Evilspeak (1981) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - January 28, 1982

Evilspeak might have been the first horror film I saw on the big screen in 1982. It played at the Southshore Twin in Alameda on a double-bill with the inane and insane killer hand flick Demonoid. What an energetic one-two punch of supernatural shenanigans and slaughter those turned two out to be.

What made that particular Saturday even better was that John Carpenter's second (and first professional) feature film, Assault on Precinct 13, was aired, complete and uncut, on Channel 44 that night. I made an audio cassette recording of that broadcast and listened to it over and over for months. Until the tapes started wearing out.

Last year a ginormous feral pig, who I named Wilbur, was captured on our trail camera and the moment I saw him (and he is most assuredly a him) Evilspeak came to mind. Because of course it would. The ending of this movie is just hog wild.

Fright Flicks - Trading Card #29

Stuff of the 'Week' - January 17 - 21, 2026

The Fog (1980) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - January 27, 1980

The Fog was the first John Carpenter movie I would be hyper-focused on and obsessed with seeing after getting the top of my head blown off by Halloween. I believed there was no way this would not be another classic from the man (i.e. creative team) responsible for Halloween.

While fog banks might not be as iconic as, say, the holiday of Halloween. They do serve as a vital backdrop, or set dressing, in the creation of an ominous, threatening, or mysterious mood. What could go wrong with letting a ghost-laden fog take center stage?

Although the end result was just a "tad" unfocused, underdeveloped, and uneven, thanks in very large part to Carpenter's eleventh hour reshoots to ramp the film's scare factor way, way up, I still loved it.

The days of my thinking The Fog to be another flawless classic are long past, but The Fog remains one of my personal favorite Carpenter films.

Lady Death: Dark Alliance #64 - Trading Card #64

Celia

Celia, one of the gifted "Haunted", will be confronted by things that she never imagined and be thrust amongst those whom she never imagined associating with. Will she and the others be able to team-up to defeat the evil that is encroaching upon them?

The Corpse Grinders (1971) / The Undertaker and His Pals (1966) / The Embalmer (1965) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - January 26, 1972

Of the trio of gruesome shockers getting hyped up in this lurid ad for a horrifying triple-bill, I believe I have only seen most, but not all, of The Undertaker and His Pals. It is a stilted and rather labored horror-comedy about an undertaker that supplies a neighboring diner with human meat.

Being a fan of genre and exploitation cinema ephemera, I really should check out Ted V. Mikels' notorious The Corpse Grinders, but I wonder at the animal treatment in the film. For those that do not know the film's central plot concept, enterprising ghouls grind up human remains to use as cat food. Something that drives the animals to then attack and devour their owners. I doubt the Humane Society was on the set, if you know what I mean and I think you do...

The Embalmer is the oldest of the three. It is an Italian shocker about a crazed killer that holes up in the catacombs of Venice, where he keeps a collection of his preserved and artfully displayed female victims.

So, all in all, this seems like a pleasant way to waste five or six hours at your local grind-house or drive-in. I... guess?

Fright Flicks - Trading Card #28

Pumpkinhead (1988)

Here is a nice shot of the true star of Pumpkinhead, which is correctly attributed on the back of this particular card. Why Topps went with Vengeance: The Demon on some other the cards in this set is a trivia factoid as of yet unknown to me. So it goes.

No spoilers, but Pumpkinhead's visage here suggests this might be from when he is just starting to whoop the asses of the victims he has been dispatched to destroy in the most torturous of manners.

 

Ghost Talk (2020) - Short

Death Valley (1981) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - January 21, 1982

Although jazzed up with an occasional intense murder, just to make it competitive with the highly lucrative slasher film craze of the time, Death Valley aims more at building the kind of tension that will have the audience on the edge of their collective seats, rather than jumping out of them.

While not that bad of a movie, this was also one I did not regret missing out on the big screen. We watched it on HBO and it was.. fine.

Lady Death: Dark Alliance - Trading Card #63

Combining East Asian occultism with her own formidable vampiric powers, Jade is like nothing the earth has ever seen before - a force that cannot be stopped, and quests to control all of the Asian continent!