I am a collector. This has been established before…shoes, toys, comics, films, etc. One thing I’m also crazy about is VHS. Everyone remembers them, everyone had them, they were a part of people’s lives. Then, Laserdisc came along, then dvd, then blu….and it died. It was a sad day in December of 2009, but they killed it. The last VHS tape was manufactured and the format that had introduced so many people to so many films was out. Until now….

We are very proud to announce, in association with Intervision, MONDO VIDEO. Here’s the meaty party of the press release that went out earlier today….

Mondo, the collectible art boutique arm of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, is pleased to announce a partnership with Intervision Picture Corporation to release 1983′s SLEDGEHAMMER on VHS. SLEDGEHAMMER, the first shot-on-tape slasher movie for the home video market, will be the first video release of Mondo Video, a label created to release rare genre films in a collectible VHS format. The VHS release will coincide with the film’s first release on DVD and a Terror Tuesday screening on Tuesday, May 10, 2011 at Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX. Mondo Video’s SLEDGEHAMMER includes the original box art and copy from the 1983 VHS release and will be available for purchase only at MondoTees.com on Wednesday, May 11, 2011. The Intervision DVD will also be available for purchase on Tuesday, May 10, 2011 at http://amzn.to/lmZGfa.

There ya go! We are beyond excited. I got back into town this morning and went straight from the airport to the store to tear the box open to check these out. If someone would’ve taped me opening it, I’m sure it would’ve went down as one of the most epic unboxing videos ever. Understand, the last time someone opened a box of VHS tapes with the intent to sell like this had to be years ago and I guarantee they weren’t as excited.

I’ve seen some stuff online calling us “ironic hipsters” and things like that for doing this, so let me retort by saying first… my legs are too big for skinny jeans and second, this is not an ironic venture at all. This is serious. Myself, Lars Nilsen, Zack Carlson, Evan Husney and everyone else involved with this project are seriously in love with the format. “Why would you want to watch an inferior format?” is the other thing that is asked a lot. We’re not sitting here saying that VHS looks better than a bluray or anything like that. No way. But, VHS has a charm to it that other formats don’t. It’s little things. The hum of the VCR as it plays, the noises it makes every time you load in the tape, the way it ejects, the way that only your tape messes up at certain points because you watched it so much and something that you once hated, but maybe miss… rewinding. To me, it’s very similar to putting a record on and listening to that, but also watching it spin. If you don’t understand this obsession, that’s totally understandable. Many people won’t get it, but for the ones that do get it, I hope you’re all as excited as we are.

Another reason we’re doing this is that there are hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of titles on VHS that have never been released on dvd and that probably won’t. Before us and Intervision put this out, SLEDGEHAMMER was a VERY expensive tape to track down so for many that would want to check it out, it was cost prohibitive. The artwork and design on VHS tapes is also amazing. Most DVDs these days are horseshit compared to the VHS version. It was a product of its time and I really can’t think of anyone doing this type of stuff now. There are some that try to ape it, but VHS art is truly gorgeous. That’s the main reason why we chose to release the VHS exactly as it was put out originally.

So, what’s SLEDGEHAMMER about anyways? Well, allow Zack Carlson to explain it…

1940s scientists put years of study into creating the nuclear bomb, but it wasn’t until the first tests at Los Alamos that they realized its inhuman powers of absolute destruction. Four decades later, filmmaker David Prior similarly unveiled SLEDGEHAMMER, a shot-on-VHS masterstroke of anti-intellectual decimation. On that day, cinema quietly crumbled into dust.

Ted Prior (star of Deadly Prey; brother of the director) leads a cast of self-loathing alcoholics who face off against a shape-shifting, dimension-crossing spectre with a penchant for blunt object trauma. By the end, brains, bowels and Budweiser will be smeared across every inch of the walls. A rewardingly lethal collision of ‘80s slasher video-vomit, suburban legend and unintentional surrealist art, Prior’s supernaturally disabled death opera is the most visionary migraine to ever pummel its way into your skull. If you survive it, you’ll never ever forget it.

One of the funnest parts of this was designing the Mondo Video intro. It would not be a proper release if we didn’t have this on there as every VHS company worth its salt had one. Check out some of the classics here:

We needed a logo for the label, so went back to the sketches Mike Saputo provided when we were reworking the Mondo logo and settled on this one. Not much changed on it except for the “video” text on the bottom.

We then took it over to The Silent Giants who animated it. We decided that it would be a good idea to send them several of our favorite video intros from VHS labels of the past (see video above) so they could replicate the feel. One thing that we definitely wanted was a trailing effect from the logo against a background with a “Tron”-esque grid. Think spacey. Add a little Dylan Ettinger synth and here is our Mondo Video intro slug.

That’s it! I could go on and on and on, but I’m going to leave at this. We’ll have these for sale at the Terror Tuesday screening tomorrow night and the rest on sale Wednesday morning. Like we said earlier, we’re very excited about this and we plan on bringing you some real crazy videos in the very near future.

-Justin

Thanks to everyone who made it out to our first ever Mondo Mystery Movie! As you may have heard by now, the movie was Akira and the poster was by Tyler Stout. It was a great night, and really nice to have Tyler and his wife here as our guest on his birthday. (We even had cake to celebrate.) People started lining up a few hours in advance of the show, and by 9:30 the line was out the door. We started things off with some tom foolery + sneak peeks of upcoming Mondo projects, and ended the evening with an opportunity to snag Tyler’s amazing rendition of Akira. Already looking forward to the next MMM!

7:30pm

9:30pm

Tyler signing/numbering posters before show

Poster by Tyler Stout. 36 x 24 screen print. Signed and numbered by the artist. Edition of 180.

Poster by Tyler Stout.  36 x 24 screen print. Signed and numbered by the artist. Edition of 80.

If you were there and have photos – we’d love to see them.  And stay tuned for news on the next Mystery Movie. It may be sooner than you think…

-Jessica

This last weekend, I flew to LA to attend the Pee-Wee Herman Show at Club Nokia. I’ll be perfectly honest and say that as much as I love Pee-Wee, I was a little bit nervous about the show. There have been lots of performers and properties that have tried to recapture the magic of old and have failed miserably.  This was definitely not the case as the show, for the  most part, was great. There were some flat jokes here and there, but it was undeniably Pee-Wee. Something that must be noted was the set. It was unbelievable! The best part was definitely seeing Pee-Wee interact with Conky, Chairry, Magic Screen, Globey, Pterri, Randy, and even a new addition to the crew. It felt good to scream “Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney ho” with Jambi (Paragon was back for it) and watch old cartoons presented by The King. It really brought back the fun of eating cereal and watching the show on a Saturday morning.

If you’re still wanting to go, tickets are still available. I cannot recommend this enough and if given the chance, I’d go again….no question. If you’ve been, let me know what you thought!

P.S. As we walked into the club, Laurence Fishbourne walked in right behind us which made me think that he would possibly have some involvement with the show, but no such luck.

-Justin

THE MONSTER SQUAD

Poster by Tyler Stout. 24″x 36″ screen print. Hand numbered. Edition of 450. $40

THE MONSTER SQUAD VARIANT

Poster by Tyler Stout. 24″x 36″ screen print. Hand numbered. Edition of 120. $80

Tyler Stout is back with this amazing poster to the 80′s classic, THE MONSTER SQUAD. Last weekend, the Alamo Drafthouse screened the film with cast members in attendance including writer/director Fred Dekker. During the Q and A session, Fred Dekker proclaimed that this poster was the best piece of art ever created for the film! High praise indeed considering the original THE MONSTER SQUAD posters are beautiful themselves.

We have very limited numbers of these posters left, so buy now!

Tomorrow at the Ritz on 6th St., THE MONSTER SQUAD will be screening with cast members in attendance. Who you ask? How about:

Director of THE MONSTER SQUAD, Fred Dekker

Writer, Shane Black

The leader of the Monster Squad, Andre Gower

The Wolfman, Jon Gries

“Toughest Kid in the 8th Grade” Rudy, Ryan Lambert

Not only will all of these dudes be there, but we will have the classic STEPHEN KING RULES shirts for sale and a brand new THE MONSTER SQUAD poster for sale. You definitely want to attend this. If you don’t have tickets yet, get on it! The 9:50pm show still has slots open so click HERE and get to purchasing!

See you all tomorrow!

-Justin

We are thrilled to announce that world famous artist and horror aficionado Alex Pardee will be at the Terror Tuesday screening of TREMORS Tuesday, December 1st at the Alamo Ritz. TREMORS is one of Pardee’s favorite movies and he is flying in to watch it and to also sign the new BASKET CASE and TREMORS posters he did for us IN PERSON before the show! The signing will start at 7pm and end at 8:30pm, so get there early as these posters are super limited!

Alex also did a crazy shirt for BASKET CASE that will also be released at the Tremors show on December 1st. Alex’s signings are always memorable (and sometimes blood soaked), so if you miss this, you obviously hate fun.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
320 E 6th Street
Austin, TX 78701

P.S. You can also read Pardee’s far superior blog posts about the event HERE and HERE.

-Justin

Kevin has put these up for sale on his site and they are selling fast. He has the regular Lebowski edition still available as well as a THERE WILL BE BLOOD and GOONIES version. Get them now as they’re moving quick!

-Justin

P.S. Kevin Tong also posted some awesome pics of the show at Gallery 1988 on his Flickr account. Check them out here.

UPDATE: Because of the HIGH DEMAND for the show tonight, we are going to allow people to start lining up in front of Gallery 1988 at 5pm.

It’s all happening tonight. Weeks of planning have culminated in tonight’s show at Gallery 1988 in LA. We have a TON of stuff debuting at the show along with some rare archival prints. Here we go!

After weeks of teasing, here it is! This is the first time we’ve used Australian Rhys Cooper and you better believe it won’t be the last. We’ve released a lot of great prints this year, but I’m going to say this has got to be my favorite. I’m a GREMLINS freak!

Poster by Rhys Cooper. 24×36 Printed with metallic and glow in the dark inks. The “rules” to owning a mogwai are printed in glow ink and appear in the dark. Limited to only 100.

This was Ken’s first version he came up with for his ALIEN poster, but ended up submitting the equally awesome “Egg” image. We thought this version was too nuts not to print!

Poster by Ken Taylor. 24×36 Limited to only 80 and even less for sale.

I’m super excited about this. We sent Skinner 40 one color Medusa prints on heavy watercolor paper. A few days later, he sent me this image:

Ummmm….yeah. INSANE! He used spraypaint, watercolors, the works. Then, he sent me this image:

Three different colorways of the prints and they’re all named! Come to the show and ask Skinner about them and BUY SOME. I’m definitely buying one of each colorway, so there are three gone right there. These will go fast.

Poster by Skinner. 11×14 one color screen print hand colored w/ watercolors and spraypaint.

A few weeks ago, I went to the Ritz to take reference photos for this print. Yes…this is an art print Kevin Tong put together of various people and movie characters watching a movie in the Alamo Drafthouse. You’re all smart…do I really have to tell you what they’re watching? Kevin will also have these available with a blank screen where he will hand draw a movie scene in.

Harry Diaz also whipped up five new designs for the event that he will be hand silk screening on t-shirts live in the store. He’ll also be hand screening prints of all of these right before your eyes! Can you name them all?

This show is going to be huge and I connect recommend highly enough to get there at 7pm when stuff goes on sale because if you’re not, you’re probably going to miss out! We’ve had an INSANE amount of emails asking about the new posters, so I’m only assuming, but they’re probably going to sell out. Christmas is right around the corner, so consider this your one stop shop for the holiday’s. Black Friday is lame. Tomorrow is officially BADASS CINEMA FRIDAY!

-Justin

Friday November 20th at Gallery 1988, Mondo will be setting up shop for the night with lots of our friends providing live art. Skinner will be on hand watercoloring a limited edition Medusa art print we printed special for this show. Kevin Tong will have a new art print for sale (just got that image in and it looks incredible) and Harry Diaz will be screen printing shirts and prints by hand live in the store! Not only will all of these guys be hanging out, but Mondo will also have shirts, toys, and some exclusive and never before seen posters that we printed especially for this show.

The next day, we will have a table at DesignerCon at the Pasadena Convention Center. Once again, lots of exclusive posters and brand new releases. If you’re a fan of Mondo, definitely come and hang out with us next weekend!

-Justin

The Midnight Hour

This movie achieves that rare distinction of being a family friendly “horror” movie that is more purely enjoyable than most genuine bleeders. It mixes a bunch of horror elements together including zombies, vampires and ghosts, it builds an entertaining story around a few simple ideas, and most importantly it nails the tone of frightening fun that really evokes the Halloween spirit I remember from being a kid. Halloween isn’t grim or vulgar. But it isn’t exactly safe either. This is a key distinction for what separates the type of movie I think of as being good for Halloween from those that are just straight-up good horror movies. It’s got to have chills, but it’s got to be fun. “The Midnight Hour” does both very well. I try to watch it every October.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Unfairly maligned over the years, I think this movie has finally started to find an audience of appreciative fans. But sometimes it’s hard to judge how people feel outside my immediate circle of friends, so if you still think of this movie as “the lame one that doesn’t have Michael Myers in it,” get with it! This is by far the best of the series after the untouchable first. If only John Carpenter’s movie had been a little less lucrative maybe they would have followed through with their plan to release a different, unrelated Halloween-themed movie every year instead of banking on the dwindling creative returns earned by trotting out poor old Michael Myers and getting him involved with such lamentable movie sink-holes as the Cult of Thorn and Busta Rhymes. This one stars Tom “Thrill Me” Atkinson as a disgruntled doctor investigating a sinister plot involving children’s Halloween masks. The truth behind the mystery is so outrageously absurd that I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t ever watched this (or read Wiley’s blogpost lower down on the page). All I’ve got to say is check it out. This one is unique.

Hauntedween

Here it is guys, the last good slasher of the golden age. Made in 1991, just as slasher movies were briefly falling out of fashion for the few years before “Scream” and its slick, soulless, disaffected and ironic progeny were flushed out, forever clogging the plumbing of the slasher horror film, “Hauntedween” stands as a final glistening example of a genre now unable to authentically function without falling back on shallow tribute, over-stylization and an unbearable lack of innocence or sincerity. Who knows what secret hopes or ambitions writer-director Doug Robertson may have placed in this, his only movie. But it has the relaxed feeling of someone just playing around, having fun making the type of movie they enjoy. No one is trying to prove anything here. It’s wonderful. A movie like this cannot be made today. It comes not only at the tail-end of the cycle of slasher films that dominated the 80′s, but it belongs to another breed of vanished cinema as well. It’s representative of the type of regional exploitation filmmaking that flourished in the 60′s and 70′s (the region being Bowling Green, Kentucky in this case) and enjoyed its final days of decent distribution and profitability during the great mom ‘n pop home video boom before being cornered out of the market by studio-sanctioned “independent” movies. There is no longer a market for something this sloppy, amateurish, delightful or whole-hearted. The plot involves a bunch of college kids putting on a haunted house only to be terrorized by a maniac who lived in the house when he was young. Pretty standard stuff but totally enjoyable and full of rich Halloween atmosphere. Don’t let movies like this be forgotten.

Happy Halloween! -Tommy