THE SHE BEAST in S&S

I review Michael Reeves' directorial debut THE SHE BEAST (Dark Sky Films) in the current June 2009 issue of SIGHT & SOUND, also readable at their website here.

Donna Lucas Accepts David J. Schow's "Donndo" Award

At the very end of last Saturday's Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award ceremony at WonderFest, David J. Schow -- the Brown Jenkin of Horror Fandom -- once again disrupted the proceedings to present his own awards. Rondo founder David Colton, who two years ago was recognized with Schow's "Nondo" Award, was this year presented with the "Coltondo" Award, while VIDEO WATCHDOG publisher/art director/shipper/receiver/receptionist/heart and soul Donna Lucas was feted with the "Donndo" Award. Schow explained the award by saying that Donna was required to share all of her Rondo Awards for Best Magazine with me, while I was winning Rondos independently of her.

My camera was running low on battery juice by the time this surprise event came about, so I missed David's introduction, but as Donna took the stage to receive her much-deserved solo recognition, I said "Damn the torpedoes" and recorded her short but ever-so-charming acceptance speech. You can see it on YouTube, here.

My Rondo Acceptance Speeches

Your erratic blogger receives not only the Best Blog Rondo but a red-hot smoocheroonie from Nurse Moan-eek. Photo (c) and courtesy of Eileen Colton, CHFB News.

This year's WonderFest played host to David Colton's presentation of the 2008 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, where I was honored to receive the awards for Best Writer and Best Blog (Video WatchBlog, natch). Jennifer Sorrels has kindly posted camcorded footage of much of the ceremony at YouTube, including footage of my two pre-scripted acceptance speeches, which you can see and hear by following these links...

Rondo recipients Cameron McCasland, Gary L. Prange, Linda "Nurse Moan-eek" Wylie, Michael Schlesinger (2007 Monster Kid of the Year), Tim Lucas and 2008 Hall of Famers Jim & Marian Clatterbaugh.

Best Blog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTB8oclWsA0

Best Writer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sERAjJlu-w

Raymond "Coffin Ray" Castile, Cameron McCasland, Gary L. Prange, Linda Wylie, Michael Schlesinger, Tim Lucas, Jim & Marian Clatterbaugh, Larry Blamire, Donnie Waddell, RUE MORGUE editor Jovanka Vuckovic, and 2008 Monster Kid of the Year Joe Moe. Blocked from view at extreme left are Best Artist Ken Kelly and Coffin Ray's fetching translator, Sara "Saramonster" Lattis.

More camcorded Rondo clips and terrific WonderFest photos by Eileen Colton can be enjoyed at this thread on the Classic Horror Film Boards. I would especially recommend Coffin Ray's "Best Article" speech -- as always, a show stealer, and this year augmented by Sara Lattis' hilarious deadpan translations.

Back To THE LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN

One of the great pleasures of attending this year's WonderFest was getting to know better writer-director-actor-author-cartoonist-aw-c'mon-I'm-tired Larry Blamire and his lovely wife, actress and STICKY MAE GREY author Jennifer "Animala" Blaire, and I should know better. (Sorry, but I am easily infected by Blamirisms. I should be back to Normal sometime later this week... that is, if I go anywhere near Illinois.) This picture shows me with both sides of the equation AND their better halves, under the extraordinarily powerful lighting at Louisville's Crowne Plaza hotel, which was strong enough to make my hair photograph orange and Larry's to actually photograph white!!!!

Another great treat was attending the Kentucky premiere of their latest Bantam Street production THE LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN, which was immediately clutched to the collective bosom of the WonderFest crowd -- a disgusting yet heartwarming sight. When this as-yet-without-distribution meisterwerk comes to your town, do what the WonderFesters did and sing the "Fleming" song over the end credits. This moving ritual deserves to catch on like the toast your grandma and grandpa used to throw at the screenings of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, back before the turn of the century.

I make no bones about it: THE LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN is a prodigal return for Blamire and his gleefully mad repertory company. It manages to improve on the original LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA in every respect while also making the original more wonderful as the modest starting point for all this divine insanity. Anybody who thinks this guy is merely spoofing bad movies is missing the point. Movie clichés have never been sent up so unmercifully yet lovingly. Also, in my opinion, Blamire is the only genuine Surrealist working in the cinema today. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a celery.

Monsters Attack WonderFest 2009

As we all know, monsters are generally very benign critters, such as this Saucer-Man who kindly posed with VIDEO WATCHDOG publisher Donna Lucas at WonderFest 2009 in Louisville, Kentucky this past weekend. Saucer-Man pitches in to help at the Ultratumba Productions table on weekends. During the weeks, he works at a nearby restaurant as -- what else? -- a saucier.

Friendliness and good will initially seemed to be the case with this imposing, larger-than-life-sized, 3-D embodiment of Jack Davis' 6 ft. tall Frankenstein Monster, one of the many wondrous trappings of this year's Old Dark Clubhouse constructed by ODCH innkeeper Gary L. Prange. He was perfectly well-mannered during the day, as seen here with THE LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN writer-director-star Larry Blamire... but then, as night fell...

THE MONSTER RAN AMOK! He started by strangling me!

Then he grabbed LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN producer Michael Schlesinger! He attacked so quickly, so lethally, that Schlesinger had literally no time for one last pun! And (imagine this in a Huckleberry Hound voice) that's fast, man!

Then he moved on to MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT publishers Jim & Marian Clatterbaugh! He squeezed them together so tightly, their ampersand was no longer necessary!

And finally he grabbed Rondo Award-winner Linda "Nurse Moan-eek" Wylie, who tried to get away Scot free, but to no avail!

Unfortunately the attacks were not limited to the Frankenstein Monster. Donna later had the misfortune of an encounter with TV horror host Count Gore DeVol, who lured her into a false sense of security with pleasantries and saturdays and sundries until...

... he sank his fangs into her neck!

Fangs for the memories to the Rondo Award-winning WonderFest!

The Long and the Short of I VAMPIRI

Original Italian quattro-foglia (four-sheet), artwork by Arnaldo Putzu.

Pursuant to yesterday's post about the new DER VAMPIR VON NOTRE DAME (I VAMPIRI) release from Anolis Entertainment, the company's publicist Ivo Scheloske has sent me links to a pair of richly illustrated German-language web pages that compare the German and Italian versions of the film, and the Italian and US (THE DEVIL'S COMMANDMENT) versions. Danke to Ivo for the links; well worth checking out. The pages also contain Amazon.de links that will take you to where you can order the disc.

Der Nebula von Notre Dame

VIDEO WATCHDOG contributor Kim Newman and I are both honored to have work included in the newly published NEBULA AWARDS SHOWCASE 2009 (ROC, $16 US/$20 Canada), edited by Ellen Datlow.

Kim's contribution is an appreciation of author Michael Moorcock, the recipient of the 2009 Damon Knight Grand Master Award. (The book also includes Moorcock's story "The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius," from his recent collection THE METATEMPORAL DETECTIVE.) My contribution is an essay about Guillermo del Toro's PAN'S LABYRINTH, the screenplay for which won a Nebula Award.

Kim, widely anthologized, must be used to this sort of thing, but it was a great kick for me to see my name highlighted on the back cover among the likes of Moorcock (a longtime hero), Barry N. Malzberg, Joe R. Lansdale, Jane Yolen, Michael Chabon and the illustrious Kim, among others. I thank Ellen Datlow for inviting me to work in such august company.

Go to your favorite bookstore now and buy it.

I also want to take a moment to recommend another new arrival. The German DVD company Anolis has followed their deluxe edition of Mario Bava's BLUTIGE SEIDE (BLOOD AND BLACK LACE) with an even more lavish presentation of DER VAMPIRE VON NOTRE DAME (I VAMPIRI). Unlike the domestic Image Entertainment release, which included the Italian version only, Anolis adds on the German version (which runs 4m longer than the Italian version, which was cut to appease the censor board) and also THE DEVIL'S COMMANDMENT, the US version containing additional exploitation footage.

Further sweetening the deal is a delightful, hour-long documentary, C'EST LA VIE, interviewing the great Swiss character actor Paul Muller, now 85 and living on a healthy pension somewhere near Rome. The program covers Muller's early life, early work in theater, and the films that preceded I VAMPIRI, then actually shows Muller reacting to scenes from the film, and wraps up with some generous comments about working with Jess Franco and Soledad Miranda on EUGENIE DE SADE. I am not sure I've ever seen Muller crack a smile onscreen, at least not a genuinely happy one, so it was a great pleasure to discover him to be such a charming, chuckling pixie offscreen. He's a very sharp 85, too, with valuable and unfaded memories of his long career.

Also included are trailers, still and poster galleries, and an interesting attempt to reconstruct the pre-credits sequence originally envisioned by Riccardo Freda, which was changed when he was replaced by Mario Bava in a rescue effort that required a rewriting of the narrative. English subtitles are provided, even for the Muller documentary, but these do not extend to Christian Kessler's German-language audio commentary. I'll be covering this important release in more detail in a future issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG.

Another CRASH

Bill Moseley in the unreleased film NIGHTMARE ANGEL, Zoe Bertoff's 1980s adaptation of J.G. Ballard's CRASH.

Brett Taylor, who contributes regularly to VW's "Biblio Watchdog" department, sent the above photo with the following letter after the posting of my J.G. Ballard post-mortem:

This fairly mundane still is all I was able to dig up on NIGHTMARE ANGEL, an adaptation of [J.G. Ballard's] CRASH from about 1984. I got it from the director, Zoe Beloff, who was just out of film school at the time. Bill Moseley says it's better than the Cronenberg version, but he would, wouldn't he? It was shot in industrial areas of New Jersey. I think there's some loophole about adaptations where you can do them so long as they're not shown for commercial purposes. I remember Stephen King saying he allowed anybody to film his stories as long as they pay a token fee of $1. So there've been many short films of his stories that have never been widely shown.

I've sat on this still for years. It was supposed to go with my Bill Moseley interview, but then PSYCHOTRONIC went under. I kept hoping they'd come back on the Internet, but after a few years I gave up on that notion. Then I had the vague notion of writing an article on unreleased films, but didn't think the world needed another "Day the Clown Cried" article. Now my interview is several years out of date, and I don't have any particular use for this shot. So I thought you might be interested in it.

I certainly am, and I thought other visitors to this blog would also be fascinated. Now how does one see NIGHTMARE ANGEL, a film I'd never heard of before, and which I don't recall being mentioned in Iain Sinclair's book on the book and film? Purely for non-commercial purposes, of course.

Thanks to Brett for sharing this interesting discovery.

Ballard Gone: World at Half Mast

Yesterday I would have described James Graham Ballard as our greatest living novelist; today, following his death from prostate cancer at the age of 78, I would still categorize him as arguably the most progressive thinker and commentator of our time. He found the beauty in places where beauty did not exist prior to his discovery: in desolation, in anomie, in medical language, in injury, in emotionless sex, in catastrophe, in sterility, in those places where hard corners open into infinite cold, where the imagination turns against itself. In some ways, I feel we continue to live in the 20th century precisely because most of us cannot follow Ballard's writing into the 21st century as it truly is. I consider CRASH the finest piece of writing I've ever read, and it (along with THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION) surely influenced the writing of my own novel THROAT SPROCKETS; CRASH taught me, more than all of Flaubert, more than all of Nabokov, the value of the mot juste, the perfectly crafted sentence and the value of transgression. Ballard himself observed that the book's cult success was not immediate, that it was initially accepted only by "a few psychopaths and amputees."

Somewhere in my archives I have a cassette of an early 1980s interview I conducted with David Cronenberg, during which I asked if he had ever read CRASH, which I expected he would like as it consolidated his obsessions with mutation and cars. He hadn't, but he promised he would. The film he eventually based on Ballard's book had its good points, but is not half so important or daring as the novel; likewise, Steven Spielberg's ambitious but overblown film of EMPIRE OF THE SUN. Jonathan Weiss's film of THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION comes much closer to the mark, making what was oblique and implicit in the original work more explicit while remaining true to its essential spirit and vocabulary.

One of Ballard's typically inspired book titles was A USER'S GUIDE TO THE MILLENNIUM. I feel this title would have been more accurately stamped on the cover of J.G. BALLARD QUOTES, a compendium of quotations from his interviews and fiction assembled by V. Vale and Mike Ryan for ReSearch Publications. I'd call it the perfect bedside book, if it didn't have the most extraordinary capacity to ignite the imagination and keep one up all hours, looking at all and sundry through Ballard's uniquely pitched spectacles. For example, he called Madonna's chromium-plated coffee table book SEX "a Commonplace book for our day, by the Daisy Ashford of the 1990s, as filled with homilies and naive dreams as the diary of any Victorian young lady." He included The Los Angeles Yellow Pages, as well as Burroughs' NAKED LUNCH, on his list of 10 Best Books. Yet he was more than a mere provocateur; these seeming provocations are actually laced with almost perilous insight and keen perspective. He had vision and the courage to use it, the capacity to look at the world around us with the poised disengagement of an art critic. Some called this perspective psychotic; I would call it Godly and the spectacle itself psychotic.

In RUSHING TO PARADISE, Ballard wrote "Contrary to general belief, no one's death diminishes us." Ballard's death enriches us by completing one of the most valuable shelves of literature in English.

EXPOSED Reviewed

Christina Lindberg in a frisky clinch with Janne Carlsson in EXPOSED.

My review of the Christina Lindberg epic EXPOSED (Exponerad, a.k.a. THE DEPRAVED), now available from the great folks at Synapse Films, appears in the May 2009 issue of SIGHT & SOUND... and also on the S&S website here. This issue should be of especial interest to VIDEO WATCHDOG readers, as it includes Kim Newman's review of the must-see LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, Mark Kermode's survey of recent vampire cinema, and another piece by Kim about "The New Horror" and what it may be lacking.

Deep Deep Down

All fans of Eurocult cinema owe it to themselves to check out this YouTube clip of Mike Patton's Mondo Cane performing Ennio Morricone's "Deep Deep Down," the love theme from Mario Bava's DANGER: DIABOLIK. I've always liked the song, with its Christy vocal, without giving it too much thought -- it's not even my favorite musical cue in the picture -- but seeing it performed live by such an expressive vocalist, a full choir and orchestra brought tears to my eyes.

God bless them, every one.

It's like seeing an entire city rise up in tribute to Mario Bava, Ennio Morricone, Marisa Mell and John Phillip Law. It's like seeing a modest film made forty years ago by humble artisans, shrugged off by most people at the time of its original release, triumphing over time by spreading the wings of a glorious phoenix.

I sent a link to Lamberto Bava, who turned 65 years old this week -- the age at which his father died in 1980. I wish Lamberto a much longer run.

Mille grazie to my friend Rod Barnett for alerting me to this.

Luís Buñuel Gets You There On Time

My review of Luís Buñuel's THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL and SIMON OF THE DESERT, now available on DVD from Criterion, is part of their April 2009 issue and also appears as a free enticement on their website here.

In other personal news, I was notified yesterday by editor David Barker of Continuum Press' 33 & 1/3 series that my book on Jefferson Airplane's 1968 album CROWN OF CREATION did not make the latest round of cuts, which is now down to 27 finalists. One of these, on Neil Young's TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT, has been proposed by VW's own Sam Umland, I'm pleased to report.

Any rejection is disappointing, but this one especially so. I have now written a cable miniseries, a feature screenplay and a book about Jefferson Airplane and not one of them has been able to "take off." It is also Dr. Barker's second rejection of this completed project, though he offered at the time of its first rejection to consider it as an emergency fill-in title, should another author on their roster encounter problems or fail to meet their deadline. Obviously the state of the economy entered into this decision, but jeez, you would think a finished book about one of the best-selling albums by the group who headlined at Woodstock and Altamont, written by a multi-award-winning critic and biographer, would have counted for something.

So now do I advance into the brave new world of music book publishing, or not? That is the question.

Video WatchBlog Wins Best Blog Rondo Award

I'm very surprised and flattered to report that, when David Colton announced the winners of the 7th Annual Rondo Awards last evening in a live Classic Horror Film Boards chat, Video WatchBlog was named Best Blog and I was named Best Writer for the second year in a row.

The common wisdom I've been hearing is that I destroyed Video WatchBlog's chances of winning by retiring it while voting was still in progress, so I am moved by this victory in particular. I've received some truly extraordinary letters from readers about this blog, and what it has meant to them; in a long letter I must count as the most touching of them all, David Colton himself gave his reasons why he considered Video WatchBlog to be my "finest hour." It's very testing to read something so heart-felt and uplifting, and to receive an popular vote acknowledgement like this award, and still stick to my guns... but I must. For now, I feel that returning to this discipline, in addition to everything else I'm trying to accomplish, would be more personally damaging than it could possibly be generally helpful. I may have disappeared from daily view and free access, but I'm still producing the best monthly print magazine of its kind (some would say the only monthly print magazine of its kind), enjoying a stimulating new phase of life, and working on (and preparing to work on) some exciting new projects.

We are now preparing to buckle down to an important number of VIDEO WATCHDOG, our 150th issue, and we want to make it something very special. I feel more able to accomplish this goal without the added responsibility of this blog, and I suspect you'll be more avid to read that issue because of what has been withheld from public view in advance.

Thank you all, very much, for your votes and good thoughts.

What follows is the complete press release of the 7th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Film Awards, with a complete list of recipients in each category. I send my congratulations to all those listed.

MARCH 24, 2009 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ARLINGTON, VA -- Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, TV's The Munsters and Ray Harryhausen's 7th Voyage of Sinbad were all winners Monday in the Seventh Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, which also honored the man who cared for sci-fi legend Forrest J Ackerman in the final years of his life. But the biggest surprise came when a special "Hitchcock" edition of Barbie, dressed like Tippi Hedren and swarmed by miniature crows from The Birds, topped the Creature from the Black Lagoon in a showdown for Best Model, Toy or Collectible.

Not only did the 50-year-old doll from Mattel beat out the green-scaled Creature, but she outclassed models from The Exorcist, Invasion of the Saucermen and even an action figure of Rondo Hatton himself, the obscure 1940s horror actor who inspired the fan awards. The Rondos are an annual celebration of the vintage monsters who sparked almost a century of horror films and sequels. The worldwide online survey by the Classic Horror Film Board, a 14-year old online community, is the largest in the genre and drew a record 2,932 emailed votes.

Beyond Barbie's latest triumph, winners Monday ranged from the modern -- The Dark Knight was voted best film of 2008, the BBC's Doctor Who was favorite television show -- to classic horrors from the past: -- A new edition of the 1960 film, Psycho, was voted Best Classic Horror DVD. -- A collection of Harryhausen's 1950s science films, including a colorized Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, was named Best DVD Collection, and the collected episodes of The Munsters was the favorite TV collection. -- And a painstaking reconstruction and restortaion of Carl Dreyer's atmospheric 1932 chiller, Vampyr, was voted Best Restoration.

The most emotional moments came when it was announced in an online ceremony that a Los Angeles producer, Joe Moe, had been named "Monster Kid of the Year,'' for his long years serving as a friend and caregiver for horror and science fiction collector Ackerman. The founder of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, Ackerman died this year at the age of 92.

"For his quiet, constant and unwavering stewardship of Forrest J Ackerman's final decade of life,'' the Rondo citation reads, "Joe Moe revealed not only the man behind Mr. Monster, but the grace and strength of the ultimate fan. For being there when we all couldn't, Joe Moe is Monster Kid of the Year.'' Moe, contacted by phone during the event, said, "If ever there was a time when I needed my monster family, it's now. Thank you so much for validating the work I tried to do in a fashion that would make all of you proud. I tried not to cry for Forry but now that he's gone, this honor from you, my pals, has me in tears. Thank you so much."

Other winners included:

Best DVD Extra: "One for the Fire,'' a documentary about the making of Night of the Living Dead.

Best DVD Commentary: Makeup master Rick Baker, Bob Burns, Scott Essman, Steve Haberman and Brent Armstrong for The Mummy (1932).

Best Documentary: Spine-Tingler: The William Castle Story.

Book of the Year: The Twilight Zone by Martin Grams.

Best Magazine: Rue Morgue.

Best Article: "Coffin Joe Resurrected,'' a look at the legendary Brazilian filmmaker Jose Mojica Marins, by Scott Gabbey and Jovanka Vuckovic in Rue Morgue.

Best Magazine Cover: Rue Morgue #83, a portrait of Forrest J Ackerman by longtime Famous Monsters artist Basil Gogos.

Best Website: Trailers from Hell.

Best Blog: Video WatchBlog.

Convention of the Year: WonderFest in Louisville.

Fan Event of the Year: World Zombie Day.

Favorite Horror Host: Svengoolie, played by Rich Koz, in Chicago.

Best Horror Audio Site: Rue Morgue Radio.

CD of the Year: Soundtrack of The Blob by Monstrous Movie Music.

Best Horror Comic Book: Hellboy: In the Chapel of Moloch, by Mike Mignola.

Biggest controversy: An L.A. fan's disputed claim he had once examined the long-lost Lon Chaney film, London After Midnight.

Writer of the Year: Tim Lucas, author and editor of Video Watchdog

Artist of the Year: Basil Gogos.

Favorite DVD Reviewer: Glenn Erickson of DVD Savant.

Vasaria Public Citizen Award: Cameron McCasland and Creature Cinema for public service announcements by Nashville's Dr. Gangrene [Larry Underwood] and Nurse Moan-Eek [Linda Wylie].

Monster Kid Hall of Fame inductees: European horror actor Paul Naschy; Jim and Marian Clatterbaugh of Monsters from the Vault magazine; painter Ken Kelly; the late Calvin Beck, founder of Castle of Frankenstein magazine; the late Lux Interior, lead singer for punk band The Cramps and an influence on the psychobilly horror rock movement; and the late Bob Wilkins, original host of San Francisco's Creature Features.

Many of the Rondo winners will receive Rondo busts, sculpted by Kerry Gammill and cast by Tim Lindsey, at the WonderFest convention in Louisville on May 16. Further information, including runners-up and all the nominees, can be found at rondoaward.com.

Rondo Voting Ends Tomorrow!

Still haven't voted for your favorites in the 7th Annual Rondo Awards? Better make up your mind, because tomorrow (Saturday) night, March 21, at 12:00 midnight is the deadline! Visit the Rondo Award website for the list of nominees and send your choices to taraco@aol.com-- and remember Donna Lucas, the designer of each and every issue of VW since the Dawn of Time, for Best Artist!

VIDEODROME Hardcover Available Now

You may remember that my Studies in the Horror Film book on VIDEODROME was originally announced as forthcoming in both trade paperback and signed/numbered limited hardcover editions. Some of you have expressed a special interest in acquiring the hardcover, which did not materialize at the same time as the softcover, and a few of you may have even been holding out in favor of it. So I'm happy to be able to pass along the news that the hardcover edition is now in house at Millipede Press and available for purchase. Collectors should note this is the author's first-ever signed/numbered limited edition -- if you don't count a 20-copy signed/numbered edition of an illustrated prose poem called "Amelia Earhart" that I Kinko'd for a select group of friends back in the mid-1970s, and I don't think we should. Long live the VIDEODROME ordering page, which you can find here.

846, or On Second Thought...

At Donna's suggestion, I am going to reactivate Video WatchBlog -- but not to become what it was before. Because VIDEO WATCHDOG remains our bread and butter, we need a place to make timely announcements to our readers, and this is the most convenient and sensible place to do that. So, while I will not be posting additional articles or essays here, I will pop back from time to time to advise you of special offers, personal appearances and such.

I am, I repeat, AM done with blogging.

845

I have no more time in my life for this blog,
Too much else that I'd rather be doing;
It's hard to have a life and do the Watchdog
And this; it seems I'm always reviewing.

This is post Eight hundred and forty five
But I need to pull the plug, I just do.
The show will go on, the mag will still thrive,
But from here, I must bid you adieu.

Birthday Love to Coralina

Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni is Italian horror's reigning Diva of Delicious Death Scenes, but she is also a dear friend, an inspiring fellow artist, and our beloved sister, so Donna joins me today in sending her our warmest regards on the anniversary of her birth. She's seen here with us at last October's Cinema Wasteland convention, embracing her own personal copy of the Bava book, while we embrace her -- as I wish we could be doing right now.

Coralina first won the hearts of horror fans as another birthday girl: the ill-fated, talon-sprouting, pus-erupting Sally of Lamberto Bava's DEMONS 2: THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS -- a legitimately great monster performance. She can currently be seen in what is surely the most outrageous of her many death scenes in Dario Argento's MOTHER OF TEARS (featured in the new issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG), and is presently engaged in many different projects we eagerly await, including an ambitious authorized biography written with Filippo Brunamonti, new paintings and music, and some original screenplay projects written in collaboration with the talented writer-director Mariano Baino (DARK WATERS).

You can see the delightfully experimental and allusive 6m trailer for Coralina's and Filippo Brunamonti's forthcoming book on her MySpace page here (which includes a Hitchcock-like cameo by... er, another book), and also sample tracks from her CD, LIMBO BALLOON -- which capture the real Coralina I know and love.

"Happy Birthday!" the dark incubus spake.
"Now tie the birthday girl down
And... cut the cake!"

Criterion's MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION reviewed

Robert Taylor chases Irene Dunne's skirt right into the path of a speeding car in the 1935 version of MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION.

My review of Douglas Sirk's -- and John M. Stahl's -- MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (Criterion DVD) appears in the March 2009 issue of SIGHT & SOUND, now on newsstands. It can be also read for free on their website, here.

The Latest on VIDEO WATCHDOG

If this blog should be doing anything, it is helping to promote the venerable hub of this freewheeling enterprise: VIDEO WATCHDOG magazine. I've been solipsistically remiss in mentioning here that VW 147 is now en route to subscribers and newsstands, and available now from our toll free 1-800-275-8395 number.

For those of you who favor Eurohorror, this current issue features an engrossing and illuminating (if I do say so myself) round table discussion of Dario Argento's MOTHER OF TEARS, with input from Maitland McDonagh, Kim Newman, Richard Harland Smith, Brad Stevens and yours truly. And, obsessives that we are, we let the thing roll on for 21 pages illustrated in full color! Where else are you going to get that? This is also one of those proud issues that has something to offer readers of every taste, from Jean-Pierre Melville noirs to horror classics from the '30s through present day, and both Kim Newman and Audio Watchdog Douglas E. Winter have their respective says about Peter Watkins' seminal rock-oriented cautionary tale PRIVILEGE. You can get the whole rundown on the issue here, complete with four free sample pages to whet your appetite.

Those of you who have been secretly wishing to write for VW over the years, but have been deterred by our "on an invitational basis only" restriction, may find an announcement in my current editorial of especial interest.

A great issue, this one, but being a monthly gives us no time to rest on our laurels. Last week, we put the finishing touches on our next issue, VW 148, which is now at the printer. Our readers have been urging us to follow our head by covering more obscure product, which we're happy to do, but if we want to keep the folks at Diamond Comics Distribution (and, by extension, ourselves) happy, we're going to have to do everything we can to keep our covers more recognizably commercial. I think Charlie and Donna's cover for 148 is a stellar example of doing this in the prettiest and most tempting way possible.

VW 148 is not billed as such, but it's actually one of our popular "all-review" issues. We weren't planning to emphasize STARDUST to this extent, but the quality of Sheldon Inkol's writing about the film, and the wealth of beautiful images available to us from it, conspired to give this issue both a special identity and sense of direction. Charlie did a lovely job of framing the ever-photogenic Michelle Pfeiffer on the cover, and adding sprinkles of his own stardust to the framing background. I also like the diversity of Donna's choices for the supporting images on the cover stripe, ranging from the British TV miniseries DEAD SET to Al Pacino (so memorable opposite Pfeiffer in FRANKIE AND JOHNNY) in the thriller 88 MINUTES, to classic stars like Fred Williamson and Sidney "Charlie Chan" Toler. This should be shorthand to our readers that, while our cover aims to appeal to wider or at least consistent numbers, the innards of this issue delve well into our usual depths.

Aside from reviews of everything from Herschell Gordon Lewis' MOONSHINE MOUNTAIN to Hideo Nakata's thought-lost ghost story KAIDAN (a remake of a Nobuo Nakagawa classic, to which we have frame grabs comparing and contrasting both versions), the real centerpiece of this issue is Kim Newman's review of the seven features collected in Fox's CHARLIE CHAN VOLUME 5 (including the spooky and rarely seen DEAD MEN TELL), which we've chosen to present in the form of a feature called "Charlie Chan: Curtain Down at Fox." You can read more about this terrific issue here, in our current "Coming Soon" section.