The Incredibly Strange Film Show (1988)

In 1988 British journo Jonathan Ross hosted this documentary series on Channel 4 in the UK. In it he featured films and film makers outside the mainstream - as an impressionable 11 year old, I was at once intruiged and unsure of these 'underground' masterpieces.



To be perfectly honest, more than a few of them bored me at the time - what with some of the featured films not containing Terminators, Predators, Running Men, or Commandos. Looking back now, though, this series opened my eyes to a a range of film makers I'd never have heard of otherwise. These were the days before the internet, of course.

The first series covered these chaps:
1. John Waters
2. HG Lewis
3. Ray Dennis Steckler
4. Ted V. Mickels
5. Russ Meyer
6. Sam Raimi

The second series (1989's Son of the Incredibly Strange Film Show) was much more my cup of tea - concerning itself with the following:
1. Jackie Chan
2. Fred Olen Ray & Doris Wishman
3. El Santo
4. Ed Wood Jr
5. Tsui Hark & Stuart Gordon
6. George Romero & Tom Savini

The series itself is available on YouTube, and, though now quite dated, it still stands the test of time, and should be of interest to all trash lovers.

Cheers

#Documentary #JonathanRoss

Texas Frightmare Weekend 2014

Today, I attended Texas Frightmare Weekend. As with most conventions, people want to hear stories about celebrities, to see what these celebrities are actually like. I had no bad experiences this or any other year I've attended, which is awesome, but this year, things seemed to go very smoothly.

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I attended the Terminator panel early on. I think Michael Biehn was high because he was zoning out and staring into space a lot.

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@DerTables, Scott Reiniger, and myself.

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Tom Morga, myself, and @Der. Now Tom was very nice, and explained the extent of his portrayal as Jason in Friday the 13th part 5 and Michael Myers in Halloween 4. Apparently, he did several key scenes in H4 before George P. Wilbur came in and took all the credit.

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Me and Larry Drake, of Darkman 1 & 2 and Dark Night of the Scarecrow.

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A mostly naked bimbo.

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David "Flyboy" Emge, myself, and @Der. I asked him about his strange bit part in Basket Case 2 (he plays one of the freaks in heavy makeup), to which he told me that took the job because he wasn't doing anything then and sort of coincidentally fell into it.

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Me and A. Michael Baldwin, from Phantasm! This man was very nice, and we briefly discussed Phantasm 5.

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@ErmaBlimp and the nephew laughing in the face of danger.

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Myself, @Der, Kevin Van Hentenryck of the Basket Case trilogy, and the nephew doing his best Belial impression. Kevin was very nice, as you can see.

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Come on, it's a pool party!! @Der, Courtney Gains of Children of the Corn fame, and myself. I spoke to him about a trash epic called Poolboy that he was in. You can tell he never thought much of that movie when he didn't even know it was on dvd! Still, he was plenty grateful to be there.

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Michael Parks, myself, and @Der. It's almost intimidating to meet a man like Michael Parks, who regularly works with Tarantino and Rodriguez, but he was worth it. After all, he was in Twin Peaks!

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Myself, the nephew, Doug Bradley, and @Der. The man behind the pins was not only surprisingly pleasant for the king of hell, but he wasn't afraid to vent his distaste for the idea of remaking Hellraiser. Seriously, he seemed to scowl at the thought of a remake, but was fine with the idea of a sequel (which I totally sympathize with). He signed an autograph for me with "See you in hell".

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Myself, Nancy Loomis, and @Ermablimp. Nancy Loomis is known primarily for her role as Annie in Halloween '78, as well as bit parts in Halloween 2 and 3, and The Fog. She was very nice and engaging in conversation, and signed an autograph with "Speed kills", which thrilled me.

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I didn't get to meet George Romero, but I attended the Dawn of the Dead panel, which was amusing (more coherent than the Terminator panel ended up being), and it was surreal. I was in the same room with George A. Romero! And @Der got to speak to him!



#Convention

The Killing Games (2012, Barry J. Gillis)



It's been far too long since we basked in the splendour of a new work of art from filmmaker/singer/philanthropist Barry J. Gillis. There was that Wicked World movie he worked on for like 20 years that remains almost entirely unseen. Then there was the music video for the haunting masterpiece Road to Sadness, in which Barry J. Gillis sang, acted and directed. I believe he even made the sandwiches for the catering. I bet they tasted amazing. But now, the Barry J. Gillis fans of the world finally have another full-length feature from the greatest human being ever to walk the planet.

The powers that be tried to prevent us from seeing The Killing Games. You see, it was rejected from a film festival for being too motherfucking violent!!! When Barry J. Gillis spoke out against this outrage, a minor Facebook campaign was started, imploring film festival organisers to blacklist Barry and his film. They all complied... except one. The programmer of the Calvary International Film Festival loved it so much that he simply had to screen it. He's a man of good taste. If I had a sister, I'd happily let him fuck her. Even in the ass, if that's what he wanted.

They tried to shut him down, but they failed, like the failing failures they are. Now finally, The Killing Games is available for all to see.

The Village People once sang that you can't stop the music. They were totally right. Trust me, I've tried. Music is too intangible, it keeps slipping through your fingers. But you know what else you can't stop? Barry J. Gillis. Unstoppable is his middle name. It's true, he spells it with a silent J.

So is it any good? I have no idea coz I ain't seen it yet. If you were expecting this to be a review, then... ermm, sorry I guess. But I have seen the trailer and it's pretty awesome. Here ya go -



FUCK YEAH!!!!

Get your very own Trash Zone, here on this site!

A trash what? Well, a trash "zone" is just an area we designate on the site for random things that don't necessarily need to relate to anything we normally discuss here on the site (but it very well can if you want it to). Any user can have one, and it can serve whatever purpose you want it to, and it will be coded and styled to your needs.

Think of it as your own mini-website, that you don't have to build.
Limited time only.

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If you look to our Trash/Zone page, it's hard to see what the difference is, but that's only because there hasn't been much added to the zone yet, but the Zone index page is our news station. It features articles tagged with "/httr/", which are designated as our news articles. Furthermore, users trying to post these articles must be moderators for it to show up here. You need credentials to post.

However, that's just the index page. Then, we have the "sections" that everybody has been so antsy about. We've simply just titled them as "zones" because it flows better, and the link to your zone would be smaller (i.e. "trashepics.com/zone/ren/"). These sections/zones of the site will be coded and styled by the staff, and to your specifications.

The layout does not need to conform to the main site, and can be as intricate or simple as you desire it to be. You can make your zone private, so only you can view it, or you can make it public, to show everyone (or maybe just your contacts).

People have suggested sections for horror soundtracks, independent film-making, and extreme cinema, among other things. This can be done. You can have a featured media, customized shoutbox, customized posts, and random gadgets and doo-dads to make your site experience even easier. Have a zone banner, custom menus... whatever the hell you want, and you want to know why? Because I am bored right now!

Start designing your Trash Epics section NOW! ... Because I'm not doing it by myself!

Elves (1989)

When there is no more room in hell, the elves shall walk the earth.

Yes, yes, I know how you're feeling. I shuddered too, when I heard that 'oh so famous' line from this 1989 trash epic. Elves. That's what we're dealing with. Our evil and vicious antagonists, are Elves! Not 'Critters', with their awesomely large grins, not 'Trolls' with their unique fx, not even 'Gremlins' and they look like cuddly little munchkins half the time. No, no, we're dealing with something much more sinister and evil. Behold, the Elves, in all their ugly glory!



Whoops, wrong elves. Hang on a minute.



Ah, there we go. Attractive isn't he. It looks like Nosferatu had sex with a rat. And look at his mouth. He never closes it. Every time you see this little bugger, he's got his mouth open, I kept expecting him to start drooling. And of course the icing on the cake being the Santa hat. This is after all, a Christmas horror movie, if you can call it that.

So what's it all about then?
Well, it centers around a teen called Kirsten. She's not a fan of Christmas. She hates it so much, she and her girlfriends decide to do some anti Christmas ritual at the beginning of the film. In doing so, Kirsten hurts her hand and starts bleeding all over the place. This is important, apparently her blood has the ability to awaken the Elf. Not 'Elves' by the way, there is no plural here. There is only one Elf, the title of this movie is a lie. But I'd still much rather watch Elves, then this flick.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319343/reference

Anyway, our second major protagonist, is good old Santa himself, played by Grizzly Adams.



Let's just take a moment to bask in the glory of his beard. Cos seriously, dat beard! Damn, he could give MacReady a run for his money.
I don't know what it is about guys who have beards, but they just seem more manly! More guys should wear more beards.

What were were talking about again? Oh yes, Haggerty plays an ex cop, turned Santa, who plays the father figure, the protector of our dear little Kirsten. And with such an epic beard like that, we know this is someone who is tough. Someone who is manly, someone who might be able to face the evil Elves... er, I mean Elf.

Okay, so there is much more to the plot, but I'm gonna zip my lips. The whole fun of Elves, is discovering the drama and shenanigans all on your own-some. What I can tell you, is things get all sorts of crazy. Like sh!t hitting the wall, crazy! I don't wanna use the term Nazi Elf Rapists, so I won't. But I really wanna...

Still haven't convinced you to watch this movie yet? Well, lets see if I can change that. For a movie that's meant to be rated PG13, it had full frontal nudity, harsh language, crotch stabbings, attempted elf rape, and a horny Santa Claus. Who couldn't love a movie that utters this line...



Best line ever!

All that said, this is some low budget shlock. The acting is woeful (apart from Haggerty's), the plot makes no sense (cos it doesn't), and the Elf is ridiculous. It takes him like ten minutes to try and rape a chick, when she's sitting right next to him. She's not even defending herself, she's right there!

This is one of those, 'so bad, it's wonderful' movies. Highly recommended for some high quality entertainment.

8/10

Thankyou. Cheers!

The Plan (For Media)

Don't be discouraged, my friends, because we're just getting started. I still have this site slapped with a toe-tag reading "Beta mode", but you're the ones here to help me fine-tune it, moderate it, and post "official" site articles.

It's a team effort, but a web site is a business opportunity too, through ad revenue. If we could capitalize on that, we can get hood rich and live the dream. Remember, I'm not a malfunctioning robot moderator (like the ones IMDb use). I'm just a poor American idiot who loves weed, B-movies, guitar, titties, and the internet. When I'm not ripping people off at the concession stand by selling them food at 4x its regular price, I'm at home doing my five wives (all at the same time, of course). If I can make shit happen, then anyone can.

Things can only happen if you try, and if you try hard enough, you always succeed. In 2009, I stopped and asked myself, "how does a forum work?". If you don't know how to do something on the internet, look it up on the internet.

I found out how to make a forum in just a few clicks, but don't take that as an invite to build one better than mine, because it's a gradual process that continues to build upon itself, and to me, this website is a canvas for anything. There's so much we can do with a website that has no rules or regulations. But for now... some content ideas...

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Some of you may not have realized this yet, but we do have a whole set of boards for specific films and tv shows. I'm serious! Nobody seems to utilize it much because I think nobody gets the point of it, so I'm going to try and elaborate on what we can do with the films in our site's database.

Movie of the Week - A featured film/series/tv-show that spans for x amount of days, in which our whole site would be themed accordingly. I'm talking site background images, articles and discussions, featured polls, new easter eggs, videos (eventually), and most recently, I've been working on games, which will have appropriately themed images, content, and audio.

For example, me and @Ballz have been discussing a Maximum Overdrive week, in which the background, polls, and games would be Maximum Overdriven. Each level in the Tetris game will have a different AC/DC song and bg still. However, we're saving Maximum Overdrive week until I make the Maximum Froggerdrive game...

Shoutbox - Each film has its very own shoutbox, that functions independently of the one on the home page, forum, and shout index. When we have a featured movie, we can have its shoutbox be featured too (if we want). Also, some of you may notice I move your posts to a relevant location. I know moving topics can be annoying as fuck, but our forum index still shows all posts. I just prefer them categorized under movies, so people browsing the movies can find the relevant posts.

Trash Awards - Don't forget to vote, people. I can't begin to experiment with the Trashie awards until I get some category ideas. This is going to be an event, in which the movies in our database will be filtered by the specified criteria, with user votes factored in to determine the winner.

Scheduled Viewings - It's very hard to sync up schedules, I'm sure, but it's not a bad idea to set aside a timeslot in which users would all participate in a shoutbox while watching (on their own external device) the featured movie-of-the-week. In fact, there can be several viewings a week, even. Of course, this shoutbox can be added to the event's post.


What can you do?

We're gonna tear into every film on our site. Finding the right week to feature a certain film can be difficult, but we can organize it however we want. We can feature Halloween in December, or My Bloody Valentines Day on Leif Erikson Day if we wanted to (we'll try to keep it relevant though). So if you have any burning discussions or articles you want to have about a movie, then save 'em up for here, cuz any movie in our database is gonna be covered sooner or later. If it's a really shitty movie, it may only get 1 day, and if it's a great movie, it may be featured for more than a week. Who knows! I want the team to want to do this, because it's going to be fun. LOTS o' FUN. This wont start until after "beta" stage, so think about what you want to do here when your favorite movie gets featured.

Easter-iffic Thoughts on 4-20

Easter is a weird holiday. Jesus came back! Only this time, it wasn't on the actual anniversary of it, but on a Sunday, just because God loves Sundays. So how do we celebrate? We look for our dearest egg man, who thinks its a good idea to dress up as an over-sized rabbit this time of year, and disperse eggs in a discrete manner. Very inconspicous, egg man; he who delivers our eggs filled with all kinds of random, sugary crap that's not good for us. The egg man goes rogue and gives us these fake plastic eggs, but you know what? I want my regular eggs back, damnit!

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Easter Eggs
...are a very fun thing to work into this site too. For example, I can hide text to be visible only in the page's source code. There is actually text between this sentence and the last one, but using regular page markup, you can't see that except if you view this page's source code.

Of course, I've also scattered other easter eggs, everywhere. This could be in various forms, such as password protected info, source code comments, search keywords, and all sorts of other irrelevant things. However, it's your job to find them (and hope that it all pays off in the end).

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Easter Movies?
I can't think of many. I tried watching Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!, but my dvd is fucked. There's also a pointless Easter egg hunt scene in one of my favorite Shriekshow titles, "The Being". Are there any other good ones? I suppose you can include actual Easter movies too. I've been meaning to see The Last Temptation of Christ for years now, because it's Scorsese, and Scorsese probably is God (and Morgan Freeman isn't?!).

What say you on this, or any other matter, regarding easter and/or marijuana?

#Easter #Egg

The Trashy Music Jukebox


Having set the tone, post your Trash Hits here!

#Penis #TrashJukebox

Don't be a regular user. Be on the team.

Yes kids, you too can earn a user subtitle to display valiantly among your fellow man. If you could be the official representative of something... anything on this site... what would it be?

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I run this bitch, but calling myself an "administrator" makes me sound like a robot, so I went with "director" instead. @DerTables is "producer". What he produces is for me to know, and you to find out. @Tromafreak is "The Professor Stokes of B-Movies", because he knows his shit, so you better listen to him. @Moffat is the "Vigilante Man", because he's now the official vigilante for Trash Epics (or at the very least, a blatant fall guy for the real vigilante). And @Qwerty is "The Blood Turkey" for Satan knows what reason... I suppose his job for us is either to watch bad movies with "blood" in the title (Blood Lake, Blood Freak, Blood Shack, Blood Junkie, Blood Fart Lake, etc).... OR, his duty literally has to do with blood and turkeys, in some sick fetish kind of way. I'm hoping it's both.

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Are you man, woman, or other enough to be part of the team? That's for you to decide. In the words of Tyler Durden, "You decide your own level of involvement".

Now you must ask yourself one question. What do you want to contribute to Trash Epics? I want to do it all, and that's why I'm building the best means to do that, one line of code at a time. Somewhere along the line though, the scope of everything just got bigger, hence the "epics" part of our fair site's moniker, and well... let's just say there's a lot going on under the surface that no one ever sees. Be part of the team.

"Don't dream it, be it"

The Warriors - a personal reflection

I posted this on another forum, but, with a few edits, this seems a fitting place to add it.


This film is my favourite of all time. Simple as that.

Don't get me wrong, I know it has it's flaws - there are hundreds of 'better' films out there - hell, it's not even Walter Hill's best film, and it's certainly not one for all tastes, but for me, it's simply unbeatable.

For anyone who hasn't seen it, it's the (tall) tale of Coney Island street gang (or 'boppers') The Warriors, who agree to a city-wide gang truce to attend a meeting in The Bronx. After the grand, city grabbing schemes (and life) of Cyrus, head of the Big Apple's biggest gang (The Gramercy Riffs) is cut short, our earstwhile heroes are blamed, and must 'bop' their way back to Coney, in a very loose adaptation of Sol Yurik's source novel, and looser adaptation of Xenephon's Anabasis.

Now, there's enough cheesy 70's goodness in this film, that it would automatically appeal to a man of my tastes - If you don't believe me, here are the Baseball Furies...


But this one has something else - an X-factor that no other film can have, and no other viewer can share in the same way.

I finally actually saw The Warriors in its entirety when I was about 14, but I felt like I knew it off-by-heart as I watched - I knew what was happening, to/by whom, who'd be bopping by next, and who wouldn't be making it back to Coney. I was nervous as I watched, because, for reasons outlined below, I had a clear image of this film in my head, and I hoped it would live up to my expectations. I was not disappointed.

You see, my dad went to cinema to see this about five times because he loved it so much - it was the B feature (when they has such things), and he can't even remember what the A was - I was about 2 at the time. Now that may not seem like much, but bear in mind this was 1979, in Newcastle upon Tyne - at the time an economically depressed region of England - and he was a married man with three small children, and bugger all spare cash for anything other than the essentials (scran, tabs and bottles o'broon!).

He bought the soundtrack LP, and played it constantly. The cover was awesome, and the inner sleeve was covered in movie stills. When we were older, my brother, sister and I also played it constantly. I know every song by heart. I still listen to it, now (though sadly the CD version cuts the DJ's line from the end of Desmond Child's 'Last of an Ancient Breed').

Dad did paintings of it (sadly lost, though I am attempting my own, if I can ever get the damned thing finished), drawings of it, doodles of it, stick figues of it... Well, maybe not that last one.

I knew the story, and all the characters - my bro, sis and I used to play The Warriors. One halloween I even attempted to dress up as one of the Furies - and that was incredibly hard, as an 8 (or so) year old in Newcastle - old-time baseball strips were hard to come by. Sadly, no photos exist of that - but I think I made a pretty good fist of it. I even had dreams about the dude getting thrown in front of a train.

All of this, before I'd even seen the film it all related to. Watching it that first time was almost like a religious experience. It felt like...

I was going to say it felt like deja-vu, but that's not quite right, it felt like... coming home. It felt like I belonged there, in that movie, bopping along with the gang.

That's pretty sad... right?

This familial bond with The Warriors had us all. Even my mum still enjoys it - to give that some context, she's a pacifist, and hates films that 'glorify violence', my folks have been divorced for over 30 years, and can barely stand to be in the same hemisphere as each other!

When I finally found it, it was immediately bought on VHS, and was quickly upgraded to DVD when the time came - one of my first. I still watch it regularly - at least a couple of viewings a year. I could put The Warriors on at any minute of any day, and sit enthralled for ninety-odd minutes. I've got plans for a tat or two of it (if/when I can afford it, and convince Mrs M. that getting some more ink doesn't warrant a divorce...) If any of my kids had been boys, there's a fair chance there'd have been a Swan, Ajax or Cochise in his name, and in a couple of years, I'll start indoctrinating my girls into it, so another generation of Moffats keep The Warriors' spirit alive..

I haven't bothered with the director's cut - that's not the film I want to see. That's not the film that's important to me. There was talk of a remake a few years back - that doesn't interest me. There's even a game of it, and comic books, too. None of that interests me (though I've heard the game captures the spirit of the film brilliantly). I'm happy with the film that means something - even if I'm not sure exactly what that something is - to me.

This film was part of my childhood - part of my life - before I'd even seen it. It's a 'good' bad film, I know that, but to me, it possibly the best thing ever made.