I’m writing this from Austin, Texas, where I’ve spent the past few days attending the PBS Annual Meeting. But I’m not writing about that this evening. If you want the scoop about upcoming public TV series, you can check out my updates on TV Worth Blogging.

No, tonight I’m online to tell you about the place that’s going to make me sorry to leave Austin tomorrow afternoon: the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz. It’s one of those “brew n’ view” theaters with liquor and a full food service brought right to your seat, but that’s not what makes it the most awesome movie house I’ve ever visited. The Alamo Ritz is a year-round gonzo film festival: not content with cult and trash offerings, it features value-added shows such as a “quote-a-long” Princess Bride and a screening of Armageddon featuring live explosions. If I lived in Austin, I would be at the Ritz all of the freakin’ time.

Tonight I had the chance to visit the KLRU-TV studios to see where they shoot Austin City Limits, but then I found out that the Ritz was showing the neo-classic of bad cinema, Birdemic. It was no contest at all.

I only knew Birdemic: Shock and Terror (to give it its full title) by reputation and its gloriously awful trailer. Imagine The Birds remade by someone who had no idea what Hitchcock was trying to accomplish, with a budget of 100 bucks and the best computer graphics that 1979 could offer.

See for yourself.

One could watch Birdemic in the comfort of one’s own home, but the best way to experience it is in the company of a theater full of willing victims. Preferably, as I did, with a molten chocolate cake ala mode on one’s lap.

It did not disappoint.

Birdemic has most of the hallmarks of a truly classic bad movie. You get banal dialogue that sounded as if someone transcribed everyday conversations. (“The eagles killed Becky” is one of the better howlers.) You get a cast of amateur actors presumably filled out by various friends and relatives. You get bogglingly bad special effects, in this case crudely superimposed CGI eagles which hover in midair. Oh, and you get lots and lots of driving scenes. A fair amount of the movie appears to be happening in real time.

However, what makes it especially precious is the basic incompetence of the direction and cinematography. There aren’t any day-for-night shots, but there are mismatched camera angles, missing dialogue and multiple jump cuts within a single scene. Every shot lingers for several seconds too long. There’s no effort made to loop dialogue muffled by nearby ocean waves, or to clear passing vacationers from the background of the frame.

This is one laid-back birdocalypse. The characters stop for a frickin’ picnic in the midst of birdmageddon.

While the script doesn’t quite reach the insane logic of Ed Wood, it does feature Wood’s endearing earnestness. This is a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve, with a plaintive message about humanity’s rape of Mother Earth. Both a gun-toting scientist and a treehouse-living naturalist make didactic speeches to the camera explaining how global warming is to blame for the bird flu epidemic that is causing eagles (and only eagles, it seems) to go berserk. (None of them, however, offer any insight as to what causes the birds to explode on impact.)

So, Birdemic was worth the $8.50 ticket price. But you know what really made the experience at the Alamo Ritz special? The trailer which declared the theater to be a “no talking zone,” and made it clear that they meant it.

Dave Movies Birdemic, reviews, so bad it's good

A trailer for Luc Besson’s latest film, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. From what I’ve been able to determine, it’s an adaptation of a series of graphic novels about an early 20th century adventuress. Mummies? A pterodactyl? I’m in!

Dave Movies Adele Blanc-Sec, freakin' awesome, trailers

Despite my lifelong love of stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, I must confess that I’ve never had that much affection for his final film, Clash of the Titans. The story, based very loosely* on the Greek myth of Perseus, was a bit of a muddle. More damningly, the special effects–with the exception of the suspenseful confrontation with the gorgon Medusa–didn’t impress me that much either. And then there was that damned robot owl.**

Harryhausen’s retirement was well-timed. He not only went out with a box-office hit, he never had to confront the reality that his groundbreaking techniques would have appeared increasingly outdated in the Age of Industrial Light & Magic.

In turn, ILM gave way to the Age of Silicon, in which anything that can be imagined can be brought to three-dimensional life provided that one has the computing power. These days, even a Roger Corman sized-budget can produce a passable Dinoshark. And $125 million–about seven times the cost of Harryhausen’s last hurrah–can buy you the convincing mythical menagerie seen in this weekend’s remake of Clash of the Titans.

What I found most surprising about the new Titans is the extent to which it hews to the original.***  There’s an added subplot about an attempt by Hades to oust Zeus from Mt. Olympus, but otherwise it hits many of the same story beats. The Kraken returns, as does Calibos the beastman. There’s another brood of giant scorpions, even though their appearance in the middle of a Greek myth makes no more sense this time than it did back in ’81. The damned robot owl, however, only rates a cameo.

Early trailers for the film suggested that it would resemble 300 with a pounding rock soundtrack, but this proved not to be the case. While the action sequences display modern sensibilities, alternating between quick cuts and slow-motion, at its core Clash is rather old-fashioned. When you get right down to it, it’s a movie in which paycheck-cashing famous actors dress in shimmering togas and play with tiny statues of their mortal pawns, while buff heroes battle harpies and ride flying horses. It’s the stuff of countless Saturday matinees.

The weak spot in this new Clash is Sam Worthington, who, it must be said, is no Harry Hamlin. Worthington seems to be the go-to guy if you want someone to Make! Short angry pronouncements! And with his inexplicable buzz cut, he seems to have walked in from an entirely different movie. Harryhausen flicks weren’t exactly known for their strong central characters, but at least Sinbad and Jason seemed to be having more fun than Worthington’s Perseus, who spends most of his screen time pissed off.

There’s another kinda, sorta mythological movie out right now: How to Train Your Dragon, the latest offering from Dreamworks Animation. Despite a terrible title (an unfortunate remnant of the children’s book series on which it’s based) and one of the worst marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen, it’s an utterly charming story about a studious, imaginative boy who forms an unlikely friendship with the most mysterious of the dragons that assault his Viking village on a nightly basis.

Unlike most Dreamworks cartoons, Dragon avoids pop culture references and emphasizes character over comedy. That’s not to say that there isn’t humor: the dialogue is at times intentionally anachronistic and, for some reason, the Vikings have Scottish accents. Yet the overall effect is far less wacky than the commercials suggest.

At its center, it’s a boy-and-his-dog**** story in parallel with a sweet tale about a child trying to win the affection of his father while charting his own path among his more bloodthirsty kin.

I think that the highest praise that I can give How to Train Your Dragon is that it’s a Dreamworks film that displays the heart I usually associate with Pixar. And while it (thankfully) never goes ventures into Old Yeller territory, it does make one decision in its final scenes that was darker than I would’ve expected from the company that gave the world Shrek.

*Fidelity to mythology wasn’t one of Harryhausen’s priorities. For example, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad intermingled Arabian, Greek and Hindu elements. And in his version of Clash of the Titans, Cerberus the three-headed dog got shortchanged a head.

**Bubo was a magical, clockwork bird intended to pander to the Star Wars generation. In the ’80s, not even Greek mythology could avoid the cute robot sidekick.

***And, just as in the original, the Titans themselves never put in an appearance.

****The animators get a lot of personality out of “Toothless” the dragon. Maybe it’s just because I’m a cat person, but Toothless’ facial reactions struck me as more feline than canine.

Dave Movies Clash of the Titans, How to Train Your Dragon, Ray Harryhausen, reviews

Professional oxygen-consumer Kevin Smith has turned his attention from his own enormous girth to his terrible movies. Inspired by savage reviews of Cop Out, he went on an Everclear-fueled Twitter rant against film critics in which he declared, “You wanna enjoy movies again? Stop reading about them & just go to the movies. It’s improved film/movie appreciation immensely for me.” He then threatened that critics would no longer be able to see his work unless they paid like everyone else.*

Then there’s this:

“Like, why am I giving an arbitrary 500 people power over what I do at all, let alone for free? Next flick, I’d rather pick 500 randoms from Twitter feed & let THEM see it for free in advance, then post THEIR opinions, good AND bad. Same difference. Why’s their opinion more valid?”

Since then, others have adroitly taken Smith to task for both his turn-off-your-brain argument and his suggestion that any random mouth-breather with a dial-up connection is equivalent to someone who has spent decades examining the history of cinema. They recalled that Smith himself was once championed by critics as he emerged on the indie-film scene.

Now, I’ve certainly had my own issues with critics, notably Roger Ebert. But my recent frustration with Roger’s output isn’t an indictment of film criticism. If anything, I’m acknowledging the importance of champions such as Ebert to both moviegoers and the industry itself.

In the Internet Age, it’s never been more true that “everyone’s a critic.” It takes nothing more than a Blogger account to declare one’s self an authority. Heck, if you dig deeply enough into Rotten Tomatoes, you’ll even find me listed as a critic thanks to a few pieces I wrote on the old Usenet group rec.arts.movies.reviews.

Goodness knows that I’ve enjoyed my share of lightweight flicks. Nothing revs my motor quite like cleverly-produced schlock. I will gladly defend the likes of Starship Troopers. Yet I won’t pretend that my opinion carries the same weight as Kenneth Turan, nor should it.

*Threat, or promise?

Dave Movies internet b.s., Kevin Smith

Make. It. Stop.

Dave Movies Alice in Wonderland, Johnny Depp, pissing on childhood, Tim Burton

Here’s the “red band” trailer for the upcoming Saturday Night Live-inspired movie, MacGruber.

Definitely not safe for work.

Dave Movies MacGruber, Saturday Night Live, trailers

The first trailer for Avatar left me convinced that James Cameron’s $300 million comeback film would be a titanic flop. It stunk of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the 2001 Japanese flick which burned bags of money to create a photorealistic, computer generated sci-fi world that absolutely no one cared about.

The next trailer was more promising, yet what it promised was Dances with Wolves. It was the traditional white man’s guilt fantasy: white man meets noble savages (who, inevitably, use every part of the buffalo), goes native, and ultimately leads a revolt against his former people.

Bonus: it also looked to be a heavy-handed eco fable featuring a literal “mother earth.” James Cameron was back, and he would speak for the trees.

I was unimpressed. Pretty to look at, I thought, but this was what he’d spent the last fifteen years developing? I was certain that only the Cameron faithful would show up on opening weekend. The Avatar toys infiltrating big box stores nationwide would be buried alongside those for Dragonball: Evolution and Astro Boy: The Movie.

Okay, so I was wrong about that. (But not about Dances with Gaia.)

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for Avatar, I felt that I really ought to see it. Sure, I was intrigued by the technology. I’m also a sucker for good 3-D. But in the end, I think that what I wanted most was to be able to bitch about it with authority.

Last weekend I drove up to visit my dad (who is conveniently located near an IMAX theater), and plunked down my $12.50.

The verdict? Pretty much I expected. Gorgeous and groundbreaking. Pity about the script.

Briefly, Avatar is the story of a paraplegic soldier transported to the planet Pandora, his mind transferred into an artificially-created copy of the indigenous population. The Na’vi are ten-foot tall, blue humanoids who literally link to their environment via a tendril/hair thingy. These plug-and-play Smurfs (who are 30 apples high) live in a hollow tree sitting on the largest known deposit of unobtanium (no shit, that’s what they call it), an isotope of mcguffinite so valuable it can buy entire cities. (And yet, the local mining company official keeps a chunk of it on his desk. Really?)

Avatar leaves no doubt that there are no longer limits on what can be depicted on screen if one has the money and computing power. While I’m not sure that Cameron’s in-camera animatics (which allowed him to see digital characters in a virtual set while directing the live actors) will change the way that movies are made, it will certainly change how very expensive movies are made.

I was impressed by his advanced technique for capturing facial movements, allowing the performances of Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver to shine through their digital makeovers. Cameron seems to have emerged from the “uncanny valley” that made Robert Zemeckis’ computer-generated Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey so unsettling. However, I wonder how many sins are covered by the blue, cat-like features of the Na’vi. The real test, I think, would be to create a realistic duplicate of the actor’s own face.

Much was made of Cameron’s attempt at world-building, but I didn’t find it so remarkable. Several years ago, the crew of Peter Jackson’s King Kong similarly created an entire ecosystem for Skull Island.

I did, however, appreciate the believably* alien flora and fauna, and wasn’t surprised to see that artist Wayne Douglas Barlowe (whose seminal work Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials sits on my bookshelf) did an early design pass on them. The use of phosphorescence was a clever way of tying together the Pandoran biosphere**.

*Not so sure about the lizard whose defense mechanism was to turn into a tiny helicopter and helplessly rotate six inches from where it had been sitting. Dangling food is still food.

**Curiously, most of the animal life was six-limbed, yet the Na’vi had only two arms and two legs. Did they originate elsewhere?

Unfortunately, Cameron spent far less time on the script that he did on the production design. I might have forgiven the “seen it all before” plot if each of the story beats hadn’t been equally telegraphed. Was there any doubt that Jake would reclaim his standing with the Na’vi by taming that family-sized pterodactyl, or that Mother Nature would listen to his plea* and assemble her horde of uintatheriums and displacer beasts to save the day?

*And just why was Jake so much more Na’vi than the Na’vi anyhow?

Having seen Cameron’s Aliens a great many times, I couldn’t shake a feeling of déjà vu when the evil military commander climbed into a mechanical suit and threatened Jake’s ferocious warrior girlfriend Neytiri. I half-expected Jake to shout, “Get away from that bitch, you bastard!”

Wired magazine’s recent feature article about Avatar explained what inspired James Cameron to become a filmmaker: a fit of jealous pique after seeing the original Star Wars. Star Wars, it said, “was the film he should have made.”

Since that didn’t happen, he settled for producing a space western in which a technological empire is defeated by bow and arrow-wielding primitives, and all life is connected by a mystic energy field. I hear that his next film will be about a globe-trotting anthropologist.

Dave Movies 3-D, Avatar, James Cameron, reviews

So, I spent part of my vacation day at the theater watching 2012.

Don’t look at me like that. I’ve seen what you do with your time.

Yes, I knew going in that it was nothing more than disaster porn. But hey, I grew up in the days of Irwin Allen. I saw Earthquake in Sensurround. I watched Shelley Winters drown again and again. And goodness knows how many times When Worlds Collide aired on WGN-TV’s Family Classics. Someone’s mother dies of cancer? That’s heartbreaking. Millions of people perish in a fiery abyss? That’s entertainment!

Of course, there was also the Roland Emmerich factor. To be charitable, the man’s work isn’t known for intricately plotted scripts and deep characterizations. Yet I enjoyed Stargate and yes, Independence Day. (Shut up about the computer virus, already. It was a fun movie and I don’t care.)

In the end, my desire to see the earth burn won out over the scars I’ve carried since Emmerich’s Godzilla remake.

The disaster porn portions of 2012 were great fun, but unfortunately the rest of it was more Godzilla or The Day After Tomorrow than Independence Day.

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now. Yes, the “end of the Mayan calendar in 2012″ thing is bullshit. Doesn’t matter. I read Silver Age comic books; I’m not all that worried about scientific accuracy or spurious folklore in my popcorn flicks.

Fortunately, aside from a few “the Mayans knew this was coming” references, the 2012 apocalypse apocrypha doesn’t come up all that much. For the most part, 2012‘s scenario owes more to old-timey sci-fi disasters like Crack in the World or the aforementioned When Worlds Collide. Rising temperatures within the earth’s core buckle the crust, causing colossal earthquakes, subsidences and tsunami.

The disaster scenes, especially the harrowing flight through a collapsing Los Angeles, are an E-ticket amusement park attraction. That’s not a criticism. But they definitely have the feel of an out-of-control Indiana Jones ride.

Now, that scene in the trailer with John Cusack’s plane staying just ahead of cracks in the earth and falling debris? Pretty much the whole first half of the film is like that. Cusack barely escapes L.A., then barely escapes Yellowstone, then barely escapes Las Vegas. His character has an impenetrable shield of script immunity. Nothing is gonna stop him surviving the end of the world and reuniting his broken family.

I found it amusing that I’ve been to every one of the U.S. locations marked for destruction. Santa Monica? Check. Hawaii? Check. It was like my most destructive vacation video.

I got a kick out of the audacious and ridiculous disaster scenes. I’m pretty sure that I spotted the Pope being crushed in the collapse of the Vatican.

But when landmarks weren’t going splat, it was rough going. The whole John Cusack and his estranged spouse and her new husband angle played out in the most pedestrian manner possible. And with few exceptions–notably a cameo by Woody Harrelson as a pickle-eating conspiracy theorist–there wasn’t a lot of humor. I like Cusack, but in terms of cocky heroics, he’s no Will Smith.

Plus, did I mention that is was 158 minutes long? (When Worlds Collide was 83 minutes.) Just when the whole thing seems to be wrapping up, there’s an entire third (or fourth) act where they’ve got to pull the thing out of the thing before the other thing hits a really big thing.

It should not be a spoiler that John Cusack survives. Never mind that it would’ve been more dramatically appropriate for him to die in defense of his former family and their New Dad, or that it would’ve been somewhat unexpected for a big star like Cusack to be ground between two enormous gears. (Modern filmmakers forget that Gene Hackman–the star of The Poseidon Adventure–went down with the ship.)

This is a Roland Emmerich film. And that means that not only does Cusack make it to the credits, so does the dog.

Dave Movies 2012, disaster porn, reviews, Roland Emmerich

This has been a rare, two-movie weekend for me. Last night Vic and I went to The Men Who Stare at Goats, and this afternoon I caught up with Paranormal Activity after a disastrously failed attempt on Halloween night in which a horde of loudly-talking, cellphone-texting underage kids drove me from the theater.

Now, I have seen more than my fair share of George Clooney movies. That’s mostly because of Vic; Clooney sits atop her “gimme” list. But I admit that I like him as well. (He’s not on my “gimme” list, but he is on my “if I swung that way” list.)

George has a bunch of positive attributes: roguish charisma, sincerity about parlaying his fame into making the world (specifically Darfur) a better place, and–perhaps most important–an inability to take himself seriously. He understands the limitations of fame and the simple truth that the people you treat like shit on the way up will be waiting for you when you come back down.

Clooney also makes interesting choices. He could’ve easily become a romantic comedy star, but he’s only made one (One Fine Day) since his breakout role on E.R. Instead, he turns up in all manner of quirky stories, quite often playing against type as someone either mentally deficient or bugfuck nuts.

Which brings me to The Men Who Stare at Goats, in which Clooney portrays one of the former members of a (real-life) clandestine, U.S. Army unit which was dedicated to developing psychically-powered super-soldiers. This semi-fictionalized adaptation of Jon Ronson’s book of the same name bops back and forth between modern-day Iraq and the early ’80s, as a reporter (Ewan McGregor) meets up with Clooney’s character in the present and delves into the oddball history of the “First Earth Battalion.”

I wish that it spent more of its time in hippie-dippie land. When it does, it fulfills the promise made by the trailers of a silly, satirical look at the military. But honestly, The Men Who Stare at Goats should have been titled The Man Who Once Stared at a Goat. Because, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve pretty much all of the goat-staring that it has to offer. The present-day Iraq material is okay, and–just as in real-life–does tie into the legacy of the “First Earth Battalion,” but the ’80s material is much more fun.

My other excursion to the multiplex this weekend was Paranormal Activity, the latest in the sub-genre of “found footage” horror flicks. While I don’t think it quite lived up to its terrifying reputation, it’s worth checking out if you’re into this sort of thing.

To be honest, I was surprised that The Blair Witch Project, which made nearly $250 million against an initial budget of about $25,000, didn’t immediately spawn a legion of knock-offs. The low entry level coupled with the possibility of a massive return on investment seemed likely to inspire a horde of would-be M. Night Shyamalans to spend their nights scaring the shit out of some amateur actors and capturing the results on digital video.

While I’m aware of a few such movies, the only one I can recall that was of much consequence was Cloverfield. And that one was really a mid-budget Hollywood flick masquerading as a cheap indie project.

Now comes the true Blair Witch successor. Paranormal was reportedly made for about half of Blair‘s already-minuscule budget. Seriously, I could’ve bankrolled this thing out of my saving account.

It shares the same handmade aesthetic and improvised dialogue, but outdoes Blair in one area: it actually delivers some on-screen spooky stuff. That’s not to denigrate the earlier film; it managed to be quite scary without ever showing a damned thing. Blair left you debating whether anything supernatural had occurred; Paranormal makes clear that some shit is going down.

The hauntings are quite minimalist, mostly simple, in-camera physical effects and banging on the walls. Yet it’s all the more effective for underplaying its frightful activities.

The storyline is reminiscent of this summer’s Drag Me to Hell, with a young woman (Katie Featherston as “Katie”) facing a demonic force which grows with each passing night. But this poor kid has to deal with something that Alison Lohman’s bank teller never did: a dick with a video camera.

Okay, to be fair, the “found footage” sub-genre demands that someone continue filming events long after the time that any reasonable person would’ve put down the damned camera. So, it’s not entirely his fault that live-in boyfriend Micah (played entirely coincidentally by Micah Sloat) is such a douche. Still, rarely have I found myself wanting to punch the camera on which the film was being shot. Micah’s douchebaggery goes well above and beyond the call, continually escalating the situation and generally making Katie’s life miserable with or without sinister help.

Now, it’s not a spoiler to say that things do not end well for Katie and Micah. The film open with a slate suggesting that it is being made available courtesy of the local police. Besides, another given of a “found footage” movie is that it ends in death and/or disappearance. If anyone was still around, no one would have to “find” the footage.

Reportedly, Steven Spielberg suggested the current ending of Paranormal Activity after championing the movie’s theatrical release. Having read about the various alternate endings (and viewed the original, which can be found online), I agree that the final cut is a big improvement. Yet, another alternate version involving a slit throat sounds even better still than the slightly cheap (CGI-enhanced?) “boo” with which the film now ends.

I found myself fidgeting a bit during the last reel, and feel that its already short 86 minute running time could’ve been trimmed to an even leaner 75 without losing anything. At the end of the day, I’d much rather see Drag Me to Hell again than watch Paranormal Activity a second time. Still, it’s nice that a horror film which depends more on suggestion and simple fear of the dark has succeeded over merciless torture porn like Saw VI.

Dave Movies Paranormal Activity, reviews, The Men Who Stare at Goats

All right, I’ll admit that for a series named “31 Monsters,” this last entry is a bit of a cheat. Even more so than Dr. Sheila Frankenstein. There’s no actual monster here, but I honestly couldn’t think of a better way to wish you a Happy Halloween than the following.

In 1982, the makers of the Halloween films had a couple of problems. One was that their star character–slasher prototype Michael Myers–had met what appeared to have been a very definite and explosive death at the end of Halloween II. The other was that there wasn’t much more to do with the concept. I mean, really, could you imagine making another seven movies about a mute in a Captain Kirk mask?

So, in what turned out to be an ill-considered attempt to keep afloat a Halloween film franchise, producer John Carpenter decided to reinvent it as a yearly anthology series, with each sequel a self-contained story themed around the holiday. (Honestly, I think the idea is fun.)

Carpenter hired British screenwriter Nigel Kneale, best known for his sci-fi TV serials featuring scientific investigator Prof. Quatermass, to pen Halloween III: Season of the Witch. And it has to be said that Kneale came up with something about as far removed from a knife-wielding William Shatner as possible.

Instead, horror fans were met by Dan O’Herlihy as Irish-born maskmaker Conal Cochran, whose “Silver Shamrock Novelties” company had saturated the airwaves with a relentless commercial campaign for his line of Halloween masks. The masks themselves–a witch, skeleton and pumpkin–were standard enough, but the gimmick was the “big giveaway” to be held live on Halloween Eve.

Cochran turned out to be a warlock attempting to return the holiday to its alleged roots. His factory melded science and sorcery, with each mask sporting a microchip embedded with a fragment of stone from a stolen Stonehenge megalith. The final Silver Shamrock commercial was encoded with a signal that would activate the microchips and cause the head of anyone wearing one of the masks to erupt in a mass of bugs and snakes. That’s right, bugs and snakes.

Now, goodness knows that Halloween III is by no means a good film–Kneale had his name taken off the final product–but I’ll give them credit for trying something different, even if it plays like a particularly nasty episode of Scooby-Doo.

However, the main reason that anyone remembers it at all is the damnable Silver Shamrock jingle which plays repeatedly throughout the film. Seriously, it’s probably been at least two decades since I saw it, and that thing is still stuck in my head.

I wanted to embed the Silver Shamrock commercial, but it turned out that for all the times it was seen, it never played all the way through on-screen. And YouTube didn’t give me what I wanted. So here is my very own Silver Shamrock montage, created just for you.

You’re welcome.

This wraps up my look at ghoulies, ghosties and things that go stomp in the night. It was fun (for me), but I have to admit that I’ll never again commit myself to 31 consecutive daily blog posts, especially when I have a vacation scheduled in the middle of the month!

Dave Movies evil Celtic maskmakers, Halloween III, happy happy Halloween, monsters