Chadwick H. Saxelid's Blog: Ghoulies, Ghosties, and Long-Leggedy Beasties, page 48

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) - Soundtrack Collection

I first time saw Assault on Precinct 13 was when it was broadcast, complete and uncut, on one of our local UHF stations. By this time I was a rabid John Carpenter fan and, since we did not have a VCR at the time, I gathered together some audio tapes and recorded the broadcast that way.
Oakland Tribune - Saturday, January 30, 1982
The reason for my knowing and remembering this fact is due to my best friend (at the time) and I seeing a matinee of Evilspeak and Demonoid at the South Shore Twin Cinema that very afternoon and discussing our excitement at being able to see the movie John Carpenter made before Halloween.
I fell in love with the movie, of course, and listening to the recording I made, over and over, helped commit its score to memory. For years and years, which added up to decades, I wondered why a soundtrack album for the film had never been released.
Turns out it was due to the movie having, at most, only some twenty-six or so minutes of music. Its memorable theme, Carpenter shares in an interview for the album liner notes, was "a simplification of a Lalo Schifrin line in Dirty Harry, which in turn was a kind of rip of The Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin."
Having had that inspiration through-line pointed out, I can now hear the connection as clear as day. Incredible.

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #9

Ripley is second in command to Dallas aboard the "Nostromo". She is a young woman, extremely intelligent and sensitive to the need and safety of her crew mates.

Here is the real heroic lead of Alien.

The Stand by Stephen King - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - November 5, 1978
Having just read and reviewed a book about the 1918 influenza epic, why not share this newspaper ad hyping the release of Stephen King's End Times epic The Stand?

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, there was a lot of chatter and jokes about Captain Trips and such. There were even chain letter tweets sharing and spreading, back when there were tweets worth sharing and spreading, the eighth chapter of the novel, which charted the explosive spread of the super flu.

Further back in time, however, I struggled to get through the totality of The Stand. I could make it as far as the end of the plague, but would start to lose patience with the seeming meandering pace of this behemoth novel. Then again, I was all of eleven or twelve at that time and had the attention span of a gnat. So it goes.

I also remember being super disappointed to learn that the Star Wars invoking cover art, featuring a sword-wielding Luke Skywalker type fighting a scythe-wielding crow creature of some kind, did not happen in the book.

Although props should be given for that art, which does a great job of invoking the epic fantasy vibe of the work more so than the epic horror expectations this potential (and future constant) reader had in the early months of 1979.

Further props for it invoking both the grim reaper, via the scythe, and the plague, via that beaked countenance. I love it.

Chopping Mall by Joshua Millican - Book Review

I read a ton of novelizations, back in the day. Many times I would have read the novelization of a movie before I was able to see it. Which is how my first time watching both Alien (1979) and The Thing (1982) were 'spoiled' by my having done that very thing. It is also why I did not see Poltergeist on the big screen, because the approach of the novelization left me feeling rather underwhelmed.

There were also times when I was caught off guard, because the script being used for the novelization turned out to have been a discarded one. Which was the case of the novelizations for Jaws 2 and The Boogens.

Over time the film market changed, because of home video and such, and novelizations stopped being as ubiquitous as they once were. Novelizations and tie-ins still happen, but they are for major Hollywood fare. Big ticket items. The practice of having a novelization of a lower budgeted exploitation film, as a form of marketing, has shriveled and died.

Until now...

Thanks to boutique publishing labels, and the purchasing power of goofball fans such as myself, novelizations of lower budgeted exploitation cult films are being written and published once more.

While this has been going on for the past few years, it took the release of the novelization for Jim Wynorski's Chopping Mall to get me reading them.

For those who might not know, Chopping Mall was a tongue-in-cheek movie about killer robots that hunt a small group of people that have gotten themselves locked inside a shopping mall. 

Author Joshua Millican adds a little background detail and some atmospheric color to the film's events.

Some of it is good. Like the reimagining of the electrical storm and lightning strike that turns the robot security guards murderous. Or giving the 'characters' of Mary and Paul Bland, who were just cameo in-jokes made by Corman alumni Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel at the start of the film, a little more to do.

But some of it fell flat and did not work for me. Like the de-aging of the primary characters into high school seniors and/or recent graduates. Yeah, no...

There are also some glaring anachronisms, such as having the characters childhood play be influenced by Rambo and Commando. If that were the case, then this story should have been set in 1996, not 1986.

But I let that go. Going in with high literary expectations for a novelization of something as goofy as Chopping Mall is just foolish. This kind of project is critique proof.

Of course I plan on reading more of them. Why wouldn't I?

Arrival (2016) - Soundtrack Collection

The predominant use of Max Richter's On the Nature of Daylight during the beginning and ending of Arrival was the excuse given as to why Jóhann Jóhannsson's phenomenal score was ruled ineligible for the Academy Awards. I say that is a load of bullshit.
This score deserved a nomination, at the very least. Jóhannsson's compositions, utilizing human vocals in irregular and arrhythmic patterns, are breathtaking. The music drifts and swirls back and forth, in and around, a vibrant tapestry of emotion; invoking awe, menace, and the excitement of dawning understanding.
I think it is an incredible and beautiful piece of work.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #11

Some of Heather's earliest memories are of her great-grandma's tales of civil war ghosts and witches said to haunt the area. While Heather relished the terror those stories inspired in her early on, she came to appreciate the historical and sociological value that this oral tradition provided. She made it her mission to investigate and document the origins of these stories, primarily as an act of preservation.
Heather Donahue
While I have no idea of what the real Heather Donahue is like as a person, the fictional character 'Heather Donahue' is someone that seems to share my sensibilities and opinions regarding myth and folklore.
As tired and played out as the term "Monsters are metaphors" might be, it nonetheless remains true. Our myth and folklore, our arts and entertainment, are where our fears and desires are costumed and contextualized in the language and logic of dreams.

Bullet for a Badman (1964) / Unearthly Stranger (1963) / The Last Man On Earth (1964)

Oakland Tribune - January 3, 1965

While the top-billed movie of this triple feature at the Lux Theatre is a western melodrama, Darren McGavin (who will always be Carl Kolchak first and the Old Man from A Christmas Story second) played the heavy. For that reason alone I would give it a watch.

Yet it is the second and third features that qualify this ad for posting here, rather than at The Newspaper Ad Archive. Unearthly Stranger is a highly regarded British thriller. One that dresses Cold War paranoia as an alien invasion.

Last, but in no way least, is The Last Man on Earth. This was the first cinematic adaptation of Richard Matheson's apocalyptic vampire novel I Am Legend, followed by 1971's The Omega Man and 2007's I Am Legend, and the acknowledged inspiration and creative blueprint for 1968's Night of the Living Dead.

Army of Darkness (1992) - Soundtrack Collection

Depressing as it is to admit, it was a struggle for me to make it through the one time I watched Army of Darkness. Which seems odd, because, on paper, this love letter to Ray Harryhausen movies, sword and sorcery fantasy, and Three Stooges slapstick should have worked.
I expected and wanted Army of Darkness to work, because I loved The Evil Dead, Crimewave, Evil Dead II, and Darkman. With a track record like that, how could I have any doubt abut it working?
Two things, though. First, the version of Army of Darkness I watched was a bootleg of the Director's Cut, the one with the Rip Van Winkle ending, and it just felt slow to me. The entire movie just seemed to sit there. Which felt off-putting and wrong.
Second, and this was the real deal breaker for me, is that I grew to dislike the character of Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell). How could the hapless everyman character from the first two films turn into such an unlikeable dunderhead? It got so bad that I began to root for the bad guys!
The version of the soundtrack I have is Varèse Sarabande's 2020 reissue, which is a presentation of the score as it heard in the theatrical release prints that screened in the United States.
While I might not have liked the movie all that much, Joseph LoDuca's score for it is incredible. As is the single track composed by Danny Elfman, March of the Dead. I've had so much fun listening to it, I might try giving Army of Darkness a second viewing.

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #8

As commander of the "Nostromo" and its crew, Captain Dallas blends discipline with humanity during his extended assignment in outer space.

While Alien is known and respected, and also detested and ridiculed, for a great many things. The depth and nuance of its characters is not one of them. Which makes the above text describing the leadership of Captain Dallas both ironic and interesting.
The interesting aspect is how the text helps build the illusion that Dallas will be the film's heroic lead. Its Chief Brody, if you will. The irony, of course, is that Dallas is not the film's heroic lead.

Frankenstein (1931) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - December 3, 1931
The success of Dracula set the stage for the taking of this risky second venture into gothic horror. With Dracula, at least, there was the proven success of the stage production it was adapting to point at and assuage the concerns of dubious investors.

That was not the case with Frankenstein, though. This was a big swing gamble that had more than a few people at Universal Studios questioning the commercial instincts of Carl Laemmle Jr., the 23-year-old head of production.

Laemmle's instincts proved correct, though. Frankenstein was another smash hit for the studio and, coupled with Dracula, opened the creative doors, so that other monsters would be able to shamble out of the shadows and up onto the big screen.