What's Goin' On? or Where on Earth is Simon Wright?

Howdy strangers!

As is no doubt self-evident from the lack of posts since July(!), I've been slacking in epic fashion during the summer months. No reason really, apart from the overriding compulsion to watch movie after movie after movie (and then not write about it!).

I'll be tied up with commitments relating to the real world this month and over Halloween, so this year's Hootenanny will be a much more subdued affair than the last two... plus, I'm gonna let this spill over into November so I can enjoy some belated Halloween viewing and blogging shenanigans.

Coming soon in that regard, I'll be talking about an impromptu theme weekend I've just had, featuring the likes of Vincent Price, Cameron Mitchell and a posthumous contribution from Lucio Fulci. I'll say no more for now though...

Also in the none too distant, I'll be returning to my 1984 retrospective with an extended piece that'll hopefully make up for the fact I've been neglecting my birth year blog wise as of late. To celebrate my 30th birthday at the beginning of this month I watched 30 films from '84 over 8 days and I plan to write it up and give y'all a whistle stop tour of where I went on my filmic travels.

And last but not least, I want to mention a print project I was involved in which should hopefully be of interest to readers of this blog...

Richard Schmidt of Doomed Moviethon, Cinema Somnambulist and Hello! This is the Doomed Show was kind enough to ask me to contribute to the second issue of his Euro-horror/giallo 'zine Fang of Joy and of course I jumped at the chance. 

You can still get hold of issue one (from Goblinhaus) which is also well worth a look but this second is a serious step up in terms of the amount of content it has and also production value. Kudos are especially due here to Richard's wife LeEtta (check out more of her artwork here and she also has a piece in the 'zine) who designed the amazing cover, which should speak directly to the hearts of any horror fans out there.

Featuring some great pieces from the likes of Jeffrey Canino, Jose Cruz, Brad and Elizabeth Hogue, Scott MacDonald, ship's captain Richard and many more fine folks, this is a must read for fans of Euro horror and the giallo. 

I won't give it all away but it includes two interviews with noted horror filmmakers, insightful essays on Scooby-Doo Gialli and the Spawn of Romero, reviews aplenty and a checklist of essential gialli. 

I had several ideas fighting it out for what I wanted to cover but in the end I went for a giallo double bill... and more specifically I chose a pair of films one could show someone as Giallo 101, as it were... the sublimely entertaining, twisted slasher/giallo hybrid Pieces and the proto-slaser-esque Sergio Martino classic Torso. It occurs to me now that another good giallo crash course would be Case of the Bloody Iris (which is Martino-esque) and Umberto Lenzi's Eyeball (which has a connection to Torso in the form of John Richardson)... might have to do that one day as a companion piece to my contribution to this wonderful 'zine. 

Thanks again to Richard for asking me to contribute, it really is an honour to be between the same pages as so many excellent writers/enthusiastic horror fans. 

Here's a link for anyone interested in ordering themselves a copy or three.

And Jeffrey made an awesome trailer for his Scooby-Doo Gialli essay which you can check out here.