All posts by Patti PaulterGeist

Owner, operator, and fuzzy retro feelers giver at NightmareNostalgia.com. Worshipper of our Lord and savior Boo Berry, Patti is a seasoned pro having written for the top horror websites and magazines over the past few years until she decided to go balls to the wall and make her own focusing on pure feel-good nostalgia. Mom to two humans and three furballs.

Cool shit to buy

FRIGHT-RAGS Celebrates Ben Cooper Fandom With New Mini-Mask Launching This Alien Day!

Image April 18, 2018 Patti PaulterGeist Leave a comment

I, and I’m willing to bet most of you reading this, can fondly recall some of our favorite childhood memories walking around a dimly lit neighborhood on Halloween night collecting an assortment of sugar-crack in our mom’s pillowcases. And if you were a little hellion, (hey, we were all kids once) you took full advantage of the spirit of Samhain and pulled the ever so important Halloween pranks on friends, family, and annoyed neighbors. Of course, some of these mischievous shenanigans required some stealth and if you were donning a Ben Cooper mask complete with a plastic garbage-bag-like costume, ninja-ing that prank became one HELL of a challenge. Walking around in those costumes were about as a loud as Freddy‘s razors on a chalkboard.

In any regard, Ben Cooper masks were and remain a nostalgic staple inside our fuzzy memory banks. So I couldn’t be more excited to see that horror merch extraordinaire FRIGHT-RAGS announced a new line of mini-masks that replicate those glorious days of when Cooper was King of the haunted holiday! The first up in the series is a 1979 mini replica of the Ben Cooper Alien mask to be released on, of course, Alien Day, April 26, 2018!

Per Ben Scrivens-FRIGHT-RAGS:

“As part of our Alien Day (4.26) line up this year, I am proud to announce a brand new addition to our mask line up – MINI MASKS! For the past several years we’ve been reproducing vintage-style Ben Cooper and Collegeville vacuform masks, selling them with t-shirts as a box set. These were full size masks in full size boxes, meant to replicate the costumes from our childhood.However, with the more masks we released it became apparent that…these take up some serious space! I have stacks of them on my office shelf and as much as I love looking at them, they take up a lot of collectible real estate. We wanted to be able to enjoy the warm nostalgic fuzzies these sets gave us, but without cluttering up people’s display cases. So we went back to the drawing board and tried to think of a different way to showcase our love for these vintage collectibles, but also stay true to them as well. Enter the MINI-MASK. We captured all the details (the eye/mouth holes, rubber band, etc) from the originals, but in a package roughly half the size of an original mask/costume set so it can be displayed much easier. In fact, the box is about the same height/width of a Blu-Ray case. Our first MINI-MASK release will be a replica of the 1979 ALIEN mask produced by Ben Cooper. We recreated the mask and box, but on a smaller scale. The mask itself measures approximately 4.25” x 6” and boxed it is approximately 5.5” x 6.75”. You can see its scale when compared to a VHS tape in this image (sorry, didn’t have the original ALIEN VHS tape handy, lol). This mask is limited to 426, and will be released on Thursday, April 26 at 10am EST. It will be sold on its own (no shirt), and retail for $17. We are stoked about this release, and have several other MINI-MASKS in the works, for new and old characters. Stay tuned!”

In addition, an all-new shirt and enamel pin will be released in honor of the day Sigourney Weaver became the baddest bitch in Sci-Fy-Horror history! Make sure to set your alarms and head on over to FRIGHT-RAGS for this nostalgic little diddy next week!

Home Video Releases

New to Blu-Ray: Arrow Video Takes Us Around the World and Into Outer Space (Where No One Can Hear You Laugh)

Image April 16, 2018 Patti PaulterGeist Leave a comment

Pop the space popcorn for a trip to the celestial psycho circus and back all around the world for Arrow Video’s and Arrow Academy’s Blu-Ray release roster for April 2018!

Via MVD Entertainment Group:

Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years. Vol. 2 Limited Edition [Blu-ray + DVD] (4-17)

First up, the Arrow express takes us to Japan with the release of Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years, Vol. 2 – Border Crossings: The Crime and Action Movies. This set brings to home video for the first time outside of Japan, 5 films from the first 5 years of Suzuki’s career (1957-1961). Released under Nikkatsu’s Borderless Action line, these thrillers of mob warfare and exuberant action helped set the stage for Japanese action to come.

Sleeping Dogs [Blu-ray] (4-17)

Moving from the islands of Japan to the island of New Zealand with the release of Roger Donaldson’s Sleeping Dogs. Based on the novel Smith’s Dream, Sleeping Dogs helped launched the New Zealand New Wave movement, introducing a system of government tax breaks and creating a boom of film production in the country. The film is also significant for starring a young Sam Neill who would go on to be sort of a big deal.

A Pistol For Ringo & The Return Of Ringo: Two Films By Duccio Tessari [Blu-ray](4-24)

The next stop on this April adventure takes us to Europe with a pair of spaghetti westerns with A Pistol for Ringo & The Return of Ringo: Two Films by Duccio Tessari. While Tessari doesn’t have the quite the name recognition as Leone, he was a major player in the spaghetti western world having co-written A Fistful of Dollars a year before making his back-to-back Ringo films. The films were a rousing success and helped kick-start the career of actor Giuliano Gemma.

Killer Klowns From Outer Space [Blu-ray] (4-24)

New to Blu-Ray: Arrow Video Takes Us Around the World and Into Outer Space (Where No One Can Hear You Laugh)

Arrow’s journey through the world of film comes to a close in the United States with the 80’s cult classic Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Since the beginning of time, clowns have always been scary rather than funny, but it was the release of the Chiodo Brothers horror-comedy that forever cemented clowns as space creatures with a thirst for human blood. If this circus comes to your town, move.

News

Joe Bob Briggs Hosting a 24-Hour Horror Marathon This June On Shudder!

Image April 12, 2018 Patti PaulterGeist Leave a comment

And on the seventh day, the Horror Gods revived a beloved program to the wonder and excitement of fans everywhere- Joe Bob Briggs is back folks!

Nothing really grabs our horror nostalgic feelers by the balls quite like the scary-movie-weekend-marathons with a horror-host-with-the-most. With the height of the slasher era in the ’80s and ’90s, many local stations from around the country offered this sort of sweet deal with a local celebrity pimped out in a killer horror-style get-up. However, nationally speaking, TNT gave us the beautiful program Monstervision with the sarcastic-infused cinephile cowboy Joe Bob Briggs in 1995. And it was love at first sight.

Fans have been clamoring for “one last call” with the witty Briggs and Monstervision for some time now via the almighty and powerful interwebs. Well, it seems that that request has finally been answered as it’s been announced the Briggs will return, this time on Shudder, for a 24-hour horror marathon on Friday, June 22, 2018. The announcement of the date was made by Briggs’ via his personal social media, however, at this time it’s mysteriously nowhere to be found. Which could be due to multiple reasons. However, that is the date as of now and if anything changes or I get in trouble here for throwing that particular day out there, I’ll update this article accordingly and pull that 10-gallon hat down shrouding my shameful face.

In any regard, we’re all just excited that Joe Bob is making a much-deserved return and who knows, maybe AMC FEARFEST will smarten up and bring him into the 2018 line-up! It’s worth mentioning anyway.

*UPDATE

Per a representative of Joe Bob Briggs, it seems the announcement concerning the date isn’t set in stone quite yet, (hence the missing social media post). However, the Shudder marathon is still a-go for June with an official date coming soon! Will update this article when it drops.