My first post was going to be about Obama, trying feebly to inhale second-hand inaugural smoke despite being a Brit, maybe act like a tinpot Chomksy minus the intellect with a flimsy leftist diatribe, drop a poorly concealed dayjob plug, or a blow-by-blow of what the postman brought me. But no. As luck would have it, just as I was artfully arranging my desk and preparing to shoot, blur address, Imageshack, and write a sychophantic ‘thank you’ message, I realised noone gives a shit.
I was grateful for the epiphany.
But on hearing more of a bland rap beef, my irritation at Saigon’s no-show LP – an annoyance that raises its stocking capped head whenever the usual “hip-hop ain’t what it was…boring mixtape rappers…dressed like they had a Karmaloop trolley dash in the dark” discussion crops up. Now that’s an annoyance, but there’s plenty more potentially great no-shows out there.
A case in point – from a misspent youth spent absorbing anything faintly macabre, it was notable that while the US was pretty much redefining screen terror from Carnival Of Souls onwards, the UK-based Amicus inexpicably chose to pick up on an archaic licence to make films from EC horror titles. EC definitely deserves respect – ’50’s titles like ‘Tales From The Crypt’ gave art legends like Joe Orlando their break, and the darker imitators of the ’70s like ‘Creepy’ exposed masters like Bernie Wrightson and let Neal Adams get a little more brutal than ‘Batman’. But to be making old-fashioned anthology horrors in the early ’70s, after ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, and relocating the plots to London was just odd. But addictive.
Subsequently bizarre anthologies of philanderers, murderers, robbers and conmen getting their just-desserts, bookended by provincial soap opera stars being sent to hell or some such nonsense are ingrained in my psyche. So when the topic of any anthology (portmanteau) horror film crops up, I get as excited as I did the day I heard ‘Blaze had produced a full album. I guess it feels like you’re getting more bang for your buck. And as with my hip-hop, I’m pretty open minded. Emilio Estevez battling an arcade machine in ‘Nightmares’ (which had Black Flag and Fear on the soundtrack – Lee Ving even had a cameo) or a demonic hole in the TV movie ‘Encounter With The Unknown’ gets the same attention as Todd Haynes’s ultra-disturbing ‘Poison’.
When the trailers and concept art for Mike Dougherty’s ‘Trick R Treat’ – a revivial of the anthology tradition, promising some Burton-esque elements and the perenially underrated Brian Cox went out in late 2007(the same time Sai-diggity’s album was declared complete) the excitement was back. Halloween ‘07 passed. Then October ‘08 came to a close. Now there’s talk of Halloween ‘09 (the price you pay for such a seasonal title) or straight-to-DVD. Even a book of concept art was released last year to tie-in with the release that never happened.
Don’t big imprints want to put out anything good any more? This will-the-won’t-they? yearly drama just ups expectations and ensures these projects won’t weather the wait, meaning guaranteed disappointment. Meanwhile, millions are lavished on a big budget Friday The 13th film that won’t even have Crispin Glover dancing erratically in it. Lame.
There you have it, the yardfather to George McFly in one rambling step. Someone please bootleg these damn things and put them, and myself, out their misery.
