#3. I SURVIVED THE "PRISON OF THE PSYCHOTIC DAMNED!"

November 14, 2005

November 13

Yeah, yeah... I know this thing automatically dates the update. But I find myself composing these updates "outside" of the blogsite first because I'm so longwinded. A couple times I've been rambling away and then I got distracted by something and I wound up losing what I was going on about. So, now I start an e-mail to myself to save what I'm writing. But, the new problem is, I can't seem to get my brain or consciousness organized enough to get all my thoughts together for whatever I'm writing.
So, I leave it. And then come back later... either an hour later, a day later, a couple days, a week, oh look! a new administration! etc.
That's why you may see multiple dates during an update.

Also, I'm slowly learning about blogging etiquette courtesy of my wife, my sweet, suffering spouse. So, if you see me doing something really stupid or verboten, drop a quick comment to let me know and I'll stand guilty but try to fix whatever stupid thing I did for the next time, if that makes any sense. I'm just a big dope.

But... THAT'S not why I'm writing today.

The next bunch of updates I'm planning on springing on you, my sparse, non-commenting readers, are my accounts regarding the extra special experience I was quite fortunate to be a part of. I was a PA (production assistant) for a VERY low budget horror movie made in town (Buffalo, NY, if there are any out-of-towners reading this... wow, I can't believe I said that with a straight face!).

From Tuesday, November 1 to Tuesday, November 8, I worked full-time as a PA at the Buffalo Central Terminal, the primary location for the horror film, "Prison of the Psychotic Damned" (that's the working title, as far as I know).
The problem was, I was so busy running around setting up scenes that were to be shot or actually helping out on scenes as they were being shot and the days were so long, that I barely had enough energy to get back and forth from to the location, let alone write some notes on what I was doing. So I have to recreate, to the best of my ability, what I did each day. So please accept these recollections of the recent past as a reconstruction with some probable screw-ups in accuracy.

Nov. 14

Ultimately, the entire gig was a dream come true. I didn't really articulate that to myself until a couple days after it was all over. I was so busy I didn't really have a chance to process all my experiences, but now I'm trying to plow through it. And thinking back on some of last week's moments are a real pleasure for me. The unique situation of being able to work on a creative project all day, each day, for over a week was a real rarity for me and I'm grateful that I was able to be a part of such an experience. The fact that it was a horror film complete with several scenes of gruesome bloodletting (in various degrees) was an extra bonus.
I was very fortunate.

So the next dozen or so updates (more or less) will concentrate on that. Hope you find it interesting!
Later, cinephiles!

PS. Oh, MAN! That whole Movie Marathon idea really blew up in my face, huh? Sheesh! I didn't even do ONE day's worth of movies let alone 31 days. God, I suck!
Well, I still like the selection of movies I assembled, so I think I might plod through those films still, and comment on them as a sporadic aside. Of course, it might be a little jarring to read reviews of "Dead/Alive" or "Entrails of a Virgin" during the Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays, but what are you gonna do, hah?

You know, an appropriate name for my blog (well, a MORE appropriate name, perhaps), either for this one or the one I have at MySpace.com, could also have been "Better Late than Never." Which is sad, because philosophically, that's almost a GOAL I set for myself. Which probably explains alot.
Cripes.

But the goal of this blog is two-fold right now: to force me to watch movies (particularly DVDs I own and have yet to watch) and to motivate me to start making movies, somehow, some way.
So, we'll see how well I do, huh?

Ciao.

Mood: moody
Listening to: Van Morrison MOONDANCE

COMMENTS:

FROM: sylvanwitch

Nov. 15, 2005

*smooches*

I love you, you big goofball, ya!

[Card, baby I’m the whole deck!]

MY REPLY:

Nov. 17, 2005

mwah mwah mwah!

Hey, actual evidence of a reader! Thank you!

As an extra special thank you, I’ll just have to tuck you in tonight…

FROM: (Anonymous)

Jan. 23, 2007

            For the record

            I screened Cannibal Holocaust at Thanksgiving, it made us think about oppressing native peoples AND eating; I thought it seemed appropriate.

Lilla

MY REPLY:

Jan 23, 2007

            Ha ha ha ha ha

            You’re absolutely correct!

            And from that point of view, ENTRAILS OF A VIRGIN doesn’t so grotesque… um, kind of. I mean, it sounds more like an exotic menu item, now.

            So, if you watched this film with more than one person… afterwards, did anybody volunteer to bring the Thanksgiving film for NEXT year?

Welcome back to April 20, 2017

Well, I found it exciting to read this post about PRISON OF THE PSYCHOTIC DAMNED. That’s the GOOD news.
The BAD news (and I anticipated this) is that I don’t follow through on what I said I was going to do.
Specifically, "So the next dozen or so updates (more or less) will concentrate on that,” meaning I was going to tell you about working on that film. I looked ahead and I do not. Not only do I NOT write about this experience (which seems the PERFECT subject matter for a damn film blog, son-of-a-bitch!), I think my very next post is even MORE ultra-lame in that I try to “attract” readers by posting, like, weird movie questions. Like, I go all, “Hey, let’s have a contest!” I start pandering and playing games! And this goes on for several posts, I’m sorry to say.

Ugh. Very sad and extremely disappointing.
Having said that, maybe I can try and rectify things by writing about the experiences now (to the best of my feeble ability), using this post as a springboard. But, I’ll post it in my current blog, Behold! The Wanna-Be Filmmaker/Full-time Name Dropper! I’ll let you know when that happens...

#2. The CATTLEWORKS HORROR MOVIE MARATHON for OCTOBER!

April 18, 2017

Looking over this post quickly, I’m genuinely amused at times by my (indulgent) writing and looking over the movie titles I picked, I’m laughing at how I ridiculously I was fooling myself into thinking I’d watch a significant portion of these films in that narrow span of time, let alone any of them. But, the assortment of titles is kind of cool.
One time-machine moment is realizing/recalling that I shared my wife’s computer in her workroom at the time-- we only had one computer back then.
Finally, there’s the LJ “luxury" of picking your “mood” and labeling what music your listening to.

October 15, 2005

Howdy!
Well, here I am, writing another entry in my livejournal (well, duh! you may say to yourself, dear reader...). The significance being, in April I opened this account. September 2, I made my first entry (cripes!). That's, uh (discreetly the livejournalist engages in some mental abacus-ry... ooh! Those slippery moving beads are kinda stimulating in the grey matter..!)(Hey, it's all intellectual stimulation, perverts..!), ah, yes, uh huh... 4 to 5 months-ish. And now, NOW, here it is, a mere 43 days later, only a month and a half even, and I'm whacking away at this fershlugginer livejournal yet AGAIN! Oh, excuse me for mussin' up your hair with my blazing activity! (Yes!)
Anyways...

So, yeah, here I am in the MOVIE themed blog.
Very interesting, the human creature. Specifically, THIS human creature (me). So, I have this livejournal I'm trying to do now. A few days ago I had this idea...

It's Halloween season. I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I did a horror movie marathon thing for the month? Like watch all these movies and give little reviews of them, and all the movies would be films I own, either on DVD or VHS. The main impetus for this ambitious concept (ambitious for me) is not to celebrate Halloween or to share these titles (some of them off-beat) with you, gentle reader, but to kick me in the ass to watch all these movies.
I have this ridiculous but well-earned reputation for buying but rarely actually watching DVDs. The running joke is I can be talking about a movie with someone and I eventually remark, "Yeah, I own that DVD." And then I amend that remark by confessing, "Um, I haven't seen it, yet."
So, I came up with this calendar of horror/scary/macabre films for the month of October.
Being the indecisive mofo that I am, of course, I came up with MORE than 31 titles. I justify this by saying that Saturdays are "Drive-in Nights" so it allows for multiple features...
Yes, I tried to organize the titles by labeling each day of the week (almost) with an arbitrary theme. At the end, I thought I came up with a pretty cool list of flicks.
The drawback is, I actually came up with this idea 12 days into the month! Sucking suck!

My wife, Amy, saw what I was doing and started laughing, which immediately annoyed me because I took it personally and un-supportively. Then she got annoyed that I got annoyed, understandably because she was right. But that's BESIDE the freaking point!

Anyways, who am I kidding?

Well, ME, of course! ME!

So, we'll proceed in stages.
First, I'll reveal my ridiculous calendar of movies.
Second, slowly I'll try to follow through on my strategy of viewing and reviewing these freaking films. And by the end of the month, we'll see how lame I was...

But, one of the main reasons I'm doing this livejournal, I've come to realize, is to entice myself to watch all these movies that I already own. Stupid, sure. But, if it works, cool!

And now, behold, the CATTLEWORKS HORROR MOVIE MARATHON for OCTOBER!! Moo hoo ha ha ha!!!
(Cue disturbing and frightening accordion music NOW!):

DRIVE-IN SATURDAYS:
Oct 1 - Director Sam Raimi's EVIL DEAD Trilogy:
THE EVIL DEAD, EVIL DEAD II: DEAD BY DAWN, and ARMY OF DARKNESS

Oct 8 - Santo the Silver Masked Wrestler Film Festival:
SANTO VS. FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER
SANTO & BLUE DEMON VS. DRACULA AND THE WOLFMAN
SANTO in THE VENGEANCE OF THE MUMMY

Oct 15 - The Arbitrary Foreign Film Festival:
Indonesia - LADY TERMINATOR
Argentina - BLOOD OF THE VIRGINS
Dutch - THE JOHNSONS

Oct 22 - 70s Triple Feature:
Greydon Clark's SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS (1977)
Daniel Haller's THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970)
Wes Craven's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972)

Oct 29 - BLOOD ISLAND Film Festival:
BRIDES OF BLOOD
MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND
BEAST OF BLOOD

BLACK & WHITE SUNDAYS:
Oct 2 - Tod Browning's FREAKS
Oct 9 - Tod Browning's DRACULA and George Melford's DRACULA (in Spanish)
Oct 16 - Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING
Oct 23 - Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY
Oct 30 - Charles Laughton's NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

HORROR, ITALIAN STYLE MONDAYS:
Oct 3 - Mario Bava's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE
Oct 10 - Lucio Fulci's THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY
Oct 17 - Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA
Oct 24 - Mario Bava's TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE
Oct 31 - Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE

THEY WON'T STAY DEAD TUESDAYS!:
Oct 4 - Dan O'Bannon's RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD
Oct 11 - Peter Jackson's DEAD/ALIVE
Oct 18 - Stuart Gordon's RE-ANIMATOR
Oct 25 - Jean Rollin's LIVING DEAD GIRL

WEIRD-ASS WEDNESDAYS:
Oct 5 - Stephen Chiodo's KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE
Oct 12 - John Waters' MULTIPLE MANIACS
Oct 19 - Toshiharu Ikeda's EVIL DEAD TRAP
Oct 26 - Lee Demarbre's JESUS CHRIST, VAMPIRE HUNTER

CRAWLING LEFTOVER THURSDAYS*:
*okay, yeah, you're right, overly critical reader. This is a lame category for Thursdays. I actually thought Thirsty Thursdays would've been great, but then I would've gone with vampire type films, and even though I could come up with some vampire movies from my collection, I simply wanted to see these movies more. Unfortunately, these movies really didn't have anything in common. Hence... this really lame though fairly accurate category for Thursdays.
Oct 6 - John Carpenter's THE THING
Oct 13 - Luigi Bastella's NUDE FOR SATAN
Oct 20 - Pedro Almodovar's MATADOR
Oct 27 - Roger Corman's THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

EROTIC, FLESHY FRIDAYS:
Oct 7 - Jess Franco Double Cheese Double Feature:
FEMALE VAMPIRE and LUST FOR FRANKENSTEIN
Oct 14 - Tobe Hooper's LIFEFORCE
Oct 21 - Vicente Aranda's THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE
Oct 28 - Kazuo "Gaira" Komizu's ENTRAILS OF A VIRGIN

Whew!
That's a lot of freaking movies! But, it's an interesting list.
We'll see how well I fare in the next two weeks (!).
Meanwhile, my sweetie-pie anxiously waits to use the computer.
Later!

Mood: determined
Listening to: Rob Zombie’s HELLBILLY DELUXE

Welcome back to April 2017:
Boy, not only am I delusional that I’m going to watch 31 movies in 31 days (and mind you, I start off by saying it’s already 12 days into the month(!)), I throw in double- and triple-features as well, so I’m actually INCREASING the number of movies I planned to watch: 43! Cripes! What a lunatic!
I don’t know if I ever watched any of these movies during that October.
But, as a cinemaphile, and especially as a cinemaphile who OWNS these movies on DVD already, I should actually watch these at some point.
Of the films listed, these are the ones I know I have seen at least once sometime in my life (those marked with an asterisk I saw in 2016/2017):

1. THE EVIL DEAD
2. EVIL DEAD II: DEAD BY DAWN
3. ARMY OF DARKNESS
4. Tod Browning’s DRACULA*
5. George Melford’s DRACULA*
6. THE HAUNTING
7. NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
8. THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY
9. SUSPIRIA*
10. ZOMBIE
11. RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD
12. DEAD/ALIVE*
13. RE-ANIMATOR
14. EVIL DEAD TRAP
15. THE THING
16. NUDE FOR SATAN
17. LIFEFORCE
18. THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE
19. ENTRAILS OF A VIRGIN

Hmmm.. I got my work cut out for me...

#1. UNTITLED (My first post on Live Journal)

September 2, 2005

Weird. And typical.
Okay.
I'm arbitrarily beginning here. I opened this journal, according to this site, in April. And this is my first entry!
I have nothing in particular to say, except that all sorts of things are filling my head lately. I'm constantly distracted, and partly because I think I go through life wanting to be somewhere else..! I don't if that's an accurate remark or a wise-ass remark. But it seems that my mind is always wandering. If I'm at work, my brain drifts and I'm constantly trying to reel it in on the subject at hand (in this case, my work). But my usual daydreaming is about wanting to create SOMETHING. Either a self-published comic book or making a movie. Those are the usual mental digressions I have. Or, if I'm thinking of something else, it probably started with those first two subjects and I just digressed.
By a curious twist of fate, well, maybe that's too melodramatic way of putting it... eh! So sue me! By a curious twist of fate... I have another web account as well, on MySpace.com. That came about because the girl Jim Cole's been seeing has a MySpace account, and I was trying to view pictures of her, but in order to check out the photos, I had to sign up...
Great!
What the hell am I going to do with TWO accounts when it takes me almost half a year to write for the first time in ONE account?

Welcome (yet again)!

Easter Sunday, April 16, 2017 

HELLO!

Well, it’s obvious I’m a serial blog-creator as opposed to a serial blogger.
But this blog is specifically an archive of my posts from when I was doing my movie blog on Live Journal.
Historically, I’ve never really created much content with any regularity. Anyone who has dropped in with any regularity to my three other blogs can easily see that. However, of the three blogs I have, the one that I update the most is my film blog.
And, I used to have such a film blog on Live Journal.

But, back in 2013 when I was trying to add another post to LJ, it seemed to take forever and I impulsively decided to create a new film blog on Blogger. Also, there was crap going on with Live Journal being Russian owned and moving their servers from the U.S. to Russia. I kind of took it as a general cosmic sign to move on, so I did. Or, at least, I started another blog elsewhere (ie. Blogger, natch!).
Except, I always thought I could go and just visit my LJ blog to see old posts, etc.
And that may be the case, but recently there’s been more crap going on with Russia and LJ, and of a political nature. Advox has an article talking about some of these recent developments.
True, some of these developments probably would have no impact on my LJ blog at all, because I think it depends on the size of your blog’s readership. For instance, somewhere else I read an article talking about how the LJ User’s Agreement now classifies any LJ blog with a readership of 3,000 to be a "media site," so the content is under more scrutiny and can be dealt with legally if they (LJ? The Russian government?) feels you’re causing trouble. There is also the issue of a deliberate anti-LGBT bias now with regards to considering subject matter in blogs.
Again, I think my having a regular readership of less than double-digits (seriously) puts me beneath the censorship radar in so many ways. However, as an American, I kind of take for granted that you can say whatever you want and don’t have to worry about it. And I’m not talking about being intentionally inciteful, but simply discussing one’s opinion, etc.

Therefore, I figure I should simply bail out altogether from my Live Journal blog.
But, one of the reasons I started the blog in the first place was to document my supposed journey towards being a filmmaker. Plus, just documenting aspects of my life in general, so it was a variation of a diary reflecting my interests specifically through the prism of movies and filmmaking.
So, I want to be able to read these ridiculous, infrequent, typically pointless posts for my own purposes, just to see what I was thinking in the past and also what I may have been doing.

But, having said that, aside from my very personal stake in saving these posts, if the occasional reader happens to stumble onto this blog/archive and they find anything of interest, well, that’s awesome. And if you stopped by and discover you found nothing of value, well, thanks for stopping by in the first place!
I really appreciate it.

PS. BTW, in my Live Journal blog, as my profile pic a photo taken from behind-the-scenes of THE FINAL NIGHT AND DAY, a zombie film produced by DefTone Pictures Studios. I played a small role, Clay, one of a number of hardened convicts being cross-country transported by bus to another prison until they find themselves broken down and unable to make contact with authorities.They travel to a nearby town and find it over-run by zombies. I don’t live long in this film. Anyway, there’s a picture of me with a mullet, looking apropriately hardened and displaying a bite mark on my arm.
I was hopiong to make this picture my background photo for this blog, but, I can’t seem to locate it in my computer files.
Instead, I posted a group photo of the rest of the cons, plus the guards in charge:

(From left to right)
Guard Pete Powers (played by Timothy Dugan)
Guard Marshal Jones (Richard Satterwhite)
Clay (Terry Kimmel- me, duh!)
Henry (Bob Bozek)
Mo (Kyle Andrews)
Little John (John M. Przybysz-- RIP, man)
Axe (Mark Mendola)
Nick (Nicholas John Morgan Anderson)
Murdoch (Christopher Brechtel)
Nazi Boy George (Christopher Lee Wroblewski)
Guard Richard Jennings (Daniel George)

The photo was taken in front of co-writer, co-director, co-producer, co-cinematographer Adam Steigert’s house in Hamburg, NY before we headed off to do our first scenes with the “prison bus”.

The significance of this film is that it was the first film I invested any money into. Not much, just a $1000. And by “I”, I actually mean my dad’s money. But since it was my idea... WE invested the money. And that’s how “Impulsive Indo Investments” began, which was the name I came up with for our “company.”
Since then (2011), I coerced my dad, John Kimmel, into investing his money into some other films as well.
My dad passed away March 13, 2016 at the age of 90, but his "independent film producer" spirit lives on through me...