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Usually the “Bad News” section of this site isn’t actually genuinely bad news. Unfortunately this time it is. Last night America’s Bad Kids learned that our good friend Don Edmonds had passed on. Don was the director of Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS, which has been a great inspiration for every Bad Kid whoever wanted to get into film making.

We first met Don at last year’s Cinema Wasteland Convention in Ohio. Over lunch, he told us all about his long career as an actor, an assistant director, and a director. Then Don was kind enough to take part in America’s Bad Kids Exploitation Breakfast Episode. Don will be greatly missed by everyone at ABK  and we know his films, especially Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS will live on in the hearts of Bad Kids forever.

This past weekend I was in Dallas for The Texas Frigtmare Weekend. It was packed with Sweatshop promotion, eating BBQ, and meeting Texas Bad Kids.

When I arrived in Dallas the first thing I noticed was a totally BAD ASS Ricky Coogan action figure from the movie Freaked. I already had one of the four piece set. I snagged Alex Winter right up so I am now at the half way mark.

I finally got to meet Bobby and Jimmy from Calabrese. They have provided music for the Eric Powell an DW Frydendall episodes. They were even kind enough to give me an interview and a T-Shirt.

That night me and all the rest of Team Sweatshop went out for some wonderful Texas BBQ.

Most of this is mine. Stacy Davidson, the director of Sweatshop got the ribs. Julin, the star of Sweatshop, then asked, Stacy, Ted, and myself to touch wieners. Normally we’d do it, but since we were in this nice restaurant we opted to just touch Lone Stars.

After a delicous meal it was time to go out back and feed leftovers to the future BBQ. Future BBQ is Texan for “cows”.

Once we got back to the hotel we were amazed to learn that everyone had been drinking. So we quickly did our best to catch up with the rest of the group. Adrianne King from Friday 13th was in town and gave Ted a hand in catching up.

Once we were good and “caught up” I decided to shoot an impromtu episode of ABK with two of the lovely ladies from Sweatshop.

Oh man. That was a hoot and I can’t wait to get that episode up. Well you can imagine where the night went from their, so I’ll fast forward to Sunday morning.

It was time for the big Sweatshop panel.

Stacy invited the cast and crew up to the stage, which was most of the audience. I moderated. It was a lot of fun and I hope I get to moderate more panels at future conventions.

Well, that’s it from The Lone Star State. I always have a good time in Texas!

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.

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.

Ever since 911 I have been a huge fan of CNN. I put it on at least once a day. I must say I have really grown attached to many of the personalities on the network. Their are even some anchors that are totally hot, such as Poppy Harlow and Erica Hill. Out of the entire CNN family the only person who I genuinely can not stand is Rick Sanchez. I like to call him Dirty Sanchez because its easy and the Dirty Sanchez as a sexual act is increadibly funny to me. According to wikipedia a Dirty Sanchez is the act of smearing fecal matter or felch on the upper lip of a partner during (or following) various types of anal sex, for those of you who didn’t know.

I first grew to despise him when he was demonstrating how fall off a cruise ship, kind of and then get rescued by the coast guard, kind of.  I knew Dirty Sanchez’s demo was retarded BUT I wasn’t the only one. Jon Stewart and the Daily Show picked up on how lame he was later that night.

Here is the link to the Daily Show bit about it.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=84192&title=sanchez-overboard

Since then Dirty has gotten his own show some how. He as been feuding with Rush Limbaugh as if anyone gives a shit. And he loves to be on social networking sites. He’s always tweeting and myspacing and facebooking while he is on the air. I don’t know who wants to watch a 51-year-old man use a social networking  site. I’d much rather picture him on the recieving end of a Dirty Sanchez. Better still I’d rather picture Poppy Harlow and Erica Hill dyking out.

The terror starts when Jaime (Brandon Fobbs, The Wire) gets a panicked video from his best buddy, Freddie (James Snyder, Broadway’s Crybaby), about an insane chain letter that was e-mailed to him…It is a snuff video that warns the recipient that they have 5 minutes to pass it on or they will die.

As Jamie watches, a figure in black breaks into Freddie’s room. His face is hidden but not the machete-sized knife he carries in his hand. Before Freddie can react, the figure slits his throat. A horrified Jamie watches helplessly as the figure leaves, his dead friend Freddie laying sprawled across his desk. 

Before he can move, a new message appears on his screen. It is Amelia (Madeline Zima, Californication), their mutual friend. She’s gotten the same message and seen the same murder. She is just as terrified and confused as Jaime, but it’s nothing compared to what they feel when a time clock appears on their screens. It says they have five minutes to pass it on…the clock already ticking down. 

They stare at each other through their webcams, trying to figure out how to save their lives as the seconds rush past.

Also starring Kevin Daniels (Ladder 49, Their Eyes Were Watching God).

America’s Bad Kids LOVE wrestling. We especially love great bad guy wrestlers like The Hot Scott, Rowdy Roddy Piper. He had a great career of pissing off wrestlers that the GOOD kids like such as Hulk Hogan.

Last night it was revealed that Rowdy doesn’t just play a bad kid when he is wrestling but he is actually a bad kid in real life. Here he is on stage with bad kid rappers, The Insane Clown Posse smoking pot.

There are some people who call Repo! The Genetic Opera “The new Rocky Horror Picture Show.” I say GOOD! This film is much better. Repo! The Genetic Opera is the fourth directorial outing by Darren Lynn Bousman. Bousman is best known for directing Saw II, III, and IV. Repo! couldn’t be further away from the Saw films in every possible way. I was greatly impressed by the film’s ambition. I do feel the storytelling was a little lacking at times but awesome visuals and fun music made up for it.

For starters, Repo is a musical. It takes place in nightmarish future where organ failure is at an all time high. An evil corporation called Geneco offers financing for organ transplant surgeries. The story centers around Shilo, played by Alexa Vega, who is the daughter of the repoman that comes to collect the organs when people can no longer make their payments. The Repoman is played by Anthony Head. Head delivers a solid performance. We really get to see his range in this film. In particular, there is one scene where he is repossesing a spine while talking on his holographic wrist phone with Shilo, reminding her of the importance of taking her medication. Here you have Head’s brutality as the repoman and his warmth as Shilo’s dad. Great acting by Head, great directing by Bousman.

Speaking of great acting, Paris Hilton is in this film. She plays Amber Sweet, the surgery addicted sister rounding out the tryfecta of evil children who belong to the head of the evil Genco. The other two siblings are played by Bill Mosely and Ogre from Skinny Puppy. Paris has clearly come a long way since her appearance in House of Wax. She fit very well into this operatic roll which lent itself to over acting. This is really what she should be looking to do more of. Another great fit was Bill Mosely. He was able to channel his Chop Top over acting into a new type of roll for him that worked really well. Ogre was under a lot of make up. It was hard for me to get a real sense of his acting ability. He seemed to be handling his slightly gay character pretty well. All three of these guys had a great chemistry together which I was not expecting.

Great performances aside one of the films strongest points are the sets and the costumes. My personal favorite costume was the Repoman’s. His mask with light up eyes was perfectly toped off with a head mirror. (that is what that reflective disk doctors used to wear on their heads is called). It was very Brazil type mix of future and past. It’s something that is lacking in recent nightmarish future films. My favorite set was definitely the graveyard where Shilo meets the Graverobber/drug dealer played by Terrance Zdunich. This set was another great combination of old and new with gothic type head stones surrounded by security cameras and signs that read, “Grave robbers will be executed on site.” There was a great sequence on this set where Shilo and Graverobber break through a wall will trying to escape some cemetary guards and end up in a subterranean room filled with corpses. You really get the feel that your in the future where there is a bubonic type plague happening.

Repo!’s strongest point has got to be the music. Terrance Zdunich not only played Graverobber but was also the composers and one of screenwriters. The music was absolutely awesome. My favorite song was Seventeen which Shilo sings as she is yelling at her father. While I was rocking out to this song, I thought, ” this song has a very “Bad Reputation” vibe to it”. Then Joan Jett appeared for a cameo playing guitar in Shilo’s bed room. Jett nods at Shilo almost to give her permission to rock out. I’d really like to know if she played guitar on the song.

My only problem with the film was it became incredibly convoluted in true operatic fashion. There was a story where The evil head of Genco loved Shilo’s mother but she married the Repoman so he killed her. Now he wanted Shilo to sing in his opera or something. There was a thing with Shilo’s Godmother who has special hologram eyes and he wanted the Repoman to reposes them. Story wise they lost me towards the end there. But all and all Repo! The Genetic Opera is way better than The Rocky Horror Picture Show and I hope it ultimately gets the cult following Rocky Horror has.