Howdy gremlins and goblins! Just a minute while I talk to some old people:
(This domain goes back to 2006, and I still get fanmail from my old material, so I know some old-timers have followed on. You folks know that my longest-continuous blogging gig is 366WeirdMovies. So if you know my review history, you must be on pins and needles wondering which film I selected for the very first video review. (Actually I know you all are wondering, I’m just stalling for the suspense.)
Anyway, for the rest of you: Hey kids I video-reviewed an old horror movie! It’s 1974’s Legacy of Satan, a movie not quite weird enough to be honored on The List, but worth an eyeball that seeks out weirdness. Made in partnership with some colleagues of mine from there, Giles Edwards and Greg Smalley.
But let me back up a bit here while the piano player warms up the lounge for me, because the story of how this project came together is gonna blow the training wheels right off your unicycle…
Giles Edwards is Average Joe Travels the California Inscape
I met Giles the way you would expect, he is also a long-time contributor to 366WeirdMovies just as myself. In fact, we had an informal, undeclared contest to find the worst possible movies to review. He’d rib me in the comments, I’d rib him back, and then he’d go dash off and solve a Dashiell Hammett mystery or something. He’s also the man-in-the-bleachers for annual film festivals such as Fantasia, back in the before-COVID (B.C.) times.
So anyway, Giles is also a talented voice artist, narrator, and sound engineer. He’s the creator of In the Studio mit Markus und Peter!, to name just one of his claims to fame. Now, there’s this weird little floating artist’s / blogger’s circle that revolves around 366WeirdMovies and arty boutiques like Babou 691. My colleague, bizarro author Amy Vaughn is another. We’re all cutting up and one of us said “We should write stuff for Giles to narrate!”
And that’s how the world was given a pile of my weirdest performance material. Next dramatis persona, the just-today 2nd-winner of Medium’s Fall 2021 contest, Dodge Zelko. Later, we teemed up with author Dodge Zelko to spurt some round-robin sci-fi time-travel frivolity with The Cult of the Temponaut, which I insist to this day is real.
You guys see what I mean when I say I don’t have time to blog to keep up with myself? Crazy stuff like this is always flying around in the background here at the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen.
The latest project to come out of this squirrel factory is Average Joe Travels the California Inscape. As you can see from the photo, Giles was BORN to play 1940’s hardboiled detective, so this is one of those but they’re going after witches and aliens and stuff. Sort of a tribute to the Dresden Files, if you recall the time I wrote about occult detective fiction.
Then we thought “video movie reviews”!
So about then Greg Smalley (in between movie set work he also does) at 366 Weird Movies saw all us kids playing around and frolicking. Well he had had enough frolicking, while 366 Weird Movies sat there as the last movie review website without a video team. “Hey!” he yelled at all of us in a way completely different from how I am quoting him, “Do a video movie review already!”
Well, you don’t get dares like that every day, so that’s what we’re doing now. The Weird View Crew proposes to commit to one video movie review per month. We collaborate, both Edwards and I working on open source software (remember when I used to write about that? I think I’m still quoted in BASH man pages out there.). He with the brilliant sound design and smooth-pipes narration, me with a messy script and amateur video editing skills – but they’re shaping together nicely.
More updates as they come! Stay tuned like a Stradivarius!
