Mocata's Den of Horror

Sad news recently, as Killjoy (real name, Frank Pucci), main man of early death metal band Necrophagia, died.  I have been a fan of Necrophagia for years, leading me to also enjoy other bands Killjoy participated in: Wurdulak, The Ravenous, Cabal, Enoch, Haxxan, and others. I am very happy that I had the opportunity to see him with Necrophagia and also got to meet him.  He was quite friendly and Necrophagia put on a great show.  I remember being at the front of the crowd right in front of Killjoy and singing (or growling, I suppose would be more appropriate) parts of the song when Killjoy held the microphone out to me and the guy next to me on multiple occasions (especially during the song "Cannibal Holocaust").  The headliner on that tour was actually 1349, but I was there to see Necrophagia and Necrophagia did not disappoint. Killjoy performing with Necrophagia, 2015 I remember being at the Housecore Horror Festival a few years back and wearing a Necropha...

Back in January of this year, Dallas Mayr, also known as Jack Ketchum, died.  He was not the most well-known author,  but where his name was known (primarily among horror fans), his reputation was that of a writer who performed literary assaults on his readers' senses and emotions.  He gave the world two of the most legendary, brutal horror novels of the 20th century: Off Season and The Girl Next Door . Off Season was his first novel and despite the fact that the publisher, Ballantine, had required numerous cuts from Mayr to tone down the dark, gruesome, and relentlessly bleak feel of the book, it was a lean, mean, and utterly vicious read.  Not even reaching the 200-page mark, the novel left no room for the literary self-indulgence that seems to plague many novels today, stretching what should be a 250-page story into a bloated 500-page one.  Of course, many years later, Dallas was able to republish the novel in a form more to his liking, known as the Unexp...

The deranged folks at Severin are at it again.  This time we are talking about Joe D'Amato's morbid classic, Buio Omega, more commonly known in English as Beyond the Darkness or the name I first saw it under on VHS many, many years ago: Buried Alive .   If you have not seen this film, it is a nasty one.  I think at least part of the film's intent was to make its audience sick.  It is gruesome and rather unpleasant in many places, featuring fairly lengthy sequences involving the disposal of a body, the embalming and dressing of another body, plus some good old gory violence.  Add in a classic Goblin score and you have yet another reason that Italian cinema was so wonderful. I got my copy directly from Severin in the Necro Bundle, which features the Blu-Ray with a CD of Goblin's score, along with a reproduction of the theatrical poster Aquarius Releasing made for its release as Buried Alive , a t-shirt, an air freshener, and a pin.  It is a rather n...

If you grew up in the '80s as I did, Freddy Krueger is bound to be as recognizable to you as the Trix rabbit, or, more appropriately, Count Chocula.  Most people automatically think of Freddy's glove and his wisecracks, but there was more to the A Nightmare on Elm Street movies.  One major aspect that is memorable, although still somewhat overlooked, is the music.  The scores for these movies were excellent (some more than others, of course).  Varèse Sarabande put together a beautiful package for those of us who love the music as well as the movies. This is a collection of the scores for each movie, from Wes Craven's classic original film to the misguided Freddy Vs. Jason .  Each CD includes the original soundtrack album, then additional material not included on those original releases.  There is a whole hell of a lot of music included in this box, with the CDs ranging from about 55 minutes to around 75. Varèse Sarabande really did a wonderful job with ...

2017 has been quite a year for death metal, particularly older death metal bands.  To date, this year has seen new releases from Immolation, Incantation, Obituary, Broken Hope, Origin, Suffocation, and others, with upcoming releases from Cannibal Corpse and Morbid Angel.  And these haven't just been new releases, but good ones, too.  Time will tell for the Cannibal Corpse and Morbid Angel releases, as those are due out in November and December, respectively. One of the most recent of this batch of death metal is the newest release from one of my favorite death/grind bands, Exhumed, entitled Death Revenge. Death Revenge LP with lyric sheet/poster and Death Revenge CD    Exhumed has been around for quite a long time at this point, starting its career with demos and multiple split releases before moving into full-length releases with the now-classic Gore Metal in 1998.  This was followed up by the superb Slaughtercult, then the more mature and melod...

It has now been a decade since the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double feature, Grindhouse , hit theaters.  Despite the fact that it did not perform as well as expected at the box office, I still believe, to this day, that this was one of the best movie-going experiences in my lifetime.  For me, personally, most movies don't seem to warrant going to the theater these days.  I think it is a combination of modern home viewing technology and the movies that are made today.  There are plenty of good movies that come out today, but they don't grab my attention quite the way movies used to and are on DVD and Blu-Ray just a few short months later, playing theaters for just a few brief weeks, so there is only a small window to go see them in the theaters now. With Grindhouse , it was different.  This was something I waited for and looked forward to for some time before the release.  It was one that I knew would be best to see in the theater.  This ...

Okay, so this isn't exactly horror, but it certainly has an old exploitation cinema appeal to it, which I love.  I am talking about the 1989 film adaptation of the Marvel Comics character, The Punisher, featuring Dolph Lundgren in the title role.  This movie was made by New World Pictures in Australia, although it still takes place in the U.S.  Due to the financial situation with the studio at the time, it was not released theatrically in the U.S. (although it was in much of the rest of the world), but instead was released straight-to-video in 1991 or so. I remember reading some pretty negative reactions to this movie in the letters section of some Punisher comics back in those days, which I never really understood.  Sure, it isn't exactly super faithful to the source material, but I think the basic idea is still intact and let's be honest, having Castle running around in the same outfit he wears in the comics would have looked really kooky, although the fact that ...