MAD RON'S PREVUES FROM HELL
Is Hack Once Gore!
And It’s Still The Best
Terror (Slash) Monster (Slash) Horror Movie
Trailer Feast Ever To “B” Scum Piled,
No Kongtest!
by
The Keeper of the Pit
Slayback when, 1987 tomb “B” hexact, a number of horror-movie-loving friends and fiends in Pennsylvania put together PREVUES FROM HELL, a VHS collection of cheapo creepo horror movie trailers for films that have since been praised, for their moist parts, as crass sicks of their unkind. Now some might think that, by Halloween 2010, even people not from PA. would have had by now their Philly of such THINGs. Ah, but they ‘haint! Are MAD RON veterans fright? I’ll let the verdict up tomb you, fear reader, on who’s having the host with the most ghosts Halloween party fun: grue, I mean, you watching MAD RON, or the guy & ghoul next door who bought or rented a terror trailer collection what witch haunt PREVUES FROM HELL. Trust the ole Keep on this, spawned in PA. or not, MAD’s gonna be the wicked Halloween winner in its categorey, no Lansdowne!
What’s that, you slay? Lansdowne, where’s that? Okay, let’s ghoul back a bit, hack in slime to 1987, when a gang of horror headcases got together the most revolting drive-in and waydown town theater trailers of terror you’d ever wanna RAW MEAT. Yeah, I know, the trailer for RAW MEAT ‘haint here, but its mate I saw it with once is, CANNIBAL GIRLS. CG’s trailer’s worth the trip to the DVD-dealer of your choice just to learn if one of the meat-loving mammalians therein hackually does say : “Eat, eat, eat, doesn’t anybody just cannibal anymore?”
One of the places around Philly horror fans always reekmember is the old Downington Diner. Said diner, where the ’58 version of THE BLOB was shot, is a mere spacestone’s throw away from Landsdowne, where that batch of late ‘80’s loonies …who like their horror meteor … decided to (a) put together their favor-et fear flicks’ coming attractions and “B”) shoot their own footage around a horde of undeaders, played by family and fiends, who just slop in to land down in front. In front of where? Why, the screen of the Lansdowne Theater, that just happens to be showing terror trailer after terror trailer, of corpse!
And don’t worry about the Poe zombs: a ghouled time was had by maul! Fangs to the celluoid creepies collecting cast of MAD movie misfits, who included:
“Mad Ron” Roccia his own self, who… how’s this for terror-typecasting? … plays “Mad Ron,” the projectionist who unspools and pond drools the PREVUES and does one HELLuva job. Plus, an old ghoulfriend who just watched PREVUE told me “the way the Madster needs to be kept a prisoner in his own workplace only shows he’s really most enchained thing.
Co-producing with Mad Ron was James F. Murray, Jr., who also co-wrote the pieces a’gore piece with Mad, Nick Pawlow, and director Jim Monaco. Murray likewise directed the 2010 DVD’s trailer footage, along with Danny Kaminski, another vet from the first MAD RON who no doubt happily obliged when either director shouted, “No, NO,
zomb in,
zomb in!”
PREVUES also creature features early make-up from Jay Kushwara of “Monsters” & “Millenium,” plus terror-ific but defrightfully CHEEP! make-up and effects from Jordu Schell, whose work was last seen on screen in James Cameron’s latest TITANIC effort, and if you ‘haint seen that one you should be both AVATARRED
and fettered. Schell’s other, later work, like his stint on and in PREVUES, is not to be MIST!
Also not to be missed is Murray’s design on the DVD disc itself. Oh, you knew that because you’re already eyeballing it?
Also of note: Fred Pomerleau, who suffered injuries as a zomb back in 1987. Many an extra in a horror film may have taken such a hit and tossed his undead un-Union card while yelling “That’s IT, I’ve had my shuffle of this!” Not Fred, who just took it like a man and got up for the necks shot.
And now that we’re talking taking it like a mannequin, let’s not forget Nick Pawlow, ventriliquist at lungs, and his ever-ugggh!-able partner in patter putrdity, ‘Happy’ Gobb Spurt, I SAID Goldsplatt.
Now, from other fine fear folks’ reekviews of MAD RON, perhaps one would think the Hapster should just take a nap, sir. Uh huh. The Hapster’s the star of the show, and does a better job hosting the Madster’s PREVUES than many an old t.v. horror host ever managed tomb mangle, that is, to manage. Anybody thinks Hap doesn’t belong here should take notice that Hap’s an old pro at these THINGs. Yeah, yeah, you may thinkgk he’s just a friggin’ dummy, but I’ll have you know he’s been around so long he worked in flicks directed by Dead Wood, Jr.!
And that was when he was only age tree!
I demean, seriously, the world’s seen some reely and ghoully horror-bull horror movie hosts. Out here in my part of the Dead Woods there was one who rather less than affectionately was dubbed by many of his watchers “Unca Turd.” Ah, butt such are memories that can’t be wiped out.
Then there’s MAD RON’s competitors in the ole vid horror collection market. Oh sure there’s ghouled ones, and plenty of them. Anything by Zacherley takes me back, there’s nobody can pretend a cauliflower painted green is really a dang brain better. Anyone out there who doesn’t think so, let’s me and grue stalk!
Or, for a Halloween party stalk on the mild side, there’s always GRAMPA’S SCARY SILLIES, if your party happens to be one where ya don’t wanna get the widdle kids all Munstered up!
My vote? The bonely
thing even gets close to MAD RON … not that getting close to the Madster looks from the DVD to be something I’d reekcommend … is THE BEST OF SEX & VIOLENCE, especially as I caught it at a dusk to dawn creature feature-rama at a loco drive-in as SCREAMS OF FLESH & BLOOD, its title held in front’a the camera as written in black Magic Marker. Ah yes, but F&B’s makers had the old now’s the time for slime spirit … and besides, what’s not to love w/ a monster mania movie whose title’s printed on Kongstruction paper?
So I’ve stated my case, and I haunt maple-ing anyone’s leg when I dummy up fright next to Happy and say it: when it scums tomb horror movie trailers gore-anteed to clear the room of folks at your 2010 Halloween party who’d sooner be watchin’ Lawrence Welk reek-runs, you’ve done them way, slay better. Meantime, it’s
your party watching MAD RON that will be better, wetter and deep redder. That party next door? That will be the one can’t get any
deader!
And besides, any mold thing beats a polka in the eye with a stick.
Oh, and before I begin a trailer by trailer overgrue-view of MAD RON? I just want ya to know that I too don’t know whether that stuff ooozing outta Mad’s mouth is a problem dental or mental. Who scares? Once you’ve watched PREVUES FROM HELL you’ll agree: MAD RON drools!
So, froth witch, I shall attempt to ghoul where no man’s gone before. Not any man with half a cauliflower brain, any hoodoo.
Yup, that’s fright. I’m about to name each & ev’ry PREVUE Kongtained in MAD RON’S, pus give each a reekview of sordids. In chronologic-kill ordure, no retch! So, don’t say ya weren’t gore-warned:
As we begin, just pretend you’re a zomb haunt got no home. You and a few Eww-yuck!-y lucky fiends are about to shamble on into the Lansdowne, PA. Theatre, where Mad Ron, projectionist & spooler who’s a drooler, is about to inflict upon them some of the scary best fright flick trailers the world has ever screamed to. But watch out, zombs, the way he’s foaming at the mouth, Mad Ron just might head, I SAID dead yer way in a sudden rabid for freedom!
Feel free as you’re pretending to stop at the Kongcession stand. Once you see what witches offered, you’ll be glad you’re deceased. Oh, sorry, you
like rot buttered popcorn!
Are we all deady? Awe fright, that’s the spirit. Way tomb ghoul! And a way we monster a-go-go, rabies and germs:
1) We “B”gin with the trailer to the I DRINK YOUR BLOOD/I EAT YOUR SKIN trailer. Wadda double bill that was, complete with Lynn Lowery in one of her first roles to give ya the SHIVERS! Whoa, izzat rats on a stick those guys and ghouls are about to roast? I mean, sheesh, even the zombs Lansdowne in front know THAT’s gotta be hard on the ole rodentures!
2) Hexed supper, I mean, next up is THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, wherein our heroine Marilyn Burns up the silver scream. No wonder, because she might not, like the TCM movie poster featured in the DVD’s extras gallery says, survive. Let alone have any of her vittles organs leftovers. No word yet if Tobe Hooper intends to use Mad Ron in another version of THE DROOLBOX MURDERS.
3) Next sup we got DERANGED, AIP’s version of the notorious murder case that inspired PSYCHO just when its writer needed it to break a Bloch. This one the Ed Gein terror type is played by the great Roberts Blossom, who played the guy who sold the kid the car in CHRISTINE. You don’t really wanna see what this feller’s got out in the barn. One trip out there w/ Blossom and any poor visitor of a gal won’t be in THAT scene no mow, no matter how she may look tied to a chair wearing white bra and panties. Although why a chair was wearing a bra and panties I’ll never nude.
4) our next little number is 3 ON A MEATHOOK, and more murderous out in the barn hayjinx. This one I caught once w/ BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD, and that’s no bull. I dare ya to sit through this and not wonder -- if the psicko in this had ever met Ed, would they have Gein out to meat hookers?
5) Next supper there’s Ted V. Mikels’ THE CORPSE GRINDERS, scare-in the trailer seems to imply we’ll get to see a woman struggling on a bed get eaten by a pussy. Honest, I’m not feline! Anyslay, like the PREVUE says, this one proves its own come-on: “No money, no meat!” And this was years of fears before a certain MOTEL owner went “Meat’s meat & a man’s gotta EAT,” the HELL.
6) Don’tcha just love trailers where the spiel claims the pic’s so vile, so violent, so depraved-a-mondo that the stuff it Kongtains haunt even fit to be seen? Well, that’s UNDERTAKER & HIS PALS all under, lotsa blank screen. This trick was often used, and was supposed to work wonders whether a pic had a bigger budget than UNDERTAKER, or rot. Research on such matters must have proven such an approach to advertising seldom enbalmed...
7) LOVE ME DEADLY may seem like it’s a title Mike Hammer left Spillane around. Nope. Voice-over claims LMD “begins where THE EXORCIST left off.” Uh, don’t tell any old body, but LMD’s Mary Wilcox is more the type who
creates leftovers. Not to say LMD’s a turkey by any demeans. When I caught this PREVUE at the late, lamented Mu-Way D-I, parked patrons suddenly fled for the snack bar during the bit where a guy’s strapped to a table as he’s hoverered over by females baring cutlery as he screams "Don't cut me, don’t cut me!” Only thing, it was the
males who hightailed it. Not that it helped ‘em. I’ve heard that when they came back to their vehicles their dates had looks on their faces witch were quite deter-men-ed.
Oh, and I wouldn’t forget Mary Wilcox in this, not with her wearing headgear that woulda given any early 70’s guy a hat on.
Still, won’t be me who tells ya what the gals hoodoo or don’t with a ghouled stiff he. And guys, DON’T see this trailer alone witch your date, unless you maybe
enjoy her saying “’Mere baby and lemme necro-feel ya!”
Before I forget to men-shun it, “B” sure to check out the poster to this in the extras gallery. I’ve been a dealer in horror & sleaze movie posters for almost 30 years of fears and leers and never before saw any paper on LMD, period. Yeah, yeah, I know, you thought it was LMD’s cut-rate cuties had all the hang-ups.
Before we get to #8, PREVUES features a com-eeccch! interlude where Happy gives ever-suffering Nick Pawlow the finger. Hope ya digit!
Twitch leads into one of the best horror titles of all slime, Alan Ormsby’s CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS. Terror-ific advice, especially if they wanna get a ghouled grade on their reekport cards!
# 9) warns us all: THE MANIACS ARE LOOSE, as filmed in “hallucinogenic hypno-vision.” And man, is watching this ever worth the trip! I saw this one with my buds in a real theatre, and don’t worry, it didn’t effect us one bite. Unless, of course, somebody finally finds the body of that principal we Haighted and up & Ash buried.
10) belongs to CANNIBAL GIRLS, wherein seated or parked patrons were warned by a bell whenever a scene too intense might or might naughty appear. Me and my backseat beauty down at the Mu-Way? Why, we simply Pavloved it!
11)’s TORSO, a slasher flick from before things were called slasher flicks and we were deader off. Producer Carlo Ponti had seen better days himself, but at least this movie didn’t inspire him to remake DR. ZHIVAGHOUL. Wait a minute, I think I hear one zomb down in the Lansdowne theater shouting “Hey baby, pass der neck!”
12) Ya want a mother great combo of titles for the drive-in masses? Howl abat I DISMEMBER MAMA w/ THE BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE? Okay, maybe I disremember MAMA because it had me and the luvva my wife dozen, I SAID dozin’ at the Mu-Way over one spooktacular Mother’s Day weekend. Yeah, ya got that fright, I DISMEMBER MAMA played for Mother’s Day. Combo was a-dead of its slime, though. And so it shall stay until, like my beast fiend always sez, "someone does a movie called EASTER and the poster sez ‘The Day HE Returned.'"
BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE, though, is one wild & wooly piece of Euro-horror, although to this day I don’t know why, hex-actly, the vampirette is found on the sunbrightbeach completely buried ‘cept for the breathing tube of her snorkel. I could easier understand if she’d been discovered buried under paved highway asphalt, where she’d been lying for carpath eons!
And wait till you see the footage of some of the folks leaving a theater showing this double bill! It’ll cack-kill ya!
13) For a movie w/ a title like THE GHASTLY ONES the trailer’s not much when it should gut munch. I mean, you do this sordid movie your material better deliver with heaps of gory over a budget as low it gets. Which brings us to the Godfather of Gore himself, Mr. H. G. … for Heap Gorey! … Lewis, with a little number that in its day was
deemed unfit
4 teens.) Ah bletch, THE WIZARD OF GORE, one of the best H.G. Lewis pix anyone’s ever bandsaw! Why, Whiz Of Gore didn’t even need a trailer, it coulda made tons of yucks, I mean, buck$ by sword of mouth alone! And don’t chew worry ‘bout any impressionable children who saw WOR when it was brand grue. I can still hear a theater-ful of us kids yelling “FAKE!” -- like kids naturally do when one gal on screen’s getting stretched on a rack while she’s having a laughin’, coffin fit.
Not that this ever went to the real H. G.’s head, although the Wiz upon the screen wound up a real basket case. Necks up...
#15, no wait, downstairs at the Lansdowne the zombs are, oh no, eating their dates! Oh well, go fig-ure. Necks up, headturningly slow, is Juliet Mills in BEYOND THE DOOR, an EXORCIST rip some folks ate up, others Merrin hated.
16) is early Dario Argento w/ DEEP RED. Those of you who may want Happy to stay quiet awhile should just enjoy and dummy up. Especially if you appreciate killer dolls of the dead wood type. Me? Man, Uh can’t.
17) is SISTERS, one of Brian DePalma’s first. As you can no doubt tell from the trailer, Margot Kidder in this is killer, and gives what could be her most twinning performance.
18) More Euro-horror with THE DEVIL’S NIGHTMARE. I scream to dismember this one from the backseat at the Mu-Way D-I, but my mamm, I SAID memory’s gone totally Erika Blanc.
19) Not so w/ HOUSE OF EXORCISM, the first Mario Bava movie herein and one w/ like a jillion American titles. Still, it has surprises gah!-gore, often fright when ya may think this Telly Savalas flick’s a pizza lolly-poop.
20) Ah, there’s nothing like hearing the voice of old New World’s trailer announcer intoning lines like those ‘bout Roger Corman’s/Mel Welles’ LADY FRANKENSTEIN: “Only the monster she creates can satisfy her strange desires.” Naughty to men shun “Who is this irresistable creature who has an insatiable love for the dead?” Why, who butt Sarah Bay of THE DEVIL’S WEDDING NIGHT, another great 70’s Euro-trash and slasher? See! LADY F. match wits with Joseph Cotten, who does the best he KANE. And don’t forget to See! Mickey Hargitay as Lady F.’s monster, who is, to be brutally Frank, Mam’ made.
And guys won’t forget Lady F. herself, the type of mad scientistessa any feller would love to love on her and “Oh, Bay!”
21) Yep, film femme of the 40’s Veronica hackually starred in FLESH FEAST, a pic I caught at a drive-in with A SEVERED HEAD starring Roddy McDowall.You can guess the one I Laked most, although neither title was a big Hitler. And never forget the mad doctoress Lake’s immortal words: “And this (SPLATT!) is for democracy!” Or somethin’ quite
Lake it, I maggot a million of ‘em.
22 & 23) TALES FROM THE CRYPT and its creepy and comic from the comics follow-up, VAULT OF HORROR. Missed these together at a drive-in once and Ah’m-ick-icussin’ about it yet. Man, talk about two terrorfests of horror that ghoul down E.C.
25) What we have fear is HORROR OF THE ZOMBIES. Forget the Independent/International title, and sink, I SAID think Blind Dead on a boat. That alone should be enough for anyone to run to the PREVUES FROM HELL DVD in streams.
26) is BLOODEATERS. Never saw the movie, but the trailer’s so quick even the zombs out in the lobby had no time to yell at the announcer “Hey, schmuck, don’tcha
drink that stuff instead eat it?” Then again, there’s no smelling what they were hemogobblin’. Or if there’s an unused clip of Happy yelling back at ‘em, “Yeah, YOU eat it.”
27) Honest, there’s never been, “B”gore or since, a triple horror-rama bill like ORGY OF THE LIVING DEAD. HELL, the poster in the extras gallery’s worth the co$t a’bone! Ghouldies included in this trailer: FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD, REVENGE OF THE LIVING DEAD and Mario Bava’s CURSE OF THE LIVING DEAD. Of curse, Bava’s ghost story here is the beast of ‘em Steele.
Not to Kongplain, but your jumbled narrator saw this triple chill bill at a loco drive-in and never hoodone
did get his as promised in the trailer straight jacket, OR the, should he have perished from watching this terrible trio, his free interror-ment. And here I am, giving it grave reviews.
# 28 may be the prime slime for all of us to catch a few DIABOLICAL DR. Z’s. Especially for those of us who caught any of this Jess Franco mad doctor series back in the 60’s, when we learned to either hate Orloff ‘em.
Should give us all time to rustle up some drive-in-style food fare & after that have a Flavo’s shrimp roll in the hay, roll in the hay like when we were young, letch be Frankie! So, like they say in all those EXORCIST imitations, don’t chew worry nun! A coupla drive-in menu dinners and I’ll “B” hack, counting up to MAD RON’s prevue #47, Texas Schooner than grue stink…
