31 Days of Halloween 2013: The New York Ripper

Special guest review by Ed Mishic of Crimson Screens magazine

Long ago, when I was first getting into horror movies, I wanted to see everything that I could.  This would often mean that entire weekends were spent in the basement, watching as many movies as I could fit into my waking hours.  After a while, I would program my own themed movie marathons.  Sometimes I would watch a days worth of ghost movies.  Other times it would be zombie movies.  Even other times, it would be slasher movies.  Every once in a while, I would pick out what looked like the most violent movies I could find.  These would be the boxes with the sickest covers, bloodiest artwork and often directed by names which I had started to notice.  One of those names was Lucio Fulci.  Back in the day, if you wanted to see the complete, uncut version of a movie, you might have to look beyond a video store.  The description of THE NEW YORK RIPPER in the latest Midnight Video catalog made it seem as if it was a gorefest like I had never seen before.  Soon enough, I had my own bootleg copy of the movie and it went right to the top of my programming schedule.

Local publishers Edward Mishic and Mike Salamone keep print zines alive in Cleveland

Interview by Bob Ignizio

With the Internet making it possible for practically anyone to share their opinions via blogs, websites, and social media, you might think there's no place in the world anymore for homemade printed fanzines. And yet, there are still those dedicated souls who see the value in creating something tangible. People like Clevelanders Edward Mishic, publisher of Crimson Screens, and Mike Salamone, publisher of Bloodfeast, Inc. As you might guess from the titles, both fanzines deal with horror and exploitation movies, an area of film fandom that I have a great deal of love for myself, but don't often get the chance to focus on here at the Cleveland Movie Blog. I recently interviewed both Ed and Mike about their zines, and why they prefer print to pixels, and here's what they had to say.