Clay's Blog, now in its 13th year!

When I think of Kelly Rowland, I think of the sassy best friend from Freddie vs Jason. (Yes, I saw it. seriously, it was like a carcrash made of candy- how can you NOT want to look?)
So when I heard she was the Heidi Klum on the Bravo show The Fashion Show, my reaction was... eh.
I watched the first episode and my reaction was... eh
I didn't even realize I'd missed the second episode until tonight.
Not likely I'm going to watch tomorrow night.  Having too much fun watching Hammer films.
Tonight's movie was Brides of Dracula.  More fun with helpless virgins in diaphanous gowns.
I got a kick out of the Universal globe at the beginning- it's Universal! It's Hammer!  It's two great tastes...

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How did I miss this? I love Kate Bush, yet somehow I missed her ode to Hammer Films. A fun piece with "effects!" from the early years of music video, it showed up on a youtube search for Hammer Horror.

Tonight's movie choice was The Gorgon. Fun Part: Doctor Who's Patrick Troughton playing a police official, with a fake mustache.

Handy tip:  I've found a lot of music lyric sites are a mine field for pop up ads, even with blockers and such.  Rhapsody online is a good source- as a realplayer site, you know it's trustworthy, and the site's relationship with the record companies gives added credence to the lyrics being correct.  Yeah, I had to go looking for the lyrics to Hammer Horror.

I'm working on a project that involves, peripherally, Hammer Horror movies.
The fun part of this is the research- watching movies.
Tonight, I watched The Satanic Rites of Dracula. 
Hammer films are delightfully lurid.
The film opens with a satanic ceremony where there's a nude woman being painted with blood to serve as an altar. 
This sure ain't Universal Pictures.
A very young Joanna Lumley play's Jessica VanHelsing, grand daughter to Peter Cushing's VanHelsing .  Christopher Lee plays Dracula... you kids know Lee- he was the badguy in Lord of the Rings and Star Wars ep 2 (he might have been in ep3, but I still haven't been able to bring myself to see it.)
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One thing that I've realized is how spoiled movie fans are now.  I wanted to see a Hammer Dracula film and ta-da, there it was on my computer screen.  I mentioned a couple of days ago you'd have to be diligent and catch something like this on tv- maybe even stay up for it.
There was an alternative:  film.
There's ads in the copies of Famous Monsters for 8mm and Super8 movies.  I'm not sure how long the movies ran, but a while back someone had posted the 8mm versions of Universal horror films and they ran just short of ten minutes.  The good parts. 
If the good parts are all that's available, hey- what you gonna do?