I was in LA this Past Weekend for the Los Angeles Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors convention. On the Saturday everyone kept asking me and my good friend Rob G from Iconsoffright.com to go to the premiere of Laid to Rest. After the premiere there would be a special party. What! Is everyone fucking RETARDED?! Am I going to Gayed to Rest instead of the Dolph Lungren movie marathon at the New Beverly Cinema in Hollywood?! FUCK NO! They were showing Red Scorpion, Universal Solider, Rocky IV, The Punisher Director’s cut, which has never been seen in the US, and at midnight, I Come in Peace AKA Dark Angel. Well for me, Rob, Barnick, Brian Collins and Mike Williams it was a no brainer.

By the time we got done fighting off the advances of team Gayed to Rest and got to the New Beverly they were in the middle of Universal Solider. This made me happy and angry at the same time. I was angry because I missed Red Scorpion. When the fuck am I going to get to see that on the big screen again?! Its the only nonhorror movie to have special effects by Thomas Savini. I was happy because we were smack right in  Universal Badassery. This movie is actually a really good science fiction action film. I feel if it had to other leads in the place of  Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren it would have been taken more seriously but been way less bad ass.

Before Rocky IV my good friend Brian Collins showed up with a 12 pack of Bud Light and 3 little airplane bottles of vodka. He suggested we all do a shot of Vodka when Apollo is killed by Drago. WTF Bud Light?! Vodka?! The New Beverly is BYOB?! That’s awesome! This is definitely a theater for the Bad Kids.  Watching Rocky IV with a crowd is amazing. Even though this was a Dolph Lundgren festival everyone was cheering for Rocky and booing Drago.

After Rocky avenged the death of his black friend at the hands of a communist boxer it was time for Dolph to dish out some revenge of his own as the Ultimate Payback Warrior, The Punisher. Many people don’t remember this film from 1989. Dolph plays Frank Castle in a Mark Goldblat directed, straight to video motion picture adaptation of the Marvel comic book. It is heavily criticized because The Punisher does not wear his trademark skull on his chest. Luckily, Mark Goldblat was here in person to explain why. He said in 1989, The Punisher of the comics wore a spandex suit which he felt would have looked cheesy on film. He opted to put the skull on the knife handles. In retrospect he wishes he has found a way to work the skull onto his chest and hopes someone can CG it on. He went on to mention that the film had never screened before in Los Angeles and we were at the LA premiere of The Punisher.

The film began and the difference between the Media Home Entertainment Cut and Goldblat’s cut was pretty apparent. Every kill had a little extra blood. It was clear where Goldblat had to make edits for an R rating. The entire film flowed so much better with the original material. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the 1989 Punisher. In fact, I’m going to call this the best of the three Punisher films.

It was now Midnight and Time for I come in Peace AKA Dark Angel. I have seen this film probably 6 times in the past few months. I DVRed it of the now defunct Monsters HD and then laid it to DVD. It was the only way to see the film in it’s correct aspect ratio being that there is no US DVD. For those of you who don’t know the film is about a cop played by Dolph Lundgren fighting a drug dealer from outerspace who has come to earth to harvest our endorphins. Dolph and his partner played by Brian Benben have to kick his ass. It is a wonderful film and will hopefully see a US release on DVD soon.

In conclusion the New Beverly Cinema is a wonderful place and America’s Bad Kids look foward to going to more screenings there.

So I’m sure by now most of you know that Lou Perryman of Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 was murdered last week in South Austin. What you may not know was that I had been talking to Lou via Facebook about possibly doing an episode of ABK at this past weekend’s Cinemawasteland convention in Cleveland. We had been put in touch by a mutal friend, Heather from Dread Central. Lou had seen my Exploitation Breakfast and wanted to do a similar thing with Texas Chainsaw people. Being that TCM is my favorite horror movie I was totally excited to do it. Alas, the great magnet had other plans.

Last night I was going through all my monster mags looking for a particular centerfold. When I opened up my copy of Gorezone #1 which has Leatherface from TCM2 on the cover. I remembered my center posters had been carefully removed by the previous owner. One of them was Bill Paxton from Near Dark. I flipped Paxton over and there was Lou as LG missing his skin from TCM2. Well, that very was sad. Anyway here is that poster. Lou, it was nice talking to you on Facebook I wish we could have met in person.