Random Ramblings from the Vault...

• So I went head over heels for Survival of the Dead, liked The Human Centipede, and had fun with the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. Am I losing my disgruntled fanboy edge? Truth be told, not sure I ever had it. Are my expectations too low... or are others' too high?

• George Romero remaking Dario Argento's Deep Red in 3-D, and Dario Argento doing Dracula in 3-D? What the hell? I can just imagine the drunken night these two guys had that led to these two ideas. Yikes.

• Did you know: The beautiful Sela Ward (do we still say MILF? I can't keep track), Emmy-winning star of TV's Once & Again and Sisters, and most recently co-star of The Stepfather, is the lawfully wedded wife of someone named Howard Sherman, whom for years I assumed was the same guy who played Bub from Day of the Dead. Alas, he's just some rich venture capitalist dude...
  

• Anyone else ever notice how Universal's Frankenstein Monster went from having a sunken-in cheek (thanks to Karloff's real-life missing teeth) to looking like he had a weird beauty mark in later incarnations? OK, maybe it's just me.

• Was Angus Scrimm born old?

• Did you also know: During the filming of the famous climactic scene of the original The Fly, in which Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall find the human-headed fly trapped in the spiderweb, Price and Marshall could not keep a straight face at the sight of the tiny animatronic figure used for reference, and kept bursting out laughing, thus requiring multiple takes to get it right.

• I don't know how this one slipped past my radar, but MGM has an amazing Vincent Price box set out that includes the likes of Twice-Told Tales, Tales of Terror, Madhouse, Theater of Blood, the Dr. Phibes movies, and more. Someone buy me this immediately.

• Kudos to Stacie Ponder of Final Girl, who has officially released her lesbian vampire short film, Taste of Flesh, Taste of Fear, to DVD. It's even got a commentary track and a back cover homage to old school Warner Home Video. Fans of the Ponderous One may order it here.

• Excited to get the Vault of Horror/Brutal as Hell project, The Lucky 13, off the ground starting next weekend! And yes, if you're wondering, there's bound to be a lot of overlap in terms of the subgenres we've chosen. No avoiding it without hashing out an unwieldy amount of categories. We wanted to keep the amount to a neat 13, so we'll just have to accept that certain films easily fit into more than one grouping! As my sainted grandmother used to say, this should be the worst of our problems.

• In closing, The Vault of Horror bids a sad, sad farewell to Ronnie James Dio, former lead singer of Black Sabbath, who suffered an untimely death yesterday after hours of swirling internet rumors. To honor his memory, let's rock out to a little clip from a movie known as Heavy Metal, shall we?

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