Today rather than feature a band we’re going to focus on just one song: Do Ya, most famously recorded by Electric Light Orchestra and covered by many, many others. The story of Do Ya goes back far earlier than ELO, however. The Move were an English band that formed in 1965 and found quite a bit of success in England …
The First Cheese Magnet Live-Tweeting Event!
Okay, that header might be the weirdest sentence I’ve ever written, but these are the times we live in. Anyway — tonight, April 1 at 9:00 PM Pacific time, Tanzi and I are gonna live-Tweet our viewing of the drive-in classic Van Nuys Blvd. I’ll be on my personal Twitter account (@ScottPhillipsNM) and Tanzi will be on the Cheese Magnet …
John Jos. Miller’s CREATURE FEATURES
PULP COVER FRIDAY PRESENTS THE SHUDDER PULPS! Popular Fiction launched TERROR TALES in 1934 and added its sister zine HORROR STORIES in 1935, originating what has become known as the Shudder Pulps genre. And I use the word “sister” advisedly, since the covers of every single issue of both mags presented distressed damsels depicted in a manner that can only …
Free Screening of DRIVE Saturday, April 2
The fine folks behind the Albuquerque Comic Expo are hosting a free screening of the director’s cut of Drive (1997) this Saturday, April 2, 2011, at 8:00 PM at Active Imagination in Albuquerque. Drive was directed by Steve Wang, written by me, and stars Mark Dacascos, Kadeem Hardison and Brittany Murphy. Kung Fu Cinema recently named the flick “The Best …
Cool Actors of the Week – Vincent Ventresca & Paul Ben-Victor
Because I recently re-discovered my love for the SyFy (back then it was still Sci-Fi) Channel’s The Invisible Man, I’m giving you guys a Cool Actor two-fer this time around. And while Vincent Ventresca and Paul Ben-Victor have both done plenty of excellent work separately, I’m gonna focus on their work on I-Man — because, much like Hope and Crosby, …
John Jos. Miller’s CREATURE FEATURES
STORIES FROM MY iPOD I had to make an emergency run up to Santa Fe to grab some signed books, so this is woefully late and probably somewhat curtailed, but I hope you enjoy it all anyway. I like story songs probably better than any other kind, so here’s three of them with disparate but interesting origins. The first is …
The Washing Machine (1993)
I’m way behind as usual, so here’s a review from my book Unsafe On Any Screen to keep the cheese a-flowin’. Italian director Ruggero Deodato (best known for the excruciating-to-watch classic Cannibal Holocaust) leaves off the disembowelment (well, mostly) and instead serves up a trio of nutty — and potentially murderous — women who like to get naked a whole …
Classic Rock Sunday: Lester Bangs
This week we’re not looking at a musician (although he had a couple of bands of his own) – instead we’re taking a look at the man who, I think it’s safe to say, turned rock criticism into a form of literature. Lester Bangs was name-checked in songs by REM and The Ramones and portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in …
Famous Monsters Saturday
Since I started scanning my own collection for these, I figured I might as well start posting front and back covers from each issue. Here’s the 1972 Fear Book.
John Jos. Miller’s CREATURE FEATURES
PULP COVER FRIDAY This time we’re going with an all-creature Pulp Cover Friday — all alien creature! It didn’t take long for bizarre-looking aliens to become a staple of science fiction pulp magazine covers. They were all over the place by the early 1930s, menacing humans, and each other, with their various tentacles, claws, death rays, and what have you. …
Movie Review: Phenomena
My first encounter with Dario Argento was when I saw a VHS box for Creepers on the shelves of my local video store in 1986. I recognized Jennifer Connelly as the cute girl from Labyrinth so I figured I’d give it a shot. I didn’t know it at the time but Creepers was the severely edited American release of Argento’s …
Cool Actor of the Week: Vincent Price
I can’t say when I first became aware of Vincent Price. He was a presence in my life from the very beginning. Horror movies, cartoon voice overs, toy commercials, TV specials, Hollywood Squares, he was everywhere. He was more than just an actor, he was also an art collector, gourmand and philanthropist. I can’t possibly do justice to the man …
John Jos. Miller’s CREATURE FEATURES
HOUND ROUND THREE: THE ODDBALL HOLMESES Herewith the long anticipated clash of Max Headroom (Matt Frewer) and Dr. Who (Tom Baker) as rival Sherlock Holmes. This is really an honest comparison, since both films are TV movies. The Frewer version was made by Canadian television (2000), the Baker by the BBC (1982). Let’s get ready to rumble! 1: Sherlock Holmes: …
Classic Rock Sunday: Tommy James
In 1963 a young Tommy James and his band The Shondells cut four singles for a local record lable in their home town of Niles, MI. One song, Hanky Panky, was a local hit but the record label didn’t have the resources to promote it. After their career fizzled out The Shondells broke up and Tommy James got a job …