The Dark Streets of the Cardboard City

Hey everybody, I made a music video!

2011-01-26T22:38:00.003-07:00

It's been nearly three years since my last production, but I've finally got something new to show. This is a music video for "Everything I Never Had," a song by a friend of mine who I can't name in searchable text (like this), because she has other plans for rolling out the video online and doesn't want me jumping the gun on her. But if you want to know the name, and the address of the myspace

2010 Haunt Reviews: Spider Mansion

2010-10-31T13:48:00.003-06:00

Spider Mansion18301 West Colfax AvenueGolden, COSpider Mansion has been completely revamped from the mid-grade haunt I a few years back into one of Denver's best. The key to their success is the line spacing - they space the groups out almost too much, to the point where you are pretty well guaranteed a lengthy wait in line. Once you get inside, though, it's completely worth it, as the sense of

2010 Haunt Reviews: House of the Headless Horseman

2010-10-30T18:45:00.001-06:00

House of the Headless Horseman66803 Hwy 285Pine, COThis haunt isn't really working at the level of most of the other, more professional haunts I've been to this year, but they do a lot with their limited resources. Sets are simple in design and concept, but feature a tremendous amount of detail, which I suppose sums up the haunt as a whole, it's unambitious, but very well executed, particularly

2010 Haunt Reviews: The 13th Floor (with Blood Shed)

2010-10-30T18:42:00.001-06:00

The 13th Floor (and Blood Shed)4120 Brighton BlvdDenver, COThis haunt seems to be constantly praised by the national media, and I can't quite figure out why. I've attended both of the last two years (I missed the first year), and both times it was solid, but very underwhelming. To be fair, this year, a lot of the problem may have stemmed from some really atrocious spacing issues that I

2010 Haunt Reviews: Decimation

2010-10-30T18:41:00.001-06:00

DecimationI-25 and County Line RoadCentennial, CODecimation is another first-year haunt, and they're off to a strong start. It's a lot more brutal and rough than many of the others, featuring the most extreme gore of any haunt I've seen this year other than (maybe) City of the Dead. They still have some kinks to work out, and I hope that they find a better space (currently, it's in a mall

2010 Haunt Reviews: The I Scream Factory

2010-10-30T18:39:00.001-06:00

The I Scream Factory3280 Brighton BlvdDenver, COThe I Scream Factory, a first-year haunt, has a lot of potential. They have a large, isolated space that could be used very effectively, and they have worked out the secret of creating a very disorienting atmosphere through the use of darkness and music. Unfortunately, they haven't done much to build on these assets, as most of the haunt is

The 50 Best Horror Movies: #1-10

2010-10-28T21:16:00.005-06:00

Well, since time is flying by we'll just finish this thing off with the top ten horror movies, all in one post.10. The Devil’s BackboneGuillermo Del Toro, 2001Pan's Labyrinth got all of the attention, but this earlier film is Del Toro's true masterpiece. It's a haunting story (hah! Thank you, I'll be here all week), focusing heavily on the weight of history and the the pain and regret that

22. Nomads

2010-10-27T19:58:00.002-06:00

NomadsJohn McTiernan, 1986A young doctor (Lesley-Anne Down)receives the memories of a dead anthropologist (Pierce Brosnan), who spent the last week of his life investigating a family of evil, nomadic spirits.Not great, but oddly memorable - and a breath of fresh air after the crap I've been wading through lately. Once you get past the opening scenes, Down is just terrible, and it's hard to

21. Crawlspace

2010-10-27T19:53:00.002-06:00

CrawlspaceDavid Schmoeller, 1986A creepy german doctor (Klaus Kinski) rents out rooms to young women, spies on them from the airducts, and eventually kills them.Crawlspace has a horrendously sleazy premise - it's just too bad the movie doesn't live up to it. It has all of the narrative weaknesses that you'd expect from an exploitation movie with a premise like that - but almost none of the sex

20. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

2010-10-27T19:49:00.003-06:00

Abbott and Costello Meet FrankensteinCharles Barton, 1948Only a pair of railroad baggage handlers can save the world from Dracula's evil plot to re-animate Frankenstein's monster.This was my first and, I dare say, last Abbott and Costello movie. They turned out to be another one of those old comedy teams that just don't work for me. Even bringing Bela Lugosi back to his signature role wasn't

19. Messiah of Evil

2010-10-27T19:44:00.002-06:00

Messiah of EvilWillard Huyck, 1973A young woman comes to a quiet seaside town, looking for her father. She finds zombies. Or an evil cult. Or both. Something like that.This was an odd one. After watching the whole thing, I'm still not sure what was going on - and I'm pretty sure the pre-credits sequence had nothing to do with anything. What it lacked in sense, though, it made up for in

2010 Haunt Reviews: Field of Corpses

2010-10-24T16:55:00.002-06:00

Field of Corpses13251 West 64th AvenueArvada, COEach year, Field of Corpses manages to cram a bit more detail, a few more props, a couple more turns into their haunt. The sets themselves are nearly overwhelming with all the little bits and pieces. Despite this, Field of Corpses remains very much actor-driven, to the point that they even send you through with a guide. This is both a blessing

18. Carrie

2010-10-24T15:24:00.002-06:00

CarrieBrian De Palma, 1976A tormented teen develops telekinetic powers and uses them to take revenge.Well, it's not the masterpiece it is often made out to be, but it's not too bad, either. The lengthy prom sequence, and much of what follows, is actually pretty good - which is pretty surprising, given the awkward and tone-deaf hour that precedes it. Carrie's mother, who serves as the cause of

17. Triangle

2010-10-24T15:17:00.003-06:00

TriangleChristopher Smith, 2010After their yacht is capsized in a storm, a small group of people find themselves trapped on an abandoned steamship - with a killer.This was an interesting one. If you go into it expecting the basic stalk-and-kill implied by my one-line synopsis above, you're either going to be very disappointed or very happy - but either way, it won't be what you expected. I

16. Paranormal Activity

2010-10-24T15:11:00.003-06:00

Paranormal ActivityOren Peli, 2009A young couple is terrorized by a demon, and catches it all on tape.Not the scariest movie of all time, as some would have you believe, nor an utter travesty, as its detractors would claim, Paranormal Activity is a small, unambitious, but mostly successful movie that managed to put me just enough on edge that the slower segments weren't boring. I can't say that

2010 Haunt Reviews: Haunted Field of Screams

2010-10-24T12:05:00.003-06:00

Haunted Field of Screams104th and RiverdaleThornton, COHaunted Field of Screams is a solid but unspectacular haunt, larger than most and populated with a small army of actors, but featuring a bit too much repetition and generally unimpressive makeup and costumes. The basic structure is a walk through a cornfield, with periodic trips through various small buildings. The focus of the haunt is on

2010 Haunt Reviews: City of the Dead

2010-10-22T12:43:00.002-06:00

City of the Dead7007 e. 88th AveHenderson, COCity of the Dead is much the same as it was last year - but that's generally a good thing, because they really nailed it last year. Unfortunately, there have been several small changes for the worse, which prevent me from rating it quite as highly as I did before. First, they eliminated most of the pre-haunt area. I really enjoyed the sort of undead

2010 Haunt Reviews: Primitive Fear

2010-10-22T12:27:00.003-06:00

Primitive Fear5155 East 64th AveCommerce City, COIn addition to renovating the 13th Street Manor, the good people at Hauntplex have also recreated their signature haunt, Primitive Fear. The results are not quite as impressive, but it's still a massive step up from what had become a reliable, but boring old standby. Primitive Fear now features a much more cohesive setting - essentially, a

2010 Haunt Reviews: The 13th Street Manor

2010-10-22T12:17:00.002-06:00

The 13th Street Manor5155 East 64th AveCommerce City, COI first visited the 13th Street Manor four or five years ago, when it was brand new. The early advertising and buzz indicated that it would take place entirely within a single mansion full of secret passages. This turned out to be true - at least, for a little while, right at the beginning of the haunt. To say I was disappointed would be

2010 Haunt Reviews: Bloodlust: The Homecoming and The Suffering

2010-10-22T12:05:00.002-06:00

Elitch Gardens Fright Fest2000 Elitch CircleDenver, CO 80204The SufferingThe Suffering is basically a redress of brutal planet, only a little less so (some of the budget seems to have been shifted to the second haunt). It was, in a word, underwhelming. As with any haunt, there were a couple of good scares, but the timing of the animatronics was off, and the sets themselves pretty much just

The 50 Best Horror Movies: #11-15

2010-10-18T17:58:00.003-06:00

15. Nosferatu: Phantom Der NachtWerner Herzog, 1979Like much of Herzog's work, Nosferatu is so beautiful and deliberately paced that it's almost hypnotic. While there are no specific images that can match the original Nosferatu for sheer terror, even when they attempt to recreate exact shots, Herzog's film manages to instill a more profound sense of horror – the plague of rats, in particular, is

15. Drag Me to Hell

2010-10-17T22:22:00.002-06:00

Drag Me to HellSam Raimi, 2009A loan officer (Alison Lohman) is cursed by a gypsy woman, and has only three days to find a way to avoid being DRAGGED TO HELL.There was a lot of hype surrounding this movie - it was, after all, a return of one of the greats (Raimi) to the genre he got his start in. What we got, though, was a decidedly mixed bag. There were some wonderfully gooey parts, and the

14. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust

2010-10-17T22:15:00.002-06:00

Vampire Hunter D: BloodlustYoshiaki Kawajiri, 2000A half-vampire, half-human is hired to rescue a young woman from the vampire who kidnapped her. But does she want to be rescued?Let me break this into pros and cons.Pros: There's some real inventiveness to some of the monster designs. The aesthetic of merging gothic horror (castles, etc) with post-apocalyptic sci-fi (robot or cyborg horses,

13. Without Warning

2010-10-17T22:08:00.002-06:00

Without WarningGreydon Clark, 1980An alien hunts the most dangerous prey - man. Sadly, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not around to stop him.Ooh, this was a bad one. Something about the mood felt off, like a sentence that was translated to another language and back again. All of the pieces of the horror movie were there, they just didn't fit together right. Even the presence of veterans like Martin

12. Dead of Night

2010-10-17T22:00:00.002-06:00

Dead of NightVarious directors, 1945A group of people gather at an old house, and wind up telling each other stories of encounters with the supernatural.This anthology is best known for the evil ventriloquist dummy segment, and rightly so - it's fantastic. Unfortunately the rest of the segments range from mediocre (the haunted mirror) to downright terrible (the ghostly golfer, the Christmas

11. Island of Lost Souls

2010-10-17T21:54:00.002-06:00

Island of Lost SoulsErle C. Kenton, 1932A shipwrecked man winds up on the island of Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton), who is experimenting with surgically turning animals into people.This is quite the mess. It's too short to convincingly develop any of the relationships, the hero doesn't really have anything to do with how the plot turns out, and Bela Lugosi is criminally underused. The only thing

10. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

2010-10-17T21:48:00.004-06:00

Henry: Portrait of a Serial KillerJohn McNaughton, 1990Henry (Michael Rooker) kills people. Eventually, he gets his friends to kill people too.Decent but nothing special. Rooker is very good, but no one else really is. Also, the score doesn't fit the movie and a particular directorial trick (panning across a corpse and playing the sounds of the murder on the soundtrack instead of showing the

2010 Haunt Reviews: The Asylum

2010-10-15T18:54:00.002-06:00

The Asylum11425 Community Center DriveNorthglenn, COI love the Asylum. Year after year, they never let me down. I think there's a very simple reason for that. In one word: Performance. At the Asylum, they are by necessity unable to put on the sort of grandiose show in terms of props and sets that you'd see at, say, Frightmare or City of the Dead. It is, after all, a tent in the parking lot

2010 Haunt Reviews: Dungeon of Terror

2010-10-15T18:34:00.002-06:00

Dungeon of Terror1741 E 120th AveNorthglenn, COAlthough this is not the first year that Dungeon of Terror has been open, I had never heard of it until the same day that I visited. Unfortunately, I think there's a reason for that - while I can appreciate the effort put into it, it's really just not up to the level of the more well-known haunts. It felt unfinished and awkward, from the line and

The 50 Best Horror Movies: #16-20

2010-10-08T09:15:00.006-06:00

20. AlienRidley Scott, 1979As we progress through this list, you're going to start seeing more and more established classics that should come as no surprise – after all, they're on everyone's lists. This is a prime example of such a movie – a spooky old house movie perfectly transposed into outer space, with sets and creatures designed by a crazy European. There is not a moment that feels wrong

2010 Haunt Reviews: Frightmare

2010-10-06T10:59:00.003-06:00

Frightmare108th and Old WadsworthWestminster, COLast year I gave Frightmare a rating of 8/10. This year, I may as well do the same, because that's basically what it was – more of the same. That's not a bad thing by any means, as they do what they do very well, and they do mix it up just enough to keep things fresh (the final segment in the farmhouse is completely different from last year), but

The 50 Best Horror Movies: #21-25

2010-10-03T15:30:00.002-06:00

25. The RingGore Verbinski, 2002One of the few cases where a remake improves on the source (you’ll see a couple more later in the list), The Ring pales in comparison to Ringu only in the visualization of the infamous climax. That lapse is forgivable, however, since it comes with stronger characters, a better-fleshed out backstory, and the fact that this time, every second character in the movie

2010 Haunt Reviews: Reinke Brothers Haunted Mansion

2010-10-03T15:01:00.002-06:00

The Haunted Mansion5663 S. Prince StreetLittleton, CO 80120Haunting season got off to an early start for me this year with the Reinke Brothers' Haunted Mansion, one of the elder staples of the haunt community in Denver. I typically avoid going to haunts until at least a week into the month because they usually need some time to ramp up and get the kinks worked out - so if you're going early, you

The 50 Best Horror Movies: #26-30

2010-09-29T22:25:00.002-06:00

30. The Fall of the House of UsherRoger Corman, 1960The first and best of the Corman/Poe/Price movies, this movie succeeds largely on the back of a truly creepy premise (courtesy of Poe) and Corman’s half-baked but still very interesting application of Freudian theory to his mis-en-scene and cinematography. It’s also the source of the infamous “burning house” footage, which you’ve seen, possibly

9. Pontypool

2010-09-29T22:03:00.003-06:00

PontypoolBruce McDonald, 2009A morning radio host (Stephen McHattie) and his crew begin to receive reports of an epidemic of violent insanity, which begins to move closer and closer to their studio. . .Wow. The first forty-five minutes of this movie are perfect. Utterly, impeccably flawless. That the second half can't live up to the first is inevitable, but the fall-off is not nearly as severe

8. The Legend of Hell House

2010-09-26T22:34:00.003-06:00

The Legend of Hell HouseJohn Hough, 1973Two psychics and a scientist journey into a legendary haunted house to try to prove the existence of life after death.A fair to middling haunted house movie, The Legend of Hell House has some promising ideas (the intersection of science and superstition) and a solid cast that seem game for anything, but it all just kind of dies on the screen, largely due to

7. Trick r Treat

2010-09-26T20:09:00.002-06:00

Trick 'r TreatMichael Dougherty, 2009On Halloween night, four loosely related tales of monsters, ghosts, and killers interweave and intersect.Prior to its release, Trick r Treat had achieved near-legendary status online, as a result of wildly successful test screenings followed by an inexplicable delay in release - it was originally scheduled for 2007, and finally got dumped direct to DVD in

The 50 Best Horror Movies: #31-35

2010-09-25T17:00:00.003-06:00

35. Session 9Brad Anderson, 2001Location, location, location. It’s less of a concern for filmmakers than for real estate, but if you can find something special, it can elevate even the weakest project to something watchable. Session 9 has, perhaps, the greatest location ever – an actual abandoned mental asylum. Any movie shot there would, by default, be creepy as hell, even (or perhaps

The 50 Best Horror Movies: #36-40

2010-09-23T20:33:00.005-06:00

40. The DescentNeil Marshall, 2006Neil Marshall’s tale of a group of women trapped in an underground cave is so effective and terrifying that, when the monsters show up halfway through, it’s actually kind of a relief. The violent, action-y movie that follows can’t match the creeping, gnawing dread of the first half, but is still pretty terrific in its own right. Make sure to watch the version

6. Poltergeist

2010-09-21T20:00:00.002-06:00

PoltergeistTobe Hooper (or was it Steven Spielberg?), 1982.After their youngest daughter is kidnapped by the television people (aka angry ghosts), the Freeling family must find a way to rescue her without falling victim to the spirits themselves.First off, the title doesn't make sense. They actually take a moment, halfway through the film, to explain how a poltergeist is different from a

5. Vampire Circus

2010-09-18T23:10:00.002-06:00

Vampire CircusRobert Young, 1972Fifteen years after the townspeople dispose of an evil vampiric baron, a group of vampires comes to town disguised as a traveling circus to take revenge and resurrect their master.Vampire Circus really never gets better than its opening sequence. The vampire's attack on a young girl and the subsequent assault on his castle is thrilling stuff, and could easily

The 50 Best Horror Movies: #41-45

2010-09-17T20:52:00.004-06:00

45. The Cabinet of Dr. CaligariRobert Weine, 1921Considered by many to be the first real horror movie, Caligari remains a masterpiece of visual storytelling to this day, utilizing an expressionistic style that has been imitated many times, but never matched. Honestly, there’s nothing I can say about this movie that isn’t better demonstrated just by seeing it for yourself, so enjoy this

4. Ju-on: The Grudge

2010-09-16T19:11:00.003-06:00

Ju-on: The GrudgeTakashi Shimizu, 2002An assortment of people with loosely interrelated lives fall victim to a curse that was left behind by a violent murder.Ju-on: The Grudge was not the first of the modern cycle of Japanese ghost stories, but it seems to be as close to an archetypal example of the genre as anything I've seen. You've got your slow-moving, long-haired female ghost, you've got

3. Swamp Thing

2010-09-16T18:57:00.002-06:00

Swamp ThingWes Craven, 1982A scientist (Ray Wise) turns into a a swamp monster (Dick Durock) and takes revenge on those responsible.I'm a big fan of Swamp Thing - that is, of the comic book character Swamp Thing. I also loved the TV series growing up. One of those (the comic) is fantastic, the other (TV show) kind of terrible, but this movie makes them both look like high art. It starts of

The 50 Best Horror Movies: #46-50

2010-09-13T21:16:00.003-06:00

I changed my mind slightly on the format. These are going to be coming five at a time, not 10. So, without further ado, here are the worst of the best (but really, just think of them as some of the best).