Fright Film Spectacular is now Horror Parade!

As promised, we have expanded beyond movies to cover all things horror, including books, television, games, conventions, etc. To that end Fright Film Spectacular is now known as Horror Parade. Bookmark horrorparade.blogspot.com and follow @horrorparade on Twitter for news and commentary from the horror universe.

Check back soon for new content.

Five things to know about Netherworld Haunted House

Yeah, I used one of those stupid things-to-know web headlines, and it goes against my grain as a journalist, but study after study says that's what people click on, so call me assimilated.

Visited Netherworld in Norcross, Ga., tonight with my teenage daughter. It's still as impressive as ever, and anyone who is even remotely interested in haunted houses or horror (or fun) should consider a trip. But get there quick. It's only open a couple of more weeks. Now, without further adieu, five things:

1) It's the best haunted house in America. Or so Netherworld claims. I haven't been to one that even comes close, but I can't imagine any haunt being much better. If there is one that tops it, it's probably in minute degrees, like saying the second glass from a bottle of Lafite Rothschild was better than the first. The effects, costumes and design are all movie quality, or at least close. Tons of jump scares, creep factor, noise and atmosphere, and it's a long walk through it. You get your money's worth. But speaking of long walks ...

2) Be prepared to wait. Netherworld gets more crowded the closer it gets to Halloween. Traffic is heavy and parking sucks. If you don't get there very early, expect to park in a gypsy lot for $10 a good walk away. The lines for tickets and to get into the haunts are long and get longer as the night goes on. (Halloween night will be ridiculous.) The staff tries very hard to keep the lines moving, but it's like herding cattle through chutes.

Once you're in a haunt, you're pretty much at the mercy of the people in front of you. One slowpoke or fraidy cat who freezes up backs up the line like an old lady in the fast lane on the freeway. The last time I went they actually broke people up into groups and put gaps between them. They still try to do that, but it's a lost cause. Just too many people.

The good news is, the show starts in the parking lot, so you won't get bored. Fully costumed monsters are on the prowl, both scaring people and gladly posing for pictures. Plus you can get your picture made in a coffin or sitting in an electric chair.

3) For gorehounds, Vault 13 is better than The Rotting. Netherworld is actually two haunted houses. The main haunt, The Rotting, is the longer of the two and the more elaborate. It is full of monsters, bugs, rats, old witches, skeletons -- most of your standard Halloween fare. And I got genuinely startled several times. A couple of things they do well are misdirection and hiding the live actors. One second, you're watching some automaton ghost shaking and laughing maniacally at your feet and Boom! a monster jumps out from above your head. And sometimes they even brush against you or follow you for several feet.

But the second haunt, Vault 13 Unearthed, is the one for grueheads. It's like a live-action version of a first-person shooter horror video game. Imagine actually walking through a level of Resident Evil or Doom. It's gory and disturbing. I spent a big portion of my time in The Rotting laughing at my daughter. When I had to walk through a Vault 13 hallway filled with bloody human heads on ropes I was genuinely creeped out. (You have to push your way through this and several other hallways full of body parts and and skinned corpses.) The effects are amazingly bloody and nightmarish, and the haunt includes both live actors and automated monsters that are reminiscent of the Zombots from Frankenstein's Army. Vault 13 is worth the extra few dollars and definitely not for young children.

Speaking of, if you're going to take a kid younger than 14, The Rotting is the one for them, although I don't recommend taking a kid younger than 14 to either of them. (Netherworld says the minimum age is 5, but only take a kid that young if he's already exhibited signs of being a sociopath or you know he's got years of therapy ahead of him anyway.)

4) Be prepared for uncomfortable situations. That's the best way I can put it. Wear comfortable shoes, shorts and a T-shirt you don't mind getting wet and sweaty. It can be hot inside, especially when the line backs up, and some sections spray mists of water meant to simulate goo or blood. Some turns are very tight, and some halls can be claustrophobic. You don't need to run, but navigating swaying bridges, shaking floors and moving walls (including one section that's basically a Fat Man's Squeeze) will be a lot easier in comfortable clothes. If you can't take strobe lights, extremely low light and optical illusions, you should probably stay away.

Finally, if you go through Vault 13, you will get wet. The end of Vault 13 includes a foam room. You have the option of bypassing it, but if you've gone that far, don't be a wuss. Go through the foam room. Just know, it's not easy to go through. It starts with bright white flashing light and heavy smoke that transitions to the actual foam. The foam is thick, impossible to see through, and it can be hard to breathe with all the smoke from dry ice. All you can do is move forward and hope there's nothing waiting for you on the other side. (Mwahahahahahaha!)

5) It's worth it. Really, really worth it. $35 on busy nights (the price changes depending on the night of the week) and worth every penny. You're not going to get live-action horror entertainment of this quality anywhere else. And you can only watch so many horror movies and episodes of The Walking Dead before you get the itch to ride the horror roller coaster yourself. Get up off your butt and go fight the monsters at Netherworld.

Five cool things about Night of the Creeps

Night of the Creeps is excellent mid-1980s B movie cheese about parasites from outer space turning college kids into walking corpses. But unlike many of its schlocky, silly and often downright pathetic B-list brethren from the decade, Night of the Creeps is actually entertaining. Make no mistake: It's a B movie. But its mix of humor and gore -- with one or two genuinely scary moments to boot -- make it worth watching. The jokes are funny and the effects are great -- for 1986 anyway. It's no accident that it became a cult classic.Here are five reasons why:

5) The Aliens.

When you first see these guys running through the spaceship (obviously little people dressed in suits) you want to laugh. But when you see them up close, they're kind of scary -- in a cuddly sort of way.

4) The Bradster.

Any time you see a guy who looks like this in an 80s movie ( i.e. Cole from Bachelor Party, Johnny from Karate Kid) you know you've got a Grade-A asshole on your hands, and The Bradster doesn't disappoint. Which makes it all the better when he gets it.

3) Sorority girl with a flame thrower/Busload of dead frat guys

I mean, who hasn't wanted to kill a whole busload of fratboys at one time or another?

2) Robert Kurtzman.

Kurtzman worked on the effects on this movie and played one of the creeps. Seems to have worked out well for him, as he is partners now with Greg Nicotero, who does a little show called The Walking Dead.

1) Tom Atkins.

Tom Atkins is a badass. He was in Creepshow, My Bloody Valentine, Lethal Weapon and Walker, Texas Ranger for chrissakes. He fights ghosts in The Fog. He fights psychopathic child killers in Halloween III, Season of the Witch. And in Night of the Creeps he delivers one-liner after magnificent one-liner, including the movie's tagline "The good news is your dates are here. The bad news is, they're dead," and his catchphrase, "Thrill me," all while smoking, drinking whiskey and blowing bad guy's heads off with shotguns. To paraphrase a line I once read about Chuck Yeager, the clanking you hear when Tom Atkins walks in a room is the sound of his giant brass balls banging together.

Available on Netflix streaming. 4 stars.

Bay of Blood - Bodies! Boobies! Bava!

My introduction to Mario Bava was Baron Blood on VHS many moons ago. It was fitting, I guess, that the godfather of giallo horror was my introduction to it.

I like the style of giallo (Italian for "yellow," a subgenre of horror/thriller films named for the yellow covers that adorned novels of the same ilk.) Giallo movies are just nice to look at. It doesn't matter whether you're looking at the Italian countryside or a bloody murder scene, it'll be beautifully photographed.

European horror in general often has a sophistication to it not present in most American films, even when offering up the requisite nude blondes for sacrifice to the black-gloved killer. Bava (like another of my favorite giallo directors, Dario Argento) pays meticulous attention to set design, lighting and the role of the camera. You just feel like you're getting your money's worth out of the cinematography in a good giallo.

Bay of Blood (known by many other names, including Twitch of the Death Nerve, Carnage and Chain Reaction) was a groundbreaking movie in a lot of ways despite not being a critical success. Bava had already invented the giallo genre, which normally involves the aforementioned stylish camera work and a bloody murder mystery. With Bay of Blood, he helped usher in the modern slasher film. What Hitchcock started in 1960's Psycho, Bava put into overdrive with Bay of Blood.

Blood is a twisty whodunit that opens with the murder of a countess, an act which leads to an ever-increasing pile of more-and-more gruesomely murdered bodies. The gore in the film was (and is) unsettling, and made the ultimate reveal of who was behind the killings even more shocking.

Many of the murder scenes from Bay of Blood would later be imitated (including being outright ripped off in the Friday the 13th franchise) by countless American slasher flicks. And in addition to influencing the amount of blood, Bava also brought us the young-people-up-to-no-good theme along with what is now one of horror's most over-indulged-in cliches, the hot chick going skinny dipping only to discover something horrific or to be killed in a horrific manner - or both.

Bay of Blood as a story is lacking. That's actually an oxymoron - there's too much story. There are too many twists that at best make the plot hard to follow, and the end - meant to shock - left me scratching my head a bit. But if you want to see one of the movies that led to the classic American slashers of the 80s, you should take a trip to Italy's Bay of Blood.

Bay of Blood is available for streaming on Netflix. 

3.5 stars.

A note on the trailer: Plenty are available. One has a long ad and another gives too much away. This one is done in monotone colors, and thus doesn't really show the good cinematography, but it sort of camouflages the spoilers and doesn't have ads. 

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 40th anniversary: Beer Goggles for Leatherface

Tobe Hooper's low-budget horror classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre turns 40 this year.

Fans know all the trivia, the behind-the-scenes stories, and have debated the film's themes, value, etc. for four decades. I've seen it 5 or 6 times myself, including a viewing for the first Fright Film Spectacular when I did it via Twitter (check out @TheBulldogNate for those tweets from two years ago). I'm not sure what else I could add to the knowledge base of the movie, other than to describe what it was like to see it on the big screen for the first time this past Saturday.

I got to see it in Athens, Ga., which is my favorite city in the world. I watched it at Cine, which is a bar/theater a block over from the world-famous 40 Watt Club. Cine is hosting what it calls Schlocktoberfest, which is sort of a misnomer given the classics on the schedule (The Exorcist, Halloween, An American Werewolf in London, etc.).

The theater held a Chainsaw Chili Cookoff and Dog of the Dead (as in hot dog) contest in conjunction with Creature Comforts Microbrewery. For $13 you got a glass, beer tasting tickets (with very generous pours), and a tasting spoon for the chili.

I got my money's worth. I had five different kinds of beer (the Reclaimed Rye is the best) and several types of chili (The Silence of the Lambs made with lamb's tongue, fava beans and chianti was by far the best). By the time I made it across the street to Cine, I was in fine form.

Cine was offering two specials in honor of TCM: $3 Lone Star beers and a drink called Grandpa's Hammer, which was basically a spicy Bloody Mary with a Lone Star in it.

I had one of each. Then took a glass of Scotch (Glenmorangie Nectar d'or, which is worth every bit of the $7.50 they charged for it) into the theater. By then I was really ready for some mayhem.

The film was introduced by a University of Georgia professor who teaches a class on horror films, which I must audit someday. He did a decent job of giving a 6- or 8-minute primer for the audience. And then the movie began.

Now if you've seen it, you remember it, and there's no point in rehashing the plot. But I will point out three things I think you should know.

One, this was supposed to be the 40th anniversary digital remastered print. I noticed no difference in image quality, which doesn't necessarily bother me. When I watch exploitation horror and grindhouse from the 1970s I sort of expect it to look cruddy. It's part of the experience. I don't know if it looks the same way on Blu-ray, but I'd probably be a little disappointed if it does.

Two, you haven't heard the saw until you've heard it in a theater. I've heard the saw on VHS and DVD, through tinny TV speakers and decent surround sound, but until you hear it on a commercial quality sound system, you haven't really heard it, nor understood just how terrifying it can be. It takes you from simply watching Sally run from Leatherface to running with her. It's a lot more effective.

Finally, the film still holds up, mainly because it descends into madness so quickly. It's a lean 84 minutes, but it gets the job done. Today's directors who can't seem to make a feature-length movie that clocks in at less than 2.5 hours could take a lesson from Hooper. From the opening voice-over by John Larroquette and camera-flash images of the posed corpses in the graveyard, you are creeped out. By the time Leatherface does his chainsaw ballet in the road at sunrise, you're ready to get the hell out of there.

Even more so if you've been to a beer tasting beforehand.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre remains a five-star classic.

The Return of Fright Film Spectacular

This blog was going to be a regular thing. And then it wasn't. There were a lot of reasons. Brain surgery. Divorce. Drug addiction (not mine). The list goes on, but for awhile I had no interest in blogging about horror movies.

But now, here we are in the scariest month, and it's time for some frightening films. I'll try to watch as many as I can to continue the Fright Film Spectacular tradition, but I'm not promising anything. Life is still in the way, as the saying goes.

Now, formalities out of the way, we start October with a movie I discovered on Netflix streaming: Jug Face.

Jug Face is about backwoods weirdos and their god, which lives at the bottom of a muddy pit. As long as the rednecks feed "The Pit" with a little human sacrifice occasionally, the pit will heal them when they're sick. That's the pact they made since they "survived the pox," as one character says.

Who gets given to The Pit is revealed by The Potter, played by Sean Bridges, who you may know better as Johnny from Deadwood. When The Potter makes a clay jug with your face on it, you get given to the pit. That's how it works in backwoods blood sacrifice land.

But some folks don't want to be given to The Pit, including our heroine, Ada (Lauren Ashley Carter), who happens to be pregnant with (drum roll to introduce cliched Southern stereotype) ...
her brother's baby! And, of course, mayhem ensues when Ada finds a jug with her face on it and hides it so the backwoods gods don't get their preferred victim.

The film also stars Sean Young, who played another redneck mama in Poor White Trash, which is a hysterical comedy. Young is less loving Southern mom and more sadistic matriarch in this flick though.

The movie is weird and disturbing. It has a high yuck factor (which I guess is good if you're into that sort of thing), and the gore effects are good, thanks to Robert Kurtzman, who has done effects on everything from Army of Darkness to Pulp Fiction to Texas Chainsaw 3D. It's not for the squeamish. Torture, miscarriage, dismemberment -- it's all there for the gorehounds.

It gets minor points off for being the 3,450th movie to perpetuate Southern stereotypes like inbreeding and possum eatin', and it gets major points off for one of my biggest pet peeves -- uneven sound. I can not stand having to turn it way up to hear dialogue and then way down to keep from waking the neighbors during intense scenes.  How this is still a problem with all the technology that exists in the 21st century is beyond me.

All in all, I wasn't mad that I watched the movie, but I wasn't necessarily all that happy either. Jug Face is strange, but it's nothing special.

2.5 out of 5 stars.

I won't let KISS bandmembers tarnish my memories

This entry is not about horror fims. But many horror fans I know are also fans of KISS, so I figure this is as good a place as any to get this off my chest.
KISS — the band — is finally going in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The band members, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, Peter Criss and Paul Stanley — have done everything they can to screw it up for everybody.
Between social media, That Metal Show, radio call-ins, press releases, books and Rolling Stone, we fans — many of us fans for decades — have gotten a new look inside the band we love.
And we hate it.
We now see how the sausage is made in this band. And we don't like what we see, because it is not what we remember or believe in.
We're nostalgic for our own childhoods and wanted to relive them one more time at the induction ceremony.
We wanted our fire breathing, blood spitting, smoking guitars, smashing guitars and rising drum kits — and the men behind them — to be the same as what we saw when we opened the gatefold of Alive II. When we were 12-14 years old (or in my case, 6) we thought the characters and the men playing them were one in the same on the same mission. And maybe they were on the same mission at one time. But they aren't anymore.
We're not going to get that trip down memory lane because behind these characters, these personas that we all believed in as kids, are flawed human beings.
The Spaceman, with his rocket-shooting, smoking guitars and blistering solos will always be my guitar hero.
The real Ace Frehley is a spaced out ex-coke fiend who thinks aliens abducted him.
The Demon that was plastered on my bedroom wall (briefly, until my mom made me take it down) with blood dripping down his chin and breathing fire will always scare the crap out of me.
The real Gene Simmons is an admitted friendless, greedy jerk.
The Starchild with that big mane of hair and the mirrored guitar will always stand tall in the pantheon of cool, with the Fonz, James Bond and Dirty Harry.
In real life, Paul Stanley is the Man Behind the Curtain, a string-puller who seemingly can't stand any of the people he's worked with, but tolerates them to keep the rock and roll money and fame machine moving forward.
The Catman will always live in a thunderous, never-ending drum solo showered in smoke and confetti.
The real Peter Criss may be the only one who is close to a genuine person, and it's sad that he isn't going to get one last hurrah. I, too, was moved by his speech on That Metal Show. But he is also the guy who hung Ace out to dry in his book and is so paranoid he is afraid to answer his own door.
And whatever they appear to be to us, they apparently appear 1,000 time worse to each other:
— Sweet guy Peter didn't merit a phone call from his bandmates when he had cancer?
— Reality star Gene can't get his "brother" Paul to stay at his house for more than a few minutes because Paul thinks Gene lives a "fake" life?
— Paul is so ruthless he'll "cut your throat?" And says people who don't realize who the real boss of KISS is "don't know the band"?
— Ace says Peter was his best friend in the band but then voted him out? (Or didn't, depending on what day you ask him.)
These guys are goofballs. Idiots. Assholes. Between the four of them they have maybe two brains and half a heart.
But the four of them together circa 1977 — or 2000 — reach a level of awesome that's rarely been achieved by any of my other childhood idols. I've seen KISS in various lineups a half dozen times. I've seen the original four together once, and that show still blows away any other. Because those four together, in makeup, on stage, create something special.
So that's how I'm going to remember them — on stage. On my turntable. On my bedroom wall. I don't want to hear about, read about or otherwise discuss them, the Hall of Fame or any of their off-stage drama any more. Because I don't need those four guys. I don't need to be a part of their lives. I don't need them.
But I do need KISS. Sometimes I need to be a kid again. Sometimes I need to rock-and-roll my troubles away. And as long as I can put on a KISS record I can do that. Listening to the music is a must.
Listening to the nonsense is optional.
Some said KISS stood for Knights in Satan's Service. Others said it was the old adage Keep It Simple, Stupid.
For me, from now on, it will be Keep It Separate, Stupid — love the music, love the nostalgia, and the hell with the rest of it.