"It's morning in America."

David Arquette's supply-side horror-comedy The Tripper pits a entire Pacific Northwest music festival's worth of stoned neo-hippies against their worst nightmare: a pissed-off Republican serial killer in a Ronald Reagan mask. Arquette's directorial debut is a visceral, highly amusing slasher. Calling in a galaxy of favors in the form of stunt casting (Tom Jane, Paul Rubens, Lukas Haas) and packed with psychedelic visuals, the film was fun, especially with a packed audience; I snagged the last available seat in the screening room, elbow-to-elbow with a thrilled crowd. Afterwards, Argquette graciously stayed to autograph every poster and take a pic with every member of the crowd.

Why do I keep closing my eyes in photos?

Miramax vs. Michael Myers

Daniel Farrands, screenwriter of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (aka Halloween 6) (1995). Despite posturing as champions of independent, iconoclastic directors, former Miramax and present Weinstein Company honchos Bob and Harvey Weinstein are very much cut from the classic cigar-chomping Hollywood studio mogul cloth. Their propensity for re-cutting films without the director's input, demanding drastic re-shoots, or burying films because of some petty personal grievance have befallen directors as notable as Bernardo Bertolucci, Martin Scorsese, and Guillermo del Toro.

Miramax's genre division, Dimension, was no exception, and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers was a casualty of Harvey Scissorhands. The released version was an incomprehensible, sloppy mess, with a baffling cobbled-together ending that left me fuming. Much re-shooting and re-editing occurred, despite the death of star Donald Pleasence, making the original storyline into a hash, the worst kind of focused-grouped, by-committee filmmaking imaginable. The much bootlegged "Producer's Cut" which restores Farrands' original story, isn't really any good (it's still a Halloween sequel, after all) but at least it make sense and has a singularity of purpose.

Farrands had obviously put the whole mess behind him. "Hey, it gave me a career," he remarked when I caught up with him at Screamfest 2007. Recently, he wrote the well reviewed adaptation of Jack Ketchum's novel, The Girl Next Door and the upcoming The Haunting in Connecticut with Virginia Madsen.

Instead of cheese, we said, "Fuck Bob Weistein!"

Update: Fangoria.com reports Farrands is working on an official release of the "Producer's Cut" of Halloween 6. Check it out here.

Cashier Girl

Take a long look: recognize this actress? No? Need a hint? She was in a Friday the 13th sequel. Got it yet? It's not Kimberly Beck. Or Dana Kimmel. Lar Park Lincoln? Nope. Still guessing? No Google, please. I still don't see any hands. Okay, I give, here's the answer:

Remember Annie? Who could forget here blistering screen presence, scintillating sensuality, and streetwise charm that made her role as "Cashier Girl" in Friday the 13th Part 3 so memorable. Remember her immortal line, her timeless catch phrase reprinted on countless bumper stickers and t-shirts, delivered off camera in a nasally whine, "We don't take no food stamps?" Even all of these years later, I still can't stop saying it. It's like "I'll be back." or "We're gonna need a bigger boat," a timeless bon mot trotted out a water coolers and cocktail parties when there's a lull in the conversation.

Requested by Travis.

Freddy People

Screamfest 2007.

There are two kind of people in this world, my friend: You've got your Jason people and you've got your Freddy people.

Me, I'm a Freddy person.

Frankly, there was always something anonymous about Jason. Unknowable. Almost, forgive me, generic. He may have racked up more kills, but Freddy ruled the day. He was scarrier. Funnier. Darker. And certainly more creative. While a parade of (mostly) anonymous stuntmen have donned Jason's hockey mask over the years, only one man could slip on the glove and play Freddy: Robert Englund.

At some point during the development of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven considered using a hulking stuntman to play Freddy, but reconsidered, recognizing the need for a genuine actor to play the role. Thank god he did. Because without Englund's performance, those films would've dried up. He embraced his star status with gusto and played each film to the hilt, giving us the first horror icon since Christopher Lee. Even in the lesser entries, when everyone else was just going through the paces, Englund was giving it his all.

When Freddy says, "You are all my children, now." He was talking to me.

That is why I waited three hours for an autograph from the man himself, Robert Englund. Snaking its way through the Wyndam hotel, into the parking lot, and down the sidewalk, the line was impossibly long. After two hours, I charted my progress:

I stared waaaaaay in the back, beyond the white fence on the left side of the pic. We were in that damn line so long that a couple got married in the hotel while we waited and I was still waiting an hour later. Honestly. Thank god I made friends with people in the line. It would've made for an excruciating three hours baking in the Florida sun without some fellow Freddy People to crack jokes at the expense of Friday the 13th Part 3's "Cashier Girl."

Finally, the moment approached. I gathered my reprint Nightmare poster and after after brief pleasantries, I stammered through an explanation:

"When I was growing up, horror movies were strictly verboten," I said. "Nightmare was my gateway drug into turning me into who I am today."

Englund silently considered this as he drew a Freddy caricature on the poster. I'm sure he'd heard thousands of variations on this story before.

After the drawing was done, he signed it. I burst out laughing at the dedication.

It said: "To James, Sorry I damaged your childhood. Robert Englund."

Damn, he's a fucking cool guy, to boot. Take that, Jason people.

Pluto

Screamfest 2007.

Michael Berryman, star of Wes Craven's original The Hills Have Eyes. Crammed between the wall and the now grown-up kid from Child's Play, he was friendly and chatty.

He told us that he'd been fucked out of a role in the sequel-to-the-remake, The Hills Have Eyes 2. He'd flown to L.A. on his own dime to discover that the director was "busy" and couldn't make his scheduled meeting. Despite enthusiastic comments from Craven (now a producer on the sequel/remake) and producer Peter Locke, he only later found out he hadn't been cast from a secretary. Over the phone.

It's hard out here for an icon, that's for sure. Hollywood is a cruel place.

"We have such sights to show you."

Screamfest 2007.

A true class act and a personable, intelligent conversationalist: Doug Bradley. The watershed British horror of the 80's, Hellraiser made Pinhead an icon and spawned a clutch of mostly unsatisfactory sequels. Behind a mountain of makeup and a leather apron resided Bradley, who always maintained the menace and integrity of the character, no matter how artistically bankrupt the proceedings got.

Minus the fashionably disgusting costume, Doug's greatest weapon in his Pinhead performance was his voice. That in mind, I leaned over the table and made an innocent inquiry about Doug's history of voice-over work. Unprompted, he took me through a complete history of the Pinhead voice and its highly inconsistent post-production manipulation. On the set, he mostly used his normal voice, citing the difficulty of working in a lower register. Apparently, the engineers had not taken notes in the dubbing sessions; they had to start fresh with each sequel, resulting in the inconsistencies.

We segued into a discussion of the re-dubbing of the British supporting cast in Hellraiser and the incongruity the oh-so English settings created with the "American" dubbing. Throughout this, I was keenly aware that there were people waiting behind me and that I'd spent longer talking to him that any other celeb I'd met that day.

Seated nearby, Kane Hodder, who played Jason no less than four times, interrupted Doug no less than twice by loudly klanging his machete on the table to rouse his fellow monster. I get the sense that these guys fuck with each other in order to break up the monotony of ten hours of pressing the flesh with strangers.

After twenty minutes, one of the Screamfest volunteers leaned in and politely shooed me away, mentioning the growing line. In a fit of pique Bradley snipped, "It doesn't seem that long to me," and continued talking.

The volunteer finally corralled us into the above pic.

Greetings from Tromaville

At Screamfest 2007 in Orlando, Florida, mere moments before this was taken, I asked Troma founder and Toxic Avenger director Lloyd Kaufman an impossibly stupid question. A knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, basement-dwelling fanboy question. The type of question that makes Trekkies look bad. The kind that gets you a furrowed brow and an admonishing remark like, "get a life, kid."

Admittedly, the question in question has haunted me for years, but it was still pretty fucking dumb.

It originates with The Toxic Avenger. During the ubiquitous "falling in love" montage set to a syrupy Journey-sounding power ballad, Toxie cavorts in a toxic waste dump with his girlfriend, Sarah. In one shot, lasting no more than ten seconds, he wears a traffic cone on his head. When he tips the cone like Chaplin's Tramp tipping his hat, she roars with laughter.

The only problem is that she's BLIND. How the fuck did she know he did that? Did he narrate this to her? "Now I'm merrily tipping the cone. Picture Charlie Chaplin... oh, sorry, I guess you can't. Because you're fucking BLIND."

I've approached Lloyd at two separate conventions to ask him how Sarah was able to know what Toxie was doing with the cone. Each time, he was gone before I could ask. Now was my big chance; Troma's booth would be there all weekend with Lloyd leading his band of hipsters and Tromatized Suicide Girls personally.

So I asked him, explaining myself in the most complimentary tone imaginable. I admitted, in a concession to Troma humor, that the montage in question had "made me cry and made me come in my pants."

I braced for impact.

"Well, you see, Toxie could've simply explained what he was doing," replied Lloyd, exhibiting the patience of Job and the kindness of Christ.

"So, he just told her? Hmm. Gee, Thanks, Lloyd," was my relieved reply.

"Come here, girls. What are you calling yourself? Genitalia? Goneherrea? Let's get a photo with James here, he's an intellectual."

After that, he had his Tromettes (excuse me, Gyno-Americans) pose with me for the above picture.

Thanks, Lloyd. I guess the only truly dumb questions are those left unasked.