The Cultural Gutter

geek chic with mad technique

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde

Drive-In Mob Ringtones

The Drive-In Mob has created ringtones “perfect for alienating people around you on public transportation” including: Omega Man; Godzilla vs. MechaPetrillo; Super Fuzz; The Wilhelm Scream; and the ants from THEM!

The Words Got Stuck In My Throat

WOG0 thumb

“If I had a hidden microphone inside of my heart/I would turn the power on/It would amplify my love for you and swear to always love you/and you’d never be gone.” I love when old movies–that are not musicals per se–spotlight the performance of a song, because it’s symptomatic of a sincere desire to entertain [...]

RIP, Carlo Rambaldi

Special effects master Carlo Rambaldi has died. Rambaldi is probably most famous for his work in ET, The Extraterrestrial; Alien; and Dune, but Rambaldi also worked extensively for Mario Bava. The New York Times has an obituary. Here are a video homage, another by Il Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia di Roma and a clip of [...]

RIP, Emi Ito

Singer and actress Emi Ito has died. Ito was a member of the singing duo, The Peanuts, with her twin sister, Yumi.  And both were probably most famous as the Shobijin/twin fairies who were mystically connected to Mothra in the Mothra and Godzilla films of the 1960s and 1970s.  More about The Peanuts here and [...]

Giant Monster All-Out Attack!

Kaiju invade the airwaves as The Cinementals discuss the work of Godzilla director Ishiro Honda, King Ghidorah is the monster of the month at Monster Island Resort and this week’s Drive-In Mob movie tweetalong will coincide with Turner Classic Movie’s screening of 4 Ishiro Honda movies on Friday, June 15! (The Drive-In Mob is co-sponsored [...]

A Very Kaiju Christmas!

Some Kaijutastic Christmas displays–prominently featuring Godzilla!

Terror of Monkeys vs. Robots

Manipulated by mad scientists, humiliated for humanity’s pleasure, will robots and apes tire of making our cars, vacuuming our floors, fighting our wars, washing our cats and smoking our cigarettes? Who will break first as humankind continually fails to distinguish androids from robots, apes from monkeys? We return again to the question that 2012 inevitably [...]

A Defense of the Silly Godzilla Movies

At TCM’s Movie Morlocks, David Kalat writes a passionate defense of silly Godzilla movies and how Godzilla vs. Megalon conquired the world in “The Importance of Being Godzilla (Part 1).”

Get Made With The Drive-In Mob

The Gutter, Grindhouse Database and Shelf Life Clothing Company have joined forces to sponsor an evening of genre movie live tweets every Thursday night at 8pm ET.  Tonight’s the last KaiJuly screening with a double feature of the Shaw Bros. kaiju movie, The Mighty Peking Man at followed by Godzilla 2000. Get made by the [...]

The Disturbing Nature of Ultraman

A meditation on Ultraman and Ultraman in manga form, drawn by “horror comics auteur” Kazuo Umezu:  “The boys who read this would grow up to read even more outlandish and violent mens’ comics; the girls would have a whole sub-genre of girls’ horror comics, jam-packed with beheadings, defenestrations, and entrails, some drawn by Umezu, for [...]

80 Years of Genre Snubs

Horror movies are celebrating their hundredth year in 2010, with the anniversary of the 1910 Edison Lab’s production of Frankenstein.  Bloody Disgusting catalogs “some of the biggest…genre snubs in Oscar history, in Part Four of B-D’s ’100 Years in Horror’ series.”

Taiwanese Giant Monsters, Discussed!

Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill! and TarsTarkas.net join forces to discuss Taiwanese giant monster films and you can listen in!

The United Monster Talent Agency

Movietone News: The United Monster Talent Agency helps bring monsters to a screen near you!

Waiting for Gorgo?

Do you remember Gorgo? The giant monster that raced up from the oceanic depths and devastated London? The DMOA do.

Giant/Human Relations

2 animated shorts from Celine & Yann record giant/human relations. “Giant: Army” and “Giant: Sun.”

The Troll Hunter

The most important documentary of our time is Norwegian: The Troll Hunter. Teaser, trailer, a pretty neat clip and a review.

Akira Ifukube Conducts

Akira Ifukube conducts the Osaka Symphony in a selection of his Godzilla works.

  • Of Note Elsewhere

    “[O]n Saturday night, when you were probably enjoying the discothèque with the other sophisticates, it was finally on: Deadly Spa.” More Deadly Spa here. (via @bethlovesbolly)

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    Kate Elliott asks, “How much sex is too much sex in your science fiction and fantasy?” (Thanks, James!)

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    NPR’s Monkey See blog shares a look at Adventure Time. “Adventure Time insists on emotional honesty.” (via @profmdwhite)

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    Recent shenanigans The Cultural Gutter has been involved in: The lost Drive-In Mob Movie S.P.E.C.T.R.E. on Monster Island; a transcript of the Shaitani Dracula tweetalong organized by The Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit; and the ongoing Twitter game/story, “Tonight On Mad Men.”

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    At Vern Reviews The Films Of Cinema, Outlaw Vern offers “one Seagalologist’s perspective on the ‘vulgar auteurism’ debate”: “The practitioners are trying to bring recognition to artists who they think are marginalized, but they’re accidentally creating a ranking of ‘vulgar auteur’ beneath ‘actual auteur.’ And that also shines a spotlight on the idea’s most glaring weakness: even the most establishment of the critical establishment have always worshipped directors who were at some point considered lowbrow–Hitchcock, Fuller, Peckinpah, DePalma.”

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    Pornokitsch finishes determining essential epic fantasy, with statistics, graphs and lists of their selections. Nice to see Homer in there.

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