Attention world: In addition to my writing about movies for fol.lowfoc.us, I have launched with my friend Lewis Manalo a new film criticism site, Split Edit.  As such, (A Superhero Named) Tony will begin to have a lot less movie-related writing on it.

And behold: Split Edit on Twitter.

This week’s Movie of the Week is Cat People.

This week’s Movie of the Week is Rififi.

// Movie Notebook: RASEN, on the forgotten (and forgettable) sequel to Ring

// Breakfast of Champions, about Jim Jarmusch and Coffee and Cigarettes

Over at fo.lowfoc.us, a new weekly feature, Movie of the Week.  This week’s movie: Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil.

See also: Last week’s inaugural, Killer of Sheep.

Jump over to followfocus to check out my farewell to one of the greatest video stores ever, Kim’s Video.

A Nightmare on Elm Street spin-off, Freddy’s Nightmares was an anthology series in the tradition of The Twilight Zone and the Tales from the Crypt comics.  In place of Rod Serling or the Crypt Keeper stood Freddy Krueger, killer of children, offering witty asides and on occasion participating in the story.  The show ran two seasons from 1988-1990, airing in Los Angeles in a late night slot on KHJ channel 9 (now KCAL).  The stories were like TV for the blind, a show-and-tell Scooby-Doo approach that led you by the nose from shock to shock.  The production value was as corny as Freddy’s one-liners.  And the show scared the crap out of me.

Rewatched online now, it’s embarrassing to admit being frightened by such cheap looking TV, particularly when I watched Freddy on a big screen with glee.  But a theatrical experience offers group moral support.  I watched Freddy’s Nightmares alone at night, and it didn’t help that the KHJ announcer reading the show’s content disclaimer had a voice that was very soothing — like Hannibal Lecter.

Unlike the third rate gialli I’ve seen, Freddy’s Nightmares scared me because of its cheap nature.  It was as if Freddy, killer pirate of dreams, pirated the airwaves and performed his own Grand Guignol (or worse, snuff) video in a dank corner of the Springwood High boiler room.  Moreover, the show often bore a narrative stream of consciousness that continued the second half of an episode by following a character indirectly related to the first half.  What I recognize now as a clever anthology trick seemed more like nightmare logic at age 12.  Indeed, this series was just amateurish enough to be made by a psycho killer, and a lack of evidence otherwise combined with an overactive (and possibly sleep deprived) imagination only amped my dread.

Of course, now it’s just lame.  Watching it online allows too many distractions — email, RSS feeds, squinting — for my inner adolescent to resurface.  And that’s probably for the better.  This is fear nostalgia, plain and simple.

// Freddy’s Nightmares at AOL Video

“…the zombie-take-all scenario isn’t just a fear–it’s a fantasy too, exposing our secret desire to guiltlessly blow away row after row of hungry, stupid humanoids, with no repercussions. When is it gonna be most okay to shoot someone in the head? In the zombie apocalypse, that’s when.”
–Program notes for ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES!, Thursdays in October at the Silent Movie Theatre.

October is a big month for the Cinefamily.  Other programs of interest include The Man of 1,000 Faces, Japanese Ghost Stories, George Romero, Val Lewton, Holyfuckingshit: Evil Children and more.  Can’t think of a better way to escape the media mania of election season.

// graphic by Matthew Forsythe for Flak Magazine

“The Tyger” by William Blake, as sung by Allen Ginsberg w/ Steven Taylor & Jim Jones. Recorded by The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, July 1988.

Wherein crossbones mark the spot. c. 2005