Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video Visions1 Comment on Video Visions: The Drive-In 
Over the thousand years I’ve been writing Video Visions, I’ve waxed poetic about my days walking those aisles crammed with garish VHS boxes, the smell of popcorn wafting in the air. This time around, I’m going to do something of an evolution chart, only with a surprise ending and no missing links, so there’s no questioning my impeccable logic.
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video VisionsLeave a comment on Video Visions: It’s Bloody Valen-Time
Ah, February. Where love is in the air, or in many cases, a desperate need to find love by Valentine’s Day. Maybe we let up on the horror gas for a spell, and let the heart run free.
Or, maybe love and death are meant to go hand in hand. Look at the phrase, la petite mort, aka, the little death, that blissful moment after you’ve achieved the BIG-O and everything goes numb and still. To love is to die a little, bit by bit, orgasm by orgasm, heartbreak by heartbreak. It’s a wonder we don’t have a treasure trove of V-day themed horror movies. Maybe we’re looking at this special day all wrong.
I think I need to start with a love story and how it’s bound to a very popular movie this time of year. That story would be mine. Now, if Cupid would aim that arrow somewhere else, I can get rolling. Continue Reading
So, yeah, I have a bigfoot costume in my attic. And I may have donned it during a multi-author book signing at a New Jersey brewery and run amok, startling every day drinker in my path. On Halloween, I quite possibly made some small children cry as I offered them treats from my hairy hand (see the author in his glory below). For shits and giggles, wearing the squatch mask at random doesn’t seem all that strange to me, even as I sit in my belfry and write this column.
I know, I have a problem. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video VisionsLeave a comment on Video Visions: Happy 40th Birthday to Creepshow!
Hard to believe that one of the greatest horror anthologies of all time hit theaters forty years ago. In that span of time, I’ve had two dogs, three cats, two turtles, at least seventeen hamsters, three hundred goldfish and beta fish (most of them lasting two days), one salamander and one dwarf rabbit that grew to be the size of Gunnar Hansen. A big fuck you to the pet store clerk who sold me that bill of goods. Dwarf my ass. Oh, and I went from a virgin to way not a virgin, got married and had two amazing children.
And now back to the real story. When I watched the coming attraction for Creepshow on TV and saw that it was the love child of Stephen King and George Romero, I believe I had a Bob Rossian happy accident in my skivvies. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead had rewired my brain a few years earlier and King was feeding me nightmare fuel every night before I hit the lights. His cocaine and booze years made for my caviar and champagne days and nights. Continue Reading
Quick show of hands, how many of you out there in the transom miss the video store? Yeah, streaming is easy, and you don’t have to be kind and rewind. Kindness in general is in short supply this day.
But, who pines for the Friday or Saturday trips to the video store (it could have been Blockbuster, Sun Coast Video, or the local mom and pop like the one I named this column after), browsing the aisle of front facing VHS boxes, carefully making your selection and maybe grabbing a little bag of freshly popped popcorn?Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video VisionsLeave a comment on Video Visions: The Twelve Assholes of Christmas
Whether you’re a ho-ho or a humbug, it’s impossible to ignore the holiday season. I know I can’t. As I write this, the threat of having to string up lights outside is looming, which is why I just might take my sweet time getting this done.
After subjecting my wife to watching at least one horror movie a day in October (we hit 55 this year), when December first rolls around, it’s my turn to get the water torture. Yes, we have to watch at least one Christmas movie or cartoon a day until Christmas Eve, when A Christmas Story goes on repeat mode all through the next day. Mind you, I’m not complaining (not loud enough so the wife can hear). First, she never makes me watch any of those insipid Lifetime or Hallmark pieces of dreck. Second, we do throw in some horror movies like Black Christmas, Red Christmas, Better Watch Out, Anna and the Apocalypse, and this year, thanks to Shudder, Silent Night, Deadly Night parts three through five. I never saw them before, and my limbo stick is set on low. Continue Reading
I love the smell of burning candy corns in the morning. It smells like…Halloween!
If you’re like me, you’ve entered into the all-horror, all-the time-zone. I know I watch and read a ton of all things creepy throughout the year, but October (or as I call it, Horrortober) is when folks like us take it up to thirteen. Fuck eleven. That’s for poseur rock bands. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Faithless by Hunter Shea 
Faithless by Hunter Shea
Flame Tree Press (October 19, 2021)
304 pages; $24.95 hardcover ; $14.95 paperback ; $6.99 e-book
Reviewed by Janine Pipe
Faithless is the latest novel by Hunter Shea from Flame Tree Press and, yet again, he knocks it out of the park. I don’t hide the fact that Hunter is my favorite writer (alongside Glenn Rolfe) but there is a very good reason for this—he never fails to deliver.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video VisionsLeave a comment on Video Visions: A Humongous Lawsuit
I’ve only been sued one time in my life, and it was for an overdue movie.
This is one time the video store was not my friend.
The movie in question is the Canadian slasher, Humongous. Not exactly Citizen Kane…or The Burning. In fact, it was considered such a schlocky piece of shit, I was surprised the video store didn’t pay me to take if off the shelves. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video VisionsLeave a comment on Video Visions: Horror Daddies
We all turn into our fathers at one point.
It could be just a look that we give when someone says something supremely stupid, or the way we tell our recalcitrant teenager that they are most certainly NOT going out dressed like that. It may be the way we sit or walk, the lilt in our voice when we talk. It could be just a few bits and bobs of dear old Dad, or maybe even the whole thing, a younger doppelgänger of the family’s patriarch.
You may love it or hate it. But he’s in there. Continue Reading
We Irish like to think of March as our month. Sure, St. Paddy’ Day is just on the 17th, but I’ve always felt March, with Spring slipping in, is a great time to be green and tipsy. More so this year, considering the miles of shit we’ve had to trudge through just to get here.
I bet you think I’m going to talk about Leprechaun movies? Too easy. However, Leprechauns are diminutive creatures, kind of like talking dolls or toys, which brings me to…Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video VisionsLeave a comment on Video Visions: A Very Cannibal Thanksgiving
Like all things in 2020, Thanksgiving will be a little different this year. Uncle Hank who showers only on quarter moons and is addicted to scratch-off tickets is not welcome in the house. Nor is cousin Amber, she of the chronic rhinitis and inexhaustible lineup of failed relationships. We tell ourselves it’s for everyone safety, but really, aren’t you glad they’re not coming?Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video VisionsLeave a comment on Video Visions: The Ultimate Movie for Halloween Night
Look, I know most normal people aren’t like me, setting aside about 50 movies to watch each October. I mean, who has that kind of time and demented dedication? If I think I won’t have time to watch a movie when I get home from work, I’ll set the alarm to wake me up at five in the morning so I can devour Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Hellraiser like a bowl of Count Chocula before heading off to the day job.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video VisionsLeave a comment on Is Anyone Returning to Horror High?
Somewhere, a school bell is ringing. The doors are open, the classrooms ready, but the halls are empty.
Funny how it takes a pandemic and a general feeling that Armageddon has its hand in our pockets to make us wax poetic about going back to school. I was a good student, but I hated school the way Leah Remini despises Scientology. Mornings, I wished for some disease that would keep me home (and got that wish in senior year when I came down with mono that had me bedridden for months). In class, I prayed the fire alarm would go off and this time it wouldn’t be a false alarm. Having to stop playing Wiffle ball or street football after school so I could get my homework done was like asking me to hack my legs off with a rusty, blunt shovel. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video Visions2 Comments on Science, Sex and Madness – The Legacy of Stuart Gordon 
To be honest, the picture on the VHS cover for Re-Animator didn’t grab me. A geeky scientist-dude wielding a syringe of glowing green fluid made it look like the movie was made for about twenty-three bucks. If I weren’t such a horror movie whore, I would have walked on by. However, what caught me was the caption :
Herbert West has a very good head on his shoulders – And another one in a dish on his desk!
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