Look Up "So Bad It's Good" in the Dictionary...

Today, because there's not much going on, and also because I feel like it, we celebrate the 36th anniversary of one of the crowned jewels of schlock cinema--The Thing with Two Heads.

That's right, it was on this day back in 1972 that American International Pictures (AIP) released this anti-classic into theaters. Starring Ray Milland--an Oscar-winner fallen on some seriously hard times--and L.A. Ram-turned-actor Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier, it's the touching tale of a wealthy ailing racist who has his head transplanted onto the body of a black death row inmate. Think The Defiant Ones meets Re-Animator.

Both catastrophically awful and incredibly hysterical at the same time, The Thing with Two Heads was directed by Lee Frost, who incidentally was also the writer/director of the '60s weird softcore classic Mondo Bizarro (he also worked as a key grip on Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, which I couldn't have made up if I tried.) Furthermore, I bet you didn't know this was also makeup wizard Rick Baker's first movie.

Tried-and-true B-movie titan AIP distributed the flick, and it was just part of the company's summer of '72 lineup, which also included Blacula, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Hammer Films' Blood from the Mummy's Tomb and Boxcar Bertha, the debut film of Martin Scorsese. Now, I wasn't even born yet, but anyone who tells you that those weren't the days is a fool.




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I'd like to briefly go from the ridiculous to the sublime (and off-topic, if you'll forgive me), to mark the sad passing of Jo Stafford, one of the last remaining superstar vocalists of the golden age of popular song.

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Thanks to Fans, The Mummy Special Edition Is a Reality

Universal wasn't going to release a special edition DVD set of The Mummy. That's right, the red-headed stepchild of the Universal Monsters canon was deemed unworthy of the double-disc treatment recently afforded both Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster. That is, until a vocal outcry from monster kids far and wide changed the studio's collective mind.

Upon hearing that Universal wasn't confident in the demand for a deluxe treatment of the 1932 classic, lovers of the film banded together via publications like Scary Monsters Magazine and websites like the Classic Horror Film Board to let the company know that they would indeed support said release. And so, the decision was made to put out The Mummy Special Edition as part of the Universal Legacy Series, and today was the day it finally hit stores.

Granted, this isn't the first DVD release of the movie, but there's plenty of new stuff to keep Mummy-heads very happy, including a bunch of new docs highlighted by a special look at makeup wizard Jack Pierce. There's also a brand-new commentary track that includes one of Pierce's greatest admirers and followers, Rick Baker.

Congrats to the fans who made this possible. You can now officially pat yourselves on the back!

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Del Toro Wolf Man Pix Hit the Web

Since first appearing at EW.com yesterday, these two images of Benicio Del Toro as Wolf Man Larry Talbot in the upcoming remake have been making the rounds on a bunch of sites, but I couldn't resist the urge to put in my two cents.

To put it simply, Rick Baker is a god among men. I knew he was a major fan of the work of Universal makeup master Jack Pierce, but even I couldn't have dared to dream of such an impressive homage to Pierce's work on Lon Chaney Jr. in the 1941 original. It's refreshing to see they resisted the urge to go CGI. It's also nice to see they're sticking with the more humanoid werewolf variety, rather than the lupine version made popular (by Baker himself, ironically) in An American Werewolf in London. This is good stuff. Consider me officially re-excited for this picture, now 11 months away.

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Del Toro and Baker Wolfing Around

While the remake of The Wolf Man might currently be mired in writers' strike limbo, I thought I would lighten things up a bit with this recent shot I found on Werewolf-Movies.com of Benicio "Larry Talbot" Del Toro hamming it up with makeup effects wizard Rick Baker. Renowned for his benchmark work on another lyncanthropic materpiece, An American Werewolf in London:

Baker will be working on The Wolf Man as well (assuming it's still happening.) Has to be a dream come true for a lifelong Universal fan like Baker. But hell, by the looks of Del Toro, it seems like they might not even need him!

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