He was listed in critical condition when this story broke last night but he’s been upgraded to stable according to his rep. The accident happened in Manhattan yesterday around 3pm when when Michael McKean was on his way to the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre for his scheduled performance in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. The 65-year old comic actor was hit by a car while crossing the street and suffered a broken leg in addition to other injuries including cuts and bruises. His wife, actress Annette O’Toole flew in from L.A. to be at his side. McKean began his career playing Lenny on the Laverne and Shirley TV show in the ’70s and is best know to movie audiences form his costarring roles in THIS IS SPINAL TAP where he played band frontman David St. Hubbins, and the Christopher Guest comedies WAITING FOR GUFFMAN, BEST IN SHOW, and A MIGHTY WIND. We Are Movie Geeks wishes Mr. McKean a speedy recovery.

What do Tommy Wiseau and the Muppets have in common? If you said they’re both moth-infested hand puppets, you’d be incorrect! They’re both coming to the Tivoli midnights this summer and Mr. Wiseau will be here live and in person. THE MUPPET MOVIE and THE ROOM are just two of the films that will be showing as part of The Tivoli’s Reel Late Midnight Movie series. There are two different films shown each weekend, one in the Tivoli’s large auditorium and one on one of the smaller screens. We Are Movie Geek’s own Tom Stockman will be there each night with trivia questions about the films and always has DVDs, posters, and other cool stuff to give away. Ticket prices are $8 (except ROCKY HORROR which is $10, and THE ROOM with Tommy Wiseau live which is $15). We hope to see everyone late at night this Spring. Here’s the Reel Late Midnight schedule for June and July:

June 1 & 2:  THE MUPPET MOVIE and TREMORS

June 8 & 9: WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY and DRIVE

June 15 & 16: TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (1990) and THE ROOM

June 22 & 23: FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH and THE SHINING

June 29 & 30: CITIZEN KANE and 13 ASSASSINS

July 6 & 7: THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW and DEAD ALIVE

July 13 & 14: GHOSTBUSTERS and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

July 20 & 21: THE ROOM with writer/director/star Tommy Wiseau in preson!

The Tivoli is located at 6350 Delmar in The Loop. Visit Landmark’s The Tivoli’s website HERE

http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/st.louis/tivolitheatre.htm

There are different types of “Bad Movies”. It’s become sport to poke fun at bloated star vehicles such as ISHTAR, GLITTER, or GIGLI but those films are usually miserable experiences to actually sit through. There are films that are intentionally bad such as those from Troma studios (TOXIC AVENGER, POULTRYGEIST) but Troma knows its audience and anyone seeing a Troma film knows what they are getting into. Writer/director Tommy Wiseau’s THE ROOM belongs with the group of movies that are so bad that they can transform their own awfulness into a “comedy of errors”ť. Unlike more mundane bad films, these films develop an ardent following of fans who love them because of their poor quality, because normally, the errors (technical or artistic) or wildly contrived plots are unlikely to be seen elsewhere and they become great entertainment in spite of themselves. PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is the most famous film in this category but its director, Ed Wood, made his films while cloaked in an alcoholic haze (and bra) while convinced he was making great art. I’m not sure what Tommy Wiseau’s excuse is but St. Louis-area fans of THE ROOM will have the opportunity to ask him this summer when he comes to Landmark’s Tivoli Theater here (6350 Delmar in The Loop) for midnight shows of his film the weekend of July 20 and 21st.

THE ROOM is an independently-made, self-distributed movie Wiseau wrote, directed, and starred in back in 2003 that would have been quickly forgotten if it hadn’t found new life after being discovered by some courageous Los Angeles movie fans.It began playing midnights all across the country, complete with prop-throwing, dialog-heckling, and the audience acting out scenes  and dialog like “Lisa, you’re tearing me apart!(think ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW without the bustiers).  There’s no real way of adequately describing the film’s amusements in standard critique but I will say that it really does live up (or in this case down) to its reputation. A most uncomplicated love story, THE ROOM stars Wiseau as Johnny, a long-haired banker whose trampy girlfriend Lisa (Juliette Danielle) is having an affair with his best friend Mark (Greg Sestero). Johnny gets upset. The End. To be sure, THE ROOM is a craptacular train wreck that will have you rolling on the floor with laughter because of its stupidity, but it is so transcendent in its dreadfulness that it actually becomes a thing of beauty. All of THE ROOMS’s cult achievement rests squarely on the awkward shoulders of Tommy Wiseau, the unlikeliest leading man ever to grace the big screen. Wiseau looks like Gene Simmons’ squat, constipated brother and has an incredibly uncomfortable screen presence. Speaking in a vague Eastern European accent (he claims he’s originally from France. He also claims to study psychology ‘as a hobby’), his every line is mumbled in the same phonetic, euro-sleaze inflection and concluded with a forced, strangled giggle. Wiseu directs himself in three long soft-core sex scenes, each one accompanied by an excruciating song and while Wiseu could have hired as his leading lady an unattractive actress who could act or a beauty who couldn’t, Juliette Danielle is both homely and untalented. I hate to be cruel but with her bad teeth, folds of fat that pop out of her lingerie, and nervous tick neck-twitch, she actually outdoes Wiseu in the lack-of-charisma department (at I first suspected she must be Wiseau’s girlfriend until I read an interview where he claims to have discovered her the day before shooting began when he spotted her stepping off a bus!).

It’s hard to explain the appeal of THE ROOM to someone who hasn’t seen it. I could describe the craziness that abounds such as the scene when the guys go outside and toss a football around from about three feet apart while reciting wretched dialog, or mention that a main character announces she has cancer halfway through, a development never again revisited, but there’s no way my descriptions can do THE ROOM’s unintentional delights justice. After all the anti-acclaim the film has received, Wiseau has backpedaled and now claims he was making a spoof. Was he? Ask him this summer when he appears at the Tivoli to sign his book on THE ROOM, sign autographs, and answer questions. Tickets are $15 each. Look for more coverage of this major upcoming cultural event here at We Are Movie Geeks.com, It doesn’t get worse than THE ROOM, and that’s a good thing.

THE ROOM’s official site can be found HERE

http://www.theroommovie.com/

The Tivoli’s site can be found HERE

http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/st.louis/tivolitheatre.htm

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A True Crime story – In 1997, in the town of Carthage, Texas, the body of wealthy, epically bitchy widow Marjorie Nugent, 81, was found in her freezer, shot four times in the back. Beloved local funeral director Bernie Tiede soon confessed to the murder so the District Attorney took him to trial and won a conviction. Director/writer Richard Linklater’s comic take on this story is the new film BERNIE.

Bernie (played by Jack Black) is well-regarded by his boss not only for his skill in dressing up the deceased, but in subtly pushing more expensive coffins on their families. He’s a pudgy, effeminate man who sings with a church choir and is the director and leading man in a local production of The Music Man. Is Bernie gay? One Carthagian notes: “He just loves hugging and kissing the old ladies, but a woman his own age he wouldn’t give the time of day”, but despite being “a little light in the loafers”, he’s one of Carthage’s most popular residents. Bernie takes an interest in the town’s newest widow, the crotchety multimillionaire Margie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine). As the first person who has shown this widely-despised person any kindness (her own grandkids are suing her), Bernie charms the old woman to such an extent that she treats him to first-class world travel and nights at the opera. Bernie leaves his job at the funeral home to become her full-time companion, but when Margie becomes too demanding, treating him like a servant rather than a friend, with non-stop put downs and nagging, Bernie does a slow burn until he is ultimately fed up enough to gun her down in her garage. He keeps her death a secret for several months, doling out her fortune to the people of Carthage in a string of charitable acts. The D.A., Danny Buck Davidson (Matthew McConaughey) is so certain that the town would acquit the well-liked man despite his confession that he gets the trial moved to a more backwoods county.

BERNIE is a well-played true crime story that rockets along without a dull moment. The story is mixed with talking head interviews with a couple dozen of Carthage’s resident busybodies. Linklater uses a combination of real East Texans and actors (including McConaughey’s mom) for these roles, a device rich in dialect-strewn humor that works as a balance against the murder and humiliation at hand. These folks find it strange that Bernie has befriended Marjorie, but less strange that he’s murdered her. The writing (or improv) by Linklater and co-writer Skip Hollandsworth is sharp in these sequences and many of the film’s best lines coming from the townsfolk, one who describes neighboring Austin as “the home of girls with hairy legs and liberal fruitcakes”.

As a high-energy dandy with a yearning desire to please others, Jack Black sheds his wild-man persona and plays Bernie fairly straight (so to speak). There’s Black’s trademark flash of mischief, but Bernie is complex and mysterious and the actor is careful not to slip too far into caricature. It’s a revelatory performance, a unique, sad character and those who claim that Jack Black is a one-note actor of limited range should really see the prissy way he walks, and the sincere way he cries and the way he sings gospel in BERNIE. The movie’s probably too slight for Oscar talk, but Black deserves to be in the running. Shirley MacLaine plays Marjorie with very little dialog, just  angry glares and  curt demands, and while the actress seems underused, it’s a realistic portrayal of the type of woman who’s lonely and bitter through no one’s fault but her own. The connection between Bernie and Marjorie seems real and the film is at its best when these two are sharing screen time. A scene in a diner where Bernie scolds Marjorie for her eating habits; “You really don’t need to chew refried beans that much”, is poignant and genuine and they make a classic on-screen couple. BERNIE has a homespun and casual tone which nicely reflects the Texas setting. Like Steven Soderbergh, Richard Linklater (a native Texan) is a director who’s never formulaic. With an accomplished and eclectic body of work that spans mainstream and independent fare alike, Linklater uses the medium of cinema to pursue subjects he finds interesting and with BERNIE, he’s made one of the best films of the year so far.

4 1/2 of 5 Stars

“Get your goddamn tongue out of my goddamn cousin’s mouth!”

Who’s up for a “thrill-a-minute, body-piercing, computer sex, sapphic, car-crashing extravaganza”? Then come check out the next TROMA NIGHT AT THE WAY OUT CLUB on May 18th when we’ll be showing the 1996 classic TROMEO AND JULIET. Set in New York City, the tale centers on the Ques and the Capulets. The bitter feud begins when father Capulet steals father Que’s Silky Films production company. As enemies, the two warring clans are always doing horrible things to each other. Tromeo Que is a computer nerd who spends much time fondling himself in front of his favorite sexy CD-ROMs until he falls in love with lovely Juliet and proposes to her while she sits upon a toilet. WARNING: this film features violence, considerable gore, tattooed hellions, hardcore punkers, nymphomaniacs, profanity, vulgar situations (featuring buckets of fake vomit), and the graphic depiction of body piercing. (Of course, if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be a Troma film).

Stick around for the next Troma film, the 1980 drive-in standard MOTHER’S DAY, which developed something of a cult following after its initial release, and no small amount of controversy — many feminist groups denounced its depiction of violence against women, while writer and director Charles S. Kaufman contended that he intended for the film to be viewed as a satire (those feminists have no sense of humor!). Three women find their worst nightmares have become a reality in this horror film that combines extreme violence with dark, absurdist comedy MOTHER’S DAY. Abbey (Nancy Hendrickson), Jackie (Deborah Luce), and Trina (Tiana Pierce) have been close friends since their college days, and they decide to celebrate their tenth class reunion by taking a vacation together. The women go camping in the woods of rural New Jersey; however, an idyllic few days in the great outdoors turn ugly when they’re ambushed by a pair of subnormal thugs, Ike (Holden McGuire) and Addley (Billy Ray McQuade). Ike and Addley live in a garishly decorated hovel deep in the woods, where they gorge themselves on sugar, obsessively watch television, debate the merits of punk rock versus disco, and strictly obey the instructions of their aged Mother (Rose Ross) — a vicious psychopath who goads her boys into acts of rape and murder, with Mother shouting encouragement throughout. When one of the women is killed by Ike and Addley, the other two escape, and they plot a gruesome revenge.

ADMISSION IS FREE! The show starts at 9pm on Friday, May 18th so join us for bad films, good films, good people, gory films, Troma trivia with door prizes, lots of cold beer and drinks, and yummy Way Out pizzas available for only $8. Did we mention that ADMISSION IS FREE? See you at The Way Out (2525 Jefferson Avenue in South St. Louis)!

Sasha Baron Cohen set the bar pretty high with his last two comedies, BORAT and BRUNO, and while THE DICTATOR doesn’t quite reach the biting heights of those two, it’s still the funniest film of the year so far and I’m pleased to report that Cohen’s brilliant improv skills work well even when he’s attached to an actual script with written dialogue and structure. Though lacking the earlier film’s candid camera format, THE DICTATOR follows the similar fish-out-water template of an outlandish foreigner set loose on American soil. Cohen plays Admiral General Aladeen, the dim-witted bearded dictator of the fictional oil-rich African state of Wadiya. He rules with a ridiculous iron ego, changing hundreds of words in the Wadiyan dictionary to Aladeen including both “positive” and “negative”, which leads to a hilariously uncomfortable scene in an HIV clinic. His recent announcement to pursue a nuclear program (he can’t keep a straight face when he discusses his “peaceful” plans for uranium), puts the rest of the world on edge and when the U.S. threatens action, Aladeen’s top advisor Tamir (Ben Kingsley) accompanies him to New York City to explain himself in front of the United Nations. But Tamir has plans to get rich by turning Wadiya into a democracy, and in order to do so, he betrays Aladeen by hiring security head John C. Reilly to assassinate him and replace him with an even more dim-witted body double (also Cohen). Aladeen escapes his captors – though not before they can cut off his beard, rendering him unrecognizable – and is taken in by an organic food store (The Free Earth Collective) owner named Zoey (Anna Faris), who believes him to be a political refugee named Alison Burgers. While trying to adapt to his new life in America, Aladeen runs into dissident Wadiyan nuclear scientist Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas) and together they plan to restore him to power where he belongs.

Dedicated “In loving memory” to Kim Jong-il, THE DICTATOR is less edgy than Cohen’s previous two films and the joke-to-laughs ratio is slightly lower but it’s still sharp satire that’s remarkable for a mainstream Hollywood comedy in its politically incorrectness. Removing the pseudo-documentary style of Cohen’s previous efforts, the spontaneity of his interacting with folks who don’t know they’re in a movie in favor of a traditional narrative reveals a flimsy, nonsensical story but it’s no less offensive when taking its sharp knives to the American way of life. The film’s richest cultural humor comes in Aladeen’s relationship, and initial disgust, with Zoey’s eco-friendly uber-liberal. He finds her green thinking, cartoonish feminism, and hairy armpits bewildering, and it’s she who must tame his verbal and physical abuse of her store’s staff and customers. Another highlight is  a trip to Manhattan’s Little Wadiya neighborhood, where our hero wanders into the Death to Aladeen restaurant staffed by refugees he thought he’d executed. There’s a helicopter tour sequence that spoofs white fears of Mideast terrorism that’s cinema’s funniest 9-11 gag to date, and you’d have to lack a pulse not to roar at the vagina-vision childbirth scene. Not all of the jokes work. A scene where Zoey teaches Aladeen to masturbate,  integrated with shots of soaring eagles, leaping dolphins, and Forest Gump’s leg braces falling away, goes on way too long. Too many jokes are wringed from a severed head and a botched attempt to zip-line between skyscrapers seems from a lesser comedy. Every race, gender, age, animal, disability, sexual orientation, and political stand is skewered in THE DICTATOR, but like BORAT, it’s disguised as good-natured naivety, maintaining sympathy for the anti-Semite despotic dictator at the film’s center. There’s also a couple of really funny celebrity cameos, including self-deprecating bits by Ed Norton and Megan Fox. Larry Charles, who helmed both BORAT and BRUNO, directs in a straightforward manner that well-serves the star and, unlike Judd Apatow, he knows when enough is enough, delivering this package of laughs at a tight 84 minute. Funny and recommended.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Aladeens

“That boy is about to seek revenge over the town that murdered him. He knows this, he says, because he himself is the heir apparent to that throne of terror so long held by the likes of Voorhees, Myers and Krueger. This man’s name is Leslie Vernon.”

A small-town serial killer with a curious penchant for self-promotion unleashes a blood-soaked frenzy of terror in his violent effort to become the best-known slasher in horror history in BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON, an acclaimed horror film that bypassed St. Louis theaters upon its initial release in 2006. Tomorrow night (Wednesday May 16th), St. Louis-area horror fans will get the chance to see it in all its big-screen grandeur when the guys at Destroy the Brain.com present a 9:30pm screening at The Ronnie’s 20 Cinema (5320 S. Lindbergh Blvd., Saint Louis, MO 63126) with director Scott Glosserman joining the festivities for a Q&A and an auctioning of a scythe used in the film.

The tickets will NOT be sold at the door. They can only be purchased online through GATHR. The site is HERE.

http://gathr.us/screening/164

BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON is low-budget mock-documentary about a TV crew that is following around Leslie Vernon (played by Nathan Baesel), a self-appointed heir to Jason Voorhees, Michael Meyers and Freddy Krueger. He has built a legend of himself as the deranged product of a rape who stalks a deserted farmhouse waiting for horny teenagers to party there every year on his birthday. This clever, occasionally very funny indie written by horror buffs Glosserman and David J. Stieve, made excellent use of cameos by Robert England, the late Zelda Rubinstein (the tiny shrieker from POLTERGEIST) and Scott Wilson as a retired serial killer mentor. BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON is definitely a film to check out if you’re a big fan of the classic slashers movies from the 80′s. You won’t be disappointed and you may even learn what to do next time if you’re trapped in an abandoned farmhouse with a couple of airheads, stoners, and football jocks. Just run! – run and don’t look back! Hope to see everyone at the Ronnies tomorrow night!

Bonnie Morgan is an actress who specializes in what she calls ‘otherworldly movement’. Remember the creepy little girl in THE RING 2 who crawled out of the well like a spider? That was Bonnie. In MEN IN BLACK 2 she doubled over and a headlike appliance was placed on her behind, given the character the nickname “Jabba the Butt”. ‘Bendy Bonnie’ is a 31-year old contortionist. She discovered she was capable of dislocating her shoulders and hips at 9 years old and eventually took her talent on tour with her actor/stuntman father and sister. Bonnie has put her unique skills to work in such films as MINORITY REPORT, HELLBOY 2, PIRANHA (she was the gal in the inner tube!), FRIGHT NIGHT, and TV’s The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Her most substantial role to date was in this year’s surprise hit THE DEVIL INSIDE as Rosa, a young woman whose body becomes twisted into all sorts of unnatural positions when she’s visited by a group of Exorcists. When I saw THE DEVIL INSIDE, the scenes involving Rosa impressed me greatly because I had the sense that there was no CGI involved in that sequence, yet I couldn’t quite figure out how this possessed character became such a human corkscrew. I recently had the chance to speak with Bonnie about the role and asked her about her unusual skills.

THE DEVIL INSIDE is available on Blu-Ray and DVD Tuesday May 15th

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman April 16th 2012

We Are Movie Geeks: I dug up my review of THE DEVIL INSIDE from January and I singled you out. I wrote “Bonnie Morgan plays Rosa, the first girl they try to exorcise and that one delirious sequence, with contortion, blood, and screaming vulgarity, is the film’s best.”

Bonnie Morgan: Oh Tom, I feel so loved!

WAMG: You know what they should do; they should make a prequel to THE DEVIL INSIDE all about Rosa. Have they talked about that at all?

BM: They haven’t actually. I believe they are working on a sequel but they haven’t told me anything specifically, but I’m on board for that idea!

WAMG: I think Rosa is still alive.

BM: Absolutely, Rose survives her ordeal. I’m not sure what state her interior is.

WAMG: I liked the movie and gave it a good review. You were so scary in it. How did you get the role?

BM: That was a straight-up actress audition. I got a call from my agent who said she was sending me in to be an Italian teenager. I have flaming red hair, very blue eyes, I look like an Irish girl. She sent in a head shot, we call it my ‘broken picture’, which is a shot of the pose I was doing laying on the bed and I have very dark hair. I bought a dark wig because I couldn’t leave it up to the imagination of the filmmakers. I play poker with a guy named Mark Fiorini. He’s an Italian who played the Pope in ANGELS AND DEMONS and he translated the Italian dialog for my audition. So I went there feeling Italian, dislocating my shoulders, speaking a little Yiddish, a little bit of whatever else I know, some profanity that wasn’t supposed to be there. The casting director thought that was very interesting. Two other actresses were looking at me and thinking “What the crap?”

WAMG: Two Italian actresses probably

BM: Possibly. So for the callback, I went in and it was William Brent Bell, the director, and two producers and the three of them had my headshots and were looking at me like three smiling kids and wondered if I could really do this and asked me if I speak Italian. I said “I speak enough to get through your script”. So they asked me to show them what I do. They didn’t say contortionist in the original breakdown, they just got that with me.

WAMG: Did you research possession cases to see how a possessed woman might act?

I’ve actually researched possession for a few other roles. I kinda seem to be the go-to girl for creepy, possessed kids. I was Samara in THE RING 2, the girl in the well, things like that. I hate to say the ‘otherworldly movement’ is my expertise but being freaky is definitely part of my business. Of course though, you research the touchstones. You build from Linda Blair. God bless her and her amazingness.

WAMG: Have you met Linda Blair?

I have not. I love her though. She does great work with animals now, and I’ve been an animal for most of my life.

WAMG: Was there any improvisation in that sequence or was that tightly storyboarded?

BM: I had very little contact with everybody before I got to Romania. By the time we got there, they looked at me and asked what I wanted to do and let me come up with some ideas of my own. Some of the more vulgar profanity was mine. I brought my sister Molly with me because on a job like that, you need a keeper to watch your back, to work with you. The scene where my shoulders dislocate in mid-air, was actually done with monofilament so that my sister was puppeteering my arms. We tried to have the Romanian effects guys help out but you need someone who knows your body, what you can do. She was just an invaluable help. The scene where I say “What is your name my daughter?” in German just freaked (lead actress) Fernanda Andrade out. She almost walked out of the room. The guys definitely gave me a pretty long leash to work with. Brent was amazing. He really knows the genre. We worked really closely and came up with some freaky stuff.

WAMG: Was there any CGI in that sequence?

BM: No, that was all me. There was one bit of CGI where the blood hits the camera, and there was a bit of wire removal. They actually cut a couple of sequences that were really cool, like one where I came charging out of that spider hole in the wall. I had no stunt doubles, they figured I was capable enough.

WAMG: Perhaps that scene will make it into the special features on the DVD

BM: I wouldn’t be surprised.

WAMG: Does it ever frustrate you that modern audiences assume that a sequence like that is full of CGI?

BM: Of course. My dad was a stuntman and stunt coordinator for years so stunts have always been in my life and that’s the bane of every stuntperson’s existence that people assume a cool stunt is enhanced with CGI. But as long as it’s entertaining audiences, we know the truth. I got a phone call right after THE RING 2 came out from a producer who wanted something like my scene in that move but “real”. I said “Uh, that was me!”.

WAMG: You said your dad was a stuntman?

BM: Yes, my dad’s name is Gary Morgan. He is kind of sci-fi royalty. He played Billy in LOGAN’S RUN. He was also in CUJO. He was the stunt double for the dog!

WAMG: What was the most physically challenging part for filming your stunts for THE DEVIL INSIDE?

BM: The location was a real challenge. It was tough. It was an uninsulated stage in Romania in December. For a contortionist, cold is our kryptonite. Your muscles will try to lock up when it’s cold. It was a 17-hour day. There was a scene where Simon yanks on my hair that hurt like Hell. It was a long day. It was taxing climbing that wall, but we got a great show.

WAMG: Oh yeah, that was the best part of the movie. When did you realize that your body moved in different directions than others?

BM: After the nuclear accident……just kidding. I was 9 years old when my sister was trying to fly me off of a diving board. She grabbed my feet and pulled them behind my head and they stuck. She was quite upset but my dad was very amused and figured we could use a contortionist in the family. I started developing an act when I was 14.

WAMG: What’s the difference between your bones and mine?

BM: Our bones aren’t that different. The big difference is the muscles and the ligaments that are attached are different. Mine are hyper-mobile and elastic so I can pull the bone out of its socket at will. Yours are going to fight to stay in or are going to tear if they come out.

WAMG: What’s the worst injury you’ve ever received on a film set?

BM: I went to the hospital when I was doing Peter Pan on stage. I was doing a swordfight with a great actor named Bruce Spence.

WAMG: From ROAD WARRIOR?

BM: Yes, the gyro captain! He laid my head the crap open. Full strength with two hands, it was like being hit in the head with a bat.

WAMG: Was he playing Captain Hook?

BM: No, he was playing the giant pirate. Jason Isaac was Captain Hook. I was playing a fairy and was Wendy’s stunt double.

WAMG: I’m glad you recovered. Thank you for taking the time to speak with We Are Movie Geeks and best of luck with you career.

BM: Thank You

Cold-blooded, brutal, and stylishly directed by Billy Wilder with a dark sense of humor, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, made back in 1944, is a prime example of the film noir genre and remains highly influential in its look, attitude and storyline. Lucky St. Louis-area film buffs will have a chance to see DOUBLE INDEMNITY in all its big-screen glory when it plays this weekend at The Hi-Pointe Theater.

Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) seduces smooth-talking insurance agent Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) into murdering her husband to collect his accident policy. The murder goes as planned, but after the couple’s passion cools, each becomes suspicious of the other’s motives. The plan is further complicated when Neff’s boss Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), a brilliant insurance investigator, takes over the investigation.

Wilder and Raymond Chandler adapted the novel by James M. Cain and Hollywood veterans Stanwyck, MacMurray, and Robinson give some of their best performances in DOUBLE INDEMNITY. The film will be shown this Saturday, May 12th at 10:30am at the Hi-Pointe Theater, 1005 McCausland in Clayton. Don’t miss it. $5 Admission – Doors open one half hour before showtime – Classic Film Series cards available at the box office – 10 admissions for $40.00. Look for more coverage of The Hi-Pointe’s Classic Film Series here at We Are Movie Geeks.

The Hi-Pointe’s website can be found HERE

http://hi-pointetheatre.com/

The 2004 shocker THE TOOLBOX MURDERS makes its long-awaited big-screen debut (locally at least) this weekend when it plays at the Tivoli Theater in St. Louis Friday and Saturday nights at midnight as part of the Tivoli’s Reel Late series. Brent Roam, one of the film’s stars and a St. Louis native, will be attending both nights to answer questions and sign autographs.

THE TOOLBOX MURDERS tells the tale of Nell and Steven Burrows (Angela Bettis and Brent Roam), who move to Los Angeles to start a new life together. When they move into the Lusman Building, a historic Hollywood apartment complex, Nell and Steven find themselves caught into a web of terrifying evil. A ruthless killer lurks inside, somehow moving sight unseen from apartment to apartment murdering various unsuspecting victims. They are beaten to death with hammers, gored with drills, shot with nailguns, and get the top half of their heads sliced off with an electric sander. When Nell stumbles into the killer’s hidden lair, she comes face to face with supernatural horror known as……The Toolbox Killer.

The original TOOLBOX MURDERS, made in 1978 and starring Cameron Mitchell, was a lively but obvious rip-off of Tobe Hooper’s THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Hooper himself directed this TOOLBOX remake so it’s a case of a director remaking a knock-off of one of his own films! Hooper did a great job with TOOLBOX though (though he missed the chance to bring back a chainsaw!). It might even have been considered something of a comeback for Hooper if anyone had seen it, but it got a spotty release, never playing theatrically here in St. Louis……until now! Come see the film and meet the star this weekend! The Tivoli is located at 6350 Delmar in The Loop.

Visit Landmark’s The Tivoli’s website HERE

http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/st.louis/tivolitheatre.htm

Webster University film student, Tyler DePerro, will be presenting the St. Louis premiere of his senior project, the short film SPECTACLES, at Star Clipper Comics on Thursday, May 10th at 7:00 pm. Star Clipper Comics is located at 6392 Delmar Blvd in ‘The Loop’ area of St. Louis. Actually the film premiered over the weekend at the Roseland Theater in Pana , Illinois, where much of the film was shot. It played double-feature with THE AVENGERS.

SPECTACLES tells the story of a struggling actor, Clark Collins (played by Scott Joy), who gets his inspiration for his success from a pair of 3D glasses his grandfather (John Bratkowski) gives him. Once he puts on the 3D glasses he gains powers equivalent to a comic book hero and Clark is transported into three movie scenarios which bring out his talent and give him confidence.

Director Tyler DePerro will be on hand at Star Clipper to introduce the film and illustrator Marie Enger will be doing in-store drawings of audience members in a 1 of 3 movie genres styles of their choice: noir, zombie, or western. Dessert snacks will be provided by DePerro, as well as free movie posters!

Come out to Star Clipper this Thursday and support independent film!

Tyler DePerro directs Scott Joy in SPECTACLES

John Bratkowski as the mysterious Grandfather in SPECTACLES

I remember her fondly as the villainess Lucretia in the outrageous Toho Sci-fi adventure LATITUDE ZERO but Patricia Medina was an actress with a solid career and an impressive number of memorable credits who worked with Orson Welles (MR. ARKADIN) , Vincent Price (twice – MOSS ROSE and THE THREE MUSKETEERS), Abbott and Costello (A&C IN THE FOREIGN LEGION), Francis the Talking Mule (FRANCIS), and the Three Stooges (SNOW WHITE AND THE THREE STOOGES). Voluptuous and exotic-looking with a deep sultry voice, the British-born Medina began her film career in 1937 and was married to actors Richard Greene and Joseph Cotton. Patricia Medina was 92
THE LA TIMES writes:

Patricia Medina, a British-born actress whose Hollywood career as a leading lady in the 1950s spanned the talking mule comedy “Francis” and Orson Welles‘ crime-thriller “Mr. Arkadin,” has died. She was 92.

Medina, the widow of actor Joseph Cotten, died Saturday at Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Los Angeles, said Meredith Silverbach, a close friend. She had been in declining health.

A petite, dark-haired beauty who launched her film career in England in the late 1930s, Medina was married to actor Richard Greene when she arrived in Hollywood after World War II.

“She was a stunning woman,” said Silverbach. “In her youth, they called her ‘the most beautiful face in England.’ “….

Read the rest HERE

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-patricia-medina-20120502,0,2331751.story

St. Louis-area DARK SHADOWS fans! Get your fangs on and head over to the Coffee Cartel in the Central West End (#2 Maryland Plaza) this Friday night, May 4th. A caricature artist will be on hand there and he wants to to a drawing of you, but in the vein of a Dark Shadows character. There will be promotional items such as DARK SHADOWS posters and “blood bags” given away as well as the chance to receive passes to an advance screening of DARK SHADOWS next week. So if you’d like a drawing of yourself looking like Barnabas, Angelique, or Willy Loomis, the excitement take place this Friday night from 6-8pm at #2 Maryland Plaza in St. Louis’ Central West End.

“They will make cemeteries their cathedrals and the cities your tombs”

The guys at Destroy The Brain.com have a doozy in store for their monthly Late Night Grindhouse Midnight offering this weekend (May 4th and 5th) at the Hi-Pointe Theater: a 35mm print of DEMONS, one of the most absurdly entertaining films you’ll ever see. I saw DEMONS at the now-shuttered Kenrick Theater three times in one week when it first opened back in 1985 so trust me, you don’t want to miss your chance to see this jaw-dropping gorefest on the big screen. You’ll be glad you did.

Those wacky Italians. Whereas plot is not in the Italian horror vocabulary, imagery and breakneck pace certainly are and that has never been more apparent than in the crazy/gory classic DEMONS. The sketchy story concerns a group of strangers who all receive tickets to a special screening at the newly opened Metropol theater in Berlin. After arriving, they watch a horror film about a group of teens who raid Nostradamus’ tomb – finding a mask that causes the wearer to turn into a flesh eating demon, and not unlike the one on display in the lobby – one that a prostitute had put on and cut her face with earlier……uh oh! Director Lamberto Bava (son of Mario) and company never let plot or continuity get in the way of phlegmy demons, demons clawing their way out of a corpse, eye gouging, exploding lesions full of green pus, more pus oozing out of a hooker’s face, a driving heavy metal score (featuring tunes by ’80s rockers such as Billy Idol, Go West, and Saxon), and of course Tony the Pimp who, with dialog like “Son of a bitch! Shit!”, gets all the film’s best lines. Nothing makes any sense, but since when did all hell breaking loose need to be logical?

DEMONS plays as part of the Destroy the Brain monthly Late Night Grindhouse film series. It will be screened midnights in a 35mm print at St. Louis’ fabulous Hi-Pointe Theater (1005 McCausland Avenue) this Friday and Saturday (May 4th and 5th). Tickets are a bargain at $6. The pre-show begins at 11:30.

The Facebook invite for Friday’s Midnight show can be found HERE
http://www.facebook.com/events/305097572894514/
The Facebook invite for Saturday’s Midnight show can be found HERE
http://www.facebook.com/events/271241982963967/

Neither the rousing adventure it’s being marketed as nor the disaster I was braced for, THE RAVEN is a fittingly dark and brooding mystery speculating on the fate of American writer Edgar Allan Poe who was found on a Baltimore park bench in a state of dementia in 1849 and died four days later at age 39. Though it’s assumed his death was caused by some disreputable cause such as alcoholism, the details have remained a mystery, all which serves as a springboard for this new film which theorizes he met his end while helping to solve a series of gruesome murders. THE RAVEN is a mixed bag, a familiar serial killer film dressed up in 19th-century drag that’s sporadically enjoyable alternating between camp and seriousness.

The premise of THE RAVEN is someone’s using scenarios from the works of Poe as inspiration for a series of ghastly murders (the term serial killer wasn’t coined until the 1970’s yet in this movie an 1840’s newspaper headline screams ‘Serial Killer on the Loose!’). A woman stuffed in a chimney is straight out of Murders in the Rue Morgue, a critic is sliced in half by a heavy pendulum, etc. Poe himself (John Cusack) is considered the town drunk so quickly ruled out as a suspect but when his fiancée Emily (Alice Eve) is kidnapped and buried alive, he joins forces with diligent Detective Emmett Fields (Luke Evans) to help catch the maniac and end his reign of terror.

THE RAVEN will be a problematic movie to market and sell. The material will play best to those with a love of Poe and an understanding of his era, but the film has not been designed with a general audience in mind. There are two or three splattery murders that secure its R rating, but outside of those moments, the movie is relatively chaste and seems to go out of its way avoiding horror elements. Visually, THE RAVEN is good enough to be seen in a theater – in fact, the stellar production design will lose something on the small screen. Despite its misleading marketing campaign, THE RAVEN is not big, loud, and busy like Guy Ritchie’s Holmes films with their brainless gags and big action sequences every 10 minutes. It’s a straightforward mystery, an entrancingly old-fashioned whodunit which is appropriate since Poe, with The Murders in the Rue Morgue, wrote what is considered to be the first detective story. Unfortunately for the audience, the killer’s unmasking is laughably unsatisfying, more Scooby Doo than THE USUAL SUSPECTS.

Cusack has the haunted, sad face  right for Poe and knowing at the outset that he will be dead at the end makes his performance seem even more melancholy, yet the screenplay never gets inside his head or attempts to explore his dark creative side. There is little chemistry between Cusack and Eve, who seems out of his league (she even starred in SHE’S OUT OF MY LEAGUE) and it’s unclear why such an upscale beauty would have fallen for him, especially at this low point in his life. But THE RAVEN is more buddy movie than romance, with the love interest at one point literally buried so Poe and Detective Fields can cast admiring gazes at one another and trade banter. Brendan Gleeson is a scene-stealer as Emily’s father, who refuses to cancel his masked ball just because some murderer has threatened to show up and kill everyone. Director James McTeigue (V FOR VENDETTA) has the right visual sense for the project. He injects a strong gothic atmosphere without letting style smother substance but the script is lacking. There were enough fiendish puzzles contained in Poe’s nightmarish writings that I would like to have seen the script peppered with even more references to his body of work. It has its good qualities, but THE RAVEN is a beautiful looking disappointment not quite worthy of Edgar Allan Poe’s legacy.

2 1/2 of 5 Stars

PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS is the latest stop-motion feature from Aardman Animations, the studio behind the likes of the Wallace and Gromit shorts, CHICKEN RUN, and ARTHUR’S CHRISTMAS. It is based on the first two novels in the Pirates! series by author Gideon Defoe. PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS is inventive and wonderfully animated; a very enjoyable and often hilarious family adventure with a terrific script, a spot-on voice cast and just enough sophistication to appeal to both adults and children.

Try as he might, the bearded scallywag known simply as Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant) just can’t get any respect as a bloodthirsty terror of the high seas. Misfortune and clumsiness seem to be his specialties and his attempts to plunder booty from other ships are a disaster (one’s a ghost ship, one’s a plague ship, one’s a nudist cruise, etc). His inept but loyal crew includes The Pirate with a Scarf (Martin Freeman), so named because he wears a scarf, The Pirate with Gout (Brendan Gleeson) who is fat, the Albino Pirate (Russell Tovey) and the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate (Ashley Jensen) who is a woman in a fake beard. Pirate Captain believes his luck might change if he could win the coveted Pirate of the Year Award, having failed over a number of years to take the prize, but he again has tough competition including Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek). He meets the scientist Charles Darwin (David Tennant) who informs him that his beloved parrot Polly is actually a long-thought-extinct Dodo bird and convinces him to enter it in the annual Royal Science Society Convention in London, an idea the Pirate Captain thinks may serve as a springboard for his real prize. Queen Victoria however (Imelda Staunton) despises pirates and vows if they’re caught, their heads will be chopped off, but the Queen has her sights set on Polly for nefarious reasons of her own.

The animation in PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS is top notch, as it should be. Aardman are the masters of this style of stop-motion animation though they have come a long way from the crude clay figures of the early Wallace and Gromit shorts. The models are every bit as fluid and lively as they are in any Pixar film, yet they still maintain the distinctive, unpolished style we associate with Claymation. There’s a nice balance of slapstick silliness for kids and literate humor (“We didn’t evolve from slugs just to stand around!”) for adults. How many animated films feature not only the likes of Charles Darwin, but cameos from Jane Austin and John Merrick (the Elephant Man) as well? The vocal talents are uniformly superb, from warm-hearted Hugh Grant to Imelda Staunton as the classically pinched villainess but the scene-stealer is Darwin’s ‘man-panzee’ monkey steward Mr. Bobo, who hilariously comments on the action through dialogue written on index cards. Overflowing with wit and intelligence and pulled off with a sense of rebellious fun, the talented folk at Aardman are at the top of their game with PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS, one of the funniest films you’ll see this year.

4 of 5 Stars

Super-8 GIANT MONSTER Movie Madness at the Way Out Club in St. Louis will be held on Tuesday May 1st from 8pm to Midnight. These are Super-8 Sound films condensed from features (they average 15 minutes in length) and will be projected on a large screen at the Way Out Club. Admission is only THREE BUCKS!!!!

The giant monster movies we’re showing are: WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, THE GIANT CLAW, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, REPTILICUS, 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH, YONGARY MONSTER FROM THE DEEP, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, a Stop-Motion Trailer Reel featuring many of Ray Harryhausen’s giant beasts, and a 35 minute cut of THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION. The non-giant monster movies we’re showing May 1st are: The Marx Brothers in DUCK SOUP, Charlton Heston in BEN HUR, W C Fields in IT’S A GIFT, a Clint Eastwood Trailer Reel, and for the fourth time the Little Rascals in the Super-8 Movie Madness favorite THE KID FROM BORNEO (Yum Yum, Eat ‘em Up!).

There will be lots of posters and T-Shirts and stuff given away. The Way Out Club is located at 2525 Jefferson Avenue in South St. Louis (corner of Jefferson and Gravois). There are yummy Way-Out pizzas available for only $8.00.

QFest ends today in St. Louis with one last film, MY BEST DAY. QFest, the annual Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is celebrating it’s fifth year with a terrific line-up of films spotlighting Gay and Lesbian filmmakers and themes. QFest is a Cinema St. Louis event and this year is presented by TLA Releasing, a US film distribution company whose primary output is LGBT-related films from all over the world. All films will be shown at the Tivoli Theatre (6350 Delmar Blvd. in the University City Loop district). Individual tickets are $12 general admission or $10 for students and Cinema St. Louis members with valid and current photo IDs. Advance tickets are available through the Tivoli Theatre box office or online at Landmark Theatres’ web site

Here’s the final film  for the QFest:

Thursday, April 26th at 7:30pm

“The witty, wacky, multicharacter comedy “My Best Day” features a rural milieu that’s authentically American: a place where people don’t have health care, run out of gas, get places by walking the train tracks, and don’t even envy each other either….it’s about being different, and the film’s message is how people cope with it. Greenwell doesn’t need a big budget and big names to get that thought across, although the film has a consistency of tone that indicates she could do more with more. …Greenwell and d.p. Adam Benn eschew handheld or grainy textures in favor of clear, coherent high-def, leaving any unfocused chaos in the minds of the characters.”

QFest continues today in St. Louis. QFest, the annual Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is celebrating it’s fifth year with a terrific line-up of films spotlighting Gay and Lesbian filmmakers and themes. QFest is a Cinema St. Louis event and this year is presented by TLA Releasing, a US film distribution company whose primary output is LGBT-related films from all over the world. All films will be shown at the Tivoli Theatre (6350 Delmar Blvd. in the University City Loop district). Individual tickets are $12 general admission or $10 for students and Cinema St. Louis members with valid and current photo IDs. Advance tickets are available through the Tivoli Theatre box office or online at Landmark Theatres’ web site

Here’s the line-up for the QFest films playing today and tonight:

“Sweet, funny, clever comedy seeks crossover” would be the Craigslist come-on for “Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same,” and it may well come true via Madeleine Olnek’s wry homage to ’50s sci-fi, urban dating and interspecies romance.”Codependent” could pass as a family film, given the right family. But small arthouse and huge DVD/VOD seem more likely…. The pic’s seat-of-the-pants aesthetic recalls “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and the interplanetary paranoia of its genre; the odd-couple romance (and a scene near the Queensboro Bridge) suggests Woody Allen’s “Manhattan”; the parallel storyline of two government agents (Dennis Davis, Alex Karpovsky) is a little bit “X-Files.” But Olnek’s sensibility is singular, and the work of the cast — notably the sweetfaced Haas and the hilariously robotic Ziegler — make for a movie that seeks, and earns, affection.”

“Director Morgan Jon Fox lays out his evidence with precision and emotive clarity…a fascinating insight”

Sponsored by: Bill Donius & Jay Perez

Wednesday, April 25th at 9:15pm

FINDING ME: TRUTH (U.S., 2011, 100 min.) Directed by Roger S. Omeus Jr.

Comfortable with his gayness but saddled with self-esteem issues, sweet, bright-eyed and emotionally vulnerable Faybien (RayMartell Moore) finds his love life put into an emotional spin when his ex returns with an interest in reigniting their relationship. His friends already have their own issues: Reggie’s in love with bisexual, noncommittal Greg; high-strung queen bee Amera is certain her boyfriend is cheating on her; and the always-meddling muscle queen Jay is busy confronting his rough-trade boyfriend’s girlfriend. A memorable cast of African-American actors make this film a fast, touching and furious emotional ride.

Actor Moore will attend.

A 35-minute cut of THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION will be shown on Super-8 sound film at Super-8 GIANT MONSTER Movie Madness next Tuesday, May 1st at The Way Out Club in St. Louis.

Wisconson-based regional filmmaker Bill Rebane’s no-budget wonder THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION was a hilariously cheesy 1975 throwback to the giant-monster flicks of the 50s, a trend then enjoying a revival with films like EMPIRE OF THE ANTS and FOOD OF THE GODS. This outrageous mix of giant monster motifs and backwoods sleaze plays like a hybrid of TARANTULA and THE BLOB with its mixture of giant spiders and falling meteors. I saw THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION at the long-shuttered Ellisville Cinema in West St. Louis County (on a double bill with the David Niven vampire comedy OLD DRACULA). I recall the poster in the lobby which featured a gargantuan spider bearing down on a group of terrified people. In the air above the mega-arachnid was three helicopters and lying crumpled at the spider’s legs were burning cars as spotlights filled the sky. One of the terrorized was a busty young blonde wearing only a negligee. I was jazzed, convinced I was about to experience the greatest cinematic thrill ride of my young life. Upon purchasing my ticket, I was handed a cool 4-page full-color comic book adaption of the film (yes, I still have it).

The main character in THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION, Farmer Dan Kester, is played by Robert Easton who cowrote the screenplay and looks dashing in his red longjohns. Easton (who died last year) was a grizzled character actor known for playing hillbillies and rednecks but, as a master of accents and dialects, was considered one of a Hollywood top dialect coaches. Anyway, Kester discovers his field is full of dead cattle that surround a large hole in the ground. He also stumbles upon some baseball-sized rocks (constantly referred to as “geodes”) which, when busted open, contain what appears to be diamonds. Kester’s farmhouse is white trash enchantment. His boozy wife Ev (Leslie Parrish – LIL ABNER’s Daisy Mae) is an bitchy lush, so he lusts after her jailbait little sister (Dianne Lee Hart who performed in Drive-in gems as LINDA LOVELACE FOR PRESIDENT and THE POM POM GIRLS and, despite a PG rating, is topless in THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION) and still finds time to carry on an affair with a local waitress (Christiana Schmidtmer, the warden in THE BIG DOLL HOUSE). When busting open the geodes, Kester doesn’t realize that he also exposes some spider eggs, and his home is soon crawling with furry tarantulas. In the film’s best-remembered gross-out scene, one of the crawling critters tumbles into the blender of Parrish’s Bloody Mary mix, and she unknowingly slurps down the Tarantula Smoothie. Her disgust is short-lived as she’s soon being attacked by a dog-sized spider puppet that pops out of her sock drawer which she is forced to catch and make look real.

That puppet later grows enormous, and at that point this “queen” spider is played by an altered Volkswagen Beetle dressed in a furry dark rug and eight giant hairy legs. That’s right, THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION is known as the film where the bug was played by a bug. Rebane had it made when the film’s distributor insisted that his film include creature special effects to rival the shark in JAWS, which was then in production. Rebane said in an article (at the Undead Backbrain website found HERE): “We had a VW sitting at the studio and a friend of mine said “Can we make a spider out of that?” Rebane’s friend Carl Pfantz figured it out. “Pfantz’s steel framework was covered with black Fun Fur to make the spiders both hairy and scary.” said Rebane, “The mechanical nature of the beast required seven people to be stuffed within the cramped confines of the VW floorpan – a driver and six children to work the spider’s legs.”

What’s especially charming (and awful) about the queen spider is that it is so obviously built atop a Volkswagen Beetle frame. I was 13 when I saw it and remember thinking to myself “Hey, that spider is a built atop a Volkswagen Beetle frame!”. During its nighttime rampage down the streets of Merrill, Wisconsin (actually the day for night photography switches to night for day within the same scenes), its orb-like eyes pulse with an orange glow resembling taillights (were they driving it backwards?). Really, one does have to appreciate the low-budget ingenuity, but still, the end result is less of a menace and more of a loathsomely hairy parade float. Seeing people get sucked upside down into one of these things, blood gushing and all, is a site to behold. Other veterans in the cast are Barbara Hale (“Perry Mason”) and Steve Brodie as a NASA scientists who deduce the invasion (with various scientific-sounding language) to be the result of some sort of intergalactic gateway, a plan thwarted when they simply close it off, draining the spiders of their energy and causing them to melt into puddles of disgusting but colorful sludge.

Director Rebane had MONSTER A-GO GO (co-directed by Herschel Gordon Lewis), RANA THE LEGEND OF SHADOW LAKE under his belt, and went on to make THE CAPTURE OF BIGFOOT and BLOOD HARVEST (starring Tiny Tim!) but THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION remains his most watchable film. By today’s phony, technologically dependent, CGI-enhanced, multi-billion dollar standards it’s a piece of crap, but THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION, which Rebane claims only cost $250,000 to produce (one wonders where the budget went),is a whole lot of fun. It’s never for a moment dull and is the kind of movie worthy a large interactive audience (it’s a favorite of fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000, who memorably skewered it). Michael Bay has yet to outfit a Volkswagen bug with legs to make it look like a giant spider and I’d respect him more if he did.

I’ve been collecting the condensed Super-8 Sound editions of movies for about 15 years now and am always thrilled when some odd title pops up for sale that I had no idea was ever released in the format. I host the monthly Super-8 Movie Madness show at The Way Out Club here in St. Louis the first Tuesday of every month where I show about 14 of these films from my vast collection. The hard-drinking crowd of movie buffs always appreciates films with the cheesiest aesthetics and there are few movies cheesier than GIANT SPIDER INVASION. A month or so ago ago, I was perusing ebay.uk and there it was. The seller claimed the Super-8 GIANT SPIDER INVASION was a two-part, 800-foot version. 35 minutes of Giant Spider madness! I couldn’t believe it! I immediately bid on the film (and bid high – I wasn’t the only one who spotted this gem). I won, paid airmail shipping via paypal, and waited anxiously. Well, it’s arrived and it’s a beauty! The color is superb, the sound is clear, and it’s edited around all the arachnid goodness! I’ll be showing my Super-8 GIANT SPIDER INVASION at the May 1st edition of Super-8 Movie Madness, a special theme show I’m calling Super-8 GIANT MONSTER Movie Madness. I’ll also be showing the giant monster movies WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, THE GIANT CLAW, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, REPTILICUS, 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH, YONGARY MONSTER FROM THE DEEP, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, and a Stop-Motion Trailer Reel featuring many of Ray Harryhausen’s big beasts. he non-giant monster movies we’re showing May 1st are: The Marx Brothers in DUCK SOUP, Charlton Heston in BEN HUR, W C Fields in IT’S A GIFT, a Clint Eastwood Trailer Reel, and for the fourth time the Little Rascals in the Super-8 Movie Madness favorite THE KID FROM BORNEO (Yum Yum, Eat ‘em Up!).

The Way Out Club is located at 2525 Jefferson Avenue in South St. Louis (corner of Jefferson and Sydney). Admission is only 3 bucks. There will be lots of posters and T-Shirts and stuff given away. Come join me and the spiders from the geodes for a night of giant monster fun.

The facebook invite for Super-8 GIANT MONSTER Movie Madness is HERE

http://www.facebook.com/events/264301753660601/