Rockula / Beverly Hills Vamp: A Fangs-On Double Feature

In the grand tradition of cinematic pairings, some double features are a match made in heaven. Consider the classic horror night or the action-packed thriller marathon. But for those with a taste for the peculiar, the absurd, and the downright silly, the combination of 1990's musical comedy Rockula and 1989’s fish-out-of-water farce Beverly Hills Vamp is a hilarious, though uneven, delight.This double feature is a crash course in late 80s and early 90s vampire humor, a subgenre that thrives on the premise that being undead is less about eternal suffering and more about eternal awkwardness. While both films sink their teeth into the concept, they each take a wildly different approach, making for a fascinating comparative study in B-movie absurdity.The evening kicks off with Rockula, a film that gleefully asks: what if a vampire was also a perpetually lovesick, eternally virgin rock musician? This is the plight of Ralph, a 400-year-old vampire whose life is an endless loop of unrequited love and reincarnation. Every 400 years, he falls for the same girl, only for her to die at the hands of a pirate with a rhinestone-studded peg leg. When he meets the latest reincarnation, Mona, he tries to win her over not with a cape and a coffin, but with a terrible band called the "Rockulas." The film is a goofy romp, filled with ridiculous musical numbers (the “rock” in Rockula is more synth-pop than anything else) and charmingly low-budget effects. It's a sweet, if slightly bizarre, romance that succeeds on the sheer, earnest charisma of its star, Dean Cameron, and the infectious energy of its supporting cast, including Toni Basil and a scenery-chewing Thomas Dolby.Following this, Beverly Hills Vamp takes a decidedly more slapstick route. Three bumbling, wannabe filmmakers from Ohio head to Beverly Hills in search of their big break, only to stumble into a den of vampires led by the alluring but deadly Countess. It’s a classic comedic setup: three average guys versus supernatural predators in a completely inappropriate setting. While it lacks the narrative coherence of Rockula, its strength lies in its over-the-top gags and the delightful chemistry between the leads. It's a film that leans heavily on broad physical comedy and groan-worthy puns, but it does so with such a lack of self-awareness that it's impossible not to find it endearing. The vampires are less menacing than they are glamorous and eccentric, and the heroes are more clueless than they are heroic.Together, Rockula and Beverly Hills Vamp form a perfect cinematic microcosm of the late 80s/early 90s. Both are products of an era when genre-blending was king, and a good hook was all you needed to get a movie greenlit. Rockula charms with its sweet story and surprisingly catchy soundtrack, while Beverly Hills Vamp delivers the pure, unadulterated pleasure of unpretentious silliness. While neither film will win any awards, they represent a moment in time when a double feature could be as simple and enjoyable as a couple of cheesy jokes and a good, old-fashioned vampire slaying.

🎺📯 TRUMPET FANFARE, COUGH OF A SAXOPHONE REED, SOMEONE DROPS A PINT ON THE FLOOR 📯🎺

ANNOUNCING THE INAUGURAL BLAST OF
✶ THE PALIMPSET PARADOX ✶
(A New Monthly Column Where Psychiatry Meets Pub-Rock, and Both Get Sectioned)

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Case Report #1: The Bass Player Believes He Is a Snare Drum

By D.C. Waing (after a long weekend in Antwerp with Syla Fang)

Patient: Male, 27, bassist.
Complaint: States with absolute conviction that he has ceased to be a person, and is now “the snare drum that keeps the whole bloody band together.”

History:
Onset of delusion followed a 14-hour drive in a van whose heating system emitted fumes resembling both diesel exhaust and metaphysical despair. Patient exhibited strong identification with percussion instruments during load-in, repeatedly insisting: “Hit me harder, I’ll keep the time, I’ll keep the time forever.”

Examination:

• Affect: Slightly manic, but rhythmic.

• Orientation: Fully oriented to tour schedule but not to calendar dates.

• Insight: Nil.

• Beer intake: Above recommended dosage for three consecutive fiscal quarters.

Diagnosis:
Borderline Percussive Personality Disorder, with comorbid Gig Economy Psychosis.

Treatment Plan:

1. Prescribe two encores and a cab back to Shepherd’s Bush.

2. Encourage “talking cure” in which patient communicates exclusively via paradiddles.

3. Avoid lithium; recommend lager.

Prognosis:
Guarded. Will either recover by next soundcheck or remain permanently incorporated into the rhythm section.

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FOOTNOTE (scrawled in biro on a beer mat): The line between symptom and solo is porous. We all contain our own drum kits, poorly tuned, forever in need of adjustment.

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📯📯📯 Thus concludes the first sounding of the PALIMPSET PARADOX, where your madness is merely the verse, and the culture’s madness the chorus. Tune in next month for: “The Guitarist Who Believed the Monitors Were His Parents.” 📯📯📯

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Sunday Matinee

A chill crept up my spine the moment I saw the marquee. Two of 'em. A double-fisted dose of shadows and sorrow, served up on a late Sunday. I had a feeling this wasn't gonna be a walk in the park.

First up, Nocturne. The kind of picture that smells of whiskey and cheap perfume. A cop named Joe Warne, a guy with a face that's seen too many long nights, is chasing a ghost. A dead composer, a closed case, and a whole lot of dames who look good in the moonlight. The streets are wet, the jazz is low, and every cigarette feels like a clue. Joe's got an itch he can't scratch, a hunch that a suicide was really a murder, and he starts digging. The picture's got style, sure, but it’s the kind of style that hides a knife in its hand. It sets you up, gets you comfortable in the gloom, and then leaves you wondering which of those pretty faces is telling the biggest lie. It's a fine piece of work, a mood-setter that pulls you down into the dark.

And just when you think you've seen the worst of it, they throw you into Hangover Square. This one's a different animal entirely. The first picture was about the demons outside; this one's about the ones in your head. It's set in a London wrapped in fog and a composer named George Harvey Bone wrapped in madness. This fella, he's a genius with a problem. A loud noise, a bad day, and suddenly he's a monster who doesn't remember a thing. Laird Cregar, the guy who plays him, is a tragic masterpiece—a sad, lumbering brute with a soul on fire. The whole thing's a slow burn, a suffocating trip into a mind coming apart at the seams. It's a grim, haunting piece of work that makes you forget what day it is.

Together, they're a hell of a ticket. Nocturne gives you the jazzy, street-level mystery, the kind of yarn you'd find in a pulp novel. Hangover Square takes that paranoia and shoves it into a corner of the human psyche where only bad things live. By the time the final credits rolled, I felt like I needed a long, stiff drink. And maybe a good night's sleep.

Building a Machine for Light

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In the attic of a bankrupt mind, amid piles of unpaid bills and ledger sheets that scream in Helvetica, a machine hums. It is composed of copper tubing, broken mirrors, and the discarded lightbulbs of a thousand forgotten offices. It is not yet finished, but it already shines—not with electricity, but with the glare of revelation. The machine waits, impatient, like a Gilliam protagonist, for the absurd bureaucracy of the world to stumble into its path.

Financial ruin has a peculiar geometry. It folds time, warps expectation, and leaves you standing on a tightrope strung between two ledgers, teetering over the yawning chasm of responsibility. The debtors, of course, are everywhere—some hiding behind suits, some behind automated voice menus, all shirking the weight they themselves imposed. The machine’s light finds them, exposing the absurdity: a paperclip bends a contract, a stapler threatens morality, a fax machine vomits confessions no one dared write.

In this world, truth is not linear. It is a kaleidoscope of falling chairs, dancing accountants, and ceilings that drip ink like rain. To see clearly is to embrace nonsense, to navigate the corridors of power armed with a screwdriver, a magnifying glass, and the audacity to laugh. The machine for light does not distinguish between debtor and tyrant—it merely illuminates. And in the illumination, one sees: the weight of obligation is misassigned, and the system itself trembles, unmasked.

Perhaps the greatest lesson of insolvency is humility. But perhaps greater still is the lesson of imagination. To build is to resist; to resist is to create; to create is to shine. The machine is incomplete, absurd, glorious, and necessary. It hums, it whirs, it bends the shadows of the world into patterns too strange to name. And somewhere in its glow, in the ridiculous symphony of bureaucracy and rebellion, one discovers the faint glimmer of justice, the delicate outline of truth, and the unshakable beauty of seeing clearly—even when everything has been lost.

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DOWN THE TUBIS: COZZI-A-THONA psychedelic plunge into the glittery, gawdy, and glorious junkyard of Luigi Cozzi cinema

Welcome to the Cozzi-Verse, where Hercules punches space bears, electric violins unlock the gates of hell, and myth collides with synth in a Eurotrash explosion of ambition and budgetary neglect. What better place to stage this feverish descent than Tubi, the true temple of divine trash?

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🎬 The Adventures of Hercules (1985)

Category: Fantasy / Adventure / Bicepsploitation
Starring: Lou Ferrigno as Hercules, muscles glistening like oiled marble

The second in Cozzi’s neon-soaked Hercules saga, this one plays like Greek mythology rewritten by a 13-year-old boy high on comic books and laser shows. The gods are fighting. Zeus is shouting. The thunderbolts are missing. So Herc, in full dad-at-the-gym mode, flies through outer space, wrestles robo-beasts, and somehow makes logic illegal.

The effects? Think Atari meets marble statue cosplay. The pacing? Like if a protein shake could walk and talk. But Lou Ferrigno grunts his way into your heart, and Cozzi? He just keeps dreaming bigger than his FX team can deliver.

🗯️ Best Line That Was Never Actually Spoken:
“I AM HERCULES. I REJECT GRAVITY.”

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🎻 Paganini Horror (1989)

Category: Horror / Giallo / Euro-rock Supernatural Swoon
Starring: Daria Nicolodi, Donald Pleasence (probably in on the joke)

When your all-girl glam band records an unearthed violin piece by Paganini—yes, that Paganini—you should expect trouble. Like... ghosts. Possession. Flames. A house that might be a portal. And of course, a violin carved from a corpse’s bones. Cozzi doesn’t just bend genre—he tie-dyes it and sells it at a cursed flea market.

The vibe is pure Italian late-’80s VHS delirium. Smoke machines, neon lighting, synths that scream, and murders with poetic flourish. It’s the haunted MTV Europe set of your nightmares.

🎶 Best Imaginary Tagline:
“SHE PLAYED THE DEVIL’S TUNE... AND HE CAME TO DANCE.”

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🧬 Cozzi’s Special Sauce

What makes Cozzi special isn't just the sci-fi FX he duct tapes over Greco-Roman myth, or the fact that he probably thinks Flash Gordon is a documentary. It’s his sheer belief that cinema should always go for it. Whether he's reediting someone else's film (Invasion of the Animal People, anyone?) or conjuring intergalactic Hercules showdowns from his Rome apartment, Cozzi creates from the gut. And maybe some expired acid.

He’s an alchemist of trash and treasure, turning myth into mess, mess into madness, and madness into midnight movie gold.

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🍿 Cozzi-A-Thon Survival Tips:

• Watch with neon lighting on.

• Subtitles ON, logic OFF.

• Drink every time something glows for no reason.

• Appreciate the vibe, not the coherence.

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Final Verdict:

Luigi Cozzi is cinema’s thrift-store Prometheus, giving fire to the weirdos. And Tubi? It’s the Olympus where his forgotten gifts still burn. Queue up The Adventures of Hercules, Paganini Horror, and whatever else bears his name. Just don’t expect the gods to save you.

COZZI-A-THON: Because sometimes, to truly see the stars... you need to go way, way Down the Tubis.

Creative aspirations/Commercial limitations

Creative aspirations—
they come in hot, like a saxophone at midnight,
blowing notes no one asked for,
but everybody needed.
They don’t walk in the room, baby,
they float—
like cigarette smoke curling above streetlights,
dressed in velvet chaos,
wearing shoes made of daydreams.

And then—
Commercial limitations strolls in,
slicked back and buttoned down,
counting steps like pocket change,
counting time like it’s got somewhere better to be.
It’s a man with a ledger in his breast pocket
and a smile you can’t quite trust—
the kind of smile that hums
“Yeah, kid, that was nice.
But where’s the hook?”

Now they’re face to face—
a trumpet spitting blood-orange notes in 5/4,
a metronome clapping back in perfect 4/4.
The dream says, “Let me bend this note till it cries.”
The deal says, “Bend it all you want,
as long as it sells by Tuesday.”

And ain’t that the dance?
That tightrope strung between gallery walls and grocery lists,
between genius and invoice,
between the ink that bleeds
and the ink that signs.

Creative aspirations want to fly, man,
want to jump the rails and run through traffic,
naked and holy,
howling into a hurricane of color and sound.
But commercial limitations—
it wants to pin you down,
clip your wings,
slap a barcode on your soul and call it product.

Still—
listen close—
when those two lock horns,
something sweet starts to cook.
A groove slides in like bourbon in a low glass,
and baby, that’s the moment—
when rebellion puts on a tie,
when compromise grows teeth,
when you find a way to make the ledger swing.

Because art ain’t dead, darling,
it just learned to dance with the devil
without stepping on its own two feet.

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Tune in Tuesday: The Night Gallery DVD Collection

“Submitted for your approval: a gallery, not of fine art, but of darker visions. Each canvas holds a story, each frame a whisper from the shadows. Step inside, and you’ll find a young filmmaker named Spielberg before he conquered the silver screen, a grande dame named Crawford in her final war with the camera, and a host of nightmares painted in shades of irony, dread, and the faint smell of cigarette smoke. This is no ordinary collection — it is a museum of the macabre, open after midnight, where the price of admission is curiosity… and the exit is never guaranteed. Welcome… to the Night Gallery.”

Step right up, night crawlers, and feast your bloodshot peepers on Rod Serling’s other brainchild — the one they didn’t show you at polite dinner parties. Night Gallery wasn’t here to teach you about moral dilemmas in neatly packaged black-and-white… this was Serling with a cigarette dangling from his lips, a stiff drink in his hand, and a wicked grin, saying, “Wanna see something really weird?”

The new DVD collection is like walking into your eccentric uncle’s attic — you’re never sure if you’ll find a dusty painting worth a fortune or a cursed artifact that’ll ruin your life before breakfast. The transfers? Not 4K sharp, but that’s the point. This is midnight-TV-in-1972 soft focus, the kind where the shadows have their own secrets.

What’s in the gallery? Oh, just Spielberg before he was Spielberg, Joan Crawford chewing scenery like it owed her money, and Vincent Price swanning around like he owned the joint. You’ll get Gothic revenge tales (The Cemetery), bittersweet nostalgia bombs (They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar), and enough twist endings to make you question your own furniture.

The extras are a little thin, but honestly, you’re here for the vibes: Serling’s sardonic intros, the queasy lighting, the sound of thunder on a backlot. It’s comfort horror — a little camp, a little creepy, and entirely irresistible.

Bottom line: this isn’t just a DVD set, it’s a haunted time machine. Pop it in, dim the lights, and remember what it felt like to watch TV when the static between stations felt like it might be alive.

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Bonus: Fake ’70s TV Guide–Style Episode Listings for The Night Gallery DVD Set

(Imagine this printed on yellowing newsprint between ads for shag carpeting and Chesterfield cigarettes.)

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8:00 — The Night Gallery
Rod Serling opens the doors to his sinister salon of supernatural curiosities. Tonight’s works include:

“The Cemetery” — Greedy nephew Jeremy Evans (Roddy McDowall) inherits his uncle’s mansion… but the painting in the hallway keeps changing. By the time he notices the final brushstroke, it’s far too late. (30 min)

“They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” — A worn-down salesman (William Windom) faces the demolition of the one place that still holds his youth — and maybe the ghosts of friends long gone. A melancholy detour into Serling’s tender side. (30 min)

“Pickman’s Model” — An art student (Louise Sorel) discovers the unsettling works of painter Richard Pickman… and the even more unsettling inspiration behind them. (30 min)

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Next Week:
“Eyes” — A ruthless, blind socialite (Joan Crawford) demands the impossible: a temporary transplant to see for just one day. Spielberg directs, and the ending sees her vision in more ways than one.

“The Doll” — A cursed plaything travels halfway across the world to deliver a soldier’s grim comeuppance. Sleep with one eye open.

“Green Fingers” — A wealthy developer learns the hard way that some gardens have roots far deeper — and far deader — than they seem.

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Editor’s Pick: “Skip your bedtime and turn the lights low. The paint may be dry, but the horrors in Night Gallery are still wet enough to run.”

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