity for vampires. I grew up with a Hollywood obsessed with the undead. Check out this list!: Once Bitten, Fright Night, Vamp, My Best Friend is a Vampire, Near Dark, The Lost Boys. All of these films came out in the mid-1980s and I watched them all, over and over again. I am still obsessed with these movies! I read everything I could find in the library on vampires as early as elementary school. In high school I found the Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice's vampire universe, and later, other writers, like Michael Romkey, Laurell K. Hamilton, John Steakley, Charlaine Harris and

One of my favorite sounds and one I strongly consider linked to Halloween these days is the Scream Factory scream that each (well most) of their titles begin with. It's incredibly quick but now completely attributed, in my mind, to one of the cooler sounds of Halloween, and especially horror. Once I hear that noise I know I'm in for a treat. It is easily the best of all the boutique's intros.  The Scream Factory catalog is the biggest reason I enjoy this label. They have put out on DVD and Blu-ray, and now 4K, most of the movies I was raised on. They have most of John Carpenter's work, including his Halloween and all of the (real) sequels up to Rob Zombie's take on the franchise. And that may come later. They have so many mid-tier horror, like Nomads or Shocker to The Return of the Living Dead and it's sequel. They put out Pumpkinhead, one of my favorite monster films, and one of the greatest fantasy films ever: Big Trouble in Little China! They reintroduced me

I realized something while watching Jurassic World Dominion recently that I couldn't quite understand for the past few years. What I realized is that, people don't want to die. They're scared to die just like me and sometimes that fear is utterly debilitating. It's not only the fear of death that is in the back of my mind while watching this film, it's my place in a world that I increasingly do Not Recognize. It's a world that daily feels like a Xerox copy of the one I remember, just off. Like The Matrix (there ya go, another one!) today's world feels like a copy of a world that used to be. But it's not a perfect copy. An imitation can never be the real thing, after all. I'm watching these characters, who I've come to love as I grew up with them, and seeing them still on the big screen after 3 decades confirmed this feeling. I mean, duh, right? We're all a little scared of death, even though it's something we all do, like tak

For the past few years I was ready to write-off DVDs altogether. As I started to pick up more Blu-rays I was just done with DVD. I pickd up a 4K TV and player. And even Blu-ray was getting long in the tooth... But then I looked at my collection and saw my snap case DVDs. These things were once the bane of my collection; now , they are the highlight of my collection and not just the DVD portion. I love them. The cardboard is so nostalgia now, and I didn't see that coming. In the early 2000s I would trade up every single snap case DVD for their plastic cousins. Shame! These snap cases have so much character, the chapters on the inside cover, they are just too cool. Their fragility is what made me consider tossing them all those years ago. But I'm glad I held onto some of them because now is the time to collect them. You can see more and more YouTubers talking about them. You could feel that collectors are starting to really lust after these things again - well some of us. Out of

As I'm still searching for my old VHS collection in my parent's basement, I have had no luck and it appears that they may be lost in space and time. Though I have found dozens if not hundreds of recorded VHS tapes, mostly from the 1990s, which I look forward to exploring one day and committing to digital to upload. Of particular interest was about 80 tapes of recorded Dark Shadows episodes. My mother grew up on the gothic soap opera in the '60s, and in the '90s she began recording every episode possible. Now I've inherited her collection. Commercials included, so there's a bonus with these tapes. What a treasure trove... A small personal jackpot of several cardboard Halloween decorations from the early 1980s were found. We used to hang these up in our home every October until probably the late '90s when they were packed away and lost in their basement of their old home. There is nothing special in the find that would blow anybody away, but I was happy to fin

This is the 14-year anniversary of the blog. I've stopped writing here for months at a time, on occasion. But something always reinvigorates me now and then, and so I return to say hi. I started this blog all those years ago to kind of note the writing process on the novel I was writing. That story went nowhere, when I took a break and stepped away from the story for a while, and realized that I was simply not a good writer. That hurts, that inward deep dive into oneself. Several months ago I started writing notes on a story I thought would be fun to write. I just kept writing and writing. I'm enjoying the writing process again, so I'm going to stick with it until the feeling goes away. I hope it doesn't go away, but I understand this is how I am now. But there are other things I'd like to talk about here, so the blog has been changing a little bit to reflect the things that I love and enjoy. There are a lot of websites I enjoy reading that are into the things like

One of the biggest reasons I've begun collecting 1990s video game mags, again, is that I'm 46 years old. I'm approaching 50, and for some reason that is unfathomable. Granted, I'm happy that I'm living to see that age, but it beggars belief. I remember being a teen like it was just years ago. Not that many years ago... During the '90s I collected a lot of damn video game mags. I mean a lot. Gamepro , Electronic Gaming Monthly , Diehard Gamefan , Next Generation , Game Players , is there more? Sega Visions and Video Games , and on and on. I had approximately 6 or 7 boxes of game mags saved up, but when I moved home in 2001 I had nowhere to put them. That's a lie, my parent's basement was filled with random boxes, but I simply thought I would never need these magazines again. I never once imagined I would need to ever reread these things again. I had no idea what my future would look like. My future looked sad. I'm kidding; I have a great life, with a

Supposedly this vintage Traveler's Dracula doll is rare, and yet, since purchasing him from The Alley in Chicago, I've seen this lil guy everywhere from Target to eBay. I wonder, just how many pallets of this doll did they find, in fact. Apparently The Alley found a pallet of new old stock of the 1985 doll in a warehouse, and have since started selling the dolls through their hell-bent for leather store in the Windy City. They're currently selling anywhere from 40 bucks to over a 100! I ordered mine directly from The Alley and he came with 2 silver coins (not bad) and a beanie. In the box is a death certificate signed by Mr. Abraham van Helsing himself (cute). I think I have the real deal then, suckers! For $40 it was hard to pass up this cool collectible. I don't have anywhere to put him, unfortunately, but he will look great somewhere. Preferably somewhere away from the windows... The art on the side flap is interesting. The marketing swings a hard left and calls the