Wednesday, October 30, 2013

THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN - Celebrity Productions - (1934)

Well, tomorrow's the big day, and the end of the 2013 Halloween Countdown, hope you had as much fun as we did! I thought I'd end it with a timeless classic......

......So tonight's feature is a Comi Color Cartoon from 1934 based on Washington Irving's original story.........

............"The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow," aka,  "The Headless Horseman!!"

Schoolteacher Ichabod Crane is the main character in this story! He was a kindly sort, but his students were anything but 'spoiled!"

The love interest in the story is a Dutch Girl named Katrina Van Tassel!

The guy on the left is Ichabod's nemesis in the field of love and romance Brom Van Brunt, Brom being short for Abraham! His nick name is Brom Bones, and Brom is to Ichabod what Bluto was to Popeye, a perennial pain in the ass! As you can see, there's no love lost between these two!
Interesting choice of words!

Just like the olde adage about men, I guess the best way to a Dutch girl's heart is through her stomach!

The joint was jumping and everybody was having a good time!

Brom has less than kind thoughts concerning his feelings for Ichabod!

Meanwhile Katrina is playing them both for fools, and really has her heart set on hooking up with Clark Gable!

Going home Ichabod gets the bejeezus scared out of him by a hideous headless ghost that you just have to assume is Brom!

With Ichabod out of the picture, Brom wastes no time in seducing Katrina and asking for her hand in marriage........BUT what's that, the shadow of some ghostly spectre?

Icky gets the last laugh!!

I counted about 10 "Headless Horseman" movies, cartoons, and TV shows that are out there including this 1976 Scooby-Doo adventure, "The Headless Horseman Of Halloween," and there's also something like another 9 versions that have been made from "The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow!"

Little known fact: In Mexico during the celebration of  the "Dia De Los Muertos" they give out Jalaweeño Peppers to all the kids!

Monday, October 28, 2013

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD III / Bandai Visual Company - 1993

It's Tabonga's last entry for Halloween Countdown 2013, here at The Dungeon!.. So, let's blow the lid off this joint!

Eegah!! sent over a cool lil' soundclip from this flick, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button there next to the big barrel of 2-4-5 Trioxin, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our audio offering for... RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD III!

Kent (PREDATOR 2) McCord plays Colonel Reynolds, the head of a secret military project where they're testing their captured zombies to be killing machines on the battlefield!! He's here with his pals for another test.

The Colonel's son, Curt, and his girlfriend, Julie, sneak into the facility with a duplicate ID swipe card. Then, they get to witness some pretty eerie stuff!

They're testing a gun that uses a freeze pellet to stop zombies in their tracks, for subduing them after they have done their thing on the battlefield.

This scene at the beginning is the movie for me, if you haven't seen it, check it out, it's nothing less than fantastic!! Blood red on antiseptic white always works for shocking contrast!

Soon after that, Curt crashes his motorcycle, killing Julie. He decides to take her back to the facility and revive her with some zombie juice.

It works, Julie comes back to life, but, they also release this freaky freak from it's putrid container! Army dudes watch the monitor as the thing eats away on one of their buddies...

Eventually, Julie gets into being a zombie and gives herself a Goth Zombo makeover!

Colonel Sinclair totally enjoys her work!

And, has a well deserved demise... Later!

A sad ending, Curt, just bitten by a zombie, and Julie both decide to be incinerated...

Saturday, October 26, 2013

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE - 1962 / Adele Lamont with Foreign Insert Nude Scene

It's time for Tabonga to give his Special Saturday Treat to all our Halloween Countdown 2013 gang, here at The Dungeon!.. I discovered something so very interesting while reviewing the bonus features on a DVD I recently scored. I have my favorite fifties and sixties Scream Queens, Faith Domergue, Beverly Garland, Yvette Vickers, Sanita Pelkey, but, my very favorite is the Jersey brunette bombshell, Adele Lamont! So, hang on for something I don't think many people even know about...

Here's the double feature bill Eegah!! and I saw at the theater back in 1962, the year we graduated from the 8th grade!

Adele is freakin' hot, this viewer cannot get enough of her!

Dumb ass Bill wants to decapitate her, but, she's saved by Eddie, the monster in the closet!

Okay then, here we go... If anyone knows where to find a foreign print of this flick, please let us know immediately!

Of course, that's the recognizable face of Sammy Petrillo there as one of the photographers.

Adele was my favorite even before viewing this clip!

You can find the great bonus foreign scene on this recent four movie DVD release, only about $3 used on Amazon!

Friday, October 25, 2013

ZOMBI 2 - Lucio Fulci - "Let's Eat Out Tonight" (1979)

I'm switching nights with Tabonga on this part of the Halloween Countdown to wish Reverend Tom Frost a Happy Freakin' Bloody Birthday, and I can't think of a better way to do it than with Director Lucio Fulci's monsterpiece of blood and guts from 1979, "Zombi 2" or "Zombie" or "Zombie Flesh Eaters," whatever the Hell you want to call it!! Now Reverend Tom Frost is about the most Halloweenish guy I know, and one of the few people in modern society that knows how to make a black cat moan, so here's to him, Cheers mon ami and Bon Appétit!!!

Lucio Fulci's ""ZOMBI 2" is a story unto itself! Today the most popular show on television is "The Walking Dead," but in 1979 it was quite a different story! Although made in 1979, Fulci's bloody banquet wasn't released until 1980, but only as long as it had one minute and 46 seconds cut out of it and was given an X rating! In 1984 the movie was actually banned and was put on the 'video nasty' list! It was cut and re-cut, rated and re-rated over the years, and finally the full version was released in 2005! I'm honestly not a big gore fan, but this film didn't seem THAT bad compared to tons of stuff made in the last 20 years! It just came out in the wrong place at the wrong time!!

Not all thoughts are original!  George Romero's "Dawn Of The Dead" was released in Italy as "Zombi" so Fulci changed the name of this film to "Zombi 2" to cash in on the zombie craze!

As the film opens, the viewer is faced with a loaded gun! In an uncensored scene, you see a body bound and wrapped in a shroud, get shot in the skullbone!

A boat drifts into New York harbor, everything's a mess and there's nobody on board! So it seems until a big zombie jumps out of a closet, and runs amok and then he gets shot and falls in the ocean!

Tisa (Anthropophagus) Farrow is the daughter of the guy who owns the yacht! She and a journalist played by Ian (Contamination) McColloch are thrown together by fate, and must search out the reasons for this big mess! They get a lead and head out to the tropical island known as Matul!

Here's where I get just a little unhinged! The kindly Doctor on the island refuses to accept the reality that voodoo might just really exist, and spends all his time in denial! He only believes in science despite what he sees happening in front of his eyes for the last couple of months! The Doctor is played by Richard (The Haunting) Johnson! Richard has had a long and varied career and is still working today!

The Doctor is so removed from the reality around him that he leaves his wife alone in their house while he's miles away, even though she is scared to death about what is happening all around her! She wants off the island, but instead is one of the first victims of the new mass zombie attack! Olga (Purple Rain) Karlatos has the role of the wife!

Olga is one of the first large scale all you can eat zombie buffets that the locals imbibe in! This scene was edited out of the earlier versions!

After that, it's time for the zombies to go after the Doctor and all the new arrivals in a no holds barred bloody freak fest!!  This zombie's mug was used on a lot of the posters!

Here's a couple of great shots of the zombies shuffling in for the big "Zombie Jamboree!" Really, these zombies would be quite easy to outrun, actually you could skip, and still get away from them!

The zombie's awesome make-up was done by Giannetto(Cannibal Apocalypse)(When Men Carried Clubs and Women Played Ding-Dong) De Rossi. Not necessarily these three, but a lot of the zombies in the movie look alike because there were four brothers, the Dell'Acqua clan, Alberto, Arnaldo, Ottaviano, and Roberto playing members of the zombie community!

They can't think, so the zombies move around like they are in some slow motion mosh pit, taking turns at banging into the door with their sides, which eventually breaks the door down! They just know they're hungry!

In the end, Tisa and Ian somehow manage to escape the island and get back to New York. They're going to be surprised that's it's not going to be as difficult as they thought to convince people they just got off an island full of zombies! Fulci didn't have a big enough budget to stop traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, so despite the zombie takeover, there's still a bunch of cars driving around!

These days you can see the whole reviled uncut version on Creepster TV for a pittance! Anybody up for a cheeseburger and a beer?

Monster Music

Monster Music
AAARRGGHHH!!!! Ya'll Come On Back Now, Y'Hear??