Adam Baran

Happy Halloween kiddies!! I’m just going to make this a rambling, delirious blog post about everything I like and everything scary and everything I think you should do tonight to have a great time. Last night’s party was a really fun time, I showed Black Sabbath, the Bava anthology, which was a big hit. Then I put on the Mexican film The Brainiac, also known as the Baron of Terror (a nickname I’ve co-opted, since I’m the Baran of Terror, sort of, not really.) Then I put on Lady Terminator but by then everyone was playing with a toy my friend Dan brought called The Grossinator which made stupid sentences like “Here comes a disgusting, gross, oozing BARF.” Or “I’m gonna make a smelly FART.” It was hilarious.

So what about tonight. I’m going to see the B-52’s and then probably off to Nowhere or Slurp. But what should you do? If you’re going to stay at home, and actually want to watch something scary, here’s a few choice selections from my fingertips.

THE ENTITY - This is probably my favorite scary film. It’s one of the many possessed/demonic spirit films that came in the wake of the success of Poltergeist, starring Barbara Hershey in the only other film of hers worth watching (Besides Beaches, obviously..) You know that scene in Poltergeist towards the end when you think everything is fine and JoBeth Williams is blow drying her hair and all of a sudden she’s floating up to the ceiling and the Poltergeist is pushing her jersey-t up and you start to see her 70’s panties (didn’t she see Alien - when you show your thong, you’re a goner) - anyway so that scene in Poltergeist is taken to it’s nth degree in The Entity. Barbara Hershey plays a single mother with three kids who one night is grabbed by an unseen spirit thrown down on her bed, and raped. She can’t see her attacker, but she can feel him, and we can see the indentation on her body to know something’s going on. It’s really fucking creepy, as she’s raped several more times by the spirit, once in front of her kids, until skeptical scientist Ron Silver tries to come to her rescue. The end is whatever, but you will jump outta your seat more than a few times. Guaranteed. Great score too.

Inferno: Most people who know Dario Argento know Suspiria, and it’s a pretty brilliant film with the kind of primal dream logic and intense imagery of Psycho. But fewer know Inferno, his follow up and second in his Three Mothers trilogy, which he’s recently completed with daughter Asia Argento. The film’s about the second location of a coven of Witches, the first was the school in Suspiria, and the second is this high rise apartment in New York City, Central Park West. The film is just so gothic and strange and moves from one bizarre set-piece to the next, colors exploding all over the place.

Here’s one of the strangest and creepiest scenes, where the lead girl decides to go underwater to try and find this painting that will reveal if the house is indeed a Witch’s hideout. Plot doesn’t matter. Check this out.

For more funny horror, I’d recommend the recently released DVD Murder Party, which is a really geniunely charming horror flick about a loner who winds up going to a Halloween Party at a loft in Williamsburg where he’s the only guest. The people throwing the party are a group of semi-deranged art-students who plan to murder the loner as the ultimate art-project, in hopes of winning a grant. There’s a great indie aesthetic, and cute Williamsburg references - nobody can decide whether to order Pizza or Thai, giving the tied-up victim a chance to escape. One of the killers is dressed like the baseball gang from the Warriors. Another is Darryl Hannah in Blade Runner. There’s some gay sex (briefly) for all you gays, and some fangoria-worthy gore. But it’s all not-taken too seriously, and it’s very winning.

For older viewing, if you have seen Tod Browning’s freaks, and are looking for something similiarly weird, check out his equally brilliant The Devil Doll, which is actually about a man who escapes from prison to his scientist friend’s house. The scientist has perfected a way of shrinking humans to doll size, and then controlling them so they can wake up and kill people. The escaped prisoner, brilliantly played by Lionel Barrymore, takes the dolls to Paris to get revenge on the people who wrongly imprisoned him, disguising himself as a woman named Madame Manderley and selling the dolls to all his enemies. The dolls are super cheesy, film with silly special effects tricks, but it’s really fun.

If you want to read, you should go to Barnes and Noble and pick up a copy of Sara Gran’s Come Closer. This is probably the scariest book I have ever read and when I say something’s scary…. I could not stop thinking about it for weeks after I read it. It’s written in sparse, chilly prose, telling the story of a woman with slight marital difficulties who slowly realizes she is possessed by the spirit of a nymphomaniac demon, or is she just crazy? It’s been described as a cross between The Yellow Wallpaper and Rosemary’s Baby. It’s pure genius, one of the best books I’ve read in years.

If you want to watch porn, you should rent The Hole, Wash West’s hilarious spoof of Japanese Horror flick The Ring. If you watch the pirated video in this one, in seven days you don’t die, you turn gay, accompanied by a phone call that when you answer it, says, “You’re gay, now.” The lead watches the tape and tries to discover the source of the tape so he can not end up gay, but when he finally turns gay at the end, he’s really happy.

For TV, Twin Peaks is out on DVD in a full boxed set that I have to get soon. Watch the last episode, the one that takes place entirely in the Black Lodge and ends with that shocking twist ending that completely freaked out all of the fans who knew that the show had already been canceled. Or better yet, why don’t I just post it here - the black lodge scene, not the twist ending: Happy Halloween! (Btw: I Love that this isn’t in english. It makes it creepier.)

PS. More focused writing to come soon, I promise. Eat lots of candy and cake.

The Devil’s Daughter is a campy TV-movie Rosemary’s Baby-knockoff from 1973 which stars Belinda Montgomery as Diane Shaw, a woman whose mother once did it with Satan, but then pulled the old “full-custody” bit, refusing him access to her daughter by sending her to school in Boston, a city not even Satan wanted to visit. Anyway, dude wants his daughter back, and enlists veteran Oscar-winning actress Shelly Winters to get Diane to marry some evil demon dude she’s been betrothed to. Shelly’s gotta “make it work,” to use the lingo of that other Devil in Disguise Tim Gunn, and using some basic Rosemary’s Baby witchery, she eventually does. It’s got some fabulous fun seventies TV movie atmosphere, and a twist ending that you’re likely to see a mile away, but that’s handled in the most pleasant way possible.

Nothing is more enjoyable than watching Shelly Winters’ go from doing her super nice, humble Place in the Sun routine to her full on Ma Barker madwoman bit. She was without a doubt the queen of the Grand Dames Guignol/Horror Hag genre though Bette Davis may have been the one who started it all in the first place. Who Slew Auntie Roo?, What’s the Matter With Helen?, Bloody Mama, The Mad Room, Wild in the Streets, and Poor Pretty Eddy, contain probably the best of her campy late sixties/early seventies performances, but the Devil’s Daughter definitely needs to be on that list. She’s just fantastic in it. There’s also a small, but crucial role played by Joseph Cotten. Can you guess what it is?

Worth picking up, as it’s just been released on DVD last week.

When I was a kid, Halloween didn’t scare me at all. The scariest night was the night before Halloween, known as Cabbage Night. Cabbage Night, or Mischief Night, Devil’s Night, or Goosey Night as it’s known in other parts of America and England, was the night when all the bullies and bad kids would run around the neighborhood toilet papering houses, throwing eggs, soaping up windows, spraying silly string everywhere, and all as the neighborhood looked on amused to see their little baby shit-kickers learning how to well, shit-kick. I was always scared of bullies, so I always imagined that the ones I was particularly afraid of would come to my house to get me. That was more scary than any boogeyman or Freddy Krueger or even Pennywise the Clown. I would sit near my window, and at any noise or kids screaming down the street I would imaging the horrors of seeing my house covered in toilet paper.

So tonight I’m having a get together at my place to reclaim Cabbage Night for the queers and the bullied. Aside from an Amy Sedaris ghost cake, cocktail franks, and very likely a Halloween game of Apples to Apples, or a Mummy contest like we used to have at camp, I’m going to try and motivate everyone to go toilet paper the hideous Lower East Side high rises like the Blue Building and the Rivington Hotel, and the people stupid enough to wait in the line outside Fat Baby and Pianos. Think we can get it done? I hope so.

Here’s more on this horrible holiday from Wikipedia:

Mischief night is a tradition in northern England, Scotland, Ireland, and the United States of a night in the calendar when the custom is for preteens and teenagers to take a degree of licence to play pranks and do mischief to their neighbours.

Traditional practice

Until the nineteenth century it was celebrated at Halloween (31 October and the eve of winter ) or , May Eve (30 April and the eve of summer). Shrove Monday (i.e. the night before Shrove Tuesday and known as Nickanan night in Cornwall and Dappy-Door night in Devon) was also celebrated in this way in some places. In some localities, notably Yorkshire, it occurred on the night before Guy Fawkes Night ( 4 November ) but there are no records of this date being celebrated before the late nineteenth century and it is assumed that festivities were transferred there from the much older folk festivals. ^[1]

Traditional mischiefs done on this night were:-

• Knocking and tapping on doors and windows (Knock down ginger)
• Daubing objects with paint and whitewash
• Smearing of doorknobs with treacle
• “Egging”, throwing eggs at homes or cars
• “T.P.-ing”, taking rolls of toilet paper and draping them over trees or homes, etc.
• Tying together adjacent door handles to prevent either from opening
• Removing gates from their hinges and depositing them elsewhere
• Lighting of fires in drainpipes to produce an organ-pipe-like sound
• Placing slices of bologna to get the paint off cars
• Placing forks in neighbors yards

Contemporary practice

The custom survives but often merged with the American Trick or Treat.

In Yorkshire it is also known as Miggy Night, Goosey Night, Tick-Tack night, Corn night, Trick night. In Liverpool UK, it is known as Mizzie Night (but unlike in Yorkshire, it is celebrated on October 30th)

Mischief night is becoming popular in Ireland, where teenagers get the week around Halloween off school. This means that many of the nights running up to October 31 are used by teenagers for acts of minor vandalism.

In the Midwestern U.S. and Eastern U.S., it is also known as Cabbage night, the Philadelphia Region referred to the night before as “Soap Night” where mischievous teens “practiced” by soaping car windows, and in the Northeastern United States as Goosey Night and Doorbell Night. always on the evening of October 30, the eve of Halloween. Detroit’s Devil’s Night tradition includes vandalism and arson, along with more harmless pranks.

It is known as Gate Night in Winnipeg, Canada and as Mat Night in Quebec, Canada, always on the October 30, the eve of Halloween.

In Camden, New Jersey, Mischief Night had escalated to the point where widespread arsons were committed in the 1990’s. Over 130 arsons were committed in that city on the night of October 30, 1991.

Modern tricks are toilet papering yards and buildings, powder-bombing and egging cars and people and homes, using soap to write on windows, “forking” yards, setting off consumer fireworks, and smashing pumpkins and jack-o’-lanterns. Occasionally though, the damage can include the more serious spray-painting of buildings and homes, and shooting people and things with paintball guns.

In New York, called “Cabbage Night”, children resort to all of the prior stunts, as well as using moldy food such as cabbages to throw at homes. Also, bags of feces are set on porches and lit on fire, so that when the pranksters knock on the door, the recipient stamps out the bag- and covers their shoe in undesired feces. Less vandalous though, is the ever-popular “ding-dong-ditch”: in this ‘game’, people ring doorbells, then run and hide somewhere nearby.

Scary. Disco Dracula.

Scary, and intense. Grace Jones is the “VAMP”.

Scary, but for a completely different reason (Trent Reznor’s not hot anymore!)

Does anyone else want to go to the movies today? I’m going to this:

Two Boots Pioneer Theater
7:00PM

It’s a Mexican Jaws rip-off/sexploitation combo! Supposed to be awful but wonderful! From IMDB:

“The fact that a shark is running amok is almost completely ignored by the director, who spends more time concentrating on the nudity and the background scenery. Perhaps the budget was so low they couldn’t afford to include many shark attack sequences.”

“The film has absolutely incredibly slow pace and it will be too much for most to watch without falling asleep. There is plenty of scenes depicting sharks being killed by people or each other and also the “sharks attacking human being” scenes are pretty dull and thus funny. There’s plenty of naked skin and bodies and also some blood so the exploitation elements are there as they were in TREASURE, too.”

“Also, if you are a gay man interested in exploitation cinema you are bound to like it: the homosexual overtones between Esteban and Miguel are painfully obvious and there are numerous shots of Hugo Stiglitz cute little ass.”

Feel free to join me! I’ve heard about this movie for a while now, and am so psyched that the Two Boots is finally showing something decent, or at least, decent in my opinion. Most of the time their programming consists of premieres of straight-to-video horror garbage presumably paid for by the DVD companies hoping that they’ll get a NY Times review. Or if it’s not horror shite, it’s crap indie with the same goal of getting a review in the Times - usually these reviews are horrible but Two Boots cuts them out and puts them in the window anyway.

It seems like a few years ago the Two Boots was really an auxiliary second run theater that used to show the sort of indie movies that played the Quad and the Cinema Village that you really wanted to see but never got the chance. So the Two Boots would take that stuff and you could usually find something great to see there. I remember it as the place where I first saw Fat Girl. I walked out with my jaw on the floor. They’d also screen cult films - the whole midnight Donnie Darko cult originated there along with repeat screenings of classic NYC cult fare like Liquid Sky and classic horror fare like Evil Dead 2 and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

That used to be fun. They had a John Waters marathon along with a lookalike contest that I came in second in, and a tribute to character actor Luis Guzman, which was really amazing. But now it just seems like the theater is a for-rent venue with a “show whatever you want” attitude - no attempt to curate or program in a decent way. The Two Boots seems like it would be the perfect place to revive the cult of the grindhouse and deuce exploitation films in the same way that Bill Landis used to do his Sleazoid Express screenings in the 80’s and early 90’s. None of these films have a regular screening place in New York anymore. Unfortunately, it seems like management wants to run the place like a banquet hall instead of a real venue, and it’s a shame.  I guess you could probably argue that straight-to-video horror IS the modern equivalent of the grindhouse exploitation films - but most of them seem to lack that shameless fuck-you-pay-me attitude that makes the Ilsa movies or Lucio Fulci or Joe D’Amato’s films such unbelievable genius (the term used very loosely).

Anyway, today it’s all about Tintorera! Seriously, join me, it’s going to be fun! Check back for my review.

Synapse DVD seems to have it’s eyes on the prize right now. First they release the restored Snake Woman’s Curse and Horrors of Malformed Men, which I reviewed a few days ago (Click Here). Now they’ve put out one of the most hysterically cheesy horror movies I’ve ever seen, the heavy-metal horror shocker Black Roses.

The trailer above is basically all the highlights of the movie in 5 minutes, but it’s really worth seeing in its entirety. It’s about a heavy metal band who for some untold reason decides to kick off their world tour in the sleepy town of Mill Basin, which fortunately for them is rife with teen angst. What the teens don’t know is that the heavy metal band - which is sort of supposed to be like Ozzy but looks more like Twisted Sister or Quiet Riot, only gayer, are demons from hell trying to possess the minds and souls of their fans. A local teacher who prefers to teach about the transcendentalists (snooze!) becomes concerned when his kids start acting like angry zombies and parents start turning up dead by the tour-busloads. Yoinks!

There’s tons of gratuitous body double nudity. In one sequence - the sequence in the trailer where the girl kills her stepdad - right before that there’s a scene where the body double of that girl stands in front of the mirror rubbing her boobs for 10 minutes! It’s great! Plus, all the monsters in the movie are superb 80’s Stan Winston clones, and the final demon that Damian turns into looks more like something from an old fifties creature feature than something that’s supposed to scare us. Synapse also included the hilariously bad audition tapes of all the actors who tried out for the part of Damian, the lead singer of Black Roses. It’s a lineup of some of the most cheesy 80’s hair metal losers ever captured on video.

There’s also an appearance by Vincent “Big Pussy” Pastore, from The Sopranos, as an Italian father who doesn’t like his son’s musical tastes, and ends up getting sucked into a sub-woofer by a demonic spider monster that for some reason, he can’t fight off, even though it’s really small. He delivers a classic movie line when speaking to his son. “Only two kinds of people wear earrings: pirates, and faggots. And I don’t see any ship in our driveway.” This is primo stuff here people! You still have time to Netflix it or pick it up at your local video emporium before All Hallow’s Eve, so get on it!