Get Ready for Halloween with Our DVD Clearance

Looking to bulk up your Halloween viewing list? Need even more frightfully good sinema to add to your shelves?

Then be sure to check out our recently launched Dan's Funky Finds ebay store. We'll be adding original movie posters plus tons of zines and vintage mags in the coming months (including about 20 years of 60s/70s/80s PLAYBOY) but right now we're unloading gently used and new DVD and Blu-Ray titles.

Current items for sale and auction include:

• MASTERS OF HORROR 10 Episode Lot featuring 9 DVDs worth of installments from directors like Tom Holland, Larry Cohen, John Landis and Dario Argento
• SLASHER, a 2010 "kids in the woods" horror throwback from Unearthed Films
• The three-disc unrated collector's edition of Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN reboot
• Anchor Bay's two-disc special edition of the greatest film ever made
• A double bill Blu-Ray featuring FREDDY'S REVENGE and THE DREAM WARRIORS, two of my fave A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequels
• The frightfully fun BEST OF BARNABAS 'Dark Shadows' Collection
• And more

If you're not an ebay shopper many of these same titles (along with other cool finds) can be found at our Amazon storefront.

Don't miss out on our upcoming listings... "like" our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter for news about our latest finds and listings.

Yes I Watched ELF-MAN. Or, I May Have Mental Problems.

Not only did I rent ELF-MAN starring Wee Man, Jeffrey Combs and Mackenzie Astin (son of John Astin and Patty Duke), but I held it an extra day so I could watch the whole thing!

In related news, I may have mental problems.

Somehow I couldn't resist the idea of a family holiday flick starring the JACKASS midget, Herbert West and the kid from THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE. Maybe I should try.

Astin stars as a widowed scientist who has created a solar cell that can deliver enough energy to power a whole house. Naturally, he finishes his invention on Christmas Eve and while out doing last-minute holiday shopping is kidnapped by the bumbling Mickey (Combs) and his two more bumbling co-horts.

When Dad doesn't return home for Christmas dinner his daughter makes a wish on an antique elf doll that Daddy come home and the family be happy again. Cue Wee Man as one of Santa's elves who lands at the house, helps out the kids, their gramma and Dad's butcher girlfriend (?!) and tries to rescue Dad from the bumbling thugs. Did I mention they're bumbling?

It's like a low-rent HOME ALONE with a stoned midget instead of Macauly Culkin and Combs acting his ass off as the Moe, er, Mickey of the gang. Having seen FROM BEYOND just a few days ago I couldn't get Combs' classic "he bit his head off like a gingerbread man" line out of my head and I kept hoping they would work it into the flick. Instead we get lots of things turning in to other things, some reindeer fart jokes, and a western standoff spoof with Wee Man and Combs

Pretty brutal but I actually did laugh out loud a couple times once Elf-Man's home-sewn costume transforms into a real superhero outfit in time for him to battle the bumbling crooks. Filmed in nearby Frederick, MD the flick features elf design by FLY II director/Oscar-winning creature creator Chris Walas (!) and a monster fruitcake that looks like something out of an EVIL DEAD Holiday Special.

ELF-MAN is available from Amazon and Redbox.

We receive a small commission for purchases made at Amazon via this blog. Thanks for your support!

July 2011 Viewing Addendum!

I realized the other day I left a couple things off my July 2011 viewing list. DEATH HUNTER: WEREWOLVES VS VAMPIRES (MTI) is an overly-ambitious but cheap and fun horror/action flick that would have made for a great men's action paperback series. A couple on an anniversary camping trip get attacked by vampires at a remote bar (sorta like if FROM DUSK TILL DAWN happened in reverse). She turns into an undead bloodsucker but he survives, only to get bit by a werewolf! A mysterious stranger injects him with an antidote and helps him train to be a part-man/part-werewolf monster hunter.

THE FRANKENSTEIN SYNDROME (also MTI) was a very pleasant surprise, with Louis Mandylor, Ed Lauter (!) and current scream queen Tiffany Shepis in an entertaining Frankenstein update mashed with a dash of RE-ANIMATOR. Lots of low-budget ruminations on life and death plus just enough gore to keep trash fans tuned in. Some surprisingly good performances, especially former NFL player Scott Leet as David, the bodyguard turned "manster".

Full reviews of both to come in our upcoming summer update!

31 DAYS OF FRIGHT: Post-Exhumed Report -- Alas, No Kinski

Got home about 24 hours ago from the 3rd Annual Exhumed Films 24-Hour Marathon and I think I'm returning to "normal". This was my third year in attendance and I have to say that while this year's rundown came awfully close to besting the first outing, it fell short ever so slightly.

Seriously, how do you beat GODZILLA VS THE COSMIC MONSTER, DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, PHANTASM, HELLRAISER, PIECES, BURIAL GROUND, TEENAGE MOTHER, DEMONS and GATES OF HELL, just to name a few?

Still no Kinski but this year's lineup was a winner...

CREEPSHOW: after kicking off the last two years with Carpenter flicks the organizers promised an A-list flick but no JC to start the event. I hadn't seen this anthology in 20 years or so and the stories still hold up nicely. Leslie Nielsen sorta steals the show in his segment and I was impressed by how much more involved "The Crate" was from what I remembered. A fun-packed way to start the festivities.

GODZILLA ON MONSTER ISLAND: though I don't remember it a friend suggested to me that I actually had seen this Godzilla flick many years ago. Described by one pal in attendance as "arson porn" it's largely long monster mashes interspersed with some ludicrous plot about bug-like aliens taking over the earth.

THE FLY (Cronenberg): more bugs, this time in the form of Jeff Goldblum. While the program guide's clue about a "science fiction/horror modern classic" from the 80s had my hopes up for LIFEFORCE, I can't hold a grudge for showing this flick (plus I can rationalize a Halloween week screening on DVD). Great storyline, fabulous acting from the three leads, icky effects and the damn thing is paced like lightning.

THE OBLONG BOX: was one of the few flicks this year that made me feel "meh". Clues suggesting a "old school gothic horror starring two genre favorites" had me crossing my fingers for HORROR EXPRESS, but we got this AIP Poe adaptation with Vincent Price and Christopher Lee instead. Unfortunately, proper appreciation probably required me to pay more attention than I wanted to at this point. And, frankly, a lot of those British people look alike.

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 4: THE FINAL CHAPTER: here's where things really got rolling. This is easily my favorite installment of the F13 series and I had a smile from ear-to-ear during this one. "Teddy, you know where that corkscrew is?" THWACK!

RAW FORCE: definitely the highlight of the weekend and this coming from somebody whose favorite film ever made closed out the event. I'd seen bits and pieces of this on VHS but never imagined I'd witness what is easily one of the craziest pieces of cinema ever unleashed on an unsuspecting public on the big screen. Cannibals, zombies, kung-fu, inane dialogue, rampant nudity, Cameron Mitchell and the Asian Hitler all team up for what can best be described as a Filipino flick made by Troma. Amazing. Needs to come out on a special edition two-disc DVD from Criterion tomorrow.

THE NEXT VICTIM (aka BLADE OF THE RIPPER): another revelation for me. A stylish and fun Sergio Martino giallo with George Hilton, the scrumptious Edwige Fenech, Ivan Rassimov (described by a pal as the lovechild of Charlton Heston and Klaus Maria Brandauer). Nicely follows some of the great Eurotrash Maxims established through the years. Such as, "If George Hilton is in a giallo, he's guilty of something".

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (aka NIGHTMARE CITY): not my favorite Italian splatter zombiefest, but one whose empty-headed plot plays better with a crowd than alone at home. Some great price-of-admission scenes but too much blah-blah-blah pessimism from the female lead for my taste.

HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD: a (mostly) beautiful print of this dreamy Bava flick starring Reg Park as Hercules and Christopher Lee as the villain. I'd seen this one on DVD and one viewing was probably plenty for me, but it was a nice 2 AM palette cleanser.

TRAUMA (aka HOUSE ON STRAW HILL): another first viewing, though certainly not as good as THE NEXT VICTIM. One friend informed me that the STRAW HILL cut is longer and sleazier than what we saw, which means more nude Linda Hayden and Fiona Richmond if that's possible. Too easy to figure out what's happening, especially after the challenging NEXT VICTIM. Being remade under one its other alternate titles, EXPOSE.

LADY TERMINATOR: to say I never, ever expected to see this on the big-screen would be an enormous understatement. Like RAW FORCE it's a crazoid blend of action, kung-fu and damaged creative forces, but the drawn-out gun battles are a little too repetitious to elevate this one to RAW FORCE level madness. Still, a gorgeous print of a flick I never thought I'd get to see in a theater.

THE CHILDREN: I'd have been impressed by this one simply because it had one of my buddies totally stumped for a good five minutes and he seems to know every 70s and 80s horror flick like the back of his hand. When a school bus passes through a radioactive cloud, the children are turned into murderous monsters (zombies?) who can deep-fry an adult with a touch of their hands. Though it drags a bit in spots, high marks for such a rare treat and for dealing with the taboo of subject of chopping kids' hands off!

PIRANHA: I'm a sucker for nature run amok horror so I would have loved just about anything they threw at me (GRIZZLY, ISLAND CLAWS, EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, etc.). Plus, I'd been awake for about 26 hours straight and had just watched 12 other movies so I was pretty mentally pliable. But this remains one of my favorite of all the post-JAWS rip-offs, with a great cast of genre vets, decent late-70s gore, a witty John Sayles screenplay and tight, fun-loving direction from Joe Dante.

RE-ANIMATOR: what can I say? Not just my favorite horror film but quite literally my favorite film ever made. A near flawless blend of dark comedy, relentless gore and nudity that perfectly capped a great weekend of trash cinema.

Combs Cooks

I love cookbooks and I love horror films. So how come I'm just finding out about It Came from the Kitchen, a 2007 cookbook that collects recipes and food-related anecdotes from horror and science-fiction personalities?

Even better, the cookbook contains a recipe from none other than Herbert West himself, actor Jeffrey Combs.

Combs, star of RE-ANIMATOR (and its sequels) as well as the underrated Lovecraft-inspired horror flick FROM BEYOND, contributes his recipe for Tortilla Soup, a tasty looking blend of peppers, spices, beef and beans that will surely warm you up on a cold winter night.

You can check out the complete recipe – and stay on top of all the Combs news that's fit to print – by visiting The Combs Corner, an excellent blog devoted to the popular actor.

Worst. News. Ever.

Between the month-long post-a-thon that took place here in October and the 25 Hour Exhumed Marathon over Halloween weekend I haven't had much energy to post of late.

But I couldn't let this piece of news from Bloody Disgusting go unreported:

We learned exclusively that Transition Entertainment is shooting a pilot presentation next April that will bring RE-ANIMATOR's Herbert West back as "a teenage Dr. Frankenstein for the new millennium". Entitled HERBERT WEST: RE-ANIMATOR THE SERIES, the pilot episode was written by Meredith Red and William Butler, with a director yet to be named.

Speaking as somebody whose favorite film of all-time – not just horror movie but movie, period – is RE-ANIMATOR, this is the kind of news that makes me die a little inside. I'll take consolation in the fact that tons of pilots get shot and never make it past the initial stages and another similarly horrible idea – the CW's ill-advised THE GRAYSONS about a pre-Robin Dick Grayson and clan – got canned shortly after it was spawned.

But one never knows. Hell, CBS had a serial zombie drama in the works a few years back but I think the failure of JERICHO soured the network on serial dramas.

HOUSE OF RE-ANIMATOR Closed... For Good?

I first heard about HOUSE OF RE-ANIMATOR – in which Herbert West would be called upon to re-animate a deceased Commander in Chief... with horrific results, I assume – back when I trekked up to Philly to catch the premiere of the fun third installment in the series.

Producer/director Brian Yuzna mentioned it during his Q&A session and even suggested that the ripe-for-satire storyline might lure Stuart Gordon back to the franchise.

Since then good news arrived in fits and spurts about the film... Gordon would return along with original RE-ANIMATOR scripter Dennis Paoli... Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott and Barbara Crampton would all be in the film... recent Gordon star and Curious George narrator William H. Macy would play the President (sorry, I have a ten-month old) while George Wendt was on-board to play the Vice-President... it all seemed so promising.

Which inevitably meant bad news was sure to come... financing was becoming an issue... the flick might be a straight-to-cable episode of 'Masters of Horror'... the proposed Summer 2007 release date came and went without so much as a camera being turned on.

Well, according to a report on Fangoria.com the project is all but dead. And not the good kind of ready-to-be-reanimated dead we've come to know and love. Nope. Dead dead. Seems the political climate which makes the subject matter explode with potential is making investors nervous (or so suggests Gordon) and we'll probably never see Herbert West striding into the Oval Office with syringe full of glowing green goo.

But fear not fellow RE-ANIMATOR fanatics. Feel free to go ahead and make your own version or some other riff on the West tale. Fango also reports that Gordon will be a guest at the Boomtown Film and Music Festival and fans are being enlisted to create 3 minute videos based on the original Lovecraft tale or movie version.

Finally! FROM BEYOND Coming to DVD in September!

"Humans are such easy prey."

Since the advent of the DVD format almost everything I've been itching to see has made its way to store shelves. RE-ANIMATOR? Three versions. THE EXTERMINATOR? Director's cut. DAWN OF THE DEAD? How many cuts do you want?

But my video shelves have always felt a bit empty, and not just because I still have half of Klaus Kinski's filmography to track down.

No, it's the continued absence of two of my favorite films of the ER era... Fred Dekker's brilliant zombie-action classic NIGHT OF THE CREEPS and Stuart Gordon's incredible RE-ANIMATOR follow-up, the Lovecraftian FROM BEYOND.

As of September 11 I'll be able to scratch one of those titles off my "Where Is It?" list. Fangoria is reporting that MGM will release the director's cut of FROM BEYOND – which premiered last year on the Monsters HD channel – along with a widescreen special edition of another 80s terror classic, THE BURNING.

For those of you who have never seen FROM BEYOND, you're in for a treat. While not the infamous genre classic that is RE-ANIMATOR, Gordon's second flick is no red-headed stepchild.

The story concerns the experiments of Dr. Edward Pretorious (Ted Sorrel), a mad genius who also happens to be an S&M/leather freak. His new invention, The Resonator, is a large, phallic device which stimulates the pineal gland and allows people to see things around them that the naked eye cannot observe.

Of course, there's a drawback. Those same things can now see us!

One of the creatures chomps off ol' Doc P's head and his assistant Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) is locked up for the murder. Enter Dr. Catherine McMichaels (the luscious Barbara Crampton), a psychologist that has been called in to see if Tillinghast is fit to stand trial.

To determine his sanity, Tillinghast, McMichaels, and ex-football-player-turned-cop Sgt. Buford "Bubba" Brownlee (DAWN OF THE DEAD and LEATHER FACE star Ken Foree) return to the scene of the crime to re-enact the experiments.

Needless to say, this is another case of cinematic logic gone awry.

That's all I'll say about the flick and that all happens in the first 20 minutes. Unlike the fast-paced, manic exercise in black humor and horror that was RE-ANIMATOR, Gordon plays FROM BEYOND mostly straight. While this serious treatment slows the flick down a tad at the beginning things kick into high gear again for the last half and the result is a well-acted, slimy and FUN horror pic with the bonus of featuring Ms. Crampton in some serious leather gear.

Having only seen the R-rated release that Empire dumped onto video instead of giving a proper release in theaters, I cannot wait to see this slice of 80s horror cinema in all its glory.

Thanks to Bruce Holecheck for the tip!

New RE-ANIMATOR Two Disc Special Edition

I wanted to get more details before I gushed about Anchor Bay's upcoming special edition of Stuart Gordon's RE-ANIMATOR (slated for release on March 20, 2007), or as we call it around ER HQ "The Greatest Movie Ever Made."

Though there have been other special editions on both laserdisc and DVD, this new two-disc special edition looks to be the one RE-ANIMATOR to have in your collection.

According to Fangoria.com, the set will feature a new remastered, 16x9-enhanced 1.85:1 transfer with Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 soundtracks, plus:

• Audio commentary by director Stuart Gordon
• Audio commentary by producer Brian Yuzna and actors Bruce Abbott, Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton and Robert Sampson
• All-new 70-minute documentary Re-Animator Resurrectus, featuring interviews with Gordon, Yuzna, writer Dennis Paoli, actors Combs, Crampton, Sampson and Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, composer Richard Band and Fango’s Tony Timpone
• Music discussion with Band
• Deleted and extended scenes
• Theatrical trailer
• TV spots
• New production stills from Yuzna’s private collection
• New behind-the-scenes, posters & advertising, storyboard and fun-on-the-set galleries
• Stuart Gordon bio
• Screenplay (DVD-ROM)
• H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “Herbert West, Reanimator” (DVD-ROM)

I wish they'd found a way to include the long out of print soundtrack as well, but I suppose you can't have everything. Oh well, at least I still have my vinyl copy. But you can have this incredible two-disc package of The Greatest Movie Ever Made for less than $20. In fact, you can pre-order your copy from Amazon today and support ER at the same time.