Tag Archives: horror movies

The Rare “Child’s Play” VHS Screener Footage From 1989

Image April 21, 2018 Patti PaulterGeist 1 Comment

The ’80s were a grand decade for the little plastic nightmare known as Chucky and I think it’s fair to say, this era belonged exclusively to the slasher. From Freddy, Jason, to Michael, the 1980’s coined the word slasher and turned it into an unstoppable phenomenon. Between brilliant marketing from all those inducing ass-whoopings from calling 1-900 numbers to every kid on your block dressed up as Freddy; sporting a plastic garbage bag Ben Cooper costume on Halloween. The era of the slasher was a glorious time to be alive for horror fans. And in 1988, a small but fierce force entered into that iconic fraternity of slasher legends in the form of what looked like, a My Buddy doll from the seventh layer of Hell.

When Child’s Play opened in theaters back ’88, no one expected the pint-sized Good Guy to launch the kind of fanfare Chucky brought to the horror game. The movie made on a less than stellar budget of only $9 million ended up pulling in almost four times that amount worldwide upon its theatrical release and ended up spawning seven sequels over the past 30 years, including an upcoming Child’s Play series in the works!

Back in the glory days of the Polaroid cassette videotape, studios such as MGM would send out promotional VHS screeners of new releases to mom and pop video stores in an effort to get that movie lined up on their shop shelves. On a side-note, I remember the first time seeing Chucky’s face at my local one-stop rental shop Action Video and my seven-year-old self, fresh off a viewing of Dolls, was immediately impulsed to rent the little sucker. Not knowing a thing about it, and so glad I did.

Anyway, these VHS screeners sent out apparently also contained some extra promotional material intended to fancy up the marketing. In this case, a six and half minute promo of a stiff as fuck Chucky salesman breaking into a rap about his movie and the cheese is so delicious my friends. Also, you gotta appreciate the gangster aspect of good ole’ Chucky taunting both Freddy and Jason in this promo.

“Jason? HA! He’s so scared of me, he’s gotta hide behind a mask.”

Beautiful. Check the video out below uploaded by YouTube channel DoctorSnowcone!

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.