Re-Writing Halloween: Interview with Comics scribe Stefan Hutchinson

Stefan Hutchinson’s been a great friend to Cinema Crazed since we began reviewing his comic books and our raves about his takes on “Halloween” and the mythos of Michael Myers have not been sycophantic. If you’ve ever read a comic from this man, you’ll know he’s one who understands the world John Carpenter unfolded for horror audiences, and why it’s remained so prevalent in the film community in spite of bad sequels and remakes. With that said, we hear from Hutchinson and his approach to the comics.

So what inspired you to write Tarantula Man?
Tarantula Man came about as a result of a long discussion between myself and the team who write the website material. We were having a conference about potential new content for the site, and Greg Mitchell (one of the site writers) suggested possibly doing Tommy Doyle’s comic books. My thoughts went into overdrive at that point and I came up with the rather wrong idea of a pedophile arachnid. I was thinking about things that would scare a child, and I instantly thought of how myself, as a child, I was constantly warned to avoid strangers. In my mind when I was young, strangers were shadowy figures that hung around by the school gates and in the garden at night. That was the sort of thing I was trying to tap into there.

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Have Aaron and Larry Longstreth Made the Greatest Fan Film Of All Time?

A little over a year ago, we spoke with Larry Longstreth, the founder of the comedy team Bull Crank, a crew of filmmakers devoted to making comedy in the form of animation and live action short films. This time we’re speaking with a different Larry; a more mature and hopeful Larry, along with his long time partner Aaron Longstreth. With this interview we hope to see what they’re up to and why Bull Crank is no more.

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Chris Lemmon, Author of "A Twist of Lemmon" and Our Review

919First and foremost, “A Twist of Lemmon” is a thank you letter and final farewell from Chris Lemmon to his father Jack Lemmon. And though intentional or not, “A Twist of Lemmon” at almost two hundred pages, is also a testament to the power of the father and son relationship and the importance of it in shaping a man. Whether a loving father or an abusive one (Lemmon was the former, by the way), the men in our lives shape who we become. It’s an often emasculated and marginalized aspect of the parental foundation that’s constantly deemed irrelevant and easily dismissed in a world that values women more over men, but the father and son relationship is one of the most powerful dichotomies of nature.

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Director Alexandra Fisher of "Desert Wedding"

A most recent earner of the Cinema Crazed’s coveted Indie Spotlight, “Desert Wedding” is a wonderful short drama about a materialistic woman on the verge of marriage who suddenly gets a lesson in appreciating what’s really important in life while you have it. Simultaneously, it’s also a commentary about the fuss and chaos women work themselves up in during weddings, so intent on sparing no cost, that they forget why they’re getting married in the first place, and director Alexandra Fisher provides a gripping dramatic short film that conveys this interesting undertone rarely ever put to the screen. Multi-talented, and multi-lingual, Fisher sheds some insight in to her hectic life and tells us about the experience making her short.

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42nd Street Blues: Waiting for the Second Revival

The “Grindhouse Review Fest” originally began back in 2007, when, to ring in the arrival of the much anticipated “Grind House,” we spent an entire month reviewing grindhouse flicks of old and new. And we had a blast. And so did our readers apparently, since the hits on Cinema Crazed jumped considerably around this period. So this year, we decided to do it again. With more movies, a small time crunch, and much better planning, we’ve gathered classic Grindhouse and Neo-Grindhouse from independent filmmakers, and brought to you the 2nd Annual Grindhouse Review Fest. And just to show you that we’re not fucking around with this occasion, we posed a survey to ourselves and to our gracious contributors to show that we absolutely adore grindhouse and all of its sub-genres from sexploitaiton, to nazisploitation. And we hope you love what contributors Lillian Patterson, William Garcia, and I, Felix Vasquez, have to say about Grindhouse movies, and why it’s one of our favorite hobbies as movie lovers.

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"King of the Grindhouse" 42nd Street Pete: The Deuce, Stag, and The New School

Movie lovers already know who 42nd Street Pete is, he’s a man you’ll either love or hate, who has spent most of his life talking about and writing about movies. That’s our kind of man. Simply known as 42nd Street Pete, he is a connoisseur of trash cinema and has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything from stag films right down to Hammer, and loves sharing his insight about what he’s experienced. Pete, even at the height of his cult fame interviewing Joe Knetter and George Romero, garnering a following, and sporting almost ten specialty compilation DVDs with his brand name, the man was still kind enough to take the time out for an interview and share his sights and sounds with us for the readers. Pete is extremely humble for a man who has seen and done it all, and at his fifties he doesn’t seem to be slowing down. You’ll find no shortage of opinions from Pete who constantly rants on his MySpace blog about social issues, and saves the movie stuff for his two very entertaining websites, where he mixes movie reviews with his own personal anecdotes on how and why he found them.

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Hacking at the Bone: Interview with Tim Seeley

Creator Tim Seeley, a confessed horror geek with a talent for satisfying the horror geeks who flock to Devil’s Due currently announced a pact with the fantastic alt model website Suicide Girls, pairing the eponymous Cassie Hack, with the gorgeous Suicide Goth’s and punks. Seeley, still reeling from the New York Comic Con was kind enough to talk with “Rot Your Brain” and yours truly (a Seeley and Hack/Slash fan) about upcoming issue developments, and what this pact will bring fans of old and new.

So, firstly, thank you very much for agreeing to this interview, Mr. Seeley. “Hack/Slash” is one of my favorite horror comics.
Thanks, no problem!

How did the New York Comic Con go?
Heh, I actually had a pretty miserable time! I had some kind of hellish space virus or something, so I was sick the whole time I was there. Man, nothing is lamer than sitting in a hotel room in Times Square watching AMC. Not to mention that my nose started running like crazy during a video interview! But, I’m feelin’ better now.

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