It contains memorable scenes from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Fantasia," "Lady and the Tramp," "Peter Pan," "One Hundred and One Dalmatians," and "The Sword in the Stone."
When Vincent Price was asked what he thought of the short, he said that it was "the most gratifying thing that ever happened. It was immortality - better than a star on Hollywood Boulevard."
An early form of Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) can be seen in the upper-left corner of the screen at 4:45.
Young Vincent Malloy dreams of being just like Vincent Price and loses himself in macabre daydreams which annoys his mother.
Tonight's feature is House, directed by Steve Miner (the only director to direct more than one film in the Friday the 13th series). The cast includes William Katt, George Wendt, Richard Moll, Kay Lenz, and Mary Stavin.
Roger Cobb (William Katt) is a Vietnam veteran and horror novelist. After his son Jimmy disappears while visiting his aunt, Roger's search for Jimmy ruins his marriage and writing career. After Roger's aunt suddenly dies, Cobb moves into her house to work on a novel based on his experiences in the war. As strange occurrences start happening around him, Roger becomes aware that the house is evil, not to mention ghost-infested, and it resents his presence in it. The ghosts force him to endure a journey into his past, where he ultimately finds Jimmy at the end.
Tonight's feature was written and directed by MOH John Carpenter.
Prince of Darkness features Carpenter favorite Donald Pleasence, Jameson Parker, Victor Wong, Lisa Blount, and yes - that's Alice Cooper as a "Street Schizo"!
Father Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is a priest who discovers a strange object in a church basement -- a canister filled with a swirling and volatile green substance. With the help of Professor Birack (Victor Wong), Loomis discovers the startling truth about his find -- it seems that Satan, who is actually an alien life form, had a son, and the essence of the devil's spawn is trapped inside the canister. The evil spirit has been guarded by a group calling themselves "The Brotherhood of Sleep," but the spirit has the ability to free itself whenever it decides the time is right... and it seems that time is just around the corner. Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
The Mysterious Stranger is an unfinished work, and the last novel attempted, by the American author Mark Twain. It was worked on periodically from roughly 1890 up until his death in 1910. The body of work is a serious social commentary by Twain addressing his ideas of the Moral Sense and the "damned human race".
Twain actually wrote multiple versions of this story, each unfinished and each involving the character of "Satan".
ANIMATED VERSION The Mysterious Stranger was adapted to a short scene in the 1985 claymation film The Adventures of Mark Twain, in which the children visit a planetoid and meet an angel named Satan. He claims to be incapable of performing an evil act as he does not understand the concept of wrongdoing. Satan builds a sandcastle and has the children make clay figures which he then brings to life. Two of the clay men bicker over ownership of a cow, and Satan kills them by mashing them with his palm. He then creates a storm and an earthquake to kill the remaining people and destroy the castle, to the horror of the watching children. Thereafter, the kids leave the planetoid as Satan lectures, "Life itself is only a vision, a dream. Nothing exists save empty space and you, and you are but a thought," ultimately disappearing with the planetoid, an illusion he created himself.
Due to the disturbing nature of this scene, it is edited out of the movie when aired on American television.
Tonight's feature is the movie Christine, about a car named Christine, based on the book of the same name by Stephen King.
The movie was directed by John Carpenter; the cast includes Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky, and Harry Dean Stanton.
A nerdish boy buys a strange car with a evil mind of its own and his nature starts to change to reflect it.
Christine was said to be a 1958 Plymouth Fury, which had similar panels and trim to the 1957 model. When the Fury name was introduced, it was essentially a sport and trim package on the Belvedere - notably two doors, gold anodized trim, gold grille and dual four-barrel carburetors.
Christine, as shown in the movie, could have been any two door Belvedere with a 318 or 350 engine.
Although over 5300 Furys - and far more Belvederes - were built in 1958, they have since become very rare and are now collector's items. There were 13 or 16 (depending on source) Belvederes/Furys smashed in the making of the movie (out of the roughly 25 used during filming), but it is unknown whether they were 1957 or 1958 models, or a combination. In any event, Plymouth enthusiasts were infuriated, although the movie popularized the car and probably saved many of them - in the same way that Back to the Future (1985) did for the DeLorean.
In the original Stephen King book, the car had four doors but this was changed to a two-door model when it was realized that there never was a four-door 1958 Plymouth Fury. Although all 1958 Plymouth Furys had Buckskin Beige exterior paint and gold anodized aluminum side trim and grille, the book mentions that this particular car was custom ordered in Ford red.
Tonight's feature is Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), directed by Steve Miner. The cast includes Amy Steele, John Furey, Adrienne King, and Kirsten Baker.
SPOILER ALERT
Two months after the events of the original Friday the 13th, Alice (Adrienne King), the lone survivor of Mrs. Vorhees' killing spree, meets a grisly end in her city apartment.
Five years later, a new group of co-eds converges near Camp Crystal Lake, scene of the original massacre and the drowning of Jason Vorhees that preceded it.
This time around, the horny collegians attend a nearby training school for camp counselors. As half the group parties in town, an unseen assailant picks off the other half one by one. Only when camp leader Paul (John Furey) and his girlfriend, Ginny (Amy Steel), return to camp do they uncover the identity of their stalker -- none other than Jason (Warrington Gillette) himself, alive but grotesquely deformed as a result of his childhood drowning.
Flashbacks chronicle Jason's behind-the-scenes activities in the first film (perhaps explaining how his mother was able to throw the dead bodies of muscular youths through windows with such apparent ease). The young couple's only hope to defeat the fiend lies in psych major Ginny's insights in Jason's mental state. Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Here's the trailer (scroll down for the full movie):
In this look back at one of the most resilient slashers in horror film history, host Tom Savini reflects on thirty years of bloody carnage and gory mayhem as waged by Jason Vorhees, the hockey-masked mama's boy who always gets his victim, no matter how fast they run. Filled with classic clips from every Friday the 13th film, featuring rare behind-the-scenes footage, and offering interviews with over eighty filmmakers, fans, stuntmen, special effects artists, actors, and journalists, this documentary offers the definitive look at the legacy of a killer who never needs to utter a word, because his trusty machete does all the talking. Featured interviewees include, Kane Hodder, Harry Manfredini, Sean Cunningham, Betsy Palmer, Felissa Rose, Lar Park-Lincoln, Greg Nicotero, Adrienne King, Seth Green, and Fangoria editor-in-chief Tony Timpone. Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
On this day in 1996, the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue became the first machine to win a chess game against a reigning world champion, Garry Kasparov, under regular time controls (see Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1 for a description of the game).
However, Kasparov won three games and drew two of the following games, beating Deep Blue by a score of 4–2. The match concluded on February 17, 1996.
Deep Blue was then heavily upgraded (unofficially nicknamed "Deeper Blue") and played Kasparov again in May 1997, winning the six-game rematch 3½–2½, ending on May 11, and becoming the first computer system to defeat a reigning world champion in a match under standard chess tournament time controls.
Here's a clip from War Games (1983) with another supercomputer that liked to play chess (and other games):
Happy Birthday to American actress Farrah Fawcett, who was born on this day in 1947.
She became a noted pop culture figure and sex symbol of the 1970s and into the 1980s, shaping the landscape of fashion and pop culture.
Her body of work includes a couple of science fiction films:
Logan's Run (1976), with Michael York. An idyllic sci-fi future has one major drawback: life must end at 30.
Here's the trailer:
Saturn 3 (1980), with Kirk Douglas and Harvey Keital. Two lovers stationed at a remote base in the asteroid fields of Saturn are intruded upon by a retentive technocrat from Earth and his charge: a malevolent 8-ft robot.
On this day in 1951 nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site began with a one-kiloton bomb dropped on the Frenchman Flats.
In 1983 the Cold War was still going on. On November 20 of that year ABC televised this frightening story of the weeks leading up to and following a nuclear strike on the United States. The bulk of the activity centers around the town of Lawrence, Kansas.
The Day After was directed by Nicholas Meyer. The cast included Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum, John Lithgow, and Amy Madigan.
It scared the hell out of television viewers nationwide.
Tonight's feature, Night of the Creeps, was written and directed by Fred Dekker. It stars Tom Atkins, Jason Lively, and Jill Whitlow.
In 1959, an alien experiment crashes to earth and infects a fraternity member. They freeze the body, but in the modern day, two geeks pledging a fraternity accidentally thaw the corpse, which proceeds to infect the campus with parasites that transform their hosts into killer zombies.
This film has yet to be officially released onto DVD.
Here's the trailer (keep scrolling down for the movie):
In 1985 Larry Cohen directed The Stuff, a movie about another consumable loved and ingested by millions. But what exactly is in The Stuff? Are you eating it ...or is it eating you?
Here's the MST3K presentation of Hobgoblins. The original movie was written and directed by Rick Sloane.
A group of hobgoblins, who allow you to live out your fantasies but kill you in the process, escape from a studio vault, and a security guard and his friends must stop them before dawn.
Tonight's feature is Gremlins, directed by Joe Dante. The cast includes Hoyt Axton, Corey Feldman, Harry Carey, Jr., and Phoebe Cates.
A boy inadvertantly breaks 3 important rules concerning his new Christmas pet and unleashes a horde of malevolently mischievous monsters on a small town.
BREWERBLOB, posted by Bill Brewer, is a general horror blog containing movie clips and trailers, Friday Night Frights, literature, music, art, and more.
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