HUH, THIS LOOKS PRETTY SWEET AND ANOTHER SOURCE OF HORROR MOVIES IS ALWAYS WELCOME... YAY THEY'RE LETTING ME TRY OUT THE BETA VERSION AND IT'S ACTUALLY REALLY WORTH A LOOK...

Shudder

Just a quick word about yet another horror movie streaming service that currently is in the Beta version (not available to the public yet).


You have to go to www.shudder.com and they'll tell you to submit your email to be notified when the service is available. I got to see the Beta version yesterday - the site is pretty slick and yes, there are some movies that are the same as on other sites, but perusing through it I found plenty I'd never heard of.


It even has an 'idiot screen' (my words) that runs 24 hours a day if you can't decide on which movie to check out. There is closed captioning available - if the movie has it. The streaming is smooth, it does stutter a bit if I try to do other things while a movie is playing but not badly.

Then I went there again today (June 20, 2015) and I was 'bumped' off and told again to submit my email in order to get word of when I could join. Bummer. Hmm, wonder if they found out I'm Native American...

Cause TV is pretty much passe' these days for horror lovers. Chiller? Okay - if you want to watch Buffy all day and a worn out movie on Friday nights. SyFy channel? One or two decent shows, and the rest filled up with just... stuff. IFC? Please. FX? Nope. I love Archer but I can see that somewhere else and I don't need to see a blockbuster five times in one week thank you, especially if I didn't like it in the first place (same goes for you Spike and TNT). 

AMC? Well they do have The Walking Dead. It's kind of dragging now though, isn't it? Sons of Anarchy, Breaking Bad, and Justified are all going away. What's left? Hundreds of sports channels, 'buy my crap' channels, 'DIY - if you're an expert' channels. For roughly a Benjamin each month? Pffft. Shudder IS from AMC so at least they're trying. But...


Local channels? Well they were mainly for the local news which we never watch (same thing every day). Sunday night used to be my cartoon night, a holy night - SHE SAID JUST KIDDING GOOD GRIEF WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? But, heaven help the person who messed with those (except when some schmuck named Bin Laden got killed) but I can see those in lots of places if I wanna.

I can understand why these new services are popping up. With Screambox, you get a month free and then $3.99 a month. As long as they keep the movies changing, watching a month of horror for the price of what we used to rent one of them for is a pretty good deal - and its streaming also is pretty smooth.

With Shudder they give you 2 months, and then it's $4.99 a month. Update 6/21/15 - Shudder put me back on the sight and yeah, there's some good movies among the meh stuff, enough to keep me busy for a while. Cool.

Netflix has horror, but it's very limited, and Hulu - pfft. I guess that's cheaper than cable or satellite but Hulu is buggier than shit. Netflix IS the superior streaming source and has closed captioning, but not a lot of younger people want to watch old TV shows, cartoons, chick flicks, romcoms, and, <shudder> zomcoms. Netflix has also developed the nasty habit of dropping movies with very little warning, and keeping sequels but dropping the originals.

So. Sign up for www.shudder.com if you want to see if there's something for you to enjoy. I know I saw movies I couldn't wait to tear apart.





                      

TWELVE THINGS I BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON





An American Werewolf In London (1981)


This classic, directed by John Landis, had and still has in my opinion the absolute best conversion from human to lycanthrope ever. Without CGI or any of that other crap either. Rick Baker rules! Having a particularly bad, sleepless night I re-visited the best werewolf movie I've ever seen. And the first time and the last time John Landis and Rick Baker played nice with each other. But this time I seemed to see things here and there I hadn't noticed before:



1. David Naughton and Griffin Dunne play David and Jack, two students backpacking through England. They keep commenting on how cold they are, but for some reason, you can only see their breath part of the time. They also seem to dry almost instantly, even though it is always damp and sometimes just pouring rain.

2. In the scene in the pub The Slaughtered Lamb, Rik Mayall, who went on to do parts in The Black Adder and Drop Dead Fred, is one of the chess players.



3. In the scenes where Jack is killed and David is injured, everywhere they go, from the pub to the moors, it's lit up like a football field, even though it is night. A full moon may give some light fellas but spotlights? C'mon.

4. David meets Alex Price (Jenny Agutter) in the hospital. If you recognized her you probably have seen Logan's Run, The Avengers, and/or Captain America:The Winter Soldier.



5. There is a scene where David is in Alex's apartment watching TV. He's watching the Muppet Show - specifically Kermit and Miss Piggy. Both muppets appear in the credits as 'Themselves'.

6. Frank Oz (better known as Miss Piggy) got an acting part in the movie as well, playing Mr. Collins.

7. When David's doctor becomes concerned that maybe David's telling the truth, he travels to The Slaughtered Lamb where he chooses a small beer. No matter how many drinks he takes, it's always foaming and always full.

8. An American Werewolf In London managed to keep an 'R' rating despite all the gore and scenes of Jack's rotting corpse trying to talk to David, not to mention several scenes clearly showing David Naughton's genitalia. But not, uh, the full, umm... length. Naughton was not circumcised and umm... yeah I think I'll stop there.


9. The music is conducted by Elmer Bernstein and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. There are also five songs about the moon in this movie (one song is done by three bands so I'm counting them separately): Blue Moon by Bobby Vinton; Blue Moon by Sam Cooke; Moondance by Van Morrison; Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival; Blue Moon by The Marcels (the original version).

10. Not to be ignored, they also give thanks to Jim Henson (Kermit).

11. At the end of the credits, a screen pops up that says: Lycanthrope Films Limited wishes to extend its heartfelt congratulations to Lady Diana Spencer and His Royal Highness The Prince Of Wales on the occasion of their marriage - July 29th, 1981. It's been speculated that they did that because in the movie David is trying to get arrested and shouts that the Prince... umm... would never marry.

12. After that we get the screen about everything is fictitious, and any similarity to actual events or persons living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental.





                      

NO FREAKING WAY!




Wowzers

I'm working away, trying to get new stuff for my blog and I realize... today is the third year anniversary of my blog so I'm... gonna get nostalgic and post something totally inappropriate. Enjoy...