[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent April 2003]
In San Sebastian there was a woman. She was cute. She wasn’t wearing much clothing. She was four stories tall.
She was advertising a fantasy film fest, one of the more notable ones in the world according to later investigations. There is no point to me mentioning this except as a dubious lead-in to the real story, and because that giant cardboard chick was pretty memorable and deserves a reappearance in the morgueatlarge story. And because in theory this email list is for my travel adventures and, well, that was one. Whereas this… this isn’t.
The connection? One of the sibling festivals of the San Sebastian one is the equally highly-regarded Dead By Dawn, right here in Edinburgh. And I went along to the part of it that mattered.
They’d sold out the weekend passes but they were selling tickets for unclaimed seats ten minutes before sessions started. I figured I had a good shot of getting into the film I wanted because the film I wanted to see was closing the festival – at midnight on Sunday night. Surely someone would rather sleep than see yet another scare movie??
(Sleep, I spit on your grave!)
So at ten to twelve I rock up to the counter at the very styley Filmhouse and give the girl a winsome smile and I am rewarded with a ticket to the UK premiere of Don Coscarelli’s new one: BUBBA HO-TEP. (Three actually, I’d accumulated two Irish girls in the Filmhouse bar while waiting. Huzzah!)
And there were speeches and thank yous and prizes and finally the lights dimmed and the projector came on, showing the only existing print of Bubba Ho-Tep. Friends, let me tell you this – this is one HECK of a movie.
Starring Evil Dead’s Bruce Campbell as the King, Elvis himself, old and tired and stuck in a rest home with a growth on his pecker and no-one believing he is who he says he is. Bruce Campbell! The man with a chin full of shovels! The Western master of physical comedy! Infamous in NZ for co-starring in the Jack of All Trades TV series with Shorty alumni Angie Dotchin! The cult hero of all true movie geeks!
The story? Elvis teams up with (old, black) JFK to take on a soul-sucking mummy and his rubbery flesh-eating scarab beetles, all the while meditating on the arc of life and the process of aging and the way Western society treats its aged and its decrepit.
It’s *emotionally moving*. It’s *brilliantly performed*. It’s *about something serious*. And it has *Elvis fighting monsters with a zimmer frame*. Folks, this may be the perfect movie.
Director Don Coscarelli is, like Bruce, a name that raises smiles on the faces of the initiated, for his was the Phantasm horror trilogy, three outstandingly inventive low-budget frightfests that defy description. If
the Evil Dead trilogy is the Star Wars of the horror world, Phantasm must surely be its Indiana Jones.
[ASIDE FOR GEEK INDULGENCE]
(from ‘Fear Itself’. Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 4)
Xander: Okay, and on that happy note, I’ve got a treat for tomorrow night’s second annual Halloween screening. People, prepare to have your spines tingled, your gooses bumped by the terrifying (Pulls out a video and reads the title) Fantasia. Fantasia?
Oz: Maybe it’s because of all the horrific things we’ve seen, but hippos wearing tutus just don’t unnerve me the way they used to.
Xander: Phantasm. It was supposed to be Phantasm! Stupid video store!
[ASIDE ENDS]
See? Xander knows. Coscarelli! Phantasm! Reggie Bannister!
Bubba Ho-Tep!
BUT! THIS ISN’T EVEN THE POINT OF THE STORY!
The point of the story is this: on the way out I TOUCHED ELBOWS with Robert Englund!
Robert Englund is an actor. He played ‘Willie’ in the American Sci-Fi mini-series ‘V’ that was all over the airwaves in the 80s, the one with the alien reptiles disguised as humans eating rats and being all fascistic and stuff.
And he also played Freddy Krueger in all the Nightmare on Elm Street films.
Freddy Krueger! Elm St! He’s horror ROYALTY, man! He’s personally caused more nightmares than anyone since early Michael Jackson! (very obscure family in-joke there)
I TOUCHED FREDDY. I didn’t make it to his talk but I touched his elbow with my elbow and no-one can ever take that away from me.
When I was thirteen I had a poster on my wall. Freddy was there. Funnily enough, it was a modern monster group shot like those ones you find of the Universal Studios posse, Dracula-Wolfman-BlackLagoonCreature- FrankensteinMonster – it also featured Michael Myers, the William-Shatner-masked killer of the Halloween films, and Leatherface, the grunting terror from primo date flick Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, along with the other member of the modern pre-Scream scare pantheon, Jason from the Friday the 13th series. Which is relevant, because the long rumoured Freddy vs Jason is in the can and up for release soon, helmed by Bride of Chucky mad genius Ronny Yu! Chucky was voiced by Brad Dourif who was Grima Wormtongue in The Two Towers! Grima was part of the entourage of King Theoden of Rohan, alongside Hama played by John Leigh! John Leigh was in Shortland Street as Lionel Skeggins the beloved doofus husband of Kirsty Knight played by Angie Dotchin! ANGIE DOTCHIN WHO WAS IN JACK OF ALL TRADES WITH BRUCE CAMPBELL WHO WAS IN BUBBA HO-TEP!
EVERYTHING CONNECTS!
I just thought it was cool.
————–
Relevant links:
Dead by Dawn:
http://www.deadbydawn.co.uk
San Sebastian Fantasy and Horror Film Fest, which has a (different) pic of the giant woman on the front page http://www.donostiakultura.com/terror/
Morgue in San Sebastian – the November 9, 2002 entry at
http://www.topica.com/lists/morgueatlarge/read/
Featuring special guest star Ella!
Robert Englund’s IMDB:
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Englund,+Robert
Bubba HoTep’s IMDB:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0281686
Freddy vs Jason’s IMDB:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0329101
Angie Dotchin’s IMDB:
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Dotchin,+Angela+Marie
My mate Norman’s IMDB just because he has one:
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Cates,+Norman
Charlie Bleakley’s IMDB because I said g’day to him on the streets of Edinburgh without explaining who I was or how I knew him, undoubtedly screwing him up for the rest of the day:
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Bleakley,+Charlie
Nat Torkington’s classic review of the first Shortland St magazine, published way way back in the early days, and featuring on the cover Angie Dotchin (ta da!) and Hollywood’s b-movie hunk du jour, Martin Henderson (most recently and bigly the doomed hubbie in The Ring)
http://prometheus.frii.com/~gnat/frii/shorters/
———-
All is right with the world.
Anyone who emails me will get a reply telling them in amusing fashion exactly how happy I am. I will attempt to incorporate any one word of your choosing in the first sentence of my reply!
Love and peace to all.
morgue (missing the ol’ BBS… *sigh*)