The Cathode Ray Mission: Cathode Anniversary

Showing posts with label Cathode Anniversary. Show all posts

Monday, October 29, 2018

Top Ten Picks For Halloween 2018

Here we go again. Another year, another Halloween list. How long have I been doing these anyway? Wow! Since the blogs beginning it appears. How time files. This year since I end up recommending so much other stuff besides movies and TV shows every year, I’m retitling the sucker. So, here we go. 2018’s Halloween picks.

10) Dick Briefer's Frankenstein

Artist Dick Briefer who worked with the likes of Will Eisner on some of the earliest comic books created a weird, macabre version of the Frankenstein monster in the 1940’s. Putting a unique spin on Mary Shelley's creation. Updating his origin to the ‘40’s and having the monster climb the Empire State building in one issue and in another Victor Frankenstein makes a crocodile man to fight his rampaging creature! This collection collects the more straightforward horror run with the monster and the later comical Charles Addams style run. And some later ones where Briefer returned to straight up horror. If you dig comics from the golden age, classic horror comics or the antics of the Addams Family, dig this monster up!

9) Prom Night (1980)

Pure 80' slasher goodness. This is one of those films I always end up watching a couple a times every year. There’s a crazy amount of ‘80’s hair style action in this sucker. You get a pretty cool killer. A extra funky disco number that has to been to be seen to be believed. There's also a snazzy soundtrack. The stalk n' slash scenes are excellent. Stand outs are an attack on the van of a couple of pot smoking post-coital teens. And an extended case scene though the school, as the "evil bitch" character tries to escape the killer. There's also a good assortment of red herrings on hand.

8) Witches by Dante Tomaselli

There was a time way back when Disney used to put out creepy sound FX records. Witches is like the sound FX of someone’s descent into madness and damnation. Filled with spine tingling synth music and strange soundbites. Witches is perfect for a chilly October night spent in a candlelit rooming reading horror stories or making your own.

7) Baron Blood (1972)

A creepy old castle with a well stocked torture chamber, a fog ensconced countryside and a badly deformed undead evil Baron. Plus a really groovy score and psychic shenanigans. Some very red blood. And the sexy Luciano Pigozzi! I mean Elke Sommer of course! This is classic Mario Bava.

6) Norm Breyfogle’s Batman Run

This year we lost a great artist, Norm Breyfogle. His run on the Batman titles is a personal favorite. His style was moody, gritty and had a hint of the exaggerated style Todd McFarlane would use. His run leaned more towards detective stories and straight up horror. Introducing villains like Ventriloquist, Ratcatcher, Jeremiah Arkham, Mr. Zsasz and the intro of the third Robin, Tim Drake. Amazing work. Amazing talent. Gone too soon.

5) The Chilling (1989)

The tale of nice girl Mary. Hard luck security guard Vince. And the doberman he saves from the frozen dead. Finding time along the way to pantomime Freddy Kruger. Throw in a drunk husband out of a Lifetime film. And there’s also one of the worst bank robberies ever filmed. To sweeten the pot (Like I have to) the film takes place on Halloween. It’s all fairly cheesy and I love it.

4) Tomie (1998)

Much like Tomie's severed head this film has grown on me over the many years. She nothing like all The Ring clones out there. Tomie is her own monster. Not a long haired ghost but a living breathing women who's only love is for herself. Tomie's franchise like her will not die. There seems to be a new one every few years or so. And that's just fine by me.

3) The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)

Very few horror films are able to make me tense. The first time I watched Poughkeepsie Tapes I wasn’t quite sure how far they're going to go. I've watched plenty of horror films over my lifetime, rarely though do I worry what's going to happen to a character. There's a couple moments here where I was thinking to myself "Go! Get out of that damn house!" Having seen the horrible fate of a few of the killer's victims by the time a couple girl scouts show up at the killer’s selling cookies your skin will be crawling.

2) The Varrow Mission (1978)

Aliens, a haunted house, a Halloween haunted house contest and '70's teenagers. All the ingredients for a quirky low budget good time. This one is a real oddity. A fun watch if you can find it.

1) Halloween II (2009)

With a new Halloween out. Another Halloween II (sort off) I felt like it was right to have something from the franchise to the list. Usually it’s Halloween II or III. This year I’m going with the follow up to Rob Zombie’s much maligned remake. Zombie’s take on Halloween wasn’t bad. Yes it was tad too long. And had too much redneck nonsense. Why was Michael Myers’ family white trash?
The sequel free of all the origin shit focused on a new story. We got to see the aftermath of his return home. Laurie suffering PTSD and Loomis using the murders to sell books. I don’t mind the arty dream sequences. Nor Mountain Man Michael. The soundtrack for this one is damn good. Nights In White Satin baby. And this film might have old MM’s most brutal and gory kills. Brad Dourif, Danielle Harris, Scout Taylor-Compton and Angela Trimbur are all excellent. Dourif and Harris the standouts. I freaking love this one.

There you have it. Have a safe and spooky Halloween folks!

Saturday, August 4, 2018

Forbidden Powers: An Interview With Paul Kyriazi

Way back in July of 2009 I had the great pleasure of interviewing writer and director Paul Kyriazi. It was the very first one I ever did. In many ways it changed the direction of this blog. Along with becoming friends with Paul. With the Cathode Ray Mission's anniversary I asked Paul if he'd like to do a follow up interview so many years ago.

Since our last interview way back in 2009, you’ve been writing and have a new movie out this year! How have things been?

The last year has been very exciting, Shane. I spent five months in Seattle directing my 7th feature film as well as doing all the post-production there at Victory Studios. I’ve spent the last years, since directing Omega Cop, making full-cast audio-books from my novels using stars of the ‘60s such as Rod Taylor (The Birds, The Time Machine), David Hedison (The Fly, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) and Robert Culp (I SPY).

When my long-time producer friend at Victory Studios purchased a Dragon 6K video camera and then Amazon started letting independent producers upload their own movies and have the proceeds go directly into the producer’s banks, instead of distributors stealing the money, I decided it was the perfect time to make my next feature. And not just any feature, but a story that I was just aching to produce.

Can you tell us a little about your new film Forbidden Power?

I’ve always like stories where the hero suddenly becomes empowered. Limitless was one of the more recent movies. Wolf with Jack Nicholson is another, as well as Luc Besson's LUCY. The Star Trek episode with Gary Lockwood; Where No Man Has Gone Before was also about an empowered man.

As much as I like those stories, I wasn't entirely satisfied with the stories or how the standard way the heroes were empowered; drugs and animal bites. Plus, the heroes had too much power such as in Lucy or the Lockwood Star Trek episode. I wanted a hero that is empowered just enough to have the edge on his business associates and his money-making capacities. Of course, he's sexually stronger and more ambitious, which gets him into trouble.

What inspired the creation of the film’s story?

In real life, I've known men, including myself, who have become empowered after starting a relationship with a new woman. Of course, that is all mental. But what if a woman has some mysterious power that she can pass on sexually? Now that idea has not been done in movies that I know about, so that was my starting point. And then the question comes to mind; when did she get her power from and why does she choose certain men to give that power to?

Not thinking about doing it as a movie, I quickly wrote up a 100-page novella to satisfy my creative urge of getting the story down on paper and putting it on Amazon as a kindle book. And as I mentioned, the timing was right to take a chance and make the movie.

Forbidden Power has a good, likable cast. Lincoln Bevers, Nasanin Nuri, Ben Leiataua, Harry Mok and Hannah Janssen to name a few. What where they like to work with?

The entire cast was great. Because of budgetary conditions, we all had to work efficiently, sometimes filming five completed scenes a day at various locations around Seattle. The cast could sense this. All of them had some stage or film experience so they knew their lines and ready to go on each scene.

It was difficult to cast the ‘mysterious woman’ as she had to be a Native American woman of a certain age and willing to do the required nudity. I searched Seattle where most of the cast came from, but didn't have any luck, so my co-producer put an add in a casting magazine and Nasanin sent in her photo from New York. So, we flew her into Seattle to film her scenes. Except for staging, I didn't have to do any directing for any of the actors, except in a few scenes.

What was it like for you to be in the director’s chair again? Scary? Exciting?

I’ve been directing movies small and large since I was 15 years old, so it was just ‘business as usual’. Shooting in digital made it much easier than film with a Panavision camera. We had a large TV monitor on the set and I could see exactly what we were getting. Also, the lighting is much easier and faster with digital. So, the experience was great, and I could move fast. However, it was a very ambitious project with a large cast for the schedule I could afford, so we had some tough working days.

The movie is mostly a drama punctuated by sudden explosions of action. But I didn't have the time for those actions sequences like I had on Weapons of Death or Death Machines, so I concentrated to make the action surprising instead of large scale.

Many of your films feature the martial arts in some way. What kind of influence have they had on your life?

When I saw James Bond use judo and karate in Dr. No, I immediately joined a karate school. My teacher introduced me to samurai movies, so all my 16mm movies and then features including martial arts in them.

The training of martial arts has a lot of personal discipline and training that is sometime not comfortable, so those that taught me to work through and persevere though tough financial times I had in the past between movie jobs.

There’s quite a few special effects shots in Forbidden Power. Was it a daunting prospect, dealing with visual effects for the film?

I knew what I could do with CGI effects because I searched them on the internet and learned what I needed to. For example, there is a train wreck in the middle of Las Vegas that we needed to do. Some of the crew members thought that we couldn’t pull that off with the budget, but I knew I could show the crash in long shot a few seconds at a time and have insert shots to distract from a weak CGI shot. However, the crash came out so good that I didn’t need the inserts and just held on the long shot of the train crashing into the New York, New York hotel, and knocking over the statue of liberty replica. It worked out great.

Ninja Busters and Death Machines have both had blu-ray releases in the last few years. Have you been involved with these new releases? What’s it like to see them getting the HD upgrade treatment?

Yes, I was involved with both of them and did the director’s commentary on them. I also did an on camera video intro for them. For Ninja Busters, I went to a ninja village amusement park and filmed there. For Death Machines, I filmed it outside a temple in Japan and worked that into my intro.

What is your creative process like when coming up with a novel or screenplay?

Well Shane, because on a lower budget I don’t have name actors such as I did on Omega Cop with Adam ‘Batman’ West, so I have to be sure to grab the audience right away in the first scene, add some mystery that has to be explained so that they keep watching.

My mental technique of writing both novels and screenplays is to think of the view watching my story on TV while he holds a remote control in his hand pointing it at the TV and thinking, “Okay, this is interesting. I’ll watch one more scene. Okay, one more scene. And then he finally is at the end of the movie.

In Forbidden Power, the hero has to decide to invite the mysterious woman to his hotel room or not. When he goes to the lobby ATM to get cash (thinking she’s a pro) and then buys condoms, I’ve got the male viewers hooked for sure. From there I have to keep them hooked. That’s what I do for every scene until the end. Keep that suspense, interest and pace up so I don’t lose the view because Bruce Willis or Brad Pitt is not in the movie.

What’s next for you? Another film?

I was thinking about doing my novel McKnight’s Memory as a movie. I already made an audio-book with Frank Sinatra Jr. narrated it about a CIA agent with amnesia. But then when I started getting good reviews on Forbidden Power from movie web sites with some of the reviewers saying, ‘I hope there’s a sequel’, so I decided to do that. But mostly because I like to do ‘weird and surprising’ action-drama scenes that keep the audience interested.

I’ll have to see how the fan base for the first movie builds over the next months as it is now available for rental on Amazon. If there are enough fans, then I’ll dive into the sequel.

Nice talking with you, Paul. And good luck with your new movie.

Thanks, Shane. It was fun talking with you.

Check out Forbidden Power on Amazon here!