October Horrors 2024: Intro.

Ok, several days late and several dollars short this year, but I mean… I couldn’t just let this blog fade away into the digital void with a snarky hatchet job on a Roger Corman film at the top of the page, could I..? 

Despite all manner of time / life related pressures, I’m still doing my damnedest to meet the now traditional “one horror movie a day” challenge this year, and have been posting notes on my viewing over at the Rock!ShockPop! forums, so… it would seem churlish of me not to work ‘em up into posts for this blog at the same time really, wouldn’t it? In fact, it’s the least I owe any kind and patient readers who are still hanging on in there.

More-so than ever, the usual October disclaimers will apply here: these bits of writing are basically just slightly tidied up versions of initial notes I scribbled down immediately after watching the film; they have no particular structure, make no particular point, probably do nothing to upset the established critical consensus regarding any particular movie, and are only researched / fact-checked in the most hap-hazard of fashions. But, they’re something - and after nearly three months of nothing, why not? 

As I’m a bit behind, I’ll try to put the first few post up within the next 12 hours, and we’ll go from there…

The Other Breakfast in the Ruins & other updates.

So, first of all, I owe loyal/remaining readers an apology for yet another lapse in posting. I had been looking forward to regaining a bit of free time to devote to this-sort-of-thing during March and April, but, once again, the responsibilities and nasty surprises of grown up life have contrived to do a number on me. We’ll see how things go moving forward, but for now at least I’ve finally got a few new posts together to keep things ticking over through May.

Meanwhile though, imagine my surprise when I saw an update on Andrew Nette’s Pulp Curry blog last month, stating that he’d made an appearance on The Breakfast in the Ruins Podcast (talking about New English Library biker paperbacks, no less).

After momentarily feeling a bit dizzy and contemplating the possibility of there being some (appropriately Moorcockian) multiverse-blurring type shenanigans going on, I eventually reached the more prosaic conclusion that The Breakfast in the Ruins Podcast has been operating out of Bradford since 2019, is hosted by Andrew Stimpson, and covers a wide variety of pop cultural topics spinning off from the work of Michael Moorcock.

I’ve been sampling some episodes over the past few weeks, and it’s a great listen, which I’m sure readers of this blog would enjoy.

I’m very happy to have discovered the podcast, and I hope that Andrew and his collaborators won’t bear a grudge against me for sitting on the blogger, gmail and mixcloud IDs they could otherwise have claimed. (Well, I suppose they got the coveted .com, so that’s cool.)

Anyway - hopefully our shared belief that Breakfast in the Ruins is a great name for a thing on the internet will help overcome such petty differences and bring us together, fingers crossed.

In other podcast-related news, I was also overjoyed last month to note the appearance of a new episode of one of my all-time favourites, El Diabolik’s World of Psychotronic Soundtracks - their first in several years.

I’ll save the hyperbole, and instead merely state that I find the show (and it is more in the spirit of a broadcast radio show than what we’d usually think of as a ‘podcast’, really) entertaining, educational and strangely relaxing, and it is great to see them back in action.

There are few greater pleasures in my life than cueing up a few episodes from their archive to accompany a long walk in the countryside, and I’m confident that anyone with a passing interest in film and library music and associated esoteric mysteries of ‘60s/’70s pop culture will find the experience similarly fulfilling.

Right - that’s all for now. Proper content on the way very soon.

Breakfast in the Ruins: Resurrection.

 

 * click *

Hello? Hello…?

Is there anybody out there..?

So, I just thought I’d give a quick heads-up to any long-time readers, old friends or other foolhardy individuals who have seen fit to keep this blog on their feeds / favourites lists through these dark months of silence, letting you know that, after a very stressful year, I’m gradually returning to a more normal pace of life. Which means, amongst other things, that I’ve recently found some time to start writing about movies and books again, and I’ve really been enjoying it too.

In fact, I’m genuinely thrilled that, in a few days, it will be October, bringing with it the annual challenge of trying to watch / read / write about something horror-related every single day leading up to Halloween.

And what’s more, I’m ready for it this time -- I’ve been preparing. After months of neglecting this blog, I now suddenly have multiple posts pretty much ready to go, just waiting to be spread out nicely across the first week or two of the month, whilst I (hopefully) work on stuff to fill the second half.

So confident am I in fact that I’m going to start early; our first Horror Express review will be in-coming tomorrow, and I’ll try to keep things ticking over after few days thereafter.

Dark gods willing, I may even be able to return to an on-going schedule of regular posting thereafter, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. So for now - welcome back, and my humble thanks for sticking around. The Sabbath beckons…

Update / Apologies.

Basically I thought I’d better just pop my head ‘round the door to offer my apologies to regular readers for letting this blog go to seed over the past few months.

With tedious predictability, the explanation for this lengthy break in posting is simply that, for various reasons, day-to-day life & grown up responsibilities have kept me extremely busy so far this year, leaving zero time for writing or creative pursuits.

Sadly, this state of affairs seems likely to continue for at least a few more months, but I have reached a point where I’m at least trying to claw back some spare time for myself. There are many things which I’m itching to write about, and several plans for exciting(?) new projects bubbling around in my brain waiting for a chance to be realised, so, uh… no promises, but watch this space. There’s life in this barren outpost yet.

Delayed Express.

 Well, I hope everybody had a good Halloween weekend. I’m painfully aware that I rather flunked by responsibilities this October, vis-à-vis keeping a steady stream of relatively brief ‘Horror Express’ movie reviews coming, but the good news is, I did at least manage to watch a lot of horror movies, and furthermore I took the time to scribble down some quick notes on each of them.

So, as perverse as it may seem to spend November enthusing about horror films, it would surely be foolish of me not to begin working some of those notes up into full reviews and posting them up here over the next month or so. So, that’s what I intend to do. And I’m just letting you know in advance in case you thought I’d gone crazy or forgot to turn over the page on my calendar or something. That is all. Oh, and, thanks as always for reading of course. It’s appreciated.

Horror Non-Express Disclaimer / Urgent Hammer Vampire Update.

As you will have noted, today is the 1st of October - the date upon which, for the past few years at least, this blog has launched an annual posting marathon, providing some suitably horror-centric new content every few days in anticipation of the All Hallows bacchanal at the end of the month.

Unfortunately however, the same real life chores and responsibilities which have slowed down the frequency of my posting during the summer look set to only increase over the next month or so, meaning that dedicating additional time to writing/blogging is simply not going to be possible.

Never fear though -- I’ll get some good spooky stuff up here, that’s for sure. I’m just unable to make any guarantees right now re: quantity or frequency.

More urgently however, long-time readers will recall that, back in 2019, apparently high on the fumes of Autumnal horror delirium, I celebrated Halloween by posting a run-down of all of Hammer’s vampire films, ranked according to quality.

Well, since publishing these important conclusions, I am duty-bound to report that I have revisited ‘Dracula: Prince of Darkness’ for the first time in a number of years, and now believe that I significantly undervalued it. Though the film’s flaws (stupid, back-of-a-napkin story, abysmal anticlimactic ending, failure to give Christopher Lee much to do) remain impossible to ignore, in most other respects (direction, acting, music), it is actually very good, with Terrence Fisher’s guiding hand lending a sense of dread solemnity to proceedings which positively reeks of “quintessential Hammer”.

Looking back on my list therefore, I’d probably now zip it straight up to, say, #8, between ‘Satanic Rites..’ and ‘..A.D. 1972’.

Meanwhile, I also watched ‘The Vampire Lovers’ again recently, and, although I still enjoyed it, in no way does it deserve to sit at #6 on the list.

Despite its charms (not all of them Ingrid Pitt-shaped), it now strikes me as a rather dreary, moth-eaten kind of affair. Visuals and production design aren’t remotely up to the level of those seen in Hammer’s earlier films, whilst its approach to sex and nudity - as per so much British sexploitation - has a furtive, slightly camp / self-conscious feel to it which makes it seem far sleazier than the relatively mild on-screen content (all crammed into one reel I note, so that the offending ‘naughty bits’ could be easily yanked out when needed) really demands.

I still find myself perversely amused by how outrageously misogynistic the whole affair is (see my original write-up), but… in short, not half as good as I remembered. In fact, I think I’d now boot it all the way down to #10, just narrowly beating ‘..Risen From The Grave’.

So, I’m glad to get all that off my heaving bosom. Please adjust your wall-charts accordingly.

Now, roll on whatever I manage to knock out for October, and tune in in 2023 for my long awaited reappraisal of ‘Captain Kronos’!

Just a Quick Note...

...to let you know that I had been planning to share a few more paperback scans with you over the next few weeks, to cover the time I'll be out of the country. Unfortunately however, a few days before I went on my holidays, my trusty old laptop pretty much packed in, severely limiting my ability to carry out computer-related tasks.

Researching, buying and setting up a replacement will have to wait until I get back in June, and could prove an ardous process, given my fervently held belief that home computing technology reached its peak in about 2006. Actually, my old printer/scanner is on it's last legs too, so I should probably get a new one of those whilst I'm at it, so.... what I'm trying to say is, there could be delays. My apologies in advance. Blame the devil-gods of Built-in Obselescence.

Obligatory ‘Apologies’ Post.

Big Tambo selects his summer reading.

So, I just thought I’d drop a quick line to regular readers to apologise for the complete collapse of my aspirational once-a-week posting regime over the summer.

Rest assured, there has been no particular reason for this. Over the past five years, I’ve managed to keep this blog ticking over nicely in the face of a number of momentous, challenging and potentially disruptive life changes, only to find things stalling over the past few months due to… nothing whatsoever really. I’ve just been a bit, y’know, busy with this and that. Nothing exciting. I haven’t even moved house, as the delightful pic above implies – we just had to move some book shelves for a couple of days to do some work on the windows.

Admittedly, I probably haven’t helped matters by embarking on a number of rambling, time-consuming multi-film reviews (1, 2) whilst neglecting to spend any time sweating over the scanner doing some quick paperback posts to fill up the space in-between. And, when I have done some book posts recently, I’ve found myself actually reading and writing about the damn things (1, 2), which of course just slows things down even further.

Well, so it goes. Just thought I’d reassure you that this blog is still alive and kicking, anyway. My enthusiasm for writing about movies and books remains undiminished, and, despite the increasingly post-apocalyptic state of the weblog landscape, this is the format in which I most enjoy doing it (which is not to say I’d turn my nose up at an offer to, say, do a book or something, BUT HEY). In fact, if the "blogosphere" does go full-on survivalist, I’m good at digging my heels in, so I’m all for it. I’m sure we must have the interweb equivalent of a stream and a potato patch around here somewhere, so praise the lord and pass the ammunition.

On a more immediate level meanwhile, I’m already gearing up for a second year of no nonsense October horror reviews leading up to Halloween, aiming for a post every two days through the month. I had great fun with this last year, so hope I’ll be able to keep up the pace. So, uh, apologies again for the lack of activity here recently, and WATCH THIS SPACE, etc.

Sorry.

As regular readers may have noted, I have not posted any new content here for over one month. I'm sorry about that. The reasons are, unfortunately, simple: my plans for posts over the festive period were lost in a tide of excess busy-ness, and January has similarly found me experiencing a chronic lack of any spare time whatsoever.

Rest assured though, I have many, many ideas brewing for things I would like to bring to Breakfast In The Ruins in 2017, so please hang on in there. Regular service will be resuming soon.

The screengrab above is taken from 'Los Monstruos del Terror' (aka 'Assignment: Terror' aka 'Dracula vs. Frankenstein' / Tulio Demicheli, 1970).

Content Warning!

 As readers who have visited this site in the past week or so will no doubt have noticed, some sensitive soul has finally hit the ‘report objectionable content’ button and subjected Breakfast In The Ruins to the imposition of one of blogger’s monolithically pointless ‘Content Warning’ pages.

No big deal really of course. Many of my favourite weblogs have had one in place for years, and to be honest, I was wondering how long I could get away with posting the kind of vaguely adult-orientated content that often predominates here without getting the dreaded warning page slapped on it. (For the record, I continue to operate this blog with a self-imposed '15' rating, even if we are skirting the NSFW boundary from time to time.)

Looking more closely at the wording on the warning page, I do find the use of the word "objectionable" is a bit galling, as it seems to imply that I'm espousing some extremist ideology or propagating deliberately offensive material or something, rather than just occasionally using curse words or posting non-explicit screen-grabs from old sexploitation films or whatever else it was that our anonymous button-pusher took umbrage with.

Oh well, never mind – at least it'll keep the riff-raff out.

And speaking of content; I’m aiming to return to a regular schedule of posting from early next week, and will do my best to keep it up. Apologies again for this summer’s posting collapse.

Martian Chronicles (and Bonus Tarzan).

Ok, so first off, I’d like to both offer a quick apology to regular readers for letting my informal once-a-week posting schedule slip a little, and to alert you to the fact that such slippages might be liable to occur more frequently in the near future.

I prefer to avoid talking about my personal circumstances on the internet, but let’s just say that life events have conspired this month to kick the idea of maintaining a regular weblog into what I believe is known as ‘the long grass’. Thankfully I had a few previously scheduled posts lined up to take the slack, but those are now exhausted, so we’ll see how things go, but nonetheless, I hope to get some new stuff up here soon.

To give you something nice to look at in the meantime though, here are some recent acquisitions to my seemingly ever-growing collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs paperbacks. I confess, I’ve never so much as read a word of Burroughs, but he sure was a gift to cover artists, and as long as these New English Library editions keep jumping off charity shop shelves at me, priced at mere pennies, it’s difficult to say no.

In fact, so widely scattered and cheaply marked up are E.R.B’s works (second only to Moorcock in their awesome-science-fantasy ubiquity), it’s probably only a matter of time before I start forgetting which ones I’ve got already and buying doubles. Maybe we habitual second-hand bookshop fiends should get together and start swapping them like trading cards? Stock up comrades, you never know when you’re going to need to trade a few commoners for a super-rare to complete your John Carter collection. First one with a complete set of the NEL editions wins the admiration of all.

The NEL editions above are all 1972-74, and the Four Square is 1965. All artwork is unaccredited.

New Year’s Intermission.

Dear Readers –

I trust you had a enjoyable winter solstice / Christmas break, and wish you the very best for the New Year. My apologies for the sluggish pace of recent posting on this blog, but…. eh, you know how it goes. Let me at least state again that I greatly value your readership, that I’m really happy that people seem to read and engage with the stuff I post here, and that it’s only lack of time, rather than lack of enthusiasm, that prevents me from posting every day.

Anyway, this is just a quick note to alert you to the fact that by the time you read this, I will be flying high on my way to Japan, where I am spending the next few weeks. I’ve scheduled a couple of geographically appropriate movie reviews that will keep things slowly ticking over until I return, but I’m afraid it’s quite likely that I won’t be able to approve or respond to comments, edit posts, and so on, until mid-January.

(Oh, and just in case you were wondering, Breakfast In the Ruins isn’t becoming an all-Asian blog either - it’s just that things have been heading that way a bit lately! If things go to plan, perhaps I’ll even find time to review a bunch of dusty old British horror movies in the new year, just to prove the point.)

So, in short, 2013 was a great year, and I’m confident 2014 will be even better. I hope you’re able to say the same, and I’ll try to bring you back something nice from Tokyo.

Sayonara for now!

Ben

ATTENTION!

I hate to disappoint loyal readers of my blather, but, as was trailed a few months back, life is busy right now. In particular, I’ve got a really thick pile of freelance work deadlines to plough through over the next month or so, and as such, I’m having to put the more time-intensive business of movie reviewing on hold for a little while. To tide us over, I’m going to be posting a bunch of random paperbacks I’ve picked up recently, all sourced from charity shops and market stalls in far flung corners of London and the UK, as per usual. I’m afraid I'm also going to be out of the country for much of January, but at least December and February will be Real Big Exciting Months here, I promise you that.*

*No refunds.

Coming Soon…

So first of all, I’m afraid I’ve got a bit of an update on the immediate future of this blog to get out of the way.

Nothing catastrophic I hope, but, without wishing to burden you with the details, let’s just say that my life is very busy at the moment with pursuits that do not afford me much time to geek out over strange movies and old books in the manner to which I have hitherto been accustomed.

Therefore, I offer no guarantees that I will be able to maintain even my usual erratic posting schedule in the near future, and the content I do rustle together may end up being somewhat eccentric, but… I enjoy doing this blog a great deal, and I’m always very gratified that people read it, so I’ll do what I can to keep things rolling along. Thanks in advance for sticking around.

Secondly though, and as the banner above has probably already informed you, I'm happy to note that the last week of this month marks the centenary of the birth of a man whose work I hope requires no introduction to readers of the blog, your friend and mine, Mr Peter Cushing.

A good old fashioned blogathon is being co-ordinated by the Frankensteinia weblog, and somewhere, somehow, I intend to take part. Expect pointless list-making, warm, cozy, Hammer-y feelings and, well, we’ll see how things go, writing-wise. Take care everybody, and I’ll be back in a jiffy.

Stuff that has happened.

Sorry once again for falling off the posting wagon a bit – I’ve been running myself ragged trying to finish off my ‘best records of last year’ list on the other blog, and also doing some freelance work that’s been cutting into my writing time, but I’m back on top of things now and have lotsa good stuff lined up for the coming months.

Before that though, a couple of things worth a quick mention…

1.

In case you’ve not seen it elsewhere, exciting news about the rejuvenated Hammer sorting out their back catalogue! Now finally I can stop bitching about how rights issues etc have made it near impossible to see some of their best films and how difficult it is to actually find a copy of ‘Curse of Frankenstein’ etc, and instead just sit back and play the waiting game. (They’ve put up a new weblog keeping track of restoration developments here, if yr interested.)

Who knows, what with this, Kino’s Jean Rollin releases and Eureka’s new Repo Man disc, I might even have to bite the bullet and invest in a blu-ray player. I mean, don’t get me wrong, as a natural luddite I’m still inherently suspicious of all this HD business and believe that movies should be flat, as nature intended. But, y’know – extras, deleted scenes, nice picture quality, booklets full of pointless essays, cool stuff – I’m easily won over. I can always plug it in with a scart and watch stuff in glorious SD, just to be awkward.

2.

At the other end of the scale, it will probably come as little surprise to learn that we here at Breakfast in the Ruins are pretty bummed out about this whole SOPA/PIPA nonsense. Not being a US citizen, there’s not much I can do to directly influence such matters, but.. those of you who are don’t need me to tell you to go do what you need to do, I’m sure. I considered trying to take the blogs down for a day, but as that would prove a fairly awkward manoeuvre within the blogger structure, thought in the end I’d just do my bit by sitting on my arse and not posting anything for another day.

Hopefully the kind of ‘internet wars’ we’ve seen subsequently won’t escalate further, but let’s just say that, personally, I’m pretty narked about the whole business simply because up until yesterday I had links to a couple of dozen obscure, commercially unavailable movies all ready to go, now leading to dead pages. So, just in case I hadn’t made up my mind which side I was on yet, the copyrights lobby just entered my little universe by way of cancelling a whole season of forthcoming movie nights – way to win those hearts & minds guys, although frankly I guess they gave up on that sorta thing a few years ago when they took to throwing people in the slammer for listening to pop songs, as opposed to, say, rethinking their business practices to respond to a changing world, just like their predecessors have had to do for generations.

Purely in terms of movies, whilst I of course believe we should do everything our disposable income allows to support independent DVD labels and anyone else who’s out there treating marginal cinema with the respect it deserves, there’s still a vast universe of forgotten, whacked out stuff that no one’s ever gonna bother throwing on a disc, with only networks of fans to keep it alive and… y’see where I’m going with this, I’m sure, and the metaphorical producer is in the metaphorical control room making neck-slicing ‘wrap it up’ type motions at this point, so, uh, yeah - Damn The Man, and so forth, and GOODNIGHT!

Argh.

I was planning to get this blog back on track this week with a series of exciting paperback posts.

Unfortunately though, my printer/scanner has undergone some pretty severe trauma this evening, and is now sitting by the front door in several pieces whilst I try to figure out the best way to dispose of it.

As usual, there's at least a thousand different things I'd love to write long and erudite posts about, but lack of time means that's not gonna happen.

At a loss for any other kind of content, why not enjoy this trailer for the 1980 Roger Corman/Barbara Peeters joint 'Humanoids from the Deep', as released in the UK under the title 'Monster'? Saw this at the start of an old VHS last weekend, and thought it was pretty funny... (particularly the conspicuous lack of any monsters)...

Quick Question.

Well you can hopefully see the poll question I've posted above. I picked up a few tickets today for films that are showing as part of London Frightfest over the August bank holiday weekend, and found myself poised over the button that would allow me to drop eleven clams on a chance to see 'The Wicker Tree'.

I've managed to miss all the pre-release publicity, and didn't realise it had even been filmed yet to be honest, so what's the word knowledgeable readers? Forty years later, same director at least? Could it possibly work?

I'll keep the poll open for a few days for a laugh, but I'll probably have to make my decision fairly pronto if I want to get a seat (assuming it's not long sold out already).

The trailer streaming off the website looks nuts, but whether that's good-nuts or bad-nuts remains to be seen.

Sorry for recent lack of updates by the way. Blame summer, in short.

Awesome!

Hey, look what I got in the post today!

Infernal Hails (that's a good thing) to Tom Farris and VHSflix, for they are legend. I can't wait to experience "Blood On Satan's Claw" as nature intended. With Bill Murray in it.

Oh, and I'm still here in case you were wondering. Got pretty sidetracked in the past few weeks, as stupid stuff like work and travel and having a social life has cut viciously into the time I'd naturally prefer to spend sitting in the dark watching stupid movies and writing about them on the internet, but plenty of stuff in the works I hope, so, uh.. watch this space.

Notices.

New posts forthcoming, but in the meantime, just thought I’d do a quick round-up of some other stuff I’ve been up to that might be of interest…

1. As if I wasn’t spreading myself thinly enough already / spending enough time staring at a computer screen, I’ve bitten the bullet and started a tumblr blog. It had to happen. Primarily, I intend to use it to dump some of the thousands of screengrabs I’ve accumulated whilst reviewing movies here. So, uh, yeah, follow it or whatever, or don’t.

2. A couple of weeks ago, my weirdo space-punk music project thing Space Age Thrills finished off an album. Homemade Ramones/Misfits/Spits type songs with lyrics about science fiction and horror movies is the basic concept, but in practice it's all gotten a bit, uh, sloppier and weirder and more varied than that. There's a Modern Lovers cover, and a John Carpenter cover, and a song about law enforcement in Texas in the 1960s, and a long, pointless self-indulgent song, and so on. Just thought I’d mention it on the off-chance that some of you guys might like that sorta thing. You can listen to it on bandcamp.

3. I’ve also recently started doing the occasional post on the Found Objects blog. Regardless of my sparse contributions though, you should probably be keeping an eye on it anyway, as it’s a daily info-dump of strange and eerie stuff, assembled to an indefinable yet somehow highly specific rationale. Hopefully I’ll be posting some new stuff, as well as revisiting some of the more aesthetically appropriate bits and pieces I’ve done here in the past.

4. Flatmate wanted! I’ve got a room in sunny South-East London that’ll be free from around July-ish for the space of about one academic year, possibly longer. Email for further details. Bear in mind you'd be sharing living space with someone whose idea of fun includes the preceding three items.

Phew! Normal movie-reviewin’ business resuming imminently.

John Carpenter Blogathon Fail.

I had very much intended to take part in the John Carpenter blogathon thing being coordinated this week by Radiator Heaven. After all, it was only a few months ago that a sudden moment of drunken clarity led me to the realisation that John Carpenter is THE BEST DIRECTOR EVER. I’m told that in my enthusiasm I may have also deemed him THE KING OF THE WORLD, but that’s up for debate. Point is - I think he has made a lot of great movies, and I really enjoy his whole, y’know, ‘John Carpenter’ shtick. So naturally I wanted to do my bit.

I had it all planned out – I was gonna write this amazing, free-wheeling essay that’s been bouncing around my head for years, about my memories of first seeing “John Carpenter’s Vampires” on TV, and about the notion of John Carpenter being an ANTI-auteur (much in the sense of an antipope), ticking all the boxes of established auteur theory but at the same time embodying the complete opposite of all the unspoken virtues that it is assumed an ‘auteur’ should represent, and about how “Vampires” in all it’s ridiculous, ugly glory is the purest distillation of Carpenterism thus committed to screen.

But sadly, I fucked up, and forgot to factor in all the stupid crap modern life compels me to do when I should be sitting in quiet repose contemplating John Carpenter movies, and that essay is just not going to get written this week I’m afraid.

All I can think to do by way of compensation is to post this video again – that is, John Carpenter’s video for The Coupe de Villes, the band he formed with two other horror movie directors(?!?), rocking out on the theme tune he recorded for his own movie, “Big Trouble In Little China”. Truly, a more convincing testament to the joys of Carpenterism would be hard to find.

By visiting this post at The Manchester Morgue, you can download the entirety of The Coupe de Villes' couldn’t-be-more-perfectly-titled album “Waiting Out The Eighties”. Featuring hits like “She Has Friends in LA”, “Midnight Train” and “Darlin’ (All Night Long)”, I speak with no irony whatsoever when I declare it an absolutely brilliant listen.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m gonna run, run into the mystic night, and try to finish off a few new movie reviews to see us through the next couple of weeks…