The Re-Purposing of House Improbabilia

I've been playing with the look of this blog, and right now, the site is rather bare bones. So for anyone who's been reading this thing, I appreciate your patience while I tinker with the layout.

I don't have a timeline in mind, but I'm hoping within the next few weeks, to have this blog in better shape. House Improbabilia will still be my "official" website where I can talk about my writing and other projects, but I'll also be moving more fully into the horror blogosphere, so you can expect more horror commentary and editorials.

I'm looking forward to it!

Strange Stories: Episode 7 - Just in Time

Download Strange Stories: Episode 7 - Just in Time here!

I was fortunate enough to be cast in Mike Murphy's Strange Stories audio drama. He appeared in Episode 7, in an episode called Just in Time, and the episode went live on July 4, 2010. (Listen to the show, and you might hear at least one other familiar voice as well!)

Check out Misfists Audio here - http://misfitsaudio.com/

Blog'D Classic - 09/22/05 - Looking in the Box

I used to maintain a LiveJournal and a different Blogger page called Blog'D; I also used to write for a geek culture website. This was a posting from 09/22/05.

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I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up. I keep going back, no matter how bad it gets, hoping, HOPING that my faith will be rewarded. It’s not like it’s always been like this. There was a time when I didn’t feel wasted and used afterward.

You know, before watching Hellraiser: Bloodline, that is.

I first saw Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II back-to-back in my teenage years, and even though my love of monster movies was firmly planted in my gray matter back in grade school, my exposure to and experience with the genre really didn’t involve much more than what I was able to pick up from library books and whatever I could sneak in via television (catching the face-tearing scene from Poltergeist on Showtime in the middle of a parent-less afternoon burned quite an image in my young mind). In high school, though, two things happened: 1) I was no longer hassled by “the man” about watching R-rated movies, and 2) I had my own wheels, which meant I could get to a movie theater or video store on my own power and schedule.

So one night, my friend Scott and I headed to the soon-to-be-absorbed-by-the-Blockbuster-empire local video store and picked up the first two Hellraiser flicks. Even though I was developing a fierce love of horror films, my friends weren’t into it as much as I was, which meant my friends humored me a lot of the time when it came to watching movies; part of breaking one of childhood’s taboos - watching an R-rated movie - made watching Hellraiser an easier pill to swallow for Scott, I’m guessing.

Even though I hadn’t really grasped the enormity of what I had seen, I was blown away by the movies. Even now, I can’t look back and adequately describe my feelings, but I can definitely say that my then view of horror movies was torn wide open by those two films.

It’s kind of sad the direction the sequels went, isn’t it?

I was a paying customer for Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, and I remember that I was one of just a few customers in the movie theater. It was a little sad (the turn out) and, well, a little sad (the movie itself). In no way did it compare to the previous two films. Was it because it was too Americanized? (The first two installments had been decidedly British productions.) Was it because it was too studio-ized? (Is that even a word?) Clive Barker wasn’t as involved in its production; could that have been it? Whatever the reason, it just felt . . . lesser. The slasher-film motif is really not something that the Hellraiser franchise was built for, or around, and turning Pinhead (even though the audience knew Doug Bradley’s cenobite character by name by now, Hellraiser III was the first film in which he was actually CALLED Pinhead by another character in the film) into a slasher-type character just didn’t work. (Thankfully, Bradley was still able to infuse Pinhead with a bit of class and distinction. Some of the other cenobites, however, ended up delivering lines that would have been more at home in a Freddy Krueger flick.)

Despite it’s widely-reported studio interference and an eventual director credit given to Alan Smithee, I wanted to see Hellraiser: Bloodline theatrically, but I was visiting my grandparents in Arizona during the one weekend the movie played, and taking them along to Hellraiser really didn’t seem like a great idea, so I waited for the video release. I had heard and read about the problems with the production, but I was intrigued by some of the concepts teased in Fangoria magazine. (I think this was the first of the horror franchises to take the story to outer space - Jason X was years off, and John Carpenter hadn’t yet suggested jettisoning Michael Myers (an idea that was jettisoned itself, but that hasn’t stopped Carpenter from once talking of sending Snake Plissken to space in a potential third Escape From… movie). Leprechaun in Space was also a year away.)

The fourth Hellraiser wasn’t AWFUL, per se, but it definitely wasn’t great. A valid argument could be made stating that the first Hellraiser film was the best, and the quality slowly declines through parts 2, 3 and 4.

And definitely through to Part 5.

Hellraiser: Inferno was the first of the franchise to be treated to a straight-to-video release. It was also the first of the films to have at least felt like it started life as something decidedly non-Hellraiser. Of all the Hellraiser entries, Inferno seems the least invested in the mythos of the films. I can’t confirm that this is actual fact (like it is with Hellraiser: Deader), but Inferno’s script could have started life as a completely different movie that was morphed, forced and changed into a Hellraiser (much like the third Die Hard film started life as a non-John-McClane script called Simon Says that was molded into the Bruce Willis flick it eventually became).

Craig Sheffer gives a solid performance, but his character is so unlikable, it’s hard to really care about the lead’s fate, and by extension, the movie at all. The movie itself isn’t BAD, it just didn’t FEEL like a Hellraiser film. Doug Bradley’s near-absence (which is odd since one of the reasons the studio interfered with the Bloodline so much was the lack of Pinhead through most of the original script) led to Pinhead’s appearance at the end of the movie feeling pinned on.

The sixth installment, Hellraiser: Hellseeker was a bit better. It gave Pinhead a bit more screen time, and it did tap into the previous Hellraiser mythos a bit more. Sort of.

Ashley Laurence returns as Kirsty, sort of. She’s called Kirsty at one point, but no mention is made of what happened to her since the events of the earlier films, which is a bit odd since in the third film, we learn that she was locked up somewhere, mental-institution-style. Apparently, between 1992 and 2002, she got better, got married and ended up with a dirtbag husband. And even though Doug Bradley made mention of Pinhead and Kirsty having some “unfinished business” in various interviews and such, not much is made of this relationship or connection either.

In the end, though, this movie was MUCH better than Hellraiser: Deader. The movie makers haven’t even tried to hide that, as I suspect was the case of Hellraiser: Inferno, Deader started out as a non-Hellraiser film right off the bat. The script was acquired by the powers that be, then sent off to a new writer to be rewritten with the famed puzzle box making a few appearances and Pinhead showing up, mostly near the end. Eh. Boring film. Kari Wuhrer as the lead really was just an annoying journalist throughout the entire piece, and the story of her investigating a strange cult that kills themselves and then come back from death just drug on and on.

The best thing about this movie is the Easter Egg hidden on the DVD - make-up artist Gary Tunnicliffe (who’s been with the franchise since Hell on Earth), directed a fan film called No More Souls in which he himself plays Pinhead in a lonely, barren Hell. Humanity has succeeding in killing itself off, and Pinhead soliloquies about the absence of, well, anything to do. It’s a neat idea, and adequately executed. Makes one wonder what would happen if Tunnicliffe was given a chance to actually direct a Hellraiser feature himself.

Hellraiser: Hellworld was recently released on DVD, and while it’s definitely better than its immediate predecessor, I still found it lacking. The premise was interesting enough: Hellworld is an online role-playing game like ‘Everquest’ or ‘World of Warcraft,’ but is based firmly in the world of Hellraiser. That’s cool; I’d play that, even if the movie starts with the funeral of one of the game’s players who “took things too far.”

Man, Hellworld is just filled with missed opportunities. The movie’s tagline ‘Evil Goes Online’ just lends itself to some sort of web support, but there’s nothing. This is so indicative of these movies in recent years - make the movie, throw it to the market, hope for the best. I only knew of the existence of Hellworld because I read about it in Doug Bradley’s book Behind the Mask of the Horror Actor. No advertising. No pride.

Another missed opportunity? Lance Henriksen. Can you imagine him interacting with Doug Bradley? Yeah, apparently the filmmakers couldn’t either. With the exception of a, “Uh, uh, how do we wrap this up?” ending, these two genre actors share no screentime. (To his credit, Henriksen performs well, good and creepy, and homeboy’s lookin’ good and healthy. I seem to recall seeing him in something recently, and thinking to myself that he wasn’t aging well; I was glad to see otherwise.)

Hellworld was just . . . I can’t even tell you what I thought of it, but I really just don’t know. It was a horror movie, maybe even a Hellraiser movie, but in the end, it just . . . didn’t leave an impression.

I don’t know if there’s a ninth film in the works or not. I have mixed feelings about there even being one. Is it possible for a franchise to break back out of the straight-to-video market? Should Hellraiser even continue? Is it time to give up the box? Hell, the last three films were shot in Romania, so it’s not like their dropping a lot of money on the films now. We know Deader started out as a non-Hellraiser film; Inferno and Hellworld may as well have. Would it be too much to ask for someone to write a script, knowing IN ADVANCE that it’s going to feature elements like Pinhead, like the puzzle box? Clive Barker’s not been directly involved in the franchise for years now, so we can pretty much count him out in terms of breathing new life into the films (although he’s reportedly working on a new story featuring Harry D’Amour - from ‘The Last Illusion’/Lord of Illusions - and Pinhead).

Should the franchise be retired? I don’t think the audience has gone away. I mean, I’m still here, right?

I say, "Pinhead." You say, "Potato Head."

While looking at horror tribute videos the other day, I noticed that YouTube had an interesting suggestion when it comes Hellraiser and Pinhead.

My favorite Universal horror video tribute

I love that there are so many tribute videos on YouTube, and this one - Horror is Universal - is one of my favorites.

I love the music choice, I thought the editing was well done and the use of the flashes between scenes as well as to highlight points in the music was well executed. Other elements I enjoy: Doctor Pretorius gets some attention, the Gillman is integrated seamlessly into the "classic Universal Monster" pantheon and we get a bit of Herbert Lom as the Phantom of the Opera.

Still Quest-ing

Over at Professor Bleak's Late Late Monster Show, the Professor reflected on buying his own VHS copy of Dario Argento's Suspiria in the early 90s. Back then, most movies were not priced to be sold to the home market. VHS tapes were being sold to video rental companies, and prices of $99.99 per VHS tape weren't uncommon. Personally, I owned a few movies on VHS in high school, buying the movies that I really loved back then (for some reason or other, the only ones that are coming to mind are Excalibur and Conan the Barbarian, but I'm sure there were some horror titles in my old VHS collection back in the day), picking up what I could either used from the local video stores or whatever Musicland had on their shelves. (I would later end up working for the local Blockbuster Video as well as the local Sundance knock-off Reel Collections - simultaneously for a little while - and ended up practically working for movies, blowing more of my paycheck than I should have on VHS tapes instead of, oh, I don't know, paying my rent on time.)

I never went as far as Professor Bleak, saving up $99.99 to buy a copy of Suspiria. However, I did have similar experiences to those he describes, scrubbing through all the local video stores trying to find the movies that I only knew about because I saw them mentioned in the pages of Fangoria, Gorezone, Cinefantastique or Starlog.

Even though my parents didn't let me watch R-rated movies as a kid, I had a pretty good idea as to what the big horror franchises were in the 80s. We made weekly family trips to the local Video USA, and would pick up movies to watch over the weekend. When my parents weren't looking, I would read the back of the Nightmare on Elm Streets, the Hellraisers and all the rest. (It was at a place that sold waterbeds and rented videos where I read the backs of the Friday the 13ths while my parents were filling out the paperwork to buy something or other and at that point, I promised myself that someday, when I was old enough to rent the movies on my own, I would sit down and watch all the Friday the 13th films in one massive marathon. Now that I think about it, I still haven't indulged myself in that marathon.)

When I was able to start renting horror movies, I went a little crazy. I tracked down every title I remembered sneaking glances at, which was difficult because that waterbed/video store wasn't around anymore, but we still had plenty of small video shops in Cheyenne, WY. I hit them all, and eventually starting working for one of them (it started life as a Giant Video, but eventually Blockbuster acquired it).

Some video shops didn't have the greatest selection - I used to kid that a video store's worth could be judged by how many installments of the Friday the 13th films could be found on its shelves. Even while working for Blockbuster, where I could get free rentals, I would go to the small store down the street or the place on the other side of the bridge or the one that repaired vacuum cleaners because not one store carried everything that I wanted to see. I remember tracking down the unrated cut of Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth to one wood paneled video store, bringing it home, popping into the VCR, seeing the ad for a special documentary about Clive Barker which was only available if you mailed in the receipt from the rental shop, noting that THAT DAY was the last day this offer was running, racing back to the video store, checking in the movie and then re-renting it so I could get another receipt because I had thrown the first one away somewhere between the video store and my apartment. (And I wasn't even all that put out that I had to pay for the movie again!)

I learned a few things during my time at Blockbuster; I became one of the people whose job it was to repair broken videocasettes. (This particular Blockbuster location took very seriously making sure the tapes were always repaired when possible, especially in the case of the Disney releases, instead of removing them from inventory and MAYBE replacing them, if it was even possible to do so.) This was something I remembered years later when I rented some horror movie somewhere in Bozeman, MT, that broke while it was in my possession BEFORE I had watched it. I don't remember the title, but it was something I knew none of the other video stores had, so to watch it, I had to fix it first.

Today, we've got mostly-reasonably priced DVDs and Blu-ray discs. We've got Netflix. For the most part, most horror fans today can get their hands on pretty much whatever horror movie they want. And that's AWESOME. I could finally put together that Friday the 13th marathon with little hassle and headache (save for finding the time to do such a thing).

But I still struggle because there are still movies out there that I want to see that I can't seem to find as easily as I'd like.

One of the many, MANY ways Brenda made life better for me was by adding a Region-Free DVD player to our collection of electronics resting comfortably beneath our TV. For whatever reason, some movies just don't get released here in the states, or if they are released, it's months or even years after other parts of the world have seen them. The Zombie Diaries was released in the UK before Uncle Romero started rolling on his Diary of the Dead, and because I stumbled across this title on a website somewhere, I knew about it, sought it out, let Amazon.co.uk handle some dollars-to-pounds conversion and had the film delivered. 2007's Wasting Away was screened at the Zompire Film Festival, but it still didn't have a state-side release, so if I want it, I'm going back to Europe's Amazon.co.uk. (Wasting Away will be released here in the states under the title Ah! Zombies!! soon.) The same can be said of Apocalypse of the Dead (originally titled Zone of the Dead).

I know I'm being zombie-centric (and can you blame me), but there are other genre titles - 2006's All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, for example - that have become the gems that can give those who are pursuing them that same anticipation, that same thrill, that same rush that Professor Bleak is describing.

I just sent €20 to a filmmaker in Europe. I didn't know where to go to get a euro note; I assumed any bank would do it, but my work hours don't allow for a lot of wandering from bank to bank, asking for European currency. I found a place online that would handle the exchange, but I wasn't willing to spend the $10-$30 on shipping. I eventually found someone who had one in person, made the exchange, and I tucked it into a birthday card and off it went.

I did this to get my hands on a movie I first read about on Wikipedia.

I don't know if this is quite the same as hopping from video store to video store, looking for a copy of the latest Hellraiser or (god help me) The Howling, but it's not like having a subscription to Netflix is making it easy for me to get my hands on this movie.

Or on Six Bullets.

As a collector of film scores, I stumbled across Endless Blue's score from this short film a few years ago and snatched it up. That was a few years ago, and I still listen to it fairly often. I'd LOVE to see the movie itself (there are bits of dialogue from the movie sprinkled throughout the album, which makes the fact that I haven't seen the film yet even worse!), and I've been watching Six Bullets' website (http://www.sixbulletsmovie.com/), but it hasn't been updated since 2007. I've swapped some emails recently with someone involved in the production who said they'd send me a copy, but I haven't heard back from him after I gave him my mailing address.

There are obviously resources online - some legal, some not so much - where I can find movies that haven't received a digital release of any kind. I keep my eyes out for some of the more obscure titles, foreign films, extremely limited releases, etc., and I always find myself experiencing a little rush when I find something rare, hard-to-find or even near-lost.

A few years ago, a friend told me about a movie called Siege of the Dead. It was an amateur production (directed by Chris Kaylor), it was a zombie movie . . . it was something I wanted to see. A few emails to those involved in the production led to dead ends, but then the friend who originally told me about the movie made the movie available to me.

Is it an amazing piece of movie-making? No. But is it something I enjoyed? Certainly. I'm sure part of my enjoyment comes from some maybe even sick place of knowing that this movie is somehow rare, but even taking that out of the equation, I think it holds up. (It holds up enough for me to cover it on Mail Order Zombie sometime later this year.)

Back to the original point of this blog - I think there's still that element of the quest when it comes to finding horror movies . . . if you want there to be. We just have to try a bit harder and look in places we wouldn't normally look. There's something about seeking out something like, say, Dead Bones, Olivier Beguin's short horror Western, watching it, talking about it with your friends (and maybe even eventually reviewing it on your podcast) that gives me a little charge. I'm not showing off that I found this movie that no one in town is going to find unless they go to the same website I went to, jumped through the same hoops and so on; rather, in a weird, twisted way, I feel like some sort of archaeologist digging for the obscure, the lost, the forgotten horror gems, consuming them and doing my oh-so-small part in making sure that the filmmakers' mother isn't the only person on the planet that remembers any given horror movie.

And it's fun. Digging, Googling, Friend-ing people on Facebook, sending out blind emails, and maybe even making a few phone calls - it somehow justifies the amount of time I spend into front of this computer . . . to me, anyway.

Blog'D Classic - 04/11/07

I used to maintain a LiveJournal and a different Blogger page called Blog'D. This was a posting from 04/11/07.

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Riding in the Elevator isn't Normally this Odd . . .
. . . but this afternoon, as I was heading back up from picking up some lunch, there were two . . . I don't know if they were maintenance men or what, but they weren't people I'm used to seeing around the workplace (of course, I'm on a different getting-up-way-too-early-in-the-morning schedule this week for some training). They were both wearing caps, one of them was carrying a ladder. I stepped into the elevator with my iPod plugged into my ears, listening to a podcast (I think it was Monster Squad Terrorcast), but over the voices in my ears, I could hear these two men talking to each other.

Man with Ladder: Is that necro . . . necrophilia?

Man without Ladder: No, no, no. That's with dead bodies.

Me: (not saying a damned word)

Man with Ladder: Really? Necrophilia?

Man without Ladder: Yeah.

Man with Ladder: So what is it when they choke you?

Me: (pretending my iPod is playing so loud I can't hear them)

Man without Ladder: That's not necrophilia.

Man with Ladder (placing his free hand around his own neck): Then what is it when they choke you?

The elevator doors opened, and I stepped out without contributing to the conversation, thank you very much.