Stephen Vincent of Monster King Productions is an incredibly talented illustrator from Flint, MI whose been doing some very fun and creepy artwork and merchandise design. We were very fortunate to have Stephen as a sponsor and vendor at our Lost Movie Night this past month. He had some great zombie nutcrackers on display as well as some hip custom painted plaques with illustrated characters from the Return of the Living Dead. So stop on in at monsterkingproductions.com and checkout his spooktacular portfolio and pick out that special gift for your own horror fananatic. You can see Stephen’s interviewed after the ROTLD trailer in the video below. Thanks again Stephen for your support.

Check out the Lost Movie Night Video created by StrangedTV

Hope you had a wonderful thanksgiving. Watch out for vengeful turkeys.

Happy Thanksgiving from Lost Highway. In honor of a day of massive turkey consumption we thought it would be appropriate to bring you our favorite movie turkeys of all times. This is the cream of the crap, the best of the worse. If you think you’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel then just lift up that barrel and you’ll find this cinematic cheese. Just remember, we warned you first.

When I think back on history to the most horrifying events, things like the Hidenburg come to mind, wars, pestilence, natural disasters, famines. All that pain and despair can’t compare to experiencing a film called “The Room.” Being exposed to it is like catching a communicable disease. One that you’ll feel compelled to spread it to others to ease your pain.The movie practically transports you into another dimension where awful acting is the norm, where actors appear magically from off screen, where football is played at arms length, and bizarre short Frenchmen in greasy hair spout wisdoms like “Everybody betrayed me! I fed up with this world!” or “Liissa you teearin me apppart!”

The story revolves around Johnny played convincingly by Tommy Wisseau, a man in love who is betrayed, then is in love, then betrayed again but is constantly in a state of surprise “Oh hi Mark”, “Oh hi Danny”, “Oh hi doggy”, “Oh hi chair.”

Lisa who resembles a bloated Britney Spears makes the moves on Johnny’s best dimwitted friend Mark and they end up having an akward torrid affair. Most of the film is spent dealing with those two hiding their little secret from Johnny and occasionally getting interrupted by a creepy kid named Danny with a drug problem or Lisa’s nosey mother who drops in to complain about her annoying cancer. Other characters in tuxedo’s show up randomly…say stuff..play football…then leave..oh and there’s softcore porn and discussions about cake. There that sums up the movie.

Either the director/actor Tommy Wisseau is certifiably mad or is a complete genius in making this film. If so, he would make Ed Wood humbled by his movie making ability. I know it sounds like I’m bashing this film but it is highly entertaining in how hilariously bad it is. It’s pure shock and awe awful, like being hit with a sledge hammer to the stomach while driving 90 mph on the freeway. It’s sure gonna leave a mark….on your soul.

“Oh hi Mark!”

Check out this amazing clip from “The Room”, the Citizen Kaine of awful.

Daniel Wiltshire has been a fan of movies for as long as he can remember, but it was the prime-time movie theme weeks on local independent TV stations – while growing up in the ’80’s – that first amped his interest in classic sci-fi, horror, and suspense pictures. “In any given week there’d be a roster of alien invasion movies, monster movies, Hitchcock movies…seemingly anything. When you’re that young, there are no old movies. Everything is new, and I was easily hooked.” Some examples of the beginning of what would grow into an ever broadening spectrum of movie interests, are his memories of seeing two wildly dissimilar pictures; CITIZEN KANE (”I watched it because I thought the beginning was spooky.”) and the 1976 killer earthworm movie, SQUIRM (”The main thing I remember were these worms coming out of a shower head. I haven’t seen it in 25 years, but it’s still a pretty vivid image.”)

Daniel explains, “It often takes a few years for me to re-watch even some of my favorite films, because I’m always on the hunt for titles I haven’t seen before. I’m always looking for my next favorite movie. Aided by my personal “drug of choice”, Turner Classic Movies, I’ve learned that the more movies I see, the more I realize how little I’ve seen.”

Daniel has a background in cartooning, and works in video production as an animator / After Effects artist. Lost Highway welcomes Daniel to our desolate roadway and now we bring Daniel’s review of “The Wild Wild Planet”…

THE WILD WILD PLANET is one of those late-night movies that I stumbled upon a couple of years ago and immediately thought to myself, “What the…?!”  Shot in Italy, and released in 1965, it has made the rounds for decades as a sort of late-night movie staple.  Part swingin’ 60’s time capsule, and part unintentionally goofball science fiction, the WILD WILD PLANET is unlike any movie I’ve ever seen.

In the distant future, manly space-cop Mike Halstead is uncomfortable with all these newfangled technological marvels being developed by Dr. Nurmi, the top hot-shot chemist at uber-corporation Chem Bio Med.  Human organs being cultivated in laboratories for transplantation just isn’t “natural”, says the man flying around in a space ship and holstering a laser pistol.  But really, it’s not just the organ transplant thing that sparks his distrust.  Dr. Nurmi has also been putting some smooth dance moves on his main squeeze, Lieutenant Connie Gomez, and he doesn’t like that one bit.

Meanwhile, Mike and his team at Space Command are trying to solve the disappearance of thousands of prominent citizens.  What he doesn’t know is that the mysterious kidnappers – A claque of attractive, tall-haired women, each paired with a mute, genetically modified mutant – are shrinking down their victims to a sixth their normal size and transporting them via briefcase for experimentation.  Everything does not go flawlessly though, for midway through their shrinky-dinking of a Space Command professor, the abductors are interrupted by his shrieking granddaughter, so they flee, leaving behind their victim, merely half his normal size.  And by “half his normal size”, I mean…a dwarf actor with the doctor’s haircut and mustache.  Genius!

The kidnappings continue.  There are witnesses to some of the abductions, but strangely, no one seems to ever be in much of a hurry to actually…describe the kidnappers.  Sometimes the key to good police work is to just state the obvious:  ”Bald guy.  Sunglasses.  Black hat.  Giant rubber trenchcoat!?”  Really, it’s not that difficult.  Nevertheless, the police manage to stumble upon two of the kidnappers, and a space-car chase ensues where they quickly crash their car in a terribly unconvincing miniature model fireball.

Rummaging through the wreckage, the police retrieve a briefcase containing some of the shrunken kidnapping victims.  Mike and his team now have the clues he needs to solve the conspiracy.  A conspiracy originating from an experimental lab on space station Delphus, which, coincidentally enough, is the same place his girlfriend went for her vacation for some reason or other.

It should come as no surprise that Mike was correct all along to be suspicious of Dr. Nurmi. The whole plot leads back to the mad scientist’s secret base where Mike and his team uncover Nurmi’s plans to create a race of perfect supermen, (Yeah, that always goes well.) as well as a superfluous plan to genetically fuse himself with Connie into one perfect he/she “bi-sapian”(!).  The guy is truly off his nut.  It should be remembered that the number one clue to realizing someone’s a mad scientist is to note if their most common exclamation is “You FOOL!”, as in “You FOOL!  You dare thwart my plans?!” or “You FOOL!  These eggs are much too runny!”  It’s a giant red flag.

Anyway, after an interrupted transplant procedure, a hall of mirrors fake out, a judo fight melee between space-cops and mad-scientist lackeys, it all culminates in a flood of liquified human remains that looks like frothy, un-refrigerated, strawberry Jell-O.  The loopy plot, coupled with the candy-colored Jetson’s-style sets, and cityscapes straight out of a 60’s sci-fi pulp magazine, THE WILD WILD PLANET manages to be a strangely memorable movie.  Not particularly good mind you, but memorable.

3 out of 10

Check out the trailer for The Wild Wild Planet

I noticed our local community center now offers the aerobic workout class “Pole Dancing 101.” I never realized that this was actually an aerobic exercise or that it required classes. Sure Jazzercise makes sense because you have a lot calories to burn when you have to do all those jazz hands moves, but didn’t expect to see a pole dancing class in the brochure next to the intro to scrapbooking and decoupage for beginners. I wonder do you have to bring your own pole? Does it offer you tips in properly securing dollars bills in your g-string when hanging upside down and not getting you hair wet in the beer pitchers? All legitimate questions any pole dancing beginner should be taking into consideration. Also since this is intro 101 does that mean there’s advanced classes? If so then we could we perhaps see this as an Olympic sport someday and I for one welcome this type of sleazercise to the Olympic stage. It could sure bring in more money for those school fundraisers too.

Speaking of extreme nekkid dancing. Linnea Quigley makes her cinematic mark as scream queen extraordinaire with all her nekkid gyrations on tombstones in “The Return of the Living Dead.” Linnea may have actually induced puberty in many a young boy in 1985 just from that scene alone and even her Ronald McDonald haircut can’t distract us from drooling over the best onscreen tombstone striptease ever filmed. But hold on I’m getting off subject here…there also happens to be zombies too!

This undead brain muncher classic starts off when a group of army brats decide to ship the remaining zombies left over from of the Night of the Living Dead incident to a medical supply room in Louisville Kentucky. In typical government engineering fashion the seals on the tank are about as thick as cheese paper……and soon they start to ooze out some funky fumes. Not a bong in sight the two workers there Frank and Freddy take a forced zombie-flu snooze and awake to find all hells breaking loose. The boss man, Burt is called in to try to help wrangle up the freeze burned cadavers and half dissected dogs who have since reanimated and are tearing up his shop.

Burt whose best friends with Ernie the mortician (Sesame Street lawyers start your letters now) enlists him to help burn the remains in his crematorium so as not to tarnish the shining reputation of his medical business. Yes, a company that already stores zombies in it’s basement but who are we to judge. Burt begs Ernie to burn the chopped up remains so that not even the bones are left and as everyone should know the best way to get people to burn your cadaver is to tell them it’s rabid weasels. Lesson learned.

Ernie tosses them in and cooks them on high causing the oven to billow out a bunch of zombie smoke into the air and leaves behind the fresh scent of pine. Soon the rain starts a pourin’ thanks to before mentioned nekkid rocker rain dance and the toxic smoke rains down on the graveyard. Brain cravin’ zombies start popping up like weeds and thousands of the undead that can run like Carl Lewis take over the cemetery. Turns out brains make the dead feel better and calm their nerves, sorta like Häagen-Dazs for pregnant women. The survivors hold up in the mortuary while a dead oily guy in the basement does some contortionist breakdancing moves stalking the punk rocker survivors.

Freddy’s girlfriend Tina stumbles upon oily face zombie in the basement and locks herself in a locker (ha the irony!) but good old oily face has got some mad MacGyver skills and rigs a crane and pulley system to open the door. She barely escapes when the rest of her punk rocker friends bust in to save here. One of them gets a chunk of his brains chewed out but he never had a decent line in the film anyways thinning the punk rocker herd.

Meanwhile Frank and Freddy who breathed the zombie fumes are looking pretty bad, sweaty, and pale. I don’t think their medical insurance even covers chronic zombification. The paramedics are even called in only to confirm that they’re already dead and then get attacked by a zombie horde on the way out. Worse doctor bedside manners ever!

Frank and Freddy justifiably freak out and are locked in the mortuary’s church while the others try to fend off the zombie herds unsuccessfully. Undead Freddy starts chasing his girlfriend around the place trying to convince her that he loves her for her body and  not her brains but she just douses him with acid. That’s what we call around here “Tough Love.” Tina and Ernie holds up in the attic while Freddy stumbles around all melty face downstairs yellin’ “Brains” and Burt tries to and escape in the a Chevy Malibu. Good luck, those cars have no handling whatsoever when running over zombies and I should know.

Burt in a last ditch effort calls the military 1-800 number on the side of the zombie spam can so the army can do what they do best, blow crap up. Really the best lesson learned from this films… keep your food sealed fresh, never rely on army intelligence, and avoid Kentucky in a nuclear fallout.

ROTLD has all the perfect ingredients for shlocky 80’s horror mixed well and served with a side of satire. There’s brain-chompin’,  head-rollin’, blood-spoutin’, and zombie dwarfism. What more can you ask for? Retroman Steve says check it out. It’s one of my all time favorite zombie film. Just be sure to “send moooore paramedics.”

- Zombie spam cans
- 1 naked punk rocker
- Half a zombie, half a dog
- Brain-munchin’
- Leg-grabbin’
- Acid rain dance
- Pick axe to the head
- Chopped up freezer burned cadavers
- The dreaded rabid weasel defense
- Acid to the face
- Embalming fu
- Zombie-midget-fu
- Kentucky fallout

9.8 out of 10

We’ll be showing “The Return of the Living Dead” on Friday the 13th at Wells Hall on MSU Campus. There’ll be a zombie costume contest and tons of great giveaways. Check out all the details at www.lostmovienight.com.
B.Y.O.B. Bring your own Brains.

Check out the trailer for The Return of the Living Dead