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.
Editorials

[VIDEO] Blockbuster Who? The Magic of the Mom-and-Pop Video Shop

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I have to credit my discovery of many different horror films to my local Mom and Pop Video Store growing up, Action Video. Under a mile away, it was close enough for me to hop on my bike and undergo one of my favorite journeys to take on a weekend afternoon or anytime during the Summer. It was located in a shopping mall that included a Smiths’, Osco Drugs, Naugles, Pizza Hut, and of course, a McDonald’s. Usually, before a trip to Action Video, we’d pop into Osco for the latest issue of MAD magazine and Fangoria and some snacks for later’s horror marathon festivities. Then a trip to one of the fast food chains located within to get some carbs in for the adrenaline rush to come later; a personal pan Pizza Hut pizza or ye’ old faithful Hamburger Happy Meal from the clown was my regular go-to. And then, off to Action Video for the finale to discover what new and glorious atrocities await to be feasted upon thine eyes.

The VHS cover art alone was all the advertisement we would need to be sold on a horror flick, as we would be standing there gawking at the enticing and illustrious covers of films I had never seen. Hell, if Return of the Living Dead or The Blob didn’t have the cover art they did, it may have very well been a long time before I would have seen those masterpieces. Take for instance here, Dead Pit, with its gimmicky light-up cover case (you’ll catch that in the video down below). I mean, the cover alone is cool as hell, but that extra flair from the art screaming “PICK ME UP AND RENT ME YA’ WALNUT” added that extra incentive to take it home with you.

Blockbuster, as popular as it was, didn’t have this kind of cool shit gracing their shelves, people. As a matter of fact, it was so bland with their mediocre white clamshell casings. Hell, you’d be hard-pressed to find ONE rental copy of, let’s say, MOTEL HELL or CHEERLEADER CAMP. That, in itself, is a travesty. One that a local Mom and Pop Video Shop never seemed to bear onto their consumers. At the very least, when you rented with a smaller venue, you would get a way cooler clamshell that looked like it contained something sinister inside. Oh and hey, with those places usually having those adult-only curtains in the back of the store, sometimes there really was, heh.

The last living relic of Action Video remains in my hands. Grabbed this when bitch-ass Blockbuster put them out of business back in 1997. THE EXORCIST III in rare mom-and-pop video form is a beautiful thing over 25 years later.

Unfortunately, time and many moves through my life took my bright orange Action Video punch hole rental card that I had hung on to long after they closed. I’ve looked far and wide for another one in the wild, but continuously come up empty-handed. So if anyone reading this is local to Las Vegas and happens to have one sitting in a dusty box somewhere, I will gladly take it off your hands and display it like the nostalgic treasure I deem it to be is.

Like Action Video, many of these mom-and-pop stores fell to the corporate giants of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video, unable to compete. I personally, never went to one until there was no other choice as I was rather bitter that they put my favorite rental place out of business. The place where I struck up conversations about horror films with other fans and Nick, the son’s owner behind the counter who would always shoot me some wild recommendations like Basket Case; of which I totally rented upon his imaginative description of Belial. When I finally made my way into Cock-Buster, I found the horror section to be rather dull. It was too bright in there, kids running around unattended… The magic was just, gone for me. And the clerks with their Gap-inspired uniforms didn’t seem to be as knowledgeable as Nick from Action Video. So here I was, biting my lip and bitterly renting Blair Witch from these corporate clowns until Karma finally made its way back to them when Netflix came into the circle.

The City of Irving published a video back in 1988 highlighting all the wonderful things a Mom and Pop shack has to offer, much of what I’ve stated here and uploaded it to YouTube. Probably one of the most wholesome things you’ll see on the internet today, folks.

Maybe I’m being too harsh on Blockbuster, ( I don’t really think I am) but aesthetically and nostalgically speaking, you just can’t compete with the powerful entity that is the small video store.

A clusterfuck of films that beg you to dig in and really do your due diligence in searching for the right film.

While the memory remains solid for myself, we luckily have people on YouTube who prior to the video website ever being a twinkle in Google’s eye, had the good sense to video record trips to their local video store so that we may bask in its glorious nostalgia. People here like HugeMovieFanatics who uploaded this home footage from December 1992 doing what we all did-wander around aimlessly looking at all the mystical things a small venue like that had to offer.

Bless these guys. Bless the Mom and Pop Video Shop. And Fuck the Blockbuster. I hope you read that in the Iron Shiek’s voice.

Editorials

Nostalgic Trauma 101: The Garbage Pails Kids Movie!

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I was lucky enough to be a kid throughout the 80s and have a first-hand experience with what is now, the glory days of nostalgia. One thing from my childhood that I was completely obsessed with was The Garbage Pail Kids, even at a ridiculously young age. I was three years old when GPK first hit the scene and was a bit of an oddball at that age loving both the insanely popular Cabbage Patch Kids while being immensely intrigued by all things horror, I remember being absolutely enthralled with the cards to the point where anytime we were at the store, I would beg the parents for a pack or two.

Actual pic of my room in 1986 so you know I ain’t bullshitting you.

The Garbage Pail Kids were TOPPS middle finger to Xavier Roberts and his CPK line as the infamous trading card company had initially wanted the license to put out some wax packs like pretty much every other pop culture entity had in the 80s and 90s. However, Roberts scoffed at the idea and turned the company down, in turn launching a series of cards in 1985 from artists at TOPPS poking fun of the toy line by making them even uglier than they already were with a gross-out factor. And thus was born the Garbage Pail Kids and a phenomenon of the 80s that is carried on to this very day with collectors catching new packs faster than your parents attempting to nab a CPK doll in 1983.

The line was so popular in fact that in 1987, a movie came along that (I think) was meant for kids… but hey it’s the 80s, and all kids’ movies were pretty damn dark anyway. It was almost like a rite of passage to help put some hair on our balls and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie was in no way short of providing plenty of trauma to kids who watched it. Add in a tiny person with an alligator face who loves to eat fingers and we got ourselves a tried and true, 80s kids’ movie folks!

In all honesty, this movie is one of the worst films ever made, and as much as I love GPK and I actually did get a kick out of this movie as a kid, watching it as an adult even with those nostalgia goggles, it’s just one of the most fuck-awful films I’ve ever seen.  It’s a trash spectacle of Z-grade 80s cinema. But you know what? In all the mess that it is, I believe that also might be its saving grace. A movie, so terrible, so awful that most that have seen it, have wiped it from their memory or shrugged it off as some sort of fever dream could be the very reason that when people talk about it today, they just laugh their hardy asses off. No one actually gets MAD at how bad it is; just at that, it’s just so damn weird and wild that no one would ever take this shit seriously.

If you’re someone that hasn’t witnessed this chaotic shitshow, the plot is basically the “kids” are mutant alien children that live in a trash can and befriend a bullied kid named Dodger along with his only friend, an antique shop owner who somehow knows everything about these gross ass kids from outer space. And by kids, I mean piss-poor animatronics and puppetry that would scare the shit out of the likes of Freddy Krueger. These “kids” are fucking goddamn terrifying to look at and I don’t know if that was the intention or not, but I had nightmares for weeks about Ali Gator and even more so, Messy Tessie- the booger snot-faced kid with a face that just scared the ever-loving shit out of me by her just standing still- staring. Like the monster she rightfully is.

SHUDDERS.

Makeup f/x artist John Carl Buechler (director of TROLL and FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD) who was initially slated to direct wanted the GPK movie, originally pitched it to be a horror film, with people being turned into hideous Cabbage Patch-like monstrosities that terrorized a small town. Although I think that probably would have worked better for older audiences and would maybe stand the test of time for 80s kids of today, it obviously wouldn’t have worked at all for kids in 1987. And yet without even trying they made a horror movie anyway with those giant prosthetic heads. I want to believe Buechler did that on purpose to scare the shit out of the kiddies. Bravo, it worked.

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie goes balls to the wall on every single level, but I can’t help but find some sick and twisted charm in it. This is a movie nobody should ever willingly watch, but one that everyone needs to see at least once. It’s horrifying, stupid, gross, offensive and so mesmerizing that you’ll feel comatose from horrifically bad 80s cheese that would never get green-lit today.

Or hey if you really hate someone, make sure to recommend this movie to them to ensure they’re out of your life forever.

At least the opening credits were a banger, eh?

Creature Features

Creature Features: The Mucho-Ecological, Man-Eating Lake Blob From “Creepshow 2”

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Nightmare Nostalgia Presents Creature Features: An ongoing tip of the hat to some of horror’s greatest monsters throughout the genre that don’t seem to get the recognition they wholeheartedly deserve.

Firstly, I would never bullshit you guys. Outside of a slimy little extraterrestrial asshole with an unnaturally long neck pointing his glowing fingers at everything trying to phone home, and a demon reverend with 20,000 teeth singing hymns on rainy days, and a mechanical shark, not a whole lot scared me as a kid. In fact, I grew up on horror movies and was schooled at the tender age of three with the beautiful Universal Monsters collection via my grandfather, and my father who introduced me to Halloween.  Apparently, I used to dance around to Halloween music with poms-poms at this age- I still don’t want to believe I was that cool that early on, but I’m just going to go with that. So yeah, embracing the horror since the potty-training days made me somewhat desensitized to a lot, it took something special to get me shakin’. Aside from what I mentioned above, and to be honest here there’s probably more that I’m just not thinking of at this moment, one thing I DO recall from my youngin’ years scaring the ever-loving shit out of me, was the mucho-ecological Lake Blob from Creepshow 2‘s, The Raft.

Creature Features: The Mucho-Ecological, Man-Eating Lake Blob From

What the hell is that thing, Poncho? Well, this pre-1988 Blob of sludge is never really explained, even thirty years after its theatrical release. We know it’s hungry, (I guess), and once it nabs its carnivorous entrĂ©e, the object completely dissolves into the Lake Blob and seemingly becomes a part of it. As we can see through various shots throughout The Raft, this “oil slick”, as the four teens refer to it, has pockets of waste and I swear I’ve seen bones in this damn thing, as it moves along patiently awaiting its next meal. I’ve looked for these answers friends as to WHAT EXACTLY IT IS or WHERE IT CAME FROM. And until I have the opportunity to actually ask Stephen King himself, or anyone who worked on the film, I may never fully know for sure. However, I have my own theory…

I could just be taking this whole thing to an unnecessary level of deep-rooted fuckery, but hear me out. What if, the Lake Blob is a metaphor for Mother Nature and the havoc we have wreaked on poor Mother Earth. Let’s face it guys. We’re kind of dicks to this planet, and history and well, science has shown us those facts. Maybe this Lake Blob is Earth’s middle finger to humankind; because clearly, it has a thing for humanoids with an occasional side of passerby duck. With each death via Lake Blob, the victim is engulfed by the slick creature’s globule tendons and pulled into its aura, dissolving into its sludgy mass. Thus, making the prey part of the predator now. Or for lack of a better term, back to the Earth you go you polluting Homo Sapien. With the initial meeting of the Blob and the four teens at the lake, this thing immediately comes and confronts them. Randy does point out that this thing, “doesn’t look like an accident… it looks like it’s on purpose.” Then it proceeds to consume Rachel in the most horrifying way imaginable. And for the record, is the scene that totally scared the crap out of me from wanting to swim in ANY LAKE EVER.

Although, I bet Tarman from ROLD would be into her.

Lake Blob Creepshow 2

Of course, feel free to tell me I’m completely way off base here. If that be the case, let’s hear your theories below! Until next time kiddies and in the meantime, steer clear of any isolated bodies of water.