Anthology Schmanthology: Fun Size Horror: Volume One (2015)

Fun Size Horror: Volume One (2015)
Various directors (20 short films)

I often have a hard time tackling anthology films. It is difficult for me to accept shifting directorial styles within what is supposed to be thought of as a conceptually bound set of films. This is especially true if there is a really strong short up front that makes me wish that the more substandard ones that follow didn't take the earlier film as an example. This is a ridiculous thought, of course, because these films are not (in the vast majority of cases) churned out on an assembly line, nor can quality – and especially an instant classic – be triggered automatically whenever one wishes. Even the greatest directors have their small (and sometimes major) misfires.

In recent years, the anthology flick has made a strong comeback with titles like The ABCs of Death and V/H/S becoming quite popular amongst the horror aficionados. None of the titles have really captured my attention thoroughly, but I chalk this up more to the hit-or-miss nature of these affairs than anything else. It's just the way things go. If you take any famous anthology series, such as The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, while there may have been a very high bar set for excellence in the series overall, every once in a while, you ran across an episode that was only so-so. This is true of most television series, but in a weekly series where the characters recur each episode, you can gloss over a dud episode a little easier than an anthology. In an anthology, each new film starts from square one and works forward, and usually has little or no connection to previous stories. It has to stand on its own, but it is still going to be identified with that which preceded it in the collection.

It is for this reason that I had to adopt a new strategy when watching anthologies. I couldn't just watch them straight through and let the entire piece wash over me, because in most cases, none of the films really have anything to do with the others. There might be an overarching theme that the producers draped over the proceedings to make it look as it there were a common theme, but I have to watch them as individual short films and judge them that way. It is much the same way that I watch collections of cartoons. It's not the collection that is important, but the individual films.

And so it shall be with the first volume of Fun Size Horror, a creepy little anthology that came out last year and which is playing currently on platforms like Hulu and Amazon for the Halloween season. No really big names in this, though favorites of mine like Lance Reddick and John Ennis do show up briefly, Fun Size Horror takes its name to heart, delivering chunks of dark devilry each no more than a few short minutes in length. Enough time to take a good, bloody bite and move on to the next one.

To stay true to my word, I am going to assign each short piece a temporary rating based on how it came off for me independent of the others. Then I will average out the ratings, and modify the result (only slightly) based on how all of the shorts played together as a collection. It might not seem fair since they don't seem designed to play off each other (and they aren't), but Fun Size Horror was released as a collection, so the final rating will be in how it played that way.

There are twenty shorts in this 85-minute feature:

When They Say You're Alone 
Dir.: Grant Olin
Rating: 6/9
Kind of a pretentious start, though I know these weren't planned to go in a certain order. This one certainly hits the "creepy" factor, as it would be hard for any of us to fall asleep if we knew for certain that things like this might occur when we were at our most vulnerable. I like director Grant Olin's (who did the animated opening for the collection as well) use of time lapse and the lack of any dialogue, and those strange sticky flowers are a nice detail. A nice way to tell a story with the briefest of information but still squeeze every inch out of the visuals. Very simple but effective.

Knock Knock
Dir.: Anthony Lund
Rating: 5/9
An asthmatic kid attempts to do battle with a monster in his closet but loses his sword on the way. This one is really built around its final shot, which is fine, I guess, but leaves the clip a little dull and a little standard. So much more could have been done with this and it left me pretty cold. Not bad, and fairly well shot... just generic.

Happy Birthday
Dir.: Erin Stegeman
Rating: 6/9
I am kind of wrestling with this one in my head. It's solid "sick" humor of the sort in which E.C. Comics specialized and its nice to see it practiced in these politically correct times. However, the "sick" punchline involves puppies, which does make Mr. Animal Rescue me a tad squeamish, so consider this a warning if you don't want to see such a joke taken a little too far. (Don't worry... as far as I know no actual puppies were harmed, but I would not be all that upset if I found out if a certain overly precocious child actor got really horrid nightmares from the experience.) There are a couple of dialogue lines and details in the party that do not ring true given the outcome, so it almost ruins the party for me upon reflection. It should be acknowledged, however, that they do go for the comically gruesome in this one, and I do appreciate that. (By the way, the dog that plays the "puppy" is almost a dead ringer for my beloved dog Trouble when I was a kid.)

Entity
Dir.: Matthew May
Rating: 4/9
A guy helps two girls move into a new place, but the lights are out. For whatever reason, they end up looking in the attic with flashlights and find a creepy doll. Soon, they hear a thump, and then weird stuff starts happening in quick order. The three actors actually aren't bad, and almost make you want to settle into a longer story with them, but then it is over before it even started. As for the scary stuff... move on, please. That aspect is not even worth further mentioning except to say it is thoroughly bland, though in line with current tastes. Tastes that are not mine at all, I'm afraid.

Bad Eggs
Dir.: Max Isaacson
Rating: 6/9
A very silly sight gag that kind of works, especially in the payoff of what comes out of where. Señor Wences-type humor taken to the Lovecraftian level (but, you know, without the ventriloquist in sight, thereby making it mere puppetry). It feels the sort of thing that might have shown up in something like Spike and Mike's back in the '80s if it had just been animated instead. Very slight and sophomoric, but I rather wish that I had thought of it.

The Screaming
Dir.: Dick Grunert
Rating: 5/9
I really hate the final shot on this one, but I am having a hard time discerning just why. I just know that I don't like it. Until then, this mostly dialogue-free quickie is based around the notion of a "chain" horror, that quickly seems to cascade closer and closer to the person perceiving a certain sound but trying to understand the possible (?) growing terror. It's an interesting concept that I wish were handled better in its closing.

Persephone
Dir.: Lisa J. Dooley
Rating: 6/9
On a personal level, I was instantly on a protective edge with this short because the title is also the name given by two of my friends to their recently born daughter. Strange how we react that way to something as simple as a name. And I haven't even met the baby yet. Outside of that, this is a mostly successful short that follows the efforts of a young woman to free herself of a coffin. She's not the Bride in Kill Bill, but she still has to figure a way out. But will it be enough if she does? A decent payoff and acting in this one.

Voice
Dir.: Mali Elfman
Rating: 3/9
Either this one is a clever spoof of a community theatre acting workshop or it's actually a short play developed in a community theatre acting workshop that was put onto film that never should have been. I am going with the latter scenario. Awful acting from the beginning took me straight out of the only barely interesting premise. I mean, really subpar "I don't know what to do with my hands" acting. This is a shame, because the director is the daughter of Danny Elfman (she also has a small role in Persephone and is a producer on other shorts), and one of the actresses is Diva Zappa. Because of these factors, I gave Voice another shot – and yet another shot – and it still came up short for me. Ugh. Easily my least favorite of the lot.

Somebody's Watching You
Dir.: Ben Rekhi
Rating: 4/9
A reality show with murderous consequences, from which we are always about fourteen seconds away in real life anyway. I was willing to go along with this for a little bit, however staid the idea already is to me. The forced drama does ring true to what we expect from such shows, but that doesn't mean that I want to see it replicated onscreen. Didn't want to see such phoniness the first time, why do I need to see someone double down on it in an even falser version? Drama, drama, drama, drama, drama... splat. Done.

Trust
Dir.: Jerry Pyle
Rating: 6/9
I was loving this short for the first five-sixths of it, and thought it was well shot and the reactions of the two actors to each other were divine. It was, to this point, the first time in the film where I was genuinely thinking that someone was on the way to a great short... but then the final gag failed me. It didn't kill the film, because I knew that was exactly where the film was meant to go from the start. I just wish it had cleverness to match the wit of the rest of the short to that point. A really nice try, though the final gag knocked my rating down a peg.

The Lover
Dir.: Anisa Qureshi
Rating: 7/9
And then The Lover showed up next and showed 'em how its done. Probably the best composed cinematography of the lot thus far. A much better showcase for Mali Elfman, who is extremely effective and believable here as the spurned girlfriend who slightly self-destructively seeks to clear her life of all traces of her former lover. A really evocative character piece with a great ending.

The Creepy Fucking Kid in Apartment B
Dir.: Eric Pereira
Rating: 7/9
For the truly fun and original, turn to this one. The little psychic kid hanging around next door is indeed creepy, but not so creepy as what he portends. This is the first one that got a genuine "aha" moment out of me, though I wish the ultimate payoff were handled a little more deftly. It's another example of what used to be called "sick" humor, but the less said about the details, the better for your enjoyment.

A Dog and His Boy
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
Rating: 5/9
When I saw the title, I immediately thought of Harlan Ellison's controversial short story (and its subsequent cult classic film) A Boy and His Dog. My first guess was that Mr. Pinheiro had not read Harlan Ellison, given that this short is similar in ultimate outcome, albeit without the post-apocalyptic trappings. Then my second guess is that Mr. Pinheiro was at least made aware of Ellison and his litigious tendencies, and so transposed the title elements thusly. But this film is not about Ellison at all. It's a tribute to an entirely different source, one that I won't reveal here. Does it work? Well, I have some serious problems with the hows and whys of what occurs late in the film, and how even the location plays into those hows and whys. On the tribute and black humor levels, it almost works. But not quite.

Quad
Dir.: Ali Presley Paras
Rating: 6/9
No, it's not about a slasher in a wheelchair who has a murderous mind-meld with his helper dog Rottweiler. Four characters and four camera angles. You would think four different POV, but you would be wrong... almost. A pretty inventive short, based around three friends watching a slasher flick – and a secretive love triangle to boot – while something is wandering about the house around them. Because I have been rewatching The Wild, Wild West series recently, the images of the split screens constantly changing and sometimes combining reminded me of that show's graphics for going to and coming back from commercials. A packed little film that is actually a nice addition to the slasher canon. I don't know if it would work as a longer film, but for an experiment, it's pretty cool.

Let Me Go
Dir.: Glen Murakami
Rating: 6/9
This one gets the Super Overly Arty award for this movie. Gorgeously shot, though the effect comes off suited more for a Chanel No. 5 ad than an horror anthology. I almost wish that this dialogue-free piece were done fully as a silent film of the old school, because some of its imagery is entirely suited to the style. It's a lovely piece, but it is as ethereal as its ghostly female lead, and wisps away from the mind in direct contrast to how she doesn't depart from the mind of her former lover.

Mother
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
Rating: 7/9
Ooh, boy... I like this one. So, if you were expecting a baby, and the ultrasound revealed a whole bunch of spiders inside you instead, how do you think you would act? And what do you think would happen to your mate? That's what I thought. Very quick and very different, but the creepiest film in the entire bunch, especially if my wife were to have watched it (which she never would). Nice job, Mr. Pinheiro. (Don't worry, he's going to show up one more time here.)

Evil Voices Lie
Dir.: Grant Olin
Rating: 5/9
Someone watches a videotape of a man being interviewed who had been the captive of a famous serial killer. But something strange is happening during the tape. A very odd piece, and I honestly don't have much of an opinion on it. The film almost seems like it is a clip out of a longer piece, which may be its intent, but I don't really have an angle on this one. I may have to watch it again.

Paramnesia
Dir.: Michael May
Rating: 5/9
This one is far more ambitious but also more pretentious than director May's other short (Entity), and it is nicely shot for the most part. Once again, though, stiff acting undoes some of its effect, and there is just not enough here overall to really intrigue me.  

Bitter
Dir.: Ned Ehrbar
Rating: 6/9
A comedy short that at first seems like it has a nice reference to Richard Bachman (i.e. Stephen King) when one character seems to mockingly curse another much larger character with the word "Thinner" at the very beginning of the film. Then we discover it is a battle of two witches who each use single (or near single) word curses ending in "-er" at each other: the title word "bitter," "liver," "Hitler," with generally comic results in most cases. My favorite is "The Millers" and then the other character discovers to her horror that her entire DVR is now filled with nothing but recordings of the movie "The Millers". (I guess somebody had it in for that film; I still haven't seen it, but I like the joke.) Very light but a nice tonic after so much darkness.

Mr. Hendrix
Dir.: Zeke Pinheiro
Rating: 5/9
Another monster in the closet tale, this time with a scared kid who enlists his parents to check out the fiend. When the kid mentions that the boogeyman goes by the name Mr. Hendrix, this triggers bad memories for the father, who encounter the boogeyman in his youth. For me, this short is enhanced briefly by the presence of John Ennis (from Mr. Show) who plays the father's dad in a flashback, and the acting is solid throughout, even by the kid. But it is just too predictable a riff on previous work with the boogeyman character, including Stephen King's.

The Collection
Dir.: Josh C. Waller
Rating: 7/9
The director of Raze (the female fighting film, which I thought was a solid drive-in-style film, starring Zoe Bell) helms this short, which features Fringe's Lance Reddick as a professional photographer who has an agenda that goes beyond being merely sleazy. It turns out he has an antique camera that takes a "special kind of picture"... but what type of picture would that be? That's what innocent models with their eyes wide shut are for, silly... As far as a polished, finished piece goes, this one is aces.

And don't forget to sit through the credits...

Overall TC4P Rating: 6/9
The twenty films averaged out to 5.3 for me overall, but in discarding the films that I rated as "5", which is my middle rating, it turns out I enjoyed more of these films (11 films rated as "6" or "7") than I actively disliked (only 3 films rated as "3" or "4"). I am greatly surprised by this, as I honestly expected to dislike and even outright hate more of them. As a viewing experience, I have to rate this film a small success, and bump its rating up to a "6" overall, which is "good" on my personal ratings chart. I hope that Volume Two, which I will be reviewing in the coming weeks, will turn out so well.

RTJ

Ghosts and Bats and Snacks Better Scurry...

Because I am who I am, I cannot help but look around the grocery stores each and every Halloween to see if there is some snack or goodie that is new to me. 

In a strange twist of fate, despite my lifelong Halloween obsession, I am not nor have I ever been a candy-holic. While I quite love certain candies (see below), my sweet tooth – even as a child – was usually sated within one or two bites of something. When other kids were seriously disgruntled when they received packs of trading cards in their bags (I mean, sure, they had a stick of chewing gum in them, but come on...), I found it an easy matter to swap out a Snickers bar (in the pre-"fun size" days) for a few packs of whatever cards were making their way through the rounds that particular year. It's how I made off with my initial stack of Topps You'll Die Laughing trading cards back when I was around nine or ten (more on this in coming weeks) and how I loaded up so well on Welcome Back Kotter, Happy Days, Mork and Mindy, and Bay City Rollers (yup...) cards back in the day.

So, when Halloween rolls around, we make sure to have candy on the off-chance that we actually have trick-or-treaters in an given year (last Halloween was the best turnout in ages – we are in a new neighborhood and no longer in an apartment building – so we need to be sure to load up this time). But I don't really spend much time perusing the different types of candy, except to be sure to find some Tootsie Caramel Apple Pops for myself and something chocolatey for Jen. My main concern when I go to the store in October is in finding other snacks that fit the Halloween season in a proper and fun way.

You may be thinking immediately... PUMPKIN... and you are so wrong. Yes, I do have a great love for both pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread. I also don't mind trying the odd pumpkin flavored this or that if it is offered to me, or if I decide on a whim to test out something. But we really are at an over-saturation point on all things pumpkin (though I am sure it is grand for the pumpkin industry), which I somewhat blame on Starbucks and on rich white people in general (I am pretty certain Martha Stewart had a hand in this somehow). Oh, yeah, and places like Trader Joe's.

And this is the stuff that I
cannot even try...

Now, I love Trader Joe's. When we lived in Anaheim for the past decade and had one just down the road from us, Jen and I shopped there weekly; now that we are a little farther away, we get to one about every three weeks or so. We have favorite items there that are staples in our weekly menus, and I cannot get by without having a stock of their Sparkling Lime Mineral Water at hand. But any trip to TJ's in late September will reveal to you entire cases full of pumpkin-flavored items that really have little to no business being pumpkin-flavored. While I am a connoisseur of tortilla chips, I just can't quite make the commitment to pumpkin-flavored ones (I've tried them though, so I at least gave them a shot). Honey-roasted pumpkin ravioli, which I have not tried because, medically, I cannot, also doesn't really appeal to me, which is also the case when I read aloud the names of many of Trader Joe's (or any other company's) pumpkin-enhanced items.

So while I don't completely write off finding something interesting in the pumpkin realm, I always hope to find something else odd in the grocery store that speaks to the monster lover that I am or really gives me a challenge for the palate beyond that great orange gourd. Unfortunately, I am saddled with dreadful wheat and rye allergies that limit me to making sure most items that I try are marked as "gluten-free" to ensure that I avoid either of those ingredients. Since wheat flour seems to be in just about everything these days, this rather kills me from trying out the bulk of items they have for sale, such as the many holiday-themed turns on Joe-Joe's (Trader Joe's brand knockoff of Oreos), including their Halloween variation which, surprisingly, does not have pumpkin-flavored cream in the middle. (Seriously, how did they miss this one?)

Last year, Trader Joe's announced Ghost Pepper Potato Chips, and I jumped on checking them out right away. Compared to another product that I tried out from another ghost pepper chip company (Paqui, though theirs were tortilla chips not potato) at the same time which blew my taste buds out, the TJ's chips were far tastier overall but not nearly as hot as the dare of the packaging led me to believe. [You can read that review from last year here.]

Cut to our impromptu visit to a Trader Joe's in Irvine the other day where, due to unexpectedly light traffic, Jen's mom, Sande, and I had a full hour to kill before my scheduled visit to my doctor, a gastrointestinal specialist. Perusing the aisles of each Trader Joe's is always interesting because every store is laid out in a  slightly different way, and this location was no exception. For one, the aisles seemed a tad wider than usual for a Trader Joe's, but it looked like it had been dropped into a much larger space than they normally tend to have. The layout of the different sections was also markedly different, so it took a little bit to get our bearings, but even the biggest Trader Joe's is still much smaller than a normal supermarket, so it is never too hard to figure out where one is situated.

The poem, I must admit,
is more than a trifle
lacking in style...

Naturally, there were a couple of different endcaps and a huge display prominently promoting roughly 8,000 pumpkin products (really, under a couple dozen) but nothing that really stuck with me. I figured that I might check out the chip aisle to see if the Ghost Pepper Potato Chips were still around, just in case nothing else stuck. But then something did stick... Ghosts & Bats Crispy Potato Snacks!

If there is such thing as love at first sight for a product, it was this as I rounded the corner and saw yet another endcap featuring a brand new product to my eyes. A greenish and purple bag with a haunted house on the front, featuring ghosts and bats flying around it, and windows on the house that you could see straight through that showed the potato crisps inside. And the best part? The crisps were shaped liked ghosts and bats!

If I had a "Squeeee!" in me at that time, that would have been the moment for it to eek out into the atmosphere and shock the old lady standing nearby me. That bag was in the cart faster than you could ever imagine. The price on the item – only $1.99 for 5 ounces – also made it a no-brainer for a taste test. Of course, part of the fun of many Trader Joe's items is the packaging, which sometimes reach J. Peterman catalog-levels of odd intrigue. Not so this time. Instead, a poem is printed on the back of the bag, and as you will tell, whoever wrote it needed to give it another draft or two:

Cute UPC ghost
negates bad poetry...

"There once was a 
house in a forest dark,
where ghosts and bats – 
upon a lark...

...happened on to potato crisps
and commenced munching 
forthwith.

No squeaks or moaning 
were ever heard,
instead – 
a crunch, crunch, crunch, 
so absurd...

It was not long before
of their favorite snacks
the ghosts and bats
began to snack!

Spooky."

So, yeah... If this guy ever gets buried by accident at Poets' Corner, he would probably come back as a bull in a china shop. But it's entirely beside the point. They were just trying to sell a back of potato chips/crisps, and they did their job on me before I even got to the stupid poem with its horrible meter. Besides... there is a cute little ghost hanging out over the UPC label, so technically, that negates the awfulness of the poem.

Yup, that's what they look like. Bat and ghost,
ready to die of (your) consumption...

All of this aside, how are Ghosts & Bats Crispy Potato Snacks? Well, they are certainly crispy, they are made of potato predominately (thankfully, there are only five ingredients listed on the back, potato flour and potato starch being those two), and they fall into the snack category. So, truth in advertising is in full force already. These are more crisps than potato chips, though please don't confuse that with the British term "crisps," which actually means "potato chips". These are pretty light and almost dissolve on the tongue after a short wait, almost like a cheesy poof.

As for the "ghosts and bats" part, indeed, opening the bag revealed that the greater proportion of pieces were cute cut-out shapes of winged batties and little ghosties with oval eyes and mouths that I assume are going "Woooooo!" Of course, any bag of potato snacks will have its crushed denizens lurking about within, and this was no exception. Luckily, most of the ghosts and bats were intact, and ready to charm straight away. 

As for taste, like any potato snack, I prefer to stack up multiple crisps in one bite for more potato flavor, but I will say that there was a definite lack of overall saltiness that actually turned out to be quite appealing. I would suppose some would consider that a bit bland, and normally I would, but it worked out fine in this case.

It really didn't matter, because I was purchasing this bag for the fun of the experience, and fun is what I received. It was a relatively light (130 calories per one ounce serving), silly snack that I will be more than happy to buy again before the Halloween season is over. I wouldn't mind Trader Joe's trying out different flavors with these in the future; perhaps a salt and vinegar version might be terrific (no matter what I just said about downplaying the saltiness).

But, please, despite the season, no pumpkin-flavored potato chips...

RTJ

Surveying the Battlefield...

"My dad says I'M the crazy one..." – The Blueberry, October 1, 2016

Photo Op at the 2016 Finger Monster Convention...

Mr. Mixtape-ptlk, Track #1: "Frankenstein Walk" by Gene "Bowlegs" Miller (1969)

"I don't know what I'm tryin' to do! I'm a monster!"

I miss making mixtapes.

Mixtapes. Mix CDs. Whatever you want to call them (really, whatever I want to call them is what matters here...), I miss them. Back when practically every car in existence had a cassette player of some form – some holdouts even still played eight-tracks (look it up, youngsters) – most of my friends had players that played standard audiocassettes. Besides 33-1/3 rpm stereo LPs, 45 rpm 7" singles, and the radio (itself always a hit or miss proposition as far as variety was concerned), our standard form of non-direct musical expression (as opposed to picking up a guitar and singing your own song) was being able to figuratively cut and paste together collections of our favorite songs on cassette. 

Sometimes this was for our own amusement, but often it was for the benefit of others... or what we perceived as being for the benefit of others. For me, I was constantly upset that others in my ever-widening circle were not listening to the things that I thought were worthwhile, and so, in my rampant snobbishness, I would make tapes of songs that I thought they should be exposed to, without any real consideration as to whether they actually might like the songs in the playlist or not.

My mixtapes were often cued to how I was feeling about life in general at the time, and could be either maudlin enough to make you take up hard drugs or maddeningly overenthusiastic enough to borrow the syringe you were planning to use for those drugs and just simply stab your own eyes out with it. And I have no real way of knowing if any of the tapes that I gave various people in my life were ever actually played or if they just told me they liked it. And yes, I did do the occasional mixtape that had romantic longing attached to it, though there were also a couple of cases where there was no such notion attached where it was totally misconstrued as such.

BUT GETTING TO HALLOWEEN...

Yes, this is supposed to be a holiday-themed post, and assuredly, that is my true purpose here, despite my semi-nostalgic rambling to this point. Most of my mixtape power actually went into creating a pair of long-running series of tapes that I would assemble at two separate points each year that I would give to my closest friends. At Halloween and at Christmas time, it was so very important to me to throw together as many appropriate songs, comedy sketches, and whatever else I could find in time to hand them to my friends for seasonal enjoyment. These were not made and given in lieu of actual presents at any time. They were a pre-seasonal appetizer or supplement; an apéritif to prepare the spirits for the particular season if you will.

I delighted in creating these tapes, but stopped after several years. Somewhere well into the compact disc age, I created a single CD titled Vel-come to Boo-hemia! which was meant to be the start of a new series of Halloween discs. But it never went beyond that first disc. [If you want to read more about the story of that disc or see the artwork I created for it, click here.]

Of course, we are now pretty much past the CD age, though they are still around us everywhere. Everything is ultra-digital now, where we can't even understand the use of external media. What? It doesn't just play automatically on my computer the second I buy it? I have to slide what into where? Forget it! (Unless it's porn...) I have often thought about starting to build mixtapes again. Yes, I know that technically, if there is no tape, then there can't be a mixtape. But my reaction to the word "mix" on its own is the same that most people have to the word "moist"... utter revulsion. It needs to be appended with "tape" at the end to sound right, especially when you are talking about a collection of songs that you mean for someone else to give a listen. But I just haven't found the right means to do it, especially since digital rights are such a huge issue now. Things like Soundcloud seem cool to build a mixtape (see, I said it, and its fine), but they also seem to be pretty snippy about actual ownership of said titles.

What I am not going to do is provide songs for download, because that is just not my style. For now, I will just have to be content with pointing you in the right direction for the songs that I am going to post this month. C'mon... you are a resilient lot. You've had a computer how long? You know how to do what you need to do to have what you wish to have. If I can find a piece of music on YouTube and provide a link to the clip, it's all you from there on out. Do whatever you wish. My main purpose is to talk about some goofy and/or cool songs that have to something to do, however peripherally, with the Halloween season or horror movies or scary stuff.

Track #1: FRANKENSTEIN WALK

With that in mind, here is Track 1 for a collection that I have decided to title Mr. Mixtape-ptlk. (If you don't get the reference, you need to find a friend with comic book leanings, I guess. That person can probably help you with the pronunciation as well.)

Frankenstein Walk is about as silly and dopey as Halloween-oriented music can get (though I can think of a great many silly and dopey Halloween songs). It's a novelty version of an R&B groover, a booty-shaker by Gene "Bowlegs" Miller, a Memphis session trumpeter and sideman who also led a lot of bands in his time. He played with a lot of blues and R&B greats like B.B. King, Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, and Etta James. (Though he has been dead since 1987, Miller has, according to AllMusic.com, a trumpet credit on the soundtrack album for Suicide Squad. For the life of me, I cannot figure out which song on the soundtrack listing he may have performed on, but judging from the list, it could be a sample on one of the more modern songs. I am not going to take the time to figure it out however.)

Apart from his sideman work, Miller also released a handful of singles in the '60s and '70s under his own name. They are all pretty standard for the day but enjoyable (there seems to be no single collection of his songs that I can find), but Frankenstein Walk is the track that I really enjoy. From the moment that I first heard the opening twenty seconds of the song while listening on WFMU a few years back, I fell head over heels for Frankenstein Walk.

The opening is hilarious and completely unexpected. Over a bubbling groove, an unidentified female voice yells into the mike, "Hey, Frankenstein, baby!" A second voice, that of Gene "Bowlegs" Miller, plays the part of Frankenstein, though we learn really quick that he is the not the mad doctor of ill scientific repute. He replies gruffly, "What'chu want, woman?" and she asks, "What are you tryin' to do, baby?"

And this is the point where great loves are made. It floored me when I first heard it. Frankenstein's response is probably about as honest a thing as any woman would want her man to admit: "I don't know what I'm tryin' to do! I'm a monster!"

If I could go back to about 47, maybe 48 key moments in my life where if I had just said these words – "I don't know what I'm tryin' to do! I'm a monster!" – each of those key moments might have gone so much smoother than they actually did. They might have led to happiness and trying to do a silly monster dance. Instead, they led to arguments and crying and anger and mistrust and sadness and... yes, even divorce. All I needed to admit was that my very monstrousness led me to act like a buffoon.

Back to the song, where the girl is accusing Frankenstein of some shoddy dance moves. She tells him she saw him trying to do the boogaloo and the Funky Broadway, but he is incredulous at these accusations (and believe me, he won't get over it either). "Boogaloo? Funky Broadway? Look here, I got my own thing!" Frankenstein, as played by Gene "Bowlegs" Miller, is a fast talker but a terrible giver of dance instructions. Still, that is not going to stop him, otherwise we wouldn't have a song to play. He likes to punctuate each of his lines with little asides like "Dig it!" and "Look here!" and sometimes even longer ones. He leads us into the actual lyrics by going a little crazy, announcing "And I'm gonna show ya how to do it! Ha ha ha! Dig this here! Look here!"

"There's a new dance comin' your way!
It's not the boogaloo or the Funky Broadway!
It's a dance that anyone can do,
so, hold it right there, 
and give me a minute or two.

(Look here!)
We gonna do a little thing!
(Uh huh!)
It's not gonna be the shingaling!
(Dig this!)
So if you just wait and let me talk,
the name of this dance is the Frankenstein Walk

[Chorus]
I know your gonna like this one
and we all can have some fun
doin' the Frankenstein Walk!
(Dig it, baby!)
Doin' the Frankenstein Walk!

(Let me show ya how to do it. Dig this here right here.)
Put your right arm out
(That's good. Do it right there.)
and your left one too.
(That's it. Right there.)
Just stand there for a minute
(Now, hold it.)
And I'll tell you what else to do.
(Cool it right there.)

Now, put out your right leg!
(Yes!)
Now, put out your left one!
(Ha ha ha! Like that!)
Now we get ready,
(Ha! Looky here!)
we gonna have some fun!
(I told ya, look here!)

[Chorus]
I know your gonna like this one
(Ha ha! Look here!)
and we all gonna have some fun
doin' the Frankenstein Walk!
(Dig it!)
Doin' the Frankenstein Walk!
(Now cool it right there. I gonna tell how to ride it! Dig it.)

Now, let your right and left arms a-stretch out,
(That's it.)
and your right and left leg too.
(Dig!)
Here are my following instructions
and they're as simple as one and two.
Just do the Frankenstein, baby!
(Look here!)
Just walk like that little ol' monster!
Just do the boogaloo if ya want to. Looky here, baby. How ya like that?"

After pretty much spending two minutes telling us to just stick out our arms and legs and then walk forward stiffly – along with making sure that we dig it and look wherever he tells us to look – Frankenstein is interrupted by the girl from the beginning of the song. She runs in and tells him, "Franky! That's a gas! Man, that's cute!" His immediate response is to ask her, "What about the Wolfman? Have you seen the Wolfman? What about Batman?" But she digs the dance he is doing, pretty much drowning him out by saying, "Man thats the Frankenstein Walk, baby! Just the Frankenstein Walk! C'mon lets go baby. You're a Frankenstein!"

And that's it. That's the Frankenstein Walk. A gloriously silly time. A lot of Gene Miller's other songs seem to be dance-oriented, including one song called "It's Bump Time" that needs no further introduction. I wouldn't mind having a mix of his collected singles, but there doesn't seem to be much call for one either given that it doesn't appear he had any major hits. But Frankenstein Walk is just calling out for someone to set it to animation, and it would be groovy to see that in the future.

Or maybe I will have to do that.

RTJ

[Keep checking back here throughout my Countdown to Halloween month on The Cinema 4 Pylon for more fun tracks. You can also follow my choices for this mix throughout the month by visiting my Mr. Mixtape-ptlk YouTube playlist by clicking here.]

Meanwhile, Other "Countdown to Halloween" Fun in Cinema 4 Land...

Just a couple quick notices to make you aware of posts and articles on my other sites that tie into the launch of Countdown to Halloween this morning:

On CINEMA 4: CEL BLOC:

Spooks (1930)

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit faces off against a parody version of the Phantom of the Opera as he tries to protect his girlfriend Kitty in Walter Lantz's 1930 short, Spooks. There might even be a strange swipe at Walt Disney in the film in the use of a mouse (or a series of mice) that looks exactly like Mickey Mouse, the character that Disney and Ub Iwerks created to replace the stolen Oswald. The first of seven Halloween-oriented cartoons that will be featured throughout the month of October on Cinema 4: Cel Bloc.

On THE SHARK FILM OFFICE:

The Munsters in "Marineland Carnival" Promo (1965)

CBS did some cross-promotion and had the stars of one of their primetime hits take part in an early television special built around Marineland of the Pacific in Palos Verdes, California. Naturally, for me to discuss such a thing on the The Shark Film Office, sharks need to be involved in some small way, yes? Well, sort of almost maybe. Find out how through the link above.

RTJ

Countdown to Halloween 2016: Pylon-Style!

Even Totoro is ready for Halloween, resplendent
and relaxed in my Baby Monster Beanie...

Holy crap, I made it another year...

Not that I was expecting to go anywhere, but with everything that has happened to me over the past eighteen months or so, just being able to take part in another Countdown to Halloween has to be seen as some form of accomplishment.

That's right... once again, I am taking part in the annual Countdown to Halloween festivities. That's not just any ol' "taking part in Halloween" thing. That's easy to do, and anyone with sense and the spirit of fun does so each and every October. And I suppose just about anyone can take part in Countdown to Halloween as well. There are only two prerequisites, and most people really only need to fulfill one of them, while a far lesser number would need to fulfill both of them (though all are invited to engage in the second one, of course). 

The first prerequisite is to have access to the internet, which everyone but a Luddite would today. Computer, phone, TV, gaming system, tablet, school... most people have access. Visit http://countdowntohalloween.blogspot.com/ to see a list of all the websites and blogs that are taking part in Countdown to Halloween this year. Once there, you click on the sites that sound interesting to you, and check out everything they have to say to you or show you regarding the Halloween season or other topics tangentially related to the season.

The second prerequisite, and the reason why I am here, is having a blog or website that you are planning to devote to regular or semi-regular posts on whatever topic strikes your fancy that you believe followers of Halloween fun and frivolity might like to stop and check out for a few minutes during their time on the worldwide web. As I said, you really only need to fulfill one of these steps, but in my case, I like to post on my own sites and check out what others have to offer during the month. 

I have a lot of surprises in store this month, none of which I will give away here, but I do like to provide variety. Rest assured, if you are into monster movies, cartoons, toys, trading cards, sharks, and Halloween or horror-oriented books and music, you will find a little bit of each (and sometimes a lot) written about here on The Cinema 4 Pylon, and on its sister blog, Cinema 4: Cel Bloc. Both blogs are full participants in this year's Countdown, though the Cel Bloc will only update every five or six days, while the Pylon will try to stick to a mostly daily schedule through most of the month.

But there's more! I will also have sporadic posts on my other sites as well: The Shark Film Office and V for Voluminous, C for Cinema. However, links to any articles on those sites that might be "holiday relevant" will be posted here on the Pylon first, so you don't have to go crazy checking out so many different sites every day.

One other shout-out that I should make. My writing partner, Aaron Lowe, will have his blog, Working Dead Productions, involved in the Countdown to Halloween as well. Together, though, we recently created a website titled We Who Watch Behind the Rows: Stephen King in Print and on Film. For the Countdown, we have decided to do a concentration on King's first officially published novel (under his own name), Carrie, and after we finish discussing the novel, we will then turn our attention to several posts reviewing the four film adaptations derived from that work. To read our introduction announcement to this project, "Carrie" On, My Wayward Sons here.

I hope that you take some time to bounce around my sites while you are here, and if you like what you see and read, please return any time. Otherwise, Happy Halloween!

RTJ