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Such mad make-believe
Feb. 23rd, 2009 01:48 amI'm assuming there are people on my flist who are old enough to remember late-night horror movie hosts, right? I'm not, and this sometimes makes me sad. I mean, yes, it's possible to download MST3K episodes from the Internet, and you sometimes get lucky and they'll show them on Comedy Central, but it's really not the same and it doesn't have that same kind of DIY charm you get from productions with literally no budget. Even my mom remembers this kind of stuff--I asked her about the concept, and she immediately said, "Oh yeah, like Sir Graves Gastly? Or the Ghoul? I used to watch them all the time!"
Well, now metro Detroit has another one, and has for a couple of years, and I didn't know this until last night. There's a tiny little group called Nightmare Sinema, based out of Warren, that fulfills this valuable niche in the ecological system of local TV. They have a genial werewolf (Wolfman Mac), and a vaudeville skeleton and a mad scientist and a ghoul and a dapper, fat vampire and a Bender-esque robot, and they do awful sketches and play dumb sound effects over the movies and they even make their own commercials for local businesses and apparently they also host B-movie nights and splatterpunk shows at various places (they had one with Country Bob and the Bloodfarmers the day before I found out about them), and it's glorious. I'm very tempted to see if I can go and be their intern or unpaid flunky or zombie extra or something.
Went on Friday to go thrift-store browsing and play-going with my Aunt Maureen, who is seriously awesome. Had fun picking out gorgeous clothing and talking and watching the last half-hour of the play at the Farmington Player's Barn ("Musical Murders of 1940"). They're staging a Mitch Albom play in the fall, which Maureen is apparently co-directing; asked if I could help out somehow.
Part of the reason I like things like community theater and low-budget TV or movies is that they're accessible--more than anything else does, they make you think, "Hey, I could do that." Even if you really can't. And it's not like looking at The Matrix and going, "Hey, I could do that someday, if I had a huge budget and mastery of special effects and attractive people in vinyl clothing to star," it's going, "Shit, I could set up a little set in my basement and dress up like a witch and have one of my friends film me cracking wise at old movies." And it wouldn't even be as good as Nightmare Sinema, or even as good as Caress of the Vampire 2: Teenage Ghoul Girl A Go Go, or as good as the amateur films some of my LJ friends have made. But it would be something.
Well, now metro Detroit has another one, and has for a couple of years, and I didn't know this until last night. There's a tiny little group called Nightmare Sinema, based out of Warren, that fulfills this valuable niche in the ecological system of local TV. They have a genial werewolf (Wolfman Mac), and a vaudeville skeleton and a mad scientist and a ghoul and a dapper, fat vampire and a Bender-esque robot, and they do awful sketches and play dumb sound effects over the movies and they even make their own commercials for local businesses and apparently they also host B-movie nights and splatterpunk shows at various places (they had one with Country Bob and the Bloodfarmers the day before I found out about them), and it's glorious. I'm very tempted to see if I can go and be their intern or unpaid flunky or zombie extra or something.
Went on Friday to go thrift-store browsing and play-going with my Aunt Maureen, who is seriously awesome. Had fun picking out gorgeous clothing and talking and watching the last half-hour of the play at the Farmington Player's Barn ("Musical Murders of 1940"). They're staging a Mitch Albom play in the fall, which Maureen is apparently co-directing; asked if I could help out somehow.
Part of the reason I like things like community theater and low-budget TV or movies is that they're accessible--more than anything else does, they make you think, "Hey, I could do that." Even if you really can't. And it's not like looking at The Matrix and going, "Hey, I could do that someday, if I had a huge budget and mastery of special effects and attractive people in vinyl clothing to star," it's going, "Shit, I could set up a little set in my basement and dress up like a witch and have one of my friends film me cracking wise at old movies." And it wouldn't even be as good as Nightmare Sinema, or even as good as Caress of the Vampire 2: Teenage Ghoul Girl A Go Go, or as good as the amateur films some of my LJ friends have made. But it would be something.
