Texas Frightmare, 2018 edition!

This is my 7th year going to this convention, and it's always been fun. Over the years, there are less people I need to meet, but there's always someone interesting there.

So this is for Sunday, May 6th. I usually go Saturday, but scheduling conflicts put me on this date. Some people are only available for certain days, but for the most part, I met most of the people I wanted to meet, and then a few others.

To start it off, I met Phil Fondacaro. My friend wanted to meet him because of "Troll" and Full Moon movies. I know of him from Land of the Dead. He's gotten a bit older, but he was happy to have anyone at his table.



My pal wanted to meet Diamond Dallas Page, so I got to meet him too. No pics though, just an autograph. We talked about Devils Rejects. I asked him if he'd be in the new movie, and he told me RZ said there wasn't room enough for him, but he later found out that Trejo was cast to return. He seemed in good spirits about it though, and praised RZ nonetheless. Nice guy.

Next up is Robert 'Bronzi' Kovacs, from "Death Kiss", which apparently got released already. Still waiting to see that one, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to meet a guy who'll basically be playing Charles Bronson.



I also met Don Mancini, the mastermind behind all the Childs Play movies. I'm talking writer of ALL of them, and director of the last three movies. A lot of the Childs Play cast was there, and they were getting all the attention. I was surprised that he had no line, but he didn't have a banner, and it was his first con, apparently. Nice dude. Made mention of the upcoming tv series, too.



Now, for a scream queen, I met 80s icon Adrienne Barbeau. I didn't have much to say to her, but she was an essential for me.



I wanted to meet Claudio Fragasso, director of Troll 2, but his table was kinda weird. He didn't have any 8x10s to sign, and no prices listed. That threw me off, so I didn't know how to go about it. I doubt he speaks well, so I don't think I'd accomplish much in talking to him.

My pal wanted to meet Ethan Embry, though I'm not familiar with a lot of his movies. Just his 90s "Can't Hardly Wait", but he was a chill guy.



They had a bunch of Jason actors there, including Steve Dash (2), Ted White (4), Tom Morga (5), CJ Graham (6), Kane Hodder (7-10 + the game), and Ken Kirzinger (FvJ). Since everybody likes bag-head Jason (the first real Jason), I gave it a go.



I wanted to meet Charles Band again, so I could talk to him about Trancers, but he left rather quickly this day. Clive Barker was nowhere to be seen (off, in a separate room), and there weren't as many busty ladies this time around. We came in on the last day of it, so they were all there on Friday and Saturday I guess.

Really fun time. I'll end it with this great picture I got of Ron Perlman. He was charging $100, so no way was I going to pay that, so we just took a pic anyway.

McKamey Manor

Has anyone ever been brave (or thoughtless) enough to visit this "haunted house" attraction in San Diego, California?

From wiki:

McKamey Manor is a nonprofit haunted house or "extreme haunt," which was founded by San Diego, California resident Russ McKamey and originally located on his property. It is regarded by some as the "scariest haunted house in America" and is known for its violence and cruelty towards its guests, who must sign a liability waiver to get in. The Manor may give its patrons unwanted haircuts, drench them in fake blood, submerge them in water, force them to eat and drink unknown substances, have them bound and gagged or engage in other forms of emotional or psychological torture.

The house permits just a handful of patrons to enter each weekend and guests are not required to pay an entrance fee. Instead, McKamey accepts payment only in dog food for his pet dogs. The tour can last anywhere from four to eight hours and no guest has made it all the way through, despite there being no "safe word" that allows guests to leave prematurely.
The house operates year round, and there is a waiting list of over 24,000 people. As of November 22, 2014, a woman named Sarah P. held the record time at McKamey Manor, enduring six hours.

I actually first heard about it through one of the Facebook groups I'm currently in, and everyone has their own opinion on it. Personally I could never do it - and I honestly don't understand how anyone could actually •want• to sign on for something like that. I guess it definitely provides an entirely different kind of scare but .. no, not my thing. :/ I'll just stick to the haunted hayrides. 😛

Why didn't they make Pat Morita-sploitation movies?

Get a guy that looks like Pat Morita, cast him as a similar character to Mr. Miyagi.

Boom!, you've got your Morita-sploitation movie genre.

Could have rivaled the actor who had the moniker Bruce Le to make Bruce Lee Bruce-sploitation movies.

Cobra Kai

So we've moved on from Pat Morita-Sploitation and onto William Zabka-sploitation as a middle age man.

Anyway, had a ball watching Cobra Kai.

Even though The Karate Kid is the laughing stock of martial art connoisseurs with it's highly telegraphed crane kick. It was the kind of movie that made kids interested in martial arts so it served it's purpose.

Quite well done and I like that it deconstructed the original movie. There is a video out there trying to point out that Daniel was the real bully of The Karate Kid and it's like they took that idea and turned it into a TV series. Very enjoyable so far.

A much better way to modernize The Karate Kid than 'The Kung Fu Kid' (You know what I mean by that ) Big fan of Jackie Chan. Not so much Jaden Smith.

Ash vs. Evil Dead, I sure will miss you

The first season was fun. It was great to see Bruce come back to our favorite role of his, and the show caters to the fans. General horror fans, that is, which is kind of a niche market these days. It had Ash at his stupidest, and best, it had gore and deadites all the time, and fuckin' LEE MAJORS.

Season two was a bit of a letdown, with its clusterfuck of an ending, but the third season was great from what I saw (haven't seen much though). The show always felt like The Evil Dead, and it was Bruce fucking Campbell, god damnit! The Chin, and he's turned our hero into beer guzzling druggie.

Fuck STARZ. They ruined Anchor Bay when they bought them out, and now they're cancelling their only show that's worth a damn.


What will become of our dear friend, the Evil Dead? Again, I haven't seen the way season 3 ends, but it'll probably be some open-ended cliffhanger, just like every other season finale. I wish Netflix would pick it up, or ANY other channel, but I'm sure the company wouldn't allow that. I doubt a series can be taken seriously after turning into a tv show, which means we probably wont get another movie either.

Is Ash really gone? Is the Evil Dead franchise DEAD?! 😩


I hope not. I hope Ash can bounce back and at least be in a DTV finale. Fuck Starz, though.

What movies did you by or watch this week (5-6)

I got Blu-rays of Death Laid an Egg and The Psychopath. Haven't had time to watch either one yet though.

Horror trends of the 20-teens?

If you had to identify a few major, overriding trends in horror movies from this decade, what would you say? In the last decade (2000's) vampire and zombie movies were particularly prominent, of course. These have tapered a bit lately, IMHO... there is certainly room for discussion on that point, but that's my take.

What would you call TRENDS in horror movies of this decade? Like, most of the Paranormal Activity and Insidious movies have some kind of backstory about some kind of demon that has been hanging around without affecting daily life for many years, but is starting to become more aggressive for whatever reason. Is there a short, handy name for that sub-genre?!? Or, maybe doll movies, like The Conjuring... I'm not saying these have to be trends that we approve of, just that they seem to be trends.

Maybe movies and TV shows set in the 80's... I want to focus more on movies than TV, but It would count as a movie set in the 80's, and some other that I can't think of offhand, but I'm pretty sure there have been some. Post apocalyptic stuff, of course. Maybe spooky doll movies??

There are some googleable articles about this general topic, but what comes to mind for you, just your first reaction?

What movies did you buy or watch this week (4-29)

I picked up my copy of Liquid Sky yesterday. Hopefully I'll get to watching it tonight. Also ordered The Maze and Death Laid an Egg.

Tales from the Darkside: The Movie

Am I crazy or something in thinking this is a legitimate, honest to God great movie?

Tales from the Darkside was a show I was obsessed with when I was a kid, so when a movie version was hitting the big screen, I begged my mom to take me to see it.

Sure, I've seen the movie many times since then over the years, usually in passing, like if it's on TV and I just sorta keep it there as background noise. But last night my girlfriend and I were looking for a movie to watch, she'd never seen it, so for whatever reason I settled on this - something I knew she wouldn't find offensively bad or boring or anything (we've wasted our time watching some clunkers lately), and would provide a light, breezy watch.

This is actually a really great, well-made and sometimes even pretty creepy movie. First of all, that fucking cast. Pretty much every motherfucker in this is a recognizable face, and they all turn in an admirable job. It's a mainstream movie with decent production values and a star studded cast, but it somehow manages to retain a sinister, low-budget '80s feel - both in atmosphere, direction, and special fx. It doesn't feel too watered-down like a lot of major studio releases. Where are the movies nowadays that balance that fine line between Hollywood glitz and something a bit more weird and on the fringes? Tales from the Darkside: The Movie does this.

I guess one of the reasons for this is choice of director: John Harrison, best known for frequently collaborating with George Romero. It's surprising that Paramount took a chance on him since he didn't really have any directorial credits to his name besides a couple of assistant directorial jobs with Romero. Was Romero ever slated to direct this at some point? I can only assume Romero vouched for Harrison and thats how he got the job. At any rate, I'm glad they did because in many ways, stylistically, it feels like a George Romero film. In "The Cat from Hell" segment, the stuffy, rich, miserable elderly people reminded me of the old people in "Father's Day" from Creepshow. Also, the way the story weaves back and forth between flashbacks, with actor William Hickey coming into the foreground was a cool touch, to say nothing of that muted, drab blue tint to the flashback scenes, it really lended an air of eeriness to a story that otherwise could've been underwhelming.

I think "Lover's Vow" might be my favorite story. The plot is compelling and unpredictable enough to keep you watching and wondering where this is all headed, particularly after we fast forward ten years in time. The ending is especially gut-wrenching: it's completely out-of-left-field and scary, but emotionally involving considering the life James Remar and the lovely Rae Dawn Chong made together. That the past came back to (literally) bite him after so much time had passed just leaves you with such a haunting feeling.

One thing though - the gargoyle transformed into Rae Dawn Chong's character to see that James Remar didn't speak of it, right? What if he hadn't grabbed her in the alley and invited her back to his apartment? Would the gargoyle have forced its way into his life as someone else, staying close to him, ensuring he never broke his promise? Was that the gargoyle's intention all along? I do feel that she (it) really did fall in love with him, though. Perhaps it never expected that?

I dunno. I feel this is a pretty underrated movie. Not in the obscure sense, of course, because everyone knows about it. But more in the "dismissed because most people find this an average, forgettable mainstream movie" type way, which I found it anything but.

Polybius: Urban Legend or True Conspiracy?

With so much talk of video games recently, I keep going back to one of my favorite conspiracy theories on the arcade game Polybius. For those that may not have heard about Polybius here's a quick description on what it was quoted from Wikipedia

**Polybius is a fictitious arcade game that originated from an urban legend created in 2000. The original game's actual existence has never been authoritatively proven,[1] but it has served as inspiration for several free and commercial games by the same name.

The urban legend is that the game was part of a government-run crowdsourced psychology experiment, with gameplay producing intense psychoactive and addictive effects in the player. These few publicly staged arcade machines were said to have been visited periodically by men in black for the purpose of data-mining the machines and analyzing these effects. Finally, all of these Polybius arcade machines allegedly disappeared from the arcade market.**

Now, while it says it's fictitious there are many people who swear to have seen it and even played it back in the 1980's. There are even a few pics that have been posted to show what seems to be actual arcade cabinets of the game. Those could easily be faked, however.


Here is a video of what people have theorized the gameplay would look like.

And it even made an appearance on an episode of The Simpsons


So what do you think? Could it have been real? Or just a creepy urban legend?