Last year I dressed up as a mad doctor with a terrible German accent, playing Theremin with a friends band. I ran the Theremin through a bunch of effects and completely hammed it up.

This year I'll be a pit musician - which is not totally unlike a ninja - because I have to work that night.

Happy Halloween sifters.

Back in the Straight Talk Express afterward:

John McCain: Tell Sarah to stop hamming it up when I talk about her.

Anonymous staffer: Sir?

JM: Standing behind me she was waving and acting all fake modest.

AS: Sir, Gov. Palin is in Ohio.

JM: Huwwhhaaaaaaaaa?

yeah, we were watching the bald guy on some outside sheltered stairs coming down from a motel or something. He was really hamming it up for the camera. I think a piece of foam flew in and he freaked.

>> ^Lithic:
Hold on a tick, did that guy just ham it up?


Damnit! When I saw that for some reason I was convinced I would be the only person to notice the downright eerie resemblance. Good job.

Hold on a tick, did that guy just ham it up?

As an Australian, I loved the hammed Aussie up accent... it's just right

ohhh aaaaant! That's not live music, it's all lipsynch. She makes up for it by hamming it up so much. Oooh. Ham and Cheese.

Oh Alright. as long as no-one tries to * bravo it.

no one has mentioned that she is Kelly Pickler from American Idol. She is dumb, but she also hams it up as well. It's hard to tell how dumb she really is because its fairly apparent she acts dumber than she really is (but she really is dumb too).

It’s a good thing I checked the paper besides looking at MovieTickets.com. Instead of Sunday, the last movie on the list was shown Saturday night. I called the theater confirm the schedule just to be sure.

Before I review the Horrorfest, I wanted to mention the theater where I viewed the films – Hollywood 9. It used to be part of a chain called General Cinema. Some older folks will remember the music that used brushes on a snare drum with an electric guitar to announce “Coming Soon” and “Feature Presentation.” Then stadium-seating theaters were introduced ten years ago. They managed to kill a majority of movie theaters in this area. A local family bought this theater from the chain. It continues to run first-run films. We used to have a network of second-run film-theaters. They were good for when a film left the first-run-theaters. Plus they were cheaper.

Audiences have been small for the Horrorfest – maybe four to twelve people at most. Horror films are more fun with a full theater of raucous younger folks.

And now for my rankings . . . . I organized them from most favorite to least favorite. The films included for 2007 cover certain standard genres:

The Deaths of Ian Stone (R)
Ian Stone keeps dying and jumping to another life. Each time he interacts with the same girl. Before each death a clock suddenly stops. I like this one best because the film takes time to reveal the context of events and characters.

Mulberry Street (R)
This could have easily been called “Rat People.” The film is set in New York City in a rundown apartment building. Rats across Manhattan bite people spreading a contagious “rat virus.” Once bitten, people morph into rat-faced-like-humans. This flick has a style similar to “28 Days Later.” These carnivorous rat-people move fast and gnaw at their human prey. The newscast vaguely covers events as the infection becomes widespread. Other than the rats spreading the virus, there’s not much of an explanation for the virus’s existence.

Crazy Eights (NR)
Six young adults gather together after the death of someone they all knew. Twenty years earlier their parents left them at mental institution as guinea pigs for human experiments. The name given to their group was “Crazy Eights.” Prior to the group reuniting, they started having nightmares. A last request by the deceased takes them on an odyssey to locate a time capsule they made years ago. OK, that’s seven people; so what about the eighth one?

Borderland (NR)
Of the eight films this is the only one based on a true story. It is more consistent than some of the others. Three American guys in their early twenties cross the border into Mexico. In the course of seeking young women, they cross paths with drug dealers who perform Santeria human sacrifices. In this area near the border, the drug dealers have police intimidated. There is one cop, however, who helps two of the guys when the third one goes missing. He’s been investigating the drug dealers for a while. Also, They killed his partner.

The murders in this film are brutal. Sean Astin plays a bad guy – I was expecting him to yell for Frodo. He has a beard that helps a little with his baby face.

Tooth and Nail (R)
Set in the year 2012 (how Mayan ), civilization has collapsed because there is no more gas. People are forced to survive without technology. Two guys and a girl are exploring when they rescue a girl from an armed man. They bring her back to their group. Right away the group does not trust her. Then one night the group’s leader is murdered. Soon group learns that cannibals are intent on feeding on them. Considering the beginning of the film I expected more cleverness in the lines and the battles to survive. I would have thought the hospital, where they are living, would have some neat props and/or rooms to do battle in – I felt like more could have been done. The cannibals dress like medieval warriors. Axes, knives, swords, spears all make for a bloodbath. There are some later twists in the plot that redeem this movie a little. Otherwise, the film just has a body count.

Mike Madsen and Vinnie Jones ham it up a bit.

Unearthed (R)
Unless I missed it, I’m not sure what group of Native Americans the characters are descended from in this movie. Anyway a young male Native American is digging in a cave where a sacred burial ground is located. Unfortunately his efforts release a monster that his ancestors managed to knock out for many centuries.

A female Native American is sheriff. She’s still trying to live down a circumstance in which she was not able to prevent a young girl from being shot. She investigates a vehicle crash site involving a truck. She locates a piece of something that was caught in a truck’s grill. When a biologist analyzes this something, she determines that it is not of this earth and it has been collecting samples of living things.

As the body count adds up, the sheriff does her best to protect those left. In the course of things she becomes covered in some black liquid in the cave. This stuff ends up protecting her in a close encounter with the creature. She and the guy, who unleashed the creature in the first place, figure out that uranium is what they need to make the protective liquid. Someone else will have to comment on the science or lack of science involved here.

The creature behaves a bit like the ones from “Alien.” It is scarier when you don’t see it. However, it does move fast.

Nightmare Man (R)
A woman orders her husband a primitive mask with horns. She gets more than she bargained for in this tale. Although this one starts off hokey, filmed with video, it does improve with some plot twists. This couple runs out of gas on the way to a mental hospital. He leaves her alone while he goes for gas.

She becomes scared by a demon in the darkness. After a bit of cat ‘n’ mouse, she manages to run to a house in the woods. Two couples are enjoying each other’s company until this woman arrives frantic about what is chasing her and the pills she dropped in the forest in the dark. Listen when someone tells you that pills help control a demon inside. : )

Lake Dead (NR)
A grandfather to an incestuous family is killed. Three granddaughters want travel to see the property they inherited. Their father warns them not to go. The kids are mad at him because saying their grandfather was dead long before he actually was dead.

One of the girls skips the funeral and goes to Lake Dead by herself – bad news. Lake is the family’s last name. Anyway the two girls arrive with a couple and another guy. There is a shallow manmade pond on the property. Characters in the story refer to it as a lake.

So then the body count starts. The gene pool in this town is a bit shallow too.


OK, there are the “8 Films to Die for.” When I’ve seen the eight from 2006, I’ll do a synopsis and ranking of them as well.

Never heard of nightwish before. Were you a fan before? The seem the type to ham it up all the time, not just on this song. Hilarious.

i love to ham it up, too, but i don't know if i can ham it up like he can, he's really good at hamming it up

This movie and soundtrack is special to my family because it reminds us so much of my dad that died a couple of years ago. Maybe it's why my kids like the movie so much because they think it's where there "Paw Paw" came from.

This post depression era/ old country south is the culture from which my dad was raised. He played guitar and sang old country on the local radio station after school when he was a teenager.
I remember him playing some of these songs around the house when I was kid. He was especially funny at "He's in the Jailhouse Now" and "You Are My Sunshine". He'd always ham it up to get a rise out of my mom who always pretended his singing annoyed her. What an act.

Since dad passed, my children have grown a fondness for old time country and bluegrass music.

Voting for this despite the fact it had to obviously staged - or is there a store you know of that wouldn't chain down a laptop like that which is on display? Not to mention how he's almost hamming it up for the camera....

Or is it? http://www.itatwork.co.nz/

From the Google Video comments:
"James
5 days ago
It's a long shot, but if anyone recognises this guy, grab our contact details off www.itatwork.co.nz and give us a call."

Elaborate prank on itatwork, or real crime?

Despite the incredulous comments ("") I still think it's staged - footage quality is so good, and they went through the trouble of setting it to music. I mean, come on...


More comments from google video - I find the idea that these might be empty plastic display models amusing.

dirtypanda
7 hours ago
Then again....if the store is dumb enough to have an item like that on display without a electronic lock/alarm.....then I re-assign the idiot name to the store.
dirtypanda
7 hours ago
Everyone knows its on display like that with no electronic lock...it was just a mockup. Idiot thief doesn't know the difference and stole a hunk of plastic.
Jokerr
7 hours ago
OK, why were the laptops not locked down???
Anonymous
7 hours ago
Awesome! I used to be a professional thief, and I can tell this dude has been at for years!

Classic Monty Python's Flying circus. I have been looking for this clip for a while. Its one of my favourites. I love Cleese hamming it up as Hitler...I mean hilter and Micheal Palin does a great job as Himmler. Its one of the few sketches that the boys do that portrays real people. What makes it so funny is that Cleese, Palin, and the late Graham Chapman actually resemble those characters so much.