The weirdest thing I ever got torn apart in the comments over, leading to at least a solid two days of heckling, was an article I wrote saying MANIAC COP, beloved '80s cult classic, was good. There were things where the heckling was more intense, for sure, but that one wildly surprising.
Realizing that Shia LaBeouf's public drunken exploits are almost identical to what Spike was like after Drusilla left him, right down to the accent of the woman he fumbled.
When Christopher Golden's SPIKE & DRU novel came out, there were complaints it contained much more sex and violence than the show, following objectively evil thrill-killing protagonists who fuck at every opportunity & I'm like, duh, that's exactly what was happening every time they weren't on screen
Is the show better? Yes. A benchmark in the history of genre TV? Yes. Important to me personally? Love it. I literally couldn't have lived my life without it. But we still gotta acknowledge the absurdity of whining your way onto TV over an above-average experience other screenwriters would kill for.
My ultimate "two things can be true at once" is that BUFFY is my favorite show of all time and also never should have happened. A nepo baby sold a screenplay, what he wrote IS what's on screen, already a miracle, but since he didn't like the way some actors delivered their lines, he got a do-over.
I swear to God, if FIREFLY rides the "cancel cancel culture" wave with a revival with Whedon at the helm which then gets BUFFY: NEW SUNNYDALE scrapped specifically because of Whedon's lack of involvement, I'm gonna fuckin lose it.
Amityville franchise ranking: Possession, it’s about time, original, dollhouse, new generation, remake, awakening, evil escapes, 3D, curse
Because nobody demanded it, here’s my ranking of the *official* AMITYVILLE franchise.
Three books, Slices of Julie, Julie by the Fire, and A Julie Carol, arranged on a bookshelf.
Happy #worldbookday! I have three slasher anthologies (2 short story collections, 1 novella collection) about a gleefully evil little shit named Julie. A sarcastic, monstrous teenage girl. She is my favorite character I have ever created. I would be in the Julie business if I could be.
To round it out:
Pepe, Sweetums & Uncle Deadly as the crew of the Demeter.
Fozzie as the owner of the Inn.
Gonzo and the chickens as the three Brides.
Bobo as Martin the orderly.
Count Von Count as the portrait of Dracula in the castle that Jonathan comments on.
Ah! I almost forgot: Gonzo and the chickens were my three Brides. Isaacs is perfect, I for some reason got really in my head that I needed a British stage actor.
It feels like my life's work to cast this.
Kermit and Piggy are Jonathan and Mina, obviously.
Animal is Renfield.
Sam is Van Helsing.
Janice is Lucy.
Scooter is Arthur.
Forgetful Jones is Quincey.
Honeydew and Beaker as the Doctors Seward.
Statler & Waldorf as Swales.
Tom Hiddleston as Dracula.
My "least favorite horror film" list is just BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA'S GUEST ten times.
It will always be wild to me that Whedon did the most damage to the show he was least involved with. The Charisma Carpenter firing, of course, was huge. But even back when everyone idolized Whedon, David Fury was not shy about saying the guy singlehandedly got ANGEL canceled.
This movie (AWAKENING, to be clear, not the greatness that is CURSE) did NOT have me in the first half I'm not gonna lie, but oh no something's happening.
CURSE OF CHUCKY changed the game by giving us the DTV sequel that looks theatrical. But AMITYVILLE: THE AWAKENING perfected the theatrical sequel that looks DTV.
Amityville Dollhouse (1997)
AMITYVILLE DOLLHOUSE absolutely cooks when it goes full low-budget DEMON KNIGHT at the end.
Truly insane how many sequels after AMITYVILLE II treated incest as a requirement.
Demon bursting out of Sonny in Amityville II
Dude melting down the drain in Amityville 1992: It's About Time
Scary Face in Amityville: A New Generation
Demon in Amityville Dollhouse
The AMITYVILLE sequels are actually a wild nightmare parade of insanely good practical effects.
I know it says "movie" but I have to break the rules for the single greatest use of the "imaginary boyfriend" trope, the episode of FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES where because we find out the boyfriend is not real, Mariska Hargitay's granny walks in on her jilling off and promptly has a heart attack and dies.
Well, it was EVIL ESCAPES, followed by IT'S ABOUT TIME, and now it's A NEW GENERATION, so it's definitely moving in that direction.
Red alert: there's a marathon of the '90s AMITYVILLE movies on Pluto's "Terror" channel.
Elvira Thriller Video ad
Elvira Mug Root Beer/Slice ad
Vintage Elvira Ad timeline cleanse.
There's something to be said for late night vibing out to the BRIDE OF CHUCKY score.
Buddy, you have a fucking trans kid.
You're very right about that. I also hope those people knew how lucky they were to get that super limited '88 release of PUMPKINHEAD to even make that double feature possible before it went "wide" in '89.
DRACULA'S DAUGHTER is also crucial to that evolution, and interesting in that she's much more driven by the desire to cure herself at the start & gives in to bloodlust more and more as the film goes on. Dracula in HOUSE is only into curing himself, but mostly because he's only there for 10 minutes.
But I will add that Dracula's plot line in House of Dracula, in which he seeks to find a cure for his condition, established a lot of the DNA of the "remorseful vampire" trope in a way for which it does not get nearly enough credit.
Varney was first in literature, there are clear moments of sympathy in Carmilla, but other than a few moments in the early Dracula films, Barnabas was the first on screen. (I don't have a shelf devoted to Dracula books for no reason, but checking replies, yeah, Kim Newman is objectively the guy)
Recreation of a ‘90s video store horror aisle
Did my best to recreate the horror aisle of my local video store growing up, Ya Gotta Love It, in Southwest Harbor, Maine.
