"A REALLY INTELLIGENT INTERVIEWER." -- Lance Henriksen "QUITE SIMPLY, THE BEST HORROR-THEMED BLOG ON THE NET." -- Joe Maddrey,Nightmares in Red White & Blue
First and foremost, let it be known that Captain Cruella and myself had a righteous blast this past Thursday night at 92YTribeca and another glorious edition of Kevin Geeks Out! Silly me for thinking that this ingenious pop culture series from the mind of Kevin Maherwas really dead. I mean, he said he was retiring it, but in the grand pro wrestling tradition, retired is never really retired. And thank goodness! Because KGO is truly one of my life's great joys.
Where else can I find myself amongst my fellow geeks, wallowing in the shamelessly masturbatory enjoyment of genre treasures? The theme of the night was rip-offs--and this time out, the comedy variety show featured the likes of Daily Show writer Elliott Kalan picking apart the abysmal German E.T. knock-off Nukie; the sardonically brilliant M. Sweeney Lawless condensing British Kong rip-off Konga down to its bare essentials; pop culture savant Prof. Geoff Klock analyzing Quentin Tarantino's brilliant rip-off techniques as utilized in Kill Bill; comic book blogger Nick Nadel presenting a montage of painful superhero rip-offs; filmmaker Matt Glasson rehashing his favorite Jaws copycat; and the witty artist-baker Sara Reiss regaling us with her own home-made breakfast cereal knock-offs?
And oh yeah...this time, for the first time ever, I got to join in the fun. That's right, it gave me great pleasure to take part in a show I've been enjoying for so long. As part of the night's festivities, I presented a tongue-in-cheek look at the unusual subgenre of calendar-inspired horror films that followed in the wake of John Carpenter's Halloween. I'm so proud of the finished product, in fact, that I've embedded it right here for your viewing pleasure...
I ran into some technical difficulties getting the bookend video clips to work, and so I'm simply including them here both before and after the PowerPoint itself. You can choose to watch them, or just jump right into the presentation, which is the second embedded video...
Thanks again to Kevin for inviting me to be a part of KGO. It was also a thrill to have a fan of the blog step out of the audience to shake my hand and offer sincere praise. It's always humbling to be reminded that people out there are actually reading this dreck. Those people are the reasons I keep writing. It may have gotten a bit slow around here as of late, but that's about to change.
Click on the above link to learn all about the upcoming Kevin Geeks Out event on Thursday, September 15--in which I'll be one of the presenters. This is very exciting for me, as I've been a big fan of Kevin Maher for quite a while now, and followed his KGO series at 92YTribeca for some time. To have the opportunity to take part will definitely be one of the highlights of this little blogging adventure I kicked off nearly four years ago (can't believe it!).
The event is built around the concept of movies that ripped off previous hit films in a blatant attempt to cash in on their success. For those curious--and too lazy to click the link--I'll be presenting a little retrospective on the multitude of Halloween knock-offs that followed in the wake of John Carpenter's slasher classic. For those who remember, there was a time in the horror genre, after the booming success of Halloween, when everyone was scrambling for a special holiday/ritual event around which to theme a horror film--most memorably Friday the 13th, but there were so many others. Well, I'll be looking back at the best and worst of them in just a little over two weeks, so be there, or be square, Vault dwellers!
I've been an admirer of the work of Kevin Maher for some time now. His well-regarded genre video clip show series, Kevin Geeks Out, was an eye-opener for me, and if you've been reading the Vault for a while, you may have seen my reviews of several of those events. Simply put, Kevin is a kindred spirit, a fellow unabashed geek--and so I'd been eager to have him as a guest on Conversations in the Dark for a while.
Thankfully, it finally happened, and it was worth the wait. Having just come off a first-time viewing of Stephen King's Maximum Orverdrive, Mr. Maher was pretty jazzed to wax rhapsodic on the topic of killer machines. Which is pretty ambitious, since this is probably not one of the most high-profile of horror subgenres. But we went for it, and with an assist from Captain Cruella, put together a little something I think you'll enjoy. So listen in as I'm joined by a brilliant TV comedy writer and movie nerd for a discussion of murderous vending machines and homicidal laundry folders.
Take a listen on the embedded player below, or proceed to the Vaultcast page and download it for listening at your leisure...
For some time now, I've supported the work of a man truly doing great things in the realm of geek culture. That man is Kevin Maher, and his long-running series was known as Kevin Geeks Out, chronicled at length here in the Vault. Now, KGO may be history (for now), but I'm excited by the fact that the brilliant mind of Maher is still thriving, and the spirit of KGO lives on. Captain Cruella and I plan to be a part of it next Friday night, and we hope you will, too.
In the past, the KGO installments each took a specific aspect of geekery (robots, aliens, sharks, etc.) and built an entire show around it. This concept lives on in Tom Blunt's video variety show, Meet the Lady. Specifically, Blunt's next show is all about that tried-and-true tope of genre cinema, the dream sequence. And lucky for us, Tom will be partnering with Kevin to put together this sure-to-be-mesmerizing show. It all goes down Friday night at 92Y Tribeca in New York City, 8pm starting time (tickets only $12, so please go right here and snatch some up before they're all gone!)
Joining Tom and Kevin in this most worthwhile endeavor will be none other than my blogging comrade-in-arms, Ms. Tenebrous Kate of the Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire, who will be talking all about dream sequences in Italian gialli (worth the price of admission, in my opinion.) I'm also proud of the fact that the influence of the Captain and I has caused the creators of the event to include my personal favorite movie dream sequence of all time, the Labyrinth ballroom scene. Now, if David Bowie in a codpiece isn't enough to get you down there, I don't know what is.
In addition to presentations by Tom, Kevin and Kate, the two-hour show will also include a burlesque performance, a classical harpist, free snacks and more. I ask you, where else can you get entertainment like this, for just a smidge more than the price of a movie ticket? It's pop culture at it's finest, and I assure you, I will be there with bells on. Kevin Geeks Out has long been one of the highlights of my life as a professional nerd, and I'm thrilled to see that the tradition continues to live on. In fact, I can almost feel my own dream sequence coming on right about now....
I've made it my pet project in recent months to help spread the word about Kevin Geeks Out! to all fans of horror and genre entertainment in general living in the approximate vicinity of New York City. If you haven't checked it out yet, you're doing yourself a grave disservice--but one which you will have the opportunity to amend this coming Friday. That's because 92Y Tribeca is once again hosting the hilarious Kevin Maher's masterfully funny (and informative!) multimedia extravaganza. Much like Moses, I may not be getting down there with you (thankfully due to family obligations and not being smitten by the hand of God), but that's no reason why you can't enter the geek Promised Land.
This time out, it's the "April All-Stars" edition of Kevin Geeks Out!, which means it'll be a veritable smorgasbord of delightful esoterica. Oscar-nominated screenwriter Will Rokos will take you through a scene from Monster's Ball, from script to screen. Cartoonist R. Sikoryak will act out scenes from his Golden Age comics/English Lit. mash-up, Masterpiece Comics (which I must own pronto). Cinema Journal editor Heather Hendershot will give a presentation entitled "Don Knotts: Reluctant Sex Object", which, as far as I'm concerned, defines the phrase "worth the price of admission." Jay Ruttenberg of TimeOut New York will explain why Billy Madison is the greatest comedy ever made. All this, plus tasty treats, Jesus vs. Magneto, and much, much more.
The show is currently half-sold, and tickets go for a piddling $10, so get yourself over to the Kevin Geeks Out! page at the 92Y Tribeca website and snag yourself a seat before it's too late. I'm currently in a state of angst over having to miss this one, so a bunch of you will just have to go and let me know how it was. Worst case scenario, you'll at least get to meet the terminally cool Tenebrous Kate, who will be on-hand for all the shenanigans.
Y'all know me... Know how I earn a livin'... Well, not actually a living--more like a time-consuming hobby/obsession. But be that as it may, let me just say that I was as pleased as Jabberjaw with a brand new drum set when I learned that 92Y Tribeca's amazingly hysterical film-clip/variety series "Kevin Geeks Out" would be using a shark theme for its next show. Some folks might remember how I extolled the virtues of Kevin Geeks Out About the Future last January, and I was supremely bummed that I could not join in the simian hijinks last month at Kevin Geeks Out About Monkeys. But I'm happy to report that spending an evening in NYC cinematically swimming with the sharks has more than made up for it.
I can honestly say that I never truly comprehended what a vast and varied (well, maybe not terribly varied) subgenre the whole "sharxploitation" thing was (new pop culture term?) But thanks to Emmy-nominated TV writer Kevin Maher and his co-host, writer/director Matt Glasson, I now grasp more about the breadth of shark cinema than I previously thought possible.
The event was timed at precisely 124 minutes--the exact running time of the original Jaws. How's that for dedication? And although that might seem like a long time for a clip show, Kevin and company filled every moment with aquatic predatory madness to such a degree that not one person would have dared question the decision. For instance, we learned all about one of the ultimate "what-ifs" of movie history--a John Hughes-scripted (!!) 1980s parody of Jaws that never came to be. We got to see sharks fighting Batman (shark-repellent bat-spray, anyone?), giant alligators, giant apes, and yes, zombies (the infamous underwater fight scene actually got the loudest cheer from the crowd, much to this blogger's delight.)
New Yorker cartoonist Karen Sneider regaled us with a true romance comic strip of unrequited shark/human love. Matt lovingly detailed the sordid history of the Italian movie industry's relentless attempts to shamelessly rip off Jaws, including screening a super-rare bit of footage (courtesy Tenebrous Kate) from the most blatant of all Jaws copycats, Enzo Castellari's Great White, a movie whose very existence was almost completely stamped out by Universal.
If it was even tangentially shark-related, it was referenced in this exhaustive tribute to maneaters at the movies, from the early days of pre-Jaws cinema, through Spielberg's mega-blockbuster and its many imitators, through the Jaws sequels, and right up through the modern era of CGI sharkitude. Throw in Scatman Crothers, the Olsen twins and Mario Van Peebles, and you can begin to understand the magnificence that was on display. Oh, and did I mention that all audience members received an authentic 1978 Jaws 2 trading card? Because we did.
In keeping with the tradition of themed treats, this time around we all got delicious shark cupcakes, made by artist/blogger Sara Reiss. Unlike with the Dippin' Dots of last time, I was not sent home with a giant styrofoam container of cupcakes; but that was a disappointment I was willing to bear. After all, there were so many other incidental joys throughout the evening. Kevin's Quint costume, for example (although a recreation of the U.S.S. Indianapolis speech would've been appreciated); or witnessing Matt debating with Dread Central's Heather Buckley as to whether John Landis killed Vic Morrow. If these aren't reasons to sojourn hundreds of miles from the soil of my homeland in southwestern Connecticut, I don't know what would be.
The best thing about the Kevin Geeks Out series is that it's a bona fide underground New York fandom phenom growing larger and larger via word-of-mouth. I'm not kidding when I say that it was significantly tougher scoring a ticket this time around than it was two months ago! And I'm sure it's only going to get tougher, so if you're in the NYC area and you'd like to be a part of this completely unique genre geekfest, head to the 92Y Tribeca website and secure tickets to the next event. It's billed as Kevin Geeks Out: April All-Stars!--and while it's not fully clear yet what this entails, I do know that Don Knotts will be prominently featured. And that's really all I need to know.
