This week’s pick was suggested by Bob Vardeman and is in honor of my dad, who I used to drag to all kinds of cheesy movies back in the 70s — but he was always more than happy when Caroline Munro would turn up in a flick, and who can blame him? The lovely Ms. Munro livened up many a …
Geronimo Jackson
The mysterious Geronimo Jackson was described this way on the ABC TV store: Keith Strutter formed the rock band Geronimo Jackson in the mid 60s in Detroit. Gathering a solid reputation for their sold-out string of performances in local burlesque clubs, the band packed up their gear and made way to the Excelsior District of San Francisco. From there they …
Dreamcatcher (2003)
I tend not to review big-studio flicks, not because I don’t enjoy them but because everybody knows about ’em, and I like to point people at stuff they might not ordinarily see. But in the case of Dreamcatcher, I think that’s kinda what I’m doing. I was poking around on Netflix streaming the other day, in the mood to watch …
Classic Rock Sunday – The Ramones
There’s no way in hell I’m a good enough writer to do justice to this week’s pick — hearing Sheena is a Punk Rocker for the first time quite literally changed my life, and before that little 2-minute, 49-second monster was over, The Ramones had become my favorite band. I went from being a schlubby, dorky, introverted nerd to being …
RIP Tura Satana
I just heard the sad news that Tura Satana — “Varla” in Russ Meyer’s unbelievably awesome Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) has died. Faster, Pussycat was one of those movies that — at the time I learned of it — was almost impossible to see, without buying it on VHS from Russ Meyer himself. John Waters had famously said about …
My secret shame: Hanson
I’m sneaking this post in on a Friday night when Scott is stranded in his New Mexico cottage, paralyzed by the sub-zero weather and a lack of heat due to a natural gas outage. I figure if he can proclaim his bold new love for Casper Van Dien I can get all gay for Hanson. As I’m sure everyone knows, …
John Jos. Miller’s CREATURE FEATURE
PULP COVER FRIDAY GOES HARD BOILED! I thought I’d like to take a look at the detective pulps this time around, but, Jesus, there’s a million of them. To narrow the focus, I decided to concentrate on the granddaddy of them all, THE BLACK MASK, which for some reason in the early 1940s lost its “The” and simply became BLACK …
John Jos. Miller’s CREATURE FEATURE
MY MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER No, I’m not turning Cheese Magnet into READER’S DIGEST, but in honor of the Kindle and Nook release of A CAREER GUIDE TO YOUR JOB IN HELL, I thought I would post an excerpt of my mostly true story “The Day of the Gerbils,” which is about the trials of working at the rat farm. The part excerpted concerns …
Cool Actor of the Week – Scott Paulin
Our pick for Cool Actor of the Week this time around is the living embodiment of the term “working actor.” Since Scott Paulin‘s first credited role in the TV movie Vampire in 1979, he’s never slowed down. Born in Steubenville, Ohio in 1950, Paulin is one of those remarkable actors who can bounce from low-budget films to big-budget blockbusters without …
John Jos. Miller’s CREATURE FEATURE
Snowpocalypse Strikes Albuquerque! Three Inches Of Snow Brings City to Its Knees! Everyone Taking Day Off, So I Am Too! It’s true. I swore to myself that I was going to get the next movie review up, but to hell with it. Gail didn’t have to work today (it’s the first time they’ve closed the libraries in the 12 years …
The CBS Late Movie
I was nosing around YouTube tonight and came across some clips from the old CBS Late Movie, and talk about getting a rush of nostalgia. When I was a kid I used to watch the CBS Late Movie all the time — it’s probably part of the reason I was such a lousy student, I was constantly staying up too …
Vigilante Force (1976)
Even though I lived through it (and saw a lot of the movies), it’s still hard to believe there was a time when Jan-Michael Vincent was one of the biggest movie stars around. When I was nine, my parents and I were camping outside of Telluride, CO (back before the hippies, then the yuppies, discovered the place). We went into …
Classic Rock Sunday – The Cars
As with a lot of bands in the 1970s, I first saw The Cars on either The Midnight Special or Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, I’m not sure which. At that point, they weren’t really getting much airplay on Albuquerque radio but I flipped out over ’em when I heard them. For one thing, I was always happy to see a …
Tenpole Tudor
Tenpole Tudor were a group of British morons that somehow managed to form a sort of punk band back in the 70’s. I say sort of punk because while they held to the punk ethos of not having any actual talent, they weren’t really angry or political. All of their songs were basically drunken shout-alongs with catchy choruses, big hooks …