In the eight episode of Cultpix Radio WCPX 66.6 we count down one week left of VIP only membership, so join now while it is still cheaper, before the site opens to everyone. We discuss what developments you will see on the site in Phase 2 (Chromecast support tops the list); lots of films and TV shows coming to Cultpix after we completed a bunch of transfers from Digibeta; restorations and films delivered to us by the Swedish Film Institute (SFI) and the British Film Institute (BFI), as well as Nikkatsu starting restoration of our secret project.
The use of A.I. and machine learning (ML) for restoring, up-converting, colorizing and enhancing footage that is over 100 years old captures our attention as one of the leading online adult sites makes its AI watch 100,000 hours of porn to learn how to do it - hopefully not going blind or getting hairy palms in the process. So which of our own films would we consider for this treatment? Grandma will never have looked so good in the buff!
Bernard Hermann's strings announce our Theme Week look at Slasher Killers. What was spawned by Hitchcock's Psycho and Powell's Peeping Tom had an interesting pre-history of all the tropes of a classic slasher film being pioneered earlier, as well as early examples of the genre like Coppola's Dementia 13. Andy Milligan’s The Ghastly Ones, a.k.a. Blood Rites (1968) pointed the way with its low budget, single location, excess gore is interesting in being a period slasher film. In The Horrible House on the Hill (1974) the slashers are kids, while Drive-In Massacre (1976) have some of the fattest cops you've seen in a horror film. Killer Workout / Aerobicide (1987) is such a by-the-numbers slasher that of course it has a shower scene, but at least a novel deadly instrument (oversized safety pin). Six teenagers, a weekend by a lake, one bloodthirsty maniac all makes it a Blood Lake (1987). Lastly Effects (1979) is a very meta slasher film as the film crew discusses viewers' appetite for seeing grissly scenes on film.
New films this week include two from the Nordisk Tonefilm archive, with almost 50 films that we will be sharing on Cultpix in the coming months, which we also hope to make English subtitles available for. The Starlost is the 'lost' Canadian television series that could have become the new Star Trek if it had not been cancelled early. Finally New Faces (1954) sees Mel Brooks trying out ideas that would later come back in The Producers, while Eartha Kitt sings MONOTONOUS:
Everyone gets into a dull routine
If they don't get a chance to change the scene
I could not be wearier
Life could not be drearier
If I lived in Siberia
I'll tell ya what I mean
I met a rather amusing fool
While on my way to Istanbul
He bought me the Black Sea for my swimming pool
Monotonous...