Since Red Hawk first posted the initial announcement that Moonlight had been cancelled, just days ago, we’ve received a ton of visitors looking to help. The petition went from 3,300 signatures to at my last check: 7,400+ people speaking out. That’s a significant increase, so we hope that if you haven’t signed the petition, you will!
In case you missed the original post, you can find it by clicking HERE. There you’ll find the phone number for CBS and also a link to a letter from Alex O’Loughlin to Moonlight fans.
The word on the streets (thanks to Moonlight-United) is that the following networks are being presented the opportunity to pick up Moonlight: The CW, USA Network and Fx Network. It’s been said time and time again that written letters (or easy-to-mail postcards!) mean more to bigger companies than mere phonecalls or e-mails. I wanted to offer the addresses for those of you who’d like to send your support for Moonlight. You can mail your favorite or all three!
Here’s the contact info:
USA Network:
USA Network (ATTN: Show Pick Up)
30 Rockefeller Center
21st Floor
New York, NY 10112
USA Phn: 212-664-4444
FX Network:
2121 Avenue of the Stars
19th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90067
Contact: President/GM: John Landgraf SVP
FX Productions & Original Programming: Eric Schrier VP
Series Development: Matt Cherniss
Main Phone: 310-369-1000
The CW:
Dawn Ostroff President
The CW Network
4000 Warner Blvd.
Bldg 168
Burbank, CA 91522-0002
This way if CBS completely abandons the show, then Warner Brothers can still get it aired somewhere. Here’s to more Moonlight in the coming years!
Oh, and be sure to check back here for an announcement of the Moonlight series on DVD!
If you’d like to download episodes to watch on your PC, you can get them by clicking RIGHT HERE!
Have you missed Moonlight? Wonder what it looks like? Well, here’s fan video!
Here at the old Double H we’re not just into horror movies, books and games. We also enjoy some of the horror TV series that have graced our televisions from time to time. We’ve covered Tales from the Crypt, reminisced about Shadow Theater and we’re quite excited about the upcoming series Fear Itself. However, I’d like to bring your attention to another show, Moonlight on CBS.
Moonlight was one of the shows that first aired last year and was affected by the writers’ strike. It tells the story of Mick St. John, a vampire private investigator living in Los Angeles. It’s also the story of Beth, a reporter whose life was saved by Mick when she was a little girl. Over the course of the season we watched Mick and Beth get closer emotionally, despite Beth’s pre-existing relationship with her district attorney boyfriend, Josh. We also met Mick’s vampire friend Josef, who we’re told has been living for several centuries.
The show did really initially as its slot situated it between Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs. The series even earned a People’s Choice Award for Best New Series. However, as John Goodman’s 2001 sitcom Normal, Ohio shows - that’s not always good enough as CBS has decided to cancel both Moonlight and Shark.
Now, I realize that one person doesn’t really mean much in the long run, but maybe alot of people can. If you care about Moonlight at all, please go to CBS.com and voice your displeasure or if you’d rather join the 3,300+ fans who’ve already signed a petition head on over to IPetitions‘ "Give Moonlight a Second Season!!!"
As horror fans, we’ve got to speak up for our genre or executives in the entertainment industries may never know that we truly care about our favorite shows. Thanks for the time to read and maybe even clicking. I’m planning an article on the series in the future for those of you who may have missed this season, so please stop back soon!
Until next time, this is Red Hawk signing out!
[Editor's note: You can call CBS here 1(323)651-0255) to ask them to bring the show back!]
[UPDATE! Thanks to Taylor Blue over at Taylor's Entertainment News for letting us know about a letter to the fans of Moonlight from Alex O'Loughlin who plays Mick St. John on the show! You can find that letter by CLICKING HERE]
[NEWEST UPDATE!! Looks like Moonlight just might get picked up by a whole different network! CLICK HERE to learn more!]
"You can keep the baby or you can put it in the street."
- a real orphanage note shown in Children of the Grave
Quite a shame that in order to type this review I’ve got to have the lights on due to the fact that I take the notes for my reviews by hand. It’d be far more eerily appropriate in the dark.
Children of the Grave presents a crisp, spooky documentary that’s quite unlike anything I’ve covered on Happy Horror before. However, when I saw the channel guide showing this documentary I couldn’t resist reviewing it for you, Merry Readers. That being said, I do warn you that this film is heavier than your typical horror movie.
As the opening scenes began to unfold, I saw that the show was a Spooked Television Releasing - a Booth Brothers film. Just who are these Booth Brothers? Well, according to their website (which I’ve linked to above) they are Philip Adrian and Christopher Saint Booth, brothers. Twin brothers, even. Philip’s the director of the pair, having done work for the music videos, the Sci Fi Channel and even the TV shows Xena Warrior Princess and Hercules The Legendary Journeys. Christopher’s the producer, also a songwriter and marketer among his other talents. Together with their crew they make documentaries of the supernatural using local lore, psychic mediums and high tech equipment.
You can tell right away that Children of the Grave received a great deal of passion from its filmmakers. It’s all put together sanely with an attention to artistic sensibilities. Simply put, I rarely see documentaries on supernatural subjects exhibit such lovingly crafted cinematography. The whole show’s totally gorgeous from start to finish. And don’t think this is all auteur silliness and hearsay, these guys actually suffer for their art. While scouting the shooting location for their documentary Death Tunnel, Christopher Saint Booth became mysteriously ill - but when he came back he had some incredible photographs that only further the pair’s notion (and my own!) that the ghosts do indeed exist.
To start with we see what they call the Paranormal Task Force going out to Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, Indiana. Here there’s a section of graves bearing only numbers - 699 of them unmarked. These are the graves of children. Orphans, in fact. From what I understand, back in the early 1900’s, formaldehyde in milk was not uncommon because it was considered a cheaper means of pasteurization. As a result, many children - especially those in orphanages - died of poisoning.
Obviously, that’s going to tug at your heart strings. Investigators actually go through these cemeteries and orphanages asking "Are you lost and looking for your mommy or daddy?" They ask many questions to the spirits said to be there and sometimes they got EVPs, which stands for Electronic Voice Phenomenon, something first noticed by Thomas Edison himself in the 1920’s. He also wanted to talk with the dead.
Now in a documentary of this nature it’s fairly commonplace for the creators to sensationalize the story and trump up the talk of evidence rather than let you see or hear it. The Booth Brothers don’t play games. They offer their own observations, witness reports and then they play those EVPs and images from thermal cameras. They don’t dilly dally around trying to get your pity, they simply tell you the stories and what they’re saying exists in public records.
We get to see Bartonville Asylumn in Peoria, Illinois. At a State Mental Hospital such as this one, many patients come in without names. This means they go to their graves the same way, too. If I remember correctly, at the asylum there’s a cemetary with 4,000 graves and only 1,500 of those mark people with currently known identities. A place like that’s clearly going to be ripe for hauntings and restless spirits. I won’t tell you what all they experience in Bartonville, but I’ll tell you it’s genuinely unnerving.
There’s also an excursion into the Pythian Castle, located in Springfield, Missouri. This place started out as an orphanage run by the Knights of Pythias but since there weren’t too many young ‘uns, it was sold to the US Military during World War II and turned into a Service Club. In other words, a recreational facility. Today it’s still standing, but being rennovated for hosting murder mysteries and ballroom dances.
I found this particular segment exceptionally creepy because for one, the Ozarks are what I consider to be America’s Transylvania ™. Anything set in that region’s bound to be freaky. Afterall, that’s where Wal-Mart sprang from, ya know? In this bit there’s some rumor of a bad guy who may’ve done nasty things to children. (No, not Sam Walton ya weirdos!) Using heat signature imaging technology, they actually pick up what looks to be a large man’s hands. Then one of the guys actually goes down into the laundry tunnel where this spirit’s known to be and starts calling him out! Suffice it to say that things turn freaky and we close that segment with this quote:
"True evil exists both in life and in death - we know because we have seen it"
- the filmmakers of Children of the Grave
Before I wrap this article up, I’ve got to dive into one last bit of Missouri lore covered in the show. It’s called Zombie Road and this place gives me a serious case of ye olde heebie jeebies! Apparently, during the misspent decades of the 1960’s and 70’s, Zombie Road served as a route for drug traffickers. Alot of real terrible shizz went down out in those woods, the local law enforcement says. So, naturally the Booth Brothers want a slice of that action. I mean, locals call the forest there the Devil’s Woods so how could they resist?
The Zombie Road actually dead ends into the Meramac River and we’re told ‘Meramac’ is a Native American phrase meaning "River of Death". Indeed, quite a few drownings happened in that river, as well. All sorts of craziness scurries afoot during this segment of the show. Tales of a quarter mile of dismembered animals (we’re not told what species) and other craziness attributed to Satanic groups.
Here’s where things get really weird. See, there’s local lore about "shadow people" that inhabit the woods. I’ve heard of this type of apparition being common among speed freaks, too. To try and film the shadow people, the crew sets up laser grids that in the past have slowed down dark masses caught on film. It’s all really wild stuff and as these events are going in, the locals decide to play a The Hills Have Eyes style prank. On the road they spray paint DEAD PEOPLE to try and scare the crew. What ends up being the biggest freakout is the guys hearing "You know too much" and getting shots of dozens of shadow figures standing out in the woods.
Oh, and during the credits I noticed the names Dylan, Devin and Dakota Vorhees. You know, like Jason Vorhees? No relation, though. They’re child actors we’ll be seeing more of in the years to come, but that chilled me a touch, I must admit.
I have to say Children of the Grave does a superb job delivering not only creepy tales, but solid historical and folkloric information at the same time. If you chance upon the show either being aired or you buy the DVD you’ll definitely be in for a hair-raising ride!
I easily give this one 5 out of 5 and I came away with a solid respect for the Booth Brothers. I’ll be reviewing more of their work as soon as I can get my lil paws on it, you can count on that!
Until next I speak of the dead, Merry Readers, this is GlowStormLion heading out into the Ozarks to party it up with some shadow spooks!
Just kidding - I’d never do that.
Or would I?
OH!
Bonus Feature: Check out this video of the Children of the Grave’s trailer!
"I do not wish to find gold. I wish to find natives who’ve already found gold."
- Hernan Cortez in Aztec Rex
Certain things click. For me, the moment I saw an advertisement for Aztec Rex on the Sci Fi Channel, I swore to see it. Having been a fan of the ridiculous from an early age, there’s no way I’d miss out on a movie where conquistadors wind up battling dinosaurs!
And right from the beginning, what do we see? Human sacrfice! To keep the terrible gods of the thunder lizards at bay, of course. Funny, I took a class on History of Latin America & the Caribbean in college. The whole human sacrifice issue among pre-Columbian tribes really split the class down the middle. Half of us were fascinated, the other half wanted to argue that it couldn’t possibly be anything more than blown up legends. I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure no T Rex’s were mentioned. Ah well, history’s more fun when we get to monkey with it, right? There’s not a great deal of story to be found in Aztec Rex. Basically, a conquistador stumbles into a settlement of Aztecs and gets scheduled for sacrifice to appease the angry dinosaurs - a local custom. Of course, one of them (Gonzalez - played quite well by Marc Antonio who I can’t find any other credits for) falls in love with the chief’s daughter. Granted, I can’t really blame the guy because ‘Ayacoatl’ sets a new standard for beauty. She’s played by Dichen (pronounced "Deechen") Lachman, a stunningly gorgeous girl who’s the daughter of an Australian father and a Tibetan mother - how’s that for exotic? Kathmandu, Nepal, that’s where Dichen was born. She’s played on the Australian soap opera Neighbours and was in a movie called Aquamarine. Aside from her natural glamour, she plays her role well as the sort of butt-kicking native princess type. Diggin’ it! Plus, according to the captions she speaks Nahuatl!
So, Gonzalez loves Ayacoatl, but her papa, Big Chief Matlal has her set to marry the tribal shaman Xocozin (which totally sounds like a drug to me!) and Xocozin don’t like the Spaniards one bit. He’ll go to all sorts of sneaky methods to ensure he gets to kill whitey. And with the general attitude of Cortez and company, who can blame him? Xocozin’s played by a guy named Kalani Queypo who’s Hawaiian and Blackfeet (the Native American tribe). He’s done a good deal of work, notably in The Royal Tenenbaums and voicing Hiawatha in Age of Empires III, the video game. He plays one tenacious looking warrior-shaman and does his job playing the heel to the point where you kind of want him to get eaten eventually, you know? I admire the guy, I mean how much could they have possibly paid him to scamper around the jungle bare-ass with a goofy top-knot hairdo blowing a horn? That takes cajones!
Cortez himself is played by Ian Ziering and the reason I’m noting him is not because he was in Batman Beyond: The Movie, but because he voiced the character Vinnie in Biker Mice from Mars! How cool is that? All in all, he does his job but.. Biker Mice from Mars!
If you’re hungry to see people get eaten by CGI Dinosaurs, Aztec Rex won’t leave you disappointed. Plenty of folks get chomped and of course, you’ll see a dino or two die, as well. Although I first believed this film to be shot in Central America, after a while it began to look more familiar. It was shot in O’ahu, Hawaii (which is allegedly part of the United States, but I dunno, sounds a bit sketchy to me - probably more revisionist history.) The film originally went by the clunky title Tyrannosaurus Azteca when it first came out in 2007. Obviously you’re not going to sell too many breakfast cereals or Chef Boyardee products with a cumbersome title like that, so they revised it to the far more fun Aztec Rex.
Oh, and a final note we’ve got a Catholic priest/monk guy named Gria (played by Jack McGee from 21, Rescue Me and who voiced Mr. White in the Reservoir Dogs video game) who’s in the village because he got captured or lost or something. The priest drinks like a fish which is pretty hilarious, but here’s the real kicker. When things get tough for our heroes, he bails! Very un-RPG of him. When I saw him do that I was just like, "Dude! He’s a monk!" Sad.
All in all, I feel Aztec Rex provided a good deal of cheap entertainment. Will it win an Oscar? No. Can I give it 5 out of 5? No, because it’d need more nudity to get that. HOWEVER, I feel it does deserve a 3 out of 5 for trying to present a weird story and succeeding without making me angry for having watched it.
Until next I speak of dinosaurs and exotic women, this is GlowStormLion, sacrificing good taste in order to calm the thunder lizards.
