A Far Out Fantastic Site

I want to first apologize for missing last month's Book-To-Movie review and the Insecure Writer's Support Group post earlier this month. I had family over from out of town, and then the week after Easter Sunday I had a bad allergy attack. I was so worn that I only had enough energy to write a little at a time. I’m just now getting back on track. So, I have the BTM for you below—a review of an H.G. Wells short story and its movie adaptation--but first I have the latest progress on my soon-to-release book of short stories, "Bad Apps".  ‘Bad Apps’ Progress Unfortunately, my allergy attack also put me behind on my work on “Bad Apps”, but now I’m at the easiest part of preparing my book for the formatting. I’ve been going through the manuscript to make sure I didn’t overlook any of the words and phrases underlined by the word processor’s editing feature. Many of these are words that either the programme mistakens the context they’re being used in or that I intentionally sp...

It's struck my curiosity for the last couple of Christmases that if Tim Burton ever did a remake of the 1960s B-rated movie, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians , what would it look like? Probably something like the sketch below (please click it to see full detail) which is particularly taken from the toy battle scene between the evil Martians and the Earth and Martian children . . . Please click to see larger image. Photo Credit: Steven Rose, Jr. Happy Hallow-days, everybody! --Steven Rose, Jr.

Warning:  This post may contain content considered obscene/objectionable by some viewers. Photo Credit: Danny Hennesy/Kristian Svensson/Wikimedia Commons  I ran into a bunch of teens from a church while I was walking back to my house from town late this afternoon and they gave me an invitation card to their play. It turned out to be from a fundamentalist church. I get along with fundamentalist Christians as much as Jews got along with Samaritans in Jesus's time. You can't blame the kids, though; they're just going along with what their parents believe. But in the words of the British butler Cruikshank from 1966's Munster, Go Home! , I said as I tossed the invitation in the garbage as soon as I got in the house, "Adolescent, swine!" Only I replaced "adolesecent" with "fundamentalist". Man, I hate religious fanatics telling me what to believe and how. There's just no room in this horror writer's life for religious fan...

     (Photo removed for copyright reasons.) Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons This hasn’t been the best Cinco de Mayo or Free Comic Book Day for me.   I was supposed to attend a mini comic con at Empire Comics Vault in Sacramento but had to cancel all because a stupid glitch in the ATM at the bank in Woodland of No Return held me back.   So I drove over to the comic book store in Davis, Bizarro World, which is a lot closer to where I live. But I wasn’t able to get there until late in the afternoon so when I asked the owner, a really nice guy, if he had any free comics left he said he didn’t. That was both a good thing and a bad thing. It was a good thing because it drew a lot of people to read comic books who don’t often read them.   It was a bad thing in that some people didn’t get free comic books and yours truly was one of them. Actually, I didn’t even care that much. If I cared that much about the free comics I wouldn’t have planned to take ...

Horror author and editor, Jeani Rector Photo Credit: Jeani Rector Sorry I missed you people last week. I was a little more busy than usual it being the Easter weekend and all that. Unfortunately I haven't gotten a chance to finish my cover for my short story collection. I'm just barely getting to the final concept sketch. I'll probably post that here by next week if I haven't finished the final product yet. I have parts  one and  two of an interview out at Examiner.com with a really neat author from my home area of Sacramento, California. Her name is Jeani Rector. She writes horror and is the editor of an online horror fiction magazine, The Horror Zine .  The zine is world known and contains stories by both new and established writers.  And it's all for free! Therefore no subscription required. I like to think of Ms. Rector as the "Elvira" of horror literature. The only difference between Jeani and Elvira other ...

Warning : Contains material that some may consider offensive and/or objectionable. Hi, everybody! I’m back again. Summer’s a time for fun in the sun (as the cliché goes), beaches, picnics and definitely releases of new blockbuster movies! But it can also be a time for old (and even new) cheap budget movies too. At least if you’re a B-rated movie nerd like me. Whether you like to watch them merely to laugh at or if you simply like obscure movies of all kinds, you may want to take a look at my new article at examiner.com on sci fi horror movies that are perfect for summer beach parties (or pool parties for those of you who live inland, like me) or even just to watch on your own or with a small group of friends. The list of movies I suggest in the article actually include both blockbusters and B-rateds, although all of them go back pre-2010. There just hasn’t seemed to be any new releases of great (A- or B-rated) sci fi-horror with summer or beach party themes out there lately. Although ...

Cinema Insomnia 10 Year Anniversary: TV horror host Mr. Lobo looks up Photo: Eric Lobo I apologize for being gone from the Fantastic Site for so long. It's been a very busy month for me. I'm trying to resume weekly posts. Many of you probably remember when horror movies that aired on TV were hosted by someone. Remember Elvira Mistress of the Dark's Movie Macabre . If you're a native Sacramentan like me you may be old enough to remember Bob Wilkin's show that screened both B-rated as well as classic horror and sci fi movies. These TV hosts I go for way more than Oprah, Montel Williams, and don't even get me started on Jerry Springer's televised freak show! These TV horror movie hosts were mostly popular in the 1970s and early '80s as were many others going as far back as the early 1950s. Well TV horror hosts are not an extinct species. Below are some links to today's generation of horror hosts, many who's shows you can see on the Web! http://ww...

Hello, All! For those of you who love B-rated sci fi movies (or any genre of B-rated flicks) or you hate them so much you just like to watch them as a means of masochism, you might be interested in this . This was made in the era of the premiere of the Star Wars Saga, the late '70s, and so is probably one of Star Wars 's knock-offs. Let me know how good (because you think it's so bad) or how bad (because you think it really is bad) it is and whether you loved it because it was so bad that it was good, or you absolutely hated it for the very reason that it was bad. Personally I haven't seen this clip myself, but I'm going to watch it tonight. I just happened to have encountered it on io9 while doing research for one of my Examiner.com articles (hopefully to be published by tomorrow evening). So it will be just as interesting for me to see how terrible it is as it will probably be for you. Oh, and you may want to read the article that presents this clip ; it's...