DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
HALLOWEEN TODAY! But at midnight tonight in Mexico, The second of November 1, the gates of Heaven open and the spirits of all dead children are allowed to reunite with their families: for one day.

This day is Día de los Muertos: the Day of the Dead.

It's a day of celebration, sugar skulls, pan de muertos, costumes and presents.

At the stroke of midnight tomorrow, the children must return to the grave. Then, at the hour of November 2, the dead adults will reunite with their loved ones. This is a more somber day. The sugar skulls are put away. Altars to the dead will be grieved over.

Of course, you have to believe in that. Mexico has more than one culture: More than 20 in fact.

Depending on where you live in Mexico, this day is celebrated in different ways. In some both rural and cosmopolitan places in Northern Mexico, it isn't honored at all, or if it is, it's celebrated with parties, dancing, and at nightclubs.

Otherwise, in places like the USA, the Day of the Dead is the 2nd Day of Halloween. So in Houston we have the Día de los Muertos Fun Run. where we're generally Celebrating Día de los Muertos 2016.

More information at Mexico's Día de los Muertos.

MexicanSugarSkull.

Día de los Muertos Program

BOX OFFICE RETURNS OF THE DEAD
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
Romero's last three Dead movies showed he's out of ideas. He knows it and we certainly know it, which is why the fan support for the last three (LAND OF THE DEAD, DIARY OF THE DEAD, and SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD) suffered diminishing audience returns and all three bombed.

Three strikes later (four if you count BRUISER), and who wants to bet on this horse? Especially on another zombie movie?

His audience and the zombie audience are obviously still there, but the subgenre has passed him by.

George once made greatness, then made it a second and third and arguably a fourth time (counting CREEPSHOW. I love that movie).

Most of us won't be able to do it even once.

I love and respect the man's early work, but George has got nothing these days but that and our good will.

There used to be more to George than zombies (THE CRAZIES, CREEPSHOW, MONKEYSHINES) and it's time he revisited and explored that.

All of this may explain George's latest problem,

George Romero Says Nobody Will Finance His Next Zombie Movie and 'Night of the Living Dead' Wouldn't Get Made Today

SO PRETTY
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
Author Stephenie Meyer's TWILIGHT was momentary flash fluff. Its critics knew it, its stars knew it, the fans who almost immediately outgrew it must have surely guessed.

It was proof yet again that poorly written novels can wildly succeed by using an established, proven hook. Geared toward a Young Adult audience who were naturally new to the whole Vampire mythos, it was an easier sale than you might think.

Only a handful of years after the end of the movie series and its vacuous teen angst is already a joke too stale to mock anymore.

R.L. Stine's GOOSEBUMPS still gets more traction after a longer arc of time and some of his audience likely grew into Meyer's audience (though I suspect that J.K. Rowling got the lion's share of Stine's audience).

In 2015 when Stephenie Meyer released LIFE AND DEATH: A Reimagining of Twilight, featuring the same story, characters, and locations: but everyone's genders were swapped, what ravenous fans that remained were left starving (Edward became Edythe and Bella became - dear Cthulhu! - Beaufort! BEAUFORT! The Hell?). Many fans complained that they couldn't finish the book and were left crying for the promised yet still vaporai, MIDNIGHT SUN.

It was as if Meyer became openly contemptuous of the adoring audience that made her rich and was humorlessly mocking her magnum opus by throwing her committed admirers leftovers of cold fan-fic.

Still the early alt-crit short films of TWILIGHT were spawned and SO PRETTY was one of the best.

NOVEL OBSCURA
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
After a week of movies to catch up on, an interruption of Cinema Obscura.

Writer Charlie Huston's series of Joe Pitt detective novels got plenty of attention from other Horror writers, yet not so much from readers, which is a pity. His publisher Del Rey, apparently knowing the market would be small, released the whole series as paperbacks instead of hardcovers, and they did it remarkably quiet.

Despite this series of Horror novels having genuine, hardcore Horror thrills and chills, it played out like detective noir. The various main characters had a thin veneer of stereotype, but revealed depth and layers throughout the series.

Possibly the main reason this series may not have resonated on a Best Seller scale is that the first two books pulled out a hideously awkward series of last hour monologuing to explain itself.

Modern audiences, with decades of rewarding their favorite books and movies for deriding such writing, may have noted that and smirked mockingly. Huston himself stopped doing that by the third book and the series of five novels got better with each one until the grand crescendo climax - which is awesome!

Far from the surface characters found in the posturing histrionics of Hamilton's ANITA BLAKE or the tedious witlessness of Meyer's TWILIGHT, Charlie's people are as well thought out as if the writer actually knew them.

Huston's writing is flawed, but grows and improves with every novel. The stories are more than worth it, they are rewarding.

Let me tell you why,

Feo Amante/ Charlie Huston's ALREADY DEAD.

COMIC OBSCURA
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
After a week of movies to catch up on, an interruption of Cinema Obscura.

This comic was first serialized in HEAVY METAL Magazine a-way back in the 1980s. Like most Westerns, the march of time does nothing to diminish the story or characters of another bygone era. Check out the Weird Western fun of John Findley's
TEX ARCANA
Back in the late nineteen seventies and on into the nineteen eighties, there was a monthly magazine called Heavy Metal. A U.S. version of the wonderful French magazine Metal Hurlant (Screaming Metal), HM took stories from artists from around the world and translated them, with more and less success, to English. It became wildly succesful. So successful in fact, that it spawned a movie that tanked and a movie soundtrack that soared.

Then an editor was hired (for reasons still never adequately explained) who didn't like the magazine's format. He felt that the magazine should be all about music, or more specific, the particular bands he liked - and he didn't like Heavy Metal Music. Over the months, little by little, he cut back on the buying of stories, and replaced them with reviews and interviews of the most obscure hipster bands he could find. The more obscure and college radio they were, the cooler he was. He also allowed cartoons to be drawn about him and what a narcissistically fun tyrant he was. Within a very short time the magazine sank, hipster got fired, and went down blaming everyone but himself. Heavy Metal could no longer make it as a monthly and only stayed afloat as a quarterly. It was during this period, when Heavy Metal readers were leaving in droves, that some remained to hang on and finish some of the better graphic stories within. One of these was TEX ARCANA.

Continued at Feo Amante/Tex Arcana.

CINEMA OBSCURA
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
These are movies you may have heard of yet never seen.
Throughout Writer and Director Gregg Bishop's long but cinematically sparse career, his movies have been enormous hits with critics and fans alike. Unfortunately his distributors have buried him in the worst cases of missed opportunity I've ever seen.

So don't miss your opportunity to see one of Gregg and crew's best,
DANCE OF THE DEAD
Finally! A clear demarcation line has been set.

In 1985, a wild and balls to the wall movie came out called RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD. These weren't your stumbling zombies, these undead. As envisioned by writers John A. Russo (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, MIDNIGHT, HEARTSTOPPER), Rudy Ricci, and Russell Striener, and wrote for the screen and directed by Dan O'Bannon (ALIEN, DEAD AND BURIED, HEAVY METAL, LIFEFORCE, TOTAL RECALL, BLEEDERS), these dead could talk, plan, and strategize. What's more, they were fast. When one of these zombies went after you, they didn't fool around. This movie was popular both in theaters and video thanks in no small part to a truly rocking soundtrack and a sense of humor. Subsequent sequels were okay up to RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3. After that the rest were excrement. It looked like that kind of fun zombie movie - not just comedic and gory, but actually fun - would never return.

So glad I was wrong about that!

Continued at Feo Amante/Dance of the Dead.

CINEMA OBSCURA
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
These are movies you may have heard of yet never seen.
I've said that Writer, Director, and Producer Frank Henenlotter makes Exploitative cheese and sleezeball horror movies, true: yet his stand out from the morass of decades of crap because there is a powerful, creative thread of genuine art running through them all. Today's movie is the champagne of low-class and this is why,

BRAIN DAMAGE
An old man comes home tired and dejected, unlike his wife who is quite enthusiastic. Their favorite butcher is out of business and he had to go to a new place to get their "cuts". They aren't as good as what they're used to getting, they're more expensive and smaller.

The old lady doesn't care. She unwraps the calf brains and practically giggles in delight as she takes them to the bathroom, exclaiming how excited Aylmer will be.

Then she screams and drops the plate of brains. The bathtub is full of water but otherwise empty. "He's gone!" She wails like a mother losing a child. The tired old man is suddenly full of energy as both of them tear apart their apartment, searching for Aylmer.

Well who the hell is Aylmer and why would he be so excited about raw calf brains?

Continued at Feo Amante/Brain Damage.

QUICK BITES
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
Then all the Cenobites broke into song!

"Take... On... Meee..."
*Take! On! Me!*

Yes, it's the infamous lost HELLBOUND: THE MUSICAL where, after a drug and alcohol fueled weekend that nobody wants to remember, the entire movie was shot in a non-stop 36 hour song and dance routine culled from trendy pop hits of the period!

It explains the unaccounted for 40 rolls of film that New World Pictures charged back to Film Futures.

Okay, that's not what this exclusive from Rue Morgue is about (many Horror sites were having "exclusives" on this even while their origin material - a newly released BLU-RAY from Arrow Video - was the same), but it's HELLRAISER, it was last year today, it's October, and the n00bs need to know about it.

Story at Rue-Morgue.

ALSO

Today is Clive Barker's birthday. So there is that.

CINEMA OBSCURA
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
These are movies you may have heard of yet never seen.
Actor Stephen Dorff began his career as a leading man, as a child actor in THE GATE. His career has been all over the place from studio hits (BLADE) to a lot of Independents made with various quixotic talents like John Waters (CECIL B. DEMENTED). During this time, he stumbled into securing his place as an A-List actor outside of the U.S. but throughout the International cinema market.
This brilliant movie is one of those.
BOTCHED
Man, owing a debt to the mob is no picnic: seriously, it's no damn picnic. And I know exactly what I'm talking about here, because I've been to a LOT of picnics!

Ritchie (Stephen Dorff: BLADE, CECIL B. DEMENTED, FEAR DOTCOM, ALONE IN THE DARK) owes a debt to a Russian mobster, Mr. Groznyi (Sean Pertwee: EVENT HORIZON, DOG SOLDIERS, EQUILIBRIUM), so he steals some diamonds as part of an arranged heist. Unfortunately, Ritchie is the only one worth a damn as the boss hired a chuckle-headed numbskull to drive the get-away car. One car accident and two dead henchmen later, Ritchie remains in debt to Mr. Groznyi who is too pussy to accept the blame for saddling Ritchie with incompetents. So Ritchie has to pull off another job to clear his debt. This one is even tougher. It's also his last chance with Mr. Groznyi. Blow this and Ritchie is a dead man. Ritchie has to steal a gold, bejeweled cross; a priceless artifact that once belonged to the first Czar of Russia. The cross now belongs to a family which owns the largest multimedia company in the world, and they live in the penthouse suite of a massive high security building in Russia.

Once again Ritchie is saddled with two Mr. Groznyi supplied incompetents. The hot-headed, loose-cannon Peter (Jamie Foreman: SLEEPY HOLLOW) and his halfwit brother Yuri (Russell Smith: THE ESCAPIST).

Continued at Feo Amante/Botched.

CINEMA OBSCURA
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
These are movies you may have heard of yet never seen.
Today's has both notoriety and popularity, yet despite so much Stalk has been watched by few.
Today's Obscura came courtesy of Director Kinji Fukasaku (THE GREEN SLIME) who, after a career of making goofy crap, stunningly hit this home run right out of the park.
BATTLE ROYALE
I've been holding off on reviewing this movie for a long time. We do that here if the movie isn't available world wide and this movie is probably the most controversial film of the 21st century. For the record it is not actually banned in the United States, it just never found a distributor, despite being one of the most popular movies on the planet.

While greater movies from Japan (RINGU, THE EYE, DARK WATER) and lesser movies (DARK WATER - American, JU-ON / THE GRUDGE) have been released or remade for American audiences, no one is willing to touch BATTLE ROYALE: SURVIVAL PROGRAM for American release. All pretenders to the throne of hard core Horror in the last seven years may bow before BATTLE ROYALE. It doesn't have the organs, dismemberment, and lingering brutality of SAW, WOLF'S CREEK, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, HOSTEL, or THE HILLS HAVE EYES (2006), but it has every one of those and more beat by sheer energy, story, characters and a breathless pace that slows but never pauses or stops.

BATTLE ROYALE doesn't waste time with self-indulgent bad guys chortling over the pieces of flesh they are torturing off of their victims. It doesn't visually drone on and on over scenes of rubber dismembered body parts. Watch this with a group of friends and count how many times you hear the hushed or whispered "Da-mn!" or "Holy shit!"

Continued at Feo Amante/Battle Royale.

CINEMA OBSCURA
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
These are movies you may have heard of yet never seen.
Today's Obscura came courtesy of Director Eduardo Sánchez (THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT).
ALTERED
Beneath a starry sky, deep in the dark woods, something runs past as a white van comes plowing up. Three desperate men jump out, one of them harnessed with a homemade harpoon. They're all on edge and scared. There's the harpoon totin' hot-head, Cody (Paul McCarthy-Boyington), shotgun totin' Duke (Brad William Henke: THE FAN [1996], THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR, THE ZODIAC, HOLLYWOODLAND) and Otis (Michael C. Williams: THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, THE OBJECTIVE). The scene draws you in as these three rednecks insist on hunting something that clearly scares them nearly witless. You can't help but wonder what spurs such bravery in the face of a nearly all-consuming fear.

Soon the boys have captured their prize. The success they didn't expect leads to consequences they didn't consider. Now that they have the creature, what to do with it? Back in the van, they're pretty sure they haven't killed it, though there is nothing Cody would love more than to make sure. Otis, the driver, is growing more terrified by the second that the thing will come around and kill them all - or worse. It's up to Duke, the biggest of the three to make a decision, and he decides to go to Wyatt's place and let him decide. The decision infuriates Cody, but Otis just wants the damn thing out of his van and makes tracks to Wyatt.

Continued at Feo Amante/Altered.

CINEMA OBSCURA
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
These are movies you may have heard of yet never seen.
Today's Obscura came courtesy of Director Ben Rock (THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT).
ALIEN RAIDERS
Whoa! Just what is up with these people? They've got cameras and boxes of tape cassettes; they are in a dark van and all wired up and nervous. Some guy they call Spooky (Phillip Newby: AMERICAN ZOMBIE) is questioned. They want to know if this is the place and Spooky says, "I think so."

That doesn't sit well with these folks and then we see they also have guns.

Spooky corrects himself and says he is sure that this must be the place. His compatriots don't like that either. Spooky has to be positive, yet he just can't bring himself to say that.

The van pulls up outside a rural grocery store in the small Arizona town of Buck Lake. It's almost midnight: the Hastings grocery store is large but not city large and the folks inside are few.

Continued at Feo Amante/Alien Raiders.

CINEMA OBSCURA
By E.C. McMullen Jr.
These are movies you may have heard of yet never seen.
Today's Obscura came courtesy of Director Nacho Cerdà and co-writer, Richard Stanley (HARDWARE).
THE ABANDONED
American audiences are accustomed to Hollywood movies about an American abroad who runs into Merry Mishaps of the dark kind. Perhaps that's why, for THE ABANDONED, Spanish filmmakers decided to make a movie about an American traveler too. Amazingly enough, they don't paint the American tourist in the same broad cartoonish colors that Hollywood has been portraying them, lo these last 25 or so years. Then again, I was intrigued to see that Spain and Russia, at least in this movie, have a better understanding of just who an American is, than their clumsy Hollywood counterparts.

The movie begins with narration, and while I usually despise opening narration, this time, in a young girl's voice, we hear the reason for a journey that isn't exposition, and would have taken far too long to show. The narration is almost lyrical, and very brief, speaking over vistas of forests and mountains. It sets the tone for what is to come, without explaining why. In short, it draws you in.

Continued at Feo Amante/The Abandoned.

NOW PLAYING IN FEO AMANTE THEATER
Lee Hardcastle's goofball
PINGU's THE THING

You know, John Carpenter may have been inspired by his cinematic hero, Howard Hawks' THE THING, but I'd argue that John's remake is significantly more influential and looks to remain that way.

For evidence I offer Exhibit A: Lee Hardcastle's PINGU'S THE THING. Like YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, the jokes chiefly work if you have already watched Carpenter's movie. Hardcastle just assumes that you have, as a foregone conclusion.

But Lee didn't stop with the PINGU. It's like Lee is obsessed with Carpenter's masterpiece.

Go to NOW SHOWING!