Curt McGirt

For god's sake do none of you live near a video store? Or never heard of Amazon? Just buy The Wire there. Do it, it's a blind purchase you absolutely will not regret. EDIT: Or steal it. I doubt David Simon gives a fuck.

I have no idea why that poster is in black and white when all the Corman Poe films are in such vivid Technicolor. I caught this about 15 minutes in so missed most of "Morella", the first of the three stories. The end is apparently a Corman creation made of reused footage from Fall of the House of Usher (the first Corman Poe film, and one of my first VHS purchases) but it has the same effect: overly dramatic gothic horror with a nasty denouement. The second in the anthology is "The Black Cat" which is a mashup of the title tale, "The Cask of Amontillado", and "The Tell-Tale Heart" storywise. Peter Lorre is a goddamn force of nature in this one. He plays the village drunk who harasses his unreasonably attractive wife (for him, anyway -- this is a recurring theme) for booze money and ends up having a wine-tasting contest with a gloriously google-eyed, scenery-chewing Vincent Price, who takes him home and begins sleeping with the wife. Peter catches and kills them, puts them behind the wall, and gets caught by the cops because of the cat. Because of Lorre's alcoholism we get a bunch of great Corman hallucination/dream sequences where he sees Komodo dragons, snakes, tarantulas, etc. If you don't crack up watching this one numerous times you just don't have any sense of humor. "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" brings the seriousness back with a dying Vincent Price being hypnotized by Basil Rathbone, keeping him in a state of suspended animation. Apparently it also gives him the ability to speak to people telepathically as well (!). Eventually Vince gets up from his slumber to choke out an intensely sleazy Rathbone and melts, not quite on the level of the end of The Terror or anything but close. Overall this is pretty up there with the great horror anthologies due to "The Black Cat" alone, being one of the earliest examples of horror comedy and probably trumping The Raven, which was even earlier. And it's Corman doing Poe so, ya know, you gotta watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9Slz9RC5-U The countdown is over, let the watching begin! I turned on the TV and Tales of Terror with Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone is on. It's one of the few Poe/Price/Corman flicks I've never seen. Review to come shortly...

The cops already knew he was in town because of the neighbor lady he said 'hi' to, I believe. So then you've got cops running around looking for a New Hampshire license plate... ah, you can only dissect this stuff so much. It's TV.

WWE probably thinks most Americans have no clue about the cruelty of bullfighting, and they're probably right. Re: this time machine idea, why dump them in JCP? Send the Shield to World Class where they can fight the Von Erichs and the fucking Freebirds, man. I'd even go for a 6-man with Devastation, Inc. They can triple powerbomb Kamala and the crowd would lose it. Watching that RVD best-of, I kept saying "Bam Bam dive! Bam Bam dive!" and lo and behold they gave it to us. I don't care how crappy this Raw might have been (I missed most of it), between that, the Shield match, Dustin in a suit, and Heyman being hilarious I cannot complain.

Fuck Lydia.

I don't think Van Alden is that scared, he just has to consider his options in the face of two sides of lunatics. Ralph is a total pimp and is currently my favorite character on the show. I loved Rothstein losing to his own fallacy (degenerate gambling) and Lucky stepping up. There is no way Eddie cracks. Him and Herc singing is one of the greatest bits in a really great show. Even though a lot of this is exposition it's great and I could watch it all day long.

Great, now I'm kicking myself for not watching Malcolm X when it was on satellite again recently too. My ass is purple at this point.

He's still no Chris Sarandon. I saw the trailer for the new sequel and since I have a bit of a crush on the original sequel I'm still gonna watch it... on TV.

GODDAMMIT. I just watched the end of that again the other day and didn't even realize it, after already seeing the movie a thousand times. Jesse left prints on the handgun Walt used to shoot Uncle Jack. ...?

Jushin Liger: NWA Heavyweight Champion is a fucking awesome idea. Imagine the US indie run! Not only that but he's a total belt whore so it works perfectly.

I support this reviewing a hundred and ten percent

As long as I get to find out what surgery Kanyon had and why he was blackballed later. That is pretty damn funny considering I watched Nirvana - Live and Loud on TV last night.

My find of the set so far is Herodes, this guy really is Race-like in look and execution. Bumps big, mauls people, not afraid to bleed, and not afraid to fly either. Anyone notice the mats outside the ring are the same blue and red color/pattern of the old All Japan rings? I love Tony trying to apparently hold the blood in his his head with his hand and then later, Herodes does the same only he looks like someone just shot him in the eye. The pops for Herodes kicking out of the rollup and the foule at the end are enormous. The sentons in this rule so much, too.

Jerry immediately gets points with me for rocking the bootleg Iron Maiden shirt. The matwork on here looks much crisper and better-sold than the previous match, with Jerry in particular standing out -- great facials from him. Something I've noticed on this set during the title matches is the skill of the refs in counting shoulders down in pin attempts and submissions. They jump right on that every time. It's a small thing but I dig the attention to detail. In segunda caida Jerry decides he's gonna take Ultraman's arm home with him but Ultraman responds with a freaked-out submission to win the fall. Jerry's selling does gets into Mr. Perfect territory but I don't mind. The dives in this feel really reckless and lead up to the finish well. I love Ultraman getting carried out over a dude's shoulder while Estrada wins the belt that looks like something an rodeo attendee would wear. I'm gonna probably rate this higher than most will.

The only time I've seen Papa Del Rio before this is when he was breaking Sasuke's skull in M-Pro so obviously this is an entirely different beast. The baby blue and red gear on him is really ugly. This desperately needs some commentary to cover the drunk fans blowing horns in the cheap seats. Slow start but it picks up after a cool inverted full nelson (I have no clue what else to call it) from Caras. Segunda caida has a classy rollup that ends the fall in seconds. I dig Caras' second stretching out his fingers between falls, it makes him have a purpose to being there instead of just being a towel boy. In tercera caida they trade off submissions and pin attempts in a very "your turn/my turn" fashion that will not be pleasant to those struggling with lucha psychology (or lack thereof). A little slow for my taste, but still solid.

I love these pics, but please never remind me of Todd Pettingill ever again

A trios match with three high-flyers versus some exoticos, so you get great, intricate spots mixed with broad comedy. All the whistling at the exoticos was great. Those of us who got the New Japan set have already seen Sergio and Bello Greco in action and they're hilarious. I was surprised at how small Super Astro is. This looks like the template for a lot of the midcard trios matches running today that you'll see in CMLL and fun to see done so far back in the day. It really feels like you're sitting at Arena Mexico watching the chaos of lucha libre unfold. This is gonna finish high.

Herodes is awesome. Not only does he have the thinning afro, Harley Race chops-into-mustache with soul patch, and barrel gut that says "professional wrestler", he absolutely beats the shit out of the tecnicos in this one. Really comes off like a big old ass-kicker and someone you don't want to fuck with. Rudos mug the shit out of of a bleeding Tony Salazar in segunda caida then the tecnicos have a huge comeback after the extended beatdown. This is a whole lot of blood and hostility and the foule at the end is so hateful. Really great trios match.

Lizmark comes off as far more polished here, with Atlantis still doing his dumb pose from the Satanico match. Despite being green as goose shit he sells really well and has some good fiery comebacks. Watch the ref dive out of the ring to separate the opponents near the start, you don't see that very often. I dug the pin from both teams at the same time. Overall though this is pretty middle of the road. We get our first de-masking of the set, which is notable.

El continuacion! More matwork. I could watch these guys stretch each other all day. The finish to una caida is freaky, graceful, and completely beautiful, everything you want out of lucha. Something I've noticed that nobody ever mentions is the use of the whistle instead of a bell to announce falls in lucha, it makes me feel like something is missing. The announcers seem to be mentioning Sinaloa and Guadalajara a lot in these matches and I wonder if the feud is regionally-based. Three guesses on which guy is Sinaloan! (Sorry, a bad stereotype, I couldn't resist.) They Flair/Steamboat the ending and I want a rubber match.

Matwork, matwork, matwork. This one looks to be all about it. Not a million miles an hour, but everything looks really snug and painful. Mocho starts out doing the great rudo thing of going to the mat like a tecnico, but complaining about the tecnico cheating when he isn't. In segunda caida the armwork gets intense with Rocca taking a double armwringer among other things. I love Cota's pin with the knee against the face, very Regal-esque. By the way, the close-up on his missing fingers is gross and completely took me off guard. After some more armwork Rocca starts to get the upper hand, Cota hits a gorgeous dropkick and follows with a plancha to the outside, then goes right back to the arm. In all this praise I can't overlook Rocca, he's a perfect foil for the devious Cota throughout the match. Finish should have fueled a riot.

This was The Satanico Show. I wasn't feeling Atlantis with his playing to the crowd with that goofy expression after every bad move that Satanico oversold to make it look good, minus his submissions which were already ace -- that wheelbarrow whatever the fuck thing to end una caida was weird and awesome. Tercera is where everything picks up, the mask ripping begins and the blood stars flowing and then surprise! Either Vince secretly owns the footage and wanted it PG or we are in a time warp back to the golden age as technical difficulties occur and everything goes black and white for awhile. There's a great moment where Satanico gloats outside the ring with his arms outstretched and his head held high and you realize that facially, he's the Mexican Adrian Adonis. The end with Satanico raising Atlantis' arm only to punch him again was nice. Probably gonna end up high middle of my ballot.

This one? I've never seen it but it's awesome! "SEE IT WITH SOMEONE YOU HATE." And "Paul Nash" haha...

As a die-hard EC FanAddict I absolutely love this