Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Halloween Post #3: Family Movie Night

I love crappy old horror films. Recently I've watched House of Wax, The Frozen Ghost, & The Blob, but to top them all, Holly introduced me to Nightmare Sinema a few weeks ago. Every Saturday night at midnight they show an old horror flick hosted by a skeleton puppet & a dude in a werewolf costume... it's pretty fantastic. I've recorded a few & watched them w/ the kids; we saw King Kong vs. Godzilla a few weeks ago & then this week we watched Mad Monster Party, a Rankin/Bass stop motion thing from 1969 which features the voice talents of one Mr. Boris Karloff as Baron Boris von Frankenstien, president of some sort of international federation of evil who plans to retire & leave all his stuff to his nephew after he hosts one last party w/ Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolfman, Dr. Jeckle, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Igor & some super cute red-headed puppet chick... oh, and obviously Phyllis Diller.On a seemingly different note (it'll come back around, just wait), I showed the kids the Karate kid movies this week, or @ least the only 2 that matter, I & II. It turns out there's a lot less fighting than I remember & they're a bit far fetched. Solstice loved them & I caught Aiden-San trying to do the Crane Technique on the couch. After seeing these movies again, I have to say that the 2nd one is the better of the 2 films (Elizabeth Shue notwithstanding). I like the romantic imagery of Japan in contrast to the hustle-bustle of the modern world... plus the Drum Technique kicks major ass. I don't think I'll bother showing the other 2 films to them though... that'll spoil the 1st 2. I was forced to see the 3rd 1 in the theater w/ Adam Madjewski, a total nozzle-head my Dad thought I should be friends w/ when I was 14. I won't subject them to that shit. I don't think I ever saw the 4th 1... the 1 w/ Hillary Swank. I hate Hillary Swank. At least w/ shitty actresses like Halle Barry &Heather Graham they have the looks to make up for lack of talent, but Hillary Swank doesn't even have that.How does all this relate to Halloween, you ask? Well, I IMDBed Ralph Macchio who incidentally suffers from the same problems as Hillary Swank... ugly & untalented & it turns out he's in the upcoming film, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead. The Wikipedia entry about this film makes it sound absolutely fantastic. You need to read it, but here's the basic overview: A New York production of a new version of the play leads people to realize it's a true story & the new version is actually written by Horatio who is a vampire & has been battling Hamlet who is also a vampire for over 400 years, ever since he tried to make Ophilia a vampire & she threw herself into the moat. It turns out Horatio is also responsible for getting Shakespeare to Hamlet, Gilbert to write Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, & Stoppard to write Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead making this the final installment of a 4 play cycle that will explain their situation. Got that? There may be a quiz later. What else could we ask for in from a new version of Hamlet? Mortality issues, plays w/in plays, intertextual referencing, & Ralph Macchio. Oh, and apparently there's some sort of Grail Quest too... I guess vampires can't kill other vampires & the only way to become a non-vampire once one is a vampire is to drink from the Grail, which means even if Indy had been bitten by the giant vampire bats in India, he'd be OK now.

1 comment:

Happy Housewife said...

I'm so glad you are enjoying the show!