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Post Watch-Party and next one….

Great time last night, thanks to everyone who attended. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. The movie was Forbidden Dance. What we learned. Laura Harring is really pretty. Sid Haig is absolutely terrific in that movie, playing a rare good guy. He's easily the best thing in it. Richard…
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Watch Party Tonight 9:00 EST

We've had a pretty good time with these so far, and I want to thank everyone who makes time to join us. If you haven't attended one before, have an Amazon Prime, and would like to attend, just send me your Prime-related email address to ken@jabootu.com. See you tonight!
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Monster of the Day #3328
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Monster of the Day #3328

Count Yorga and Blacula, while successfully bringing to (then) modern times a very traditional image of the undead, were kind of the last sputter of the Lugosi-esque Dracula type. After this caped vamps were basically used in comedies like Love at First Bite and Dracula Dead and Loving It. The Count Yorga movies were…
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Monster of the Day #3327
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Monster of the Day #3327

While Dracula was being made safe for kiddies--this is pretty natural, good at Godzilla's trajectory in Japan--others tried to update the concept to make it relevant for the modern, groovy age. Oddly, a few of these attempts worked. In 1970 actor Robert Quarry briefly became a thing by starring in two Count Yorga movies.…
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Monster of the Day #3326
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Monster of the Day #3326

With vampires featured on Sesame Street, they had officially been established as kid-friendly. Saturday morning cartoon/kid shows were replete with Draculas, on shows like Drac Pack, Monster Squad and Groovie Goolies. So it was only a matter of time until some big market product used a mock-Dracula to market directly to the kiddies. And…
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Watch Party on Friday….

Just a reminder, for anyone who is interested, we'll be doing an Amazon Watch Party on Friday at 9:00 PM EST. Anyone who has attended before is good. You'll get an email invitation about 15 minutes before then, which you can use or ignore. If you haven't attended before, just send me the email…
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Monster of the Day #3325
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Monster of the Day #3325

Lugosi's Dracula was so iconic--despite appearing on screen only twice--that until recently every other screen interpretation was set against his. Only Christopher Lee came close to stealing his crown. By the '70s, though, the old Lugosi-style Dracula had become so familiar that he began to be reinterpreted as safe and lovable for kids.
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Monster of the Day #3324
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Monster of the Day #3324

Surely the first really great, utterly iconic film monster was Lugosi's Dracula. So to kick off the year, let's take a week to review alternate takes on the Bela's Count. The first was Armand Tesla, Lugosi's own, most direct take-off on Dracula, in Columbia's Return of the Vampire. Lugosi exploited the classic Dracula look…
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(Ignore: Dumb Anime Stuff) I’m Happy

So I spent a decent portion of the last week rewatching most of the Girls und Panzer anime franchise. This includes the (only) original season of that show that kicked things off like ten years ago, the OVAs (six shorter episodes produced later that cover a weird variety of tones and topics, the best…
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Monster of the Day #3323
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Monster of the Day #3323

  Well, Monsters of the Day. You can fight them! Coooool. In case I oversleep tomorrow (since I won't be at work), and don't get a MotD up, Happy New Year everyone!
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