Windows 95 Tips, Tricks, and Tweaks.

Didn't we all, deep down, know the awful truth all along.

My favourite:

[Via MetaFilter]

We should probably be glad that Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan's story of Dracula fighting the Silver Surfer only took up a single issue of The Tomb of Dracula; with any luck, such brevity should protect it from ever being adapted for the big screen. Chris Sims tells the tale:

[Cult leader Anton Lupeski ...] has dreamed up "quite a unique" means for destroying Dracula. And he ain't kidding.

See, at this point in the series, Dracula had more or less settled down, apart from the occasional murder. He'd married a woman named Domini and gotten her knocked up with his hellish seed, and taken over Lupeski's "Church of the Damned" so that he could sit upon the Throne of Satan. It's all very metal.

So metal, in fact, that Lupeski seems to believe that the only way to battle it is through prog. Thus, his "unique" plan: To magically invade the mind of the Silver Sufer and send him to fight Dracula. Again: If you've got a better plan for dealing with that guy, I'd like to hear it. [...]

Charlie Stross trying to make James Nicoll cry:

Three o'clock in the morning. The rain had subsided to a gentle trickle: Cuddles hunkered down on her haunches and oozed through the cat-flap to take up position in the shrubs at the left of the yard. The damp soil smelled of worms and bugs and night creepers, which in better circumstances she would take delight in pursuing: but tonight was different.

Tonight, her human mistress Alice lay abed, skin bone-white against the pillow, barely breathing, the two marks on her neck livid and pulsing with every heartbeat. This could not be permitted! For two nights now, Cuddles had smelled the intruder's clammy undeadness on her adored human's hands in the morning: the death-smell of clay and graveyard soil. Another predator, alien and unbreathing, was stealing into the home and battening on Alice's blood. This could not be! So weakened, Alice could barely perform her duties: for two mornings in a row it had taken Cuddles more than an hour of shouting to wake her so that she could operate the machine that opens tins.

The intruder thinks he can take my food ape, thought Cuddles, flexing her claws. Boy, has he got a nasty surprise coming …

From "Cuddles After Dark" by Daisy Chick, book #1 of "Cats versus Vampires" (18 more to follow).

The thing is, I'd happily read this if it was written by Charlie Stross instead of Daisy Chick.

[Via More Words, Deeper Hole]

Grabbers looks like all sorts of fun.

[Via The Awl]

V-J Day in the Black Lagoon. What a great picture.

Having seen The Cabin in the Woods, I don't feel able to write very much about it because anyone thinking of seeing it absolutely owes it to themselves to go in with as little foreknowledge as possible of the storyline.

I will say one thing. You may think the trailers and poster have given away the plot. They haven't. Trust me on this.

Not that there was much doubt that I'd be going to see The Cabin in the Woods, but Mightygodking's Single-sentence review pretty much ensured that I'll be doing so sooner rather than later:

First two acts are perfectly serviceable and okay meta-commentary on horror tropes that some will claim are more clever than they in fact are; third act is some of the most ambitious, exciting horror filmmaking in years, and since it's the last bit, you'll forget that the first two-thirds of it was only okay.

ABC (of) monsters. Off the top of my head, I can identify 20 out of the 26. The ones I can't get are D, I, O, Q, R and U.

Question: was E really a monster?

[Via swissmiss]

I, too, have fond memories of Tobe Hooper's "Lifeforce":

LIFEFORCE is my all-time guilty pleasure movie, (am referring to the 116 minute British version of course – from IMDB: "Original unedited European version contains more violent and erotic footage Tri-Star Pictures cut from the domestic version.").

I love the epic scopeness of it all. We travel all the way from outer-space, to mist-bound foggy parks in the morn, to asylums for the criminally insane, to the secret war-rooms of the vampire Prime Minister and finally to the end of the world. And all the time the seriousness of it, the gob-smacking, "gentlemen this is a D-notice situation", seriousness of it it. LIFEFORCE has a tone like no other film.

And Mathilda May.

Walking around nude.

For what seems like forever.

posted by jettloe at 7:55 AM on February 7 [8 favorites +] [!]

So just how truncated was the US release? I'm guessing it probably lasted about 23 minutes…

Lee Hardcastle's Pingu's THE THING. This is the epic extended cut, a whole two minutes long.

Robin Hardy, best known as the director of the original¹ version of The Wicker Man, has written and directed a belated prequel/reimagining called The Wicker Tree.

As a rule I work on the assumption that any instance where a writer or director revisits their best work a couple of decades on is likely to disappoint: given that this sequel is getting a release almost four decades on from the original part of me wishes he'd left well alone, even as I wish him luck.

The trailer looks OK but nothing special, so I'm going to choose to be cautiously optimistic but wait for the reviews.

1. i.e. Nicolas Cage-free. ↩

<sarcasm>Six reasons why The Thing prequel is better than John Carpenter's 1982 film.</sarcasm>

THE STUPIDITY

Oh yes, we're in Antarctica, so I think I'll just pop outside and wave at that helicopter WITHOUT PUTTING MY COAT ON. And oh, any one of you could be a Thing, so hey, let me just STICK MY HEAD IN ALL YOUR MOUTHS TO SEE IF YOU HAVE FILLINGS. Because, you know, Things can't reproduce metal or something, though they don't appear to have any problems with clothes or zips or whatever. [...]

[Via @AnneBillson, via guardian/film-staff]

I didn't think there was much you could to to improve upon John Carpenter's The Thing, but somehow it's been done.

Ladies and Gentlemen, pray silence for … John Carpenter's "The Thing": The Musical. So, so good.

[Via MetaFilter]

Fifty Baddies.

[Via Subtraction.com]

Seeing the poster for The Abominable Dr Phibes reminds me of just how much joy I used to get from the Friday night horror film slot on British TV back in the mid/late 1970s.

It's been far too long since I've seen either of the Dr Phibes films, or Theater of Blood come to that.

Miss Lovecraft's Sex Ed class.

[Via jwz]

BBC News – Apology over The Walking Dead poster gaffe:

An advertising firm has apologised for placing a billboard for a TV show called The Walking Dead on the side of a funeral parlour.

Heh…

I was dimly aware that a remake of Fright Night was in the works but I hadn't paid it much attention: I enjoyed the original but I haven't seen it in years and it wouldn't make it onto my all-time top 10 horror films. Imagine my surprise at the sight of a teaser poster for the new film featuring David Tennant in the part played in the original by Roddy McDowall.

Clearly they've rewritten the role a bit, but I can still see Tennant being quite fun as the host of a low-budget horror anthology TV show who has to face up to the fact that there really are vampires out there.

Having been prompted to look up the remake, the one real doubt I have is over Colin Farrell taking on the role originally played by Chris Sarandon. I can see why Farrell is physically right for the part¹ but I don't know if Farrell can pull off the mix of charm and menace that made Sarandon such a memorable villain, but I might be inclined to find out.

1. Except for being a decade too young compared to Sarandon, but I suppose that the character's apparent age is a reflection of how old he was when he was turned. The character's self-assurance and silky charm, by contrast, was a result of his having been a vampire for long enough to know exactly how to get away with insinuating himself into a neighbourhood and finding victims without bringing attention to himself. Apparent age wouldn't matter in that regard, so long as he was old enough not to look out of place buying a house in a nice, quiet suburb and mixing with his potential victims. ↩

Comment of the week, from MeFi user No-sword in a MetaFilter thread on the news that Guillermo del Toro's plans to film HP Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness have been shelved:

I can't believe everyone is taking this at face value. To those who know the truth of this, our wretched existence atop a dusty ball in infinite space, the facts are plain: in attempting to depict in moving pictures the Incident in the Antarctic, del Toro stumbled into secrets that no filmmaker – no man! – was meant to know. He draws back now, hoping thereby to escape the notice of the writhing madness Above.

But it is too late. The film shall be shown. Its individual frames shall pulse in aneulerian courses through the skies above the bone-rough plains of K'Zar. Its director's cut shall muddily illuminate squamous hollows in the pestilential star-skin of a million-eyed beast that lies cursed and dream-dead across the entire floor of the Indian Ocean. Its praises shall be howled and gibbered by degenerate humanoids in that network of tunnels and caves that webs our fragile planet, silent miles beneath our feet, their shrieks confined to the repetition of a single, mad word of all too obvious source: "Spoilers! Spoilers!"

posted by No-sword at 10:32 AM on March 9

A Spanish TV show decided to put a spooky little girl in a hotel corridor and see what happened next.¹

Don't let the language barrier stop you from watching: the body language for "WTF! OMG! Run away!" seems to be pretty universal.

[Via MetaFilter]

1. I think it's fair to assume that the producers edited out the bits where at least some of the guests, after the initial fright, asked the little girl if she had lost her parents or needed any help. ↩