And then there was silence

The move was smooth, the injuries were minor and aside from the neighbors' loud pipes, it's already very peaceful living by myself. Much thanks to Andy, Scarecrow, Barry, Jack and Bart for the helping hands. All the essentials are now in, so now I just have to tote over a few thousand more CDs and a few hundred videotapes. I spent most of yesterday setting up the living room. Now I'm set up to accomodate guests unless they want to watch television.

Guess I've been in a vampire animal mood lately. I already read a whole book at my bachelor digs - it was my childhood favorite "Bunnicula". And what was the first low-rent horror movie watched in the new pad? That honor goes to "Zoltan: Hound of Dracula". Jack and I recently split one of Anchor Bay's "Fright Pack" box sets, and it worked out perfectly. We each got one movie we really wanted (him - "Slugs," me - "The Cat O'Nine Tails"), one movie the other owned (he already had Mattei's "Rats: Night of Terror," I already had Fulci's "The Black Cat") and one movie we each wanted but wouldn't have went out and bought on its own (Jack loves "Alien" rip-offs so he snagged "Parasite," I had long been amused by the video box for "Zoltan" under its alternate title, "Dracula's Dog").

Zoltan is indeed a vampire dog. He actually bites other dogs and turns them into vampires, complete with insert effects shots of the teeth going into his canine victims' necks. These effects were done by the young Stan Winston, and they're pretty good if you consider how ludicrous the idea is. I suppose the only "name" in this is José Ferrer, who like Christopher Plummer is still considered a legit actor although he's been in tons of Z-grade crap. For horror buffs, there's Michael Pataki, star of the well-regarded "Grave of the Vampire" (which I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I've never seen), and Reggie Nalder, whose claim to fame was that he was ugly in the '70s. Oh, and "Zoltan" was the genre debut of Albert Band, who with his son Charles went on to found Empire Pictures, which begat direct-to-video powerhouse Full Moon Pictures and all its various subdivisions. Still, unless any of those people really thrill you, you shouldn't bother to seek this boring-ass movie out. Maybe the other killer canine movie that came out in 1978 ("Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell") is better. Can anyone verify?

Those Anchor Bay boxes are cheap and awesome. I highly recommend the "Walking Dead" set; three of those movies are totally awesome, two are pretty good, and "Nightmare City" is the hilarious kind of bad. Further proof that Anchor Bay rules (although I wish they'd hurry up with that damned "Cemetary Man" DVD - my only copy of my favorite movie of the '90s is a bootleg of the European laserdisc). Anyway, the first item on my Christmas list is from one of their competitors: this motherfucker.

Ah, such bougeois pleasures! Enjoy a taste of this high life with one of my current favorites, Between the Buried and Me's "Selkies: The Endless Obsession" (click "save target as" - you can't get the file otherwise, and believe me, it's worth it).