Category Archives: Historical

Carnival of Souls: the penultimate Halloween video

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If only, if only I could have this video tonight.

Instead I shall make do with The Toxic Avenger and Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, which at least has a lovely and gratuitous ass shot of Viggo Mortensen as Tex. The apron scene is a must-see as well.

[ youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY7lOYrnhBI ]

Oh, fine. Be that way.

Made in 1962 on an extremely low budget, Herk Harvey’s classic CARNIVAL OF SOULS has become legendary for its ability to create a tensely creepy atmosphere with virtually no special effects. A young woman (Candace Hilligoss) is involved in a car crash when her car falls off a bridge while drag racing with some friends. After she pulls herself from the river, she moves to a new town to take a job as a church organist. Meanwhile, a distinctly eerie and hollow-faced man seems to be following her wherever she goes, while an abandoned lakeside amusement park beckons her with an almost gravitational pull. The effective organ score enhances the film to great effect, as do the bleak landscapes of Utah’s salt flats. Of course, the colorization ruins everything that I just said.

And there’s also this Roy Orbison music video with scenes from the movie. Seriously, if you haven’t seen it, do.

Brian Atene 2.0: Good Day Mr. Kubrick 2006

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Stolen from BoingBoing, but I’m sure it’ll be all over in twelve hours. Click here for the original, perhaps the most perfect, and most perfectly amusing, bad audition ever captured on film; the fellow in the video in this post claims to be the contemporary, 43-year-old Brian Atene, and it’s just so cheaply amusing that I’m not going to question it even though the fellow looks nothing whatsoever like Brian Atene.

“Me so hoooooorny. Me love you long time!“

The real Brian Atene, if he knows what’s good for him, should just let this ride. The last thing he needs is to go toe to toe with somebody this mean and this much bigger than him.

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart

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 Lynd Ward's Song Without Words...but ya just KNOW they'd be creepy, if it did have 'em!

This is a beautiful and sophisticated vintage animation of Edgar Allan Poe‘s The Tell-Tale Heart. The illustration hearkens back to the early days of the Thirties, and particularly reminds me of my copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which is illustrated by the American Lynd Ward.

the terrorists are coding! the terrorists are coding!

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that's what I call Homeland Security!

Terrorists are now subverting America‘s peacetime tools and transforming them into traitors. Boingboing reports that they are inserting mysterious code into US government geodatabases in a shocking subliminal PR war against all that is right and good about America.

I found a bizarre data on an official USGS database. It points to a place on Minnesota and the text says:

‘Tell Him I Blame Him for the Children We Have Lost…’ Aish-Ke-Vo-Go-Zhe  

This, it turns out, is nothing less than a shocking technological attack on the government of the United States of the Land of the Free Until Remanded and the Home of the Grave of Democracy. It seems the particular geological spot referenced by that line in the database is the spot where Aish-Ke-Vo-Go-Zhe, Native American terrorist, died.

To remember those who perished at Sandy Lake during a failed attempt to remove Ojibwe bands from Wisconsin and Michigan in 1850, GLIFWC sponsors annual ceremonies at the Sandy Lake site near McGregor, Minnesota…

“Tell him I blame him for the children we have lost, for the sickness we have suffered, and for the hunger we have endured. The fault rests on his shoulders.”
—Flat Mouth, [also known as Aish-Ke-Vo-Go-Zhe] Leech Lake Ojibwe speaking of Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey

Be ever vigilant.

welcome to wounded knee!

Brian Atene, Bad Audition Boy and the reason YouTube exists

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Yep: to make sure we can never, ever live down our most embarassing moments. Here’s what Defamer has to say about this four minute and thirty-two second glimpse straight down the gaping, gibbering maw of Hell itself.

Please, Stanley Kubrick has cast weirder 

In 1984, or so the YouTube blurb legend goes, the late, great Stanley Kubrick “placed ads throughout the U.S. for young aspiring actors to send in audition tapes” for his upcoming project, Full Metal Jacket. Whether or not the director ever saw this submission–and we think the less we tell you about it the better–we cannot say.

I can say, though, and I say that if he had seen it, he’d have died right then and there.

Brace yourselves; he went to Juilliard. But then, so did Robin Williams, and I bet he’d make a more plausible Outsider.

There is also an hilarious new video which claims to be the 2006 Brian Atene, also addressing Mister Kubrick (Mister CUE-Brick!) and re-enacting a scene from Full Metal Jacket. It must be seen to be believed: Me so hoooooorny! Me love you longtime!