Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Closed For The Season




The Devastation Drive-In is now closed.  Please throw your trash in the appropriate recepticles as you leave the theater.

Whew.  21 movies, and their respective 21 mutants, in a little over 21 days, all for your haunted holiday pleasure.  (Yeah, yeah...I missed getting Robot Monster in there on October 31st by about 45 minutes, but I think it can slide since it's right between Halloween and Mexican Halloween Día de los Muertos.)

Some random musings:

) It was a hoot revisiting old favorites (Blood Freak, SlithisThe Children, Piranha II)...and a joy to finally watch fright-flicks I never got around to renting in the glory days of the mom & pop video stores.   Case in point, The Being.  I clutched its clamshell and poured over its text and images many, many times as a kid, but never actually saw the movie until last week.  And I'm glad I did, because it is utterly insane.  Inept film-craft, slumming celebs (and I'm not even talking about Martin Landau or Ruth Buzzi, but...The Unknown Comic!  And Kinky Friedman!), and a monster whose powers randomly come and go:  all made it a highlight of this month's viewings.

) Because I watched each and every movie (at least) twice to get each entry juuuuuuust right, I didn't have time to get to stat out everything I had in mind.  So, next Halloween, expect theatrical threats and celluloid spooks from the likes of The Green Slime (1968), Night Of The Lepus (1972), Shivers (1975), Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes (1978), Chopping Mall (1986), Demonwarp (1988), The Terror Within (1989)...and more!!!

) Entries of my regular run-of-the-mill mutants will be sporadic over November.  Not only do I really want to curl up with a good book (or five), but I've received several requests over the last few weeks to get my collective blog beasties organized into a convenient PDF.  So I'm gonna be working on that, and get it posted as soon as I can.

) Oh, yeah...my favorite thing?  Introducing readers to genre films they didn't know existed.  There's a ton of great B-features out there, and definite gems amongst the glorious trash.  I've said it before, but I can't say it enough:  Go give Something Weird Video all your filthy lucre.


I really enjoyed this month-long diversion.  As always, thanks for reading, y'all.