I just received word that midnight screenings of outlawvern.com favorite BLACK DYNAMITE have been scheduled in some new spots on the map including Columbus, Boston, Minneapolis, Houston, Denver, Fort Collins, even Spokane, WA where a couple of you helped approve R-71. I think a midnight screening is the best way to see it, this is a movie that’s even better with a big audience. And by the way they expanded the best picture Oscar to ten nominees this year, so, you know, keep that in mind when you’re watching it.
Anyway, that’s not all of the cities so check out the full list and details here. Because orphans don’t have parents.
In THE BLOB Steve McQueen plays “Steve” and he’s supposed to be a teen. But he was actually 28 and looked about the same age as he did in THE GREAT ESCAPE. Therefore I don’t think there’s anything unreasonable about leaping to the conclusion that he was re-enacting true events that had happened to him for real. The Young Steve McQueen Chronicles. None of this is included in his biography and some of what happens here (like his father being a store owner) don’t jibe with the established facts. But what importance do the details have when there is an essential truth at work here, the truth that a teenaged Steve McQueen sighted, tracked, battled and helped defeat The Blob? In a sense, this is BATMAN BEGINS to Steve McQueen’s life. 
Once every 7 years, in a different town each time, high stakes gamblers run a secret competition where the world’s greatest assassins all try to kill each other and the last one standing gets ten million dollars. With that premise and generic title this doesn’t sound like the kind of DTV I would like. And with Ving Rhames and Robert Carlyle starring I have to wonder if this was intended for theatrical release, which could also be a bad sign. We don’t want another EDISON FORCE on our hands. But the great Scott Adkins (UNDISPUTED II, SPECIAL FORCES, etc.) is in this so I’d been keeping my eye out ever since I spotted it on his IMDb page. It was released by the fucking Weinsteins with their pain in the ass exclusive deals (how the fuck do I get my friend to watch MARTYRS if he can’t find it anywhere?) so I didn’t know it came out until I got some emails about it. Two different people said it was even better than BLOOD AND BONE, which I’d pre-emptively declared best DTV action movie of the year. 
In Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of PSYCHO they tried to recreate Hitchcock’s filmatism, they had Joseph Stefano only slightly re-word his old script, they re-recorded Bernard Herrman’s score and made it sound basically the same. So the success or failure of this version mostly falls to the one element Hitchcock claimed to not give two shits about: the actors.
Did you know that in 1987 there was a pilot for a TV spinoff of the PSYCHO series, starring Bud Cort? It was a failure, it never turned into a series and it’s never been available on a legitimate video in the US, but you can catch it on cable occasionally, get it from the fine bootleggers at revengeismydestiny.com or download it from 
You know what, if you want to enjoy life you’ve got to be spontaneous. Some of us, we get locked into these rigid routines. We get comfortable and stop taking risks or doing new things. You know, you take a certain route to work, you eat at the same places, same foods. If a stranger comes up and tries to talk to you it’s not expected, you try to get away. Maybe you don’t like to go to concerts or to movies alone or you don’t go outside at night. Whatever. You get stuck in your boring, safe ways.
After catching up with NIGHT OF THE CREEPS I knew I had to see director Fred Dekker’s second movie that I’d always avoided. You know, he’s one of those directors who wears his horror nerd-dom on his sleeve, and some members of the internet community have too much loyalty to guys like that. There’s this whole “he’s one of us!” idea where if they swear they love some comic book or something that proves they’ll do a good job of making a movie. But of course, we all know ten guys who love that comic book who we wouldn’t trust to return a movie to the video store on time, let alone direct one.
In further Halloween leftovers I have a double feature of “cursed movie” movies.
“DON’T LOOK NOW but Nicolas Roeg has made an eerie meditation on fate, death, mourning and love!” That would’ve been my quote for the newspaper ad if I was doing this back then. I do quotes, you know. Too bad I’m late on this one, I think I would’ve had alot to offer their marketing team.
BRONSON is pretty entertaining. Tom Hardy, some British actor who’s apparently substituting Treat Williams style as Mad Max in FURY ROAD, worked out and scaried up to play some real life dude they tell us is famous as “Britain’s most violent prisoner.” His real name is Michael something but he calls himself “Charlie Bronson.” He does have a mustache, but it’s a twirly circus strongman type deal and with a bald head, it’s not a Bronson vibe at all.
