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I had to check mister Lobo because for some reason, I thought at one point you and I had chatted, But I find no record of.
It at all, So I think I think we did too, but it must have been in like a news feature or something.
It's weird. Yeah, I know another another Mandela Effects choking with you Me and Skidbath. Yeah.
Uh. Mister Lobo is a regular guest here on Coast to Coast AM.
I feel like I know him.
He's the host of Cinema Insomnia. I was looking at some of your YouTube videos getting ready for our conversation tonight. Well honored for being not just a fan of the horror genre, but also one of those people that keeps it alive with the humor zine and underground on comics he's done, and with radio, theater and other things that that I also obsess over.
Yeah no, but I look down your page. I looked everywhere.
Everybody seems to be ripping off the same the same lines. Everybody's doing the same. But you know, I go for word economy. I could write a haiku.
Uh your I want to hear I want to hear this haiku.
Well before the end of the night. I will do that.
And I I take my haiku very seriously, so I don't I could write a dirty limerick off the top of my head that I don't think I would get anybody anywhere.
Standards and practices, Ian standards in practices.
It is one of those been around. We don't we don't have those coast to coast.
Never let me on it broadcast. Is we have a higher standard.
That's true. So anyway, really like your work, and and thank you for joining to come with us.
As we talk about and I think this is really important, is as you are a fan of the of both the cinema of horror.
But also just kind of the genre as a whold.
I know that you're probably very saddened by the fact that so many great movies which were slated to be released before the end of summer, which is typically when a lot of the popcorn you know, drive in type movies come out, are on hold and may you know, wait until the end of the So I like to supplement that by going into my you know, contour at I have the cock system where I can I can go back and I can watch all.
These old movies.
So I'd love a top ten before we're done of your movies that we could pull up and we could watch which might be able to satisfy our need for something fun and new.
Okay, all right, well there are I guess talk about a lot of different things as far as uh tonight, as far as some streaming and on Netflix, and that's sort of And.
There's a lot of different genres too, right, I mean, there's the there's.
My particular reb like, even though I'm best known as a horror host, I like to what I like to my category are like late night misunderstood movies, you know, at the bottom of the barrel kind of stuff, plan from out of Space. That's that's my bag.
I totally get it.
I love those movies that uh uh, well, we like to say they're not bad movies, just misunderstood.
Yeah, or they're so bad they're good you just can't stop watching them.
You know. I mean, like The Brain That Wouldn't Die. I think I some thousand times and every time it's on, I have to stop everything I'm doing.
And City of the Dead another great. A lot of these movies, A lot of these movies are in the public domain too, which is also fun.
Yeah, I mean, so those a lot of those we can can find. And what's interesting, you know, this is sort of a side thing, but I mean my show is now back pretty on broadcast on a lot of public and PBS and community and educational channels. For whatever reason, I've had another resurgence in broadcasts. I've got thirty two stations that have kind of picked the show up out of nowhere. And we have a footprint of seven million homes. So there's a whole bunch of people who were who
were discovering this the you know, these these these movies. Again, I'm getting these younger viewers now. And sure, you know, not that I'm hoping for Hollywood to fall apart, but during the pandemic that a lot of people found the cinema and Zombia during the pandemic, and I would assume that during the during the strike, a lot of people are going to be finding independent content, more obscure movies. You know, I think people are going to be widening their palette of what are gonna enjoy.
You know, well, I think there's some obviously, there's some telling reasons for why those movies, the ones that aren't bad, they're just misunderstood.
Uh.
They're so much fun for the right person to be if you don't take it too seriously, if you're not looking for uh, if you don't.
I mean, there's so many of these movies.
I think they're just kind of like horror porn, and I don't get anything out of that at all, you know.
Right, I don't.
I don't like crying in my horror movies.
You know.
If if I wanted holding hands and crying, I just watch a Lifetime Orion, right.
But I like crying when it's really faky and when the people's when they got their hands in front of their face and they're you know, I like that's kind of you know, but not like yeah, not like Brad Pitt in the.
River Runs through It or whatever.
You know not or Legends of the Fall. What I want is and this is what you deliver on. And I think you're are you now? You're on Roku too, is the.
F I seventy four on Roku and Fossom also is on many platforms. Uh also, so I'm I'm kind of fe on a lot of different platforms.
But this is you're the there's the perfect host for films that don't take themselves too seriously.
That's preferred actually, because you know, I feel like I'm Hamburger Helper.
I feel like.
And I got something, I've got something to say about them, and then when I get too boring, it goes back into the and so I feel like it's a very symbiotic relationship. But the movie's too good, I get jealous, you know, I don't want competing with the movie something.
No, And I think a lot of the movies, maybe to.
To Helper is really more Helper, it's really more I.
Think like Devil Bat's Daughter, that's definitely too to Helper.
Yeah, yeah, that movie.
We did that movie recently, and they totally try to gaslight you into thinking a totally different thing happens in the first movie. And it's like, no, Bell Lagosi was a bad guy in that first movie. You can't write eleven hour ago he actually was a nice man. No, true, you can't change that. We all saw what he did in the first have a twit like that.
Well, you know, it's the retcon.
It's the classic sequel retcon where you got to make the second one work and you figure out probably only forty percent of the audience saw.
The first one anyway, So let's just roll the U.
I think it's the worst sequelist where it was really another movie that at the last minute they said, hey, let's just make it, you know, the sequel to this movie, right, and then they'll make a couple of changes to the script and it doesn't really match up. And that happens a lot.
No, it does, and there's and so again I say, there are certain types of horror suspense that work for me.
I wasn't into the cannibal movies.
You know.
One of my kids was heavily into like that type of stuff. He thought that was very funny.
Didn't wear from me, Like what cannibal fair rock kind of thing?
Yeah, or even what was the movie the more recent version of the Eli Roth version that they did.
In screen the Hell or something, Yeah, whatever.
Yeah, that's just I don't know.
But the the other stuff kind of does you know, or body horror, even to a certain degree, kind of works for me because I kind of relate to.
That maybe every morning. I kind of related to yeah, exactly.
As I'm getting older and older, body horror is kind of becoming a thing and of.
Course we're talking about movies like most of the Kronenberg movies, right, We're talking about like a Scanners and Shippers, and I mean those are the Fly.
Right was the Fly?
Yeah?
I love the remake of The Fly. Yeah, Goldblue's The Fly is such a great movie. I just I could watch it over and over again. But but there are others that are like that too, right, So then there's the the Mysterious Visitor. There's I mean, there's all these different genres. Which one is your favorite? As a host of cinema insomnia.
Boy, That's that's like picking a favorite child. I mean, my my favorite genre, to be honest, I I I love a good cheesy sci fi movie. I mean, honestly, you know, anything with with with guys in monster suits or you know, uh, model flying saucers. I just I just love that kind of thing. Yeah, you know, and uh Invasion of the Saucermen or god whatever that that's you know, I have a real soft spot in my
heart for that. And it's amazing that Godzilla is still going, Like, yeah, Shin Godzilla and then maybe Shin Shin Cayman Writer and Shin Ultraman and and uh, you know, I love. You know, those are modern ones that I really like. And it's interesting to see that that that lineage of you know, going all the way to nineteen fifty four. Today it's like, wow, that's a robusts at the rope ran well.
And you know what's really interesting about that is how many of those movies, the universal monsters, let's go back to the thirties, that are still behind a paywall, you know, I mean that that says a lot. I mean, you got classic Academy Award winning movies that you.
Can call up and watch for free. But you can't do that with The Wolfman.
Oh you can't. And it's really interesting because like you know, we'll show We'll show The Wolfman or even Abin Costello Mee Frankenstein. You can show that to an audience today. That's an eighty year old movie, you know, seventy five year old movie, and people are still laughing and still enjoying it. And it's like, you know, and even with the lesser ones like Plan nine from Out of Space, you show that in the seat, you can show that
in the theater. It's like, you know, the A list movies from that time period aren't showing in theaters a list. Movies of a aren't aren't either as celebrated as some of them are. People don't want to watch them. But these things that were considered kitty fair, these things that were considered pot boilers, these things that were considered trash cinema, they have this lighte like you know, I mean, uh, you know, Blockbuster's Fade cult Last.
But at the same time, I do think we should take a moment to recognize that what we think of is kitty fair today was not at the on the weekend of its release, and it was fairly. I wouldn't call it literature, but they were artful films that carried important themes which seem to have been lost to history. For example, the theme of anti Semitism, which is rife in The Wolfman and and I don't mean, I don't mean as a promoting anti Semitism, but fighting anti semitism.
Made those movies had very serious themes in them, right. Horror movies as a general in general had a stigma as being juvenile in that in that ten of the time period that they came out. But yeah, the people who made those movies were making serious movies. I mean a lot of the horrors of World War One are reflected in the original Frankenstein's to James Whale, So you know, and obviously you know, I think there was always this sort of pressure to put this legitimacy into everything because
they were always being criticized for being illegitimate. But to be honest, horror films had had a bad rap until like the seventies, you know, and from movies from my standpoint where it was, they were not thought of as material for you know, uh upright adults.
Right, But I think that I mean to speak to a previous general of creature features. I think that that is also part of how television reframed these movies.
And the idea of a late night horror, which is fun. But it did.
It did it did to throw out the Baby with the bathwater on that because you know, a lot of these movies, I mean they did. They followed the Marvel model,
which I think is interesting to consider today. Is the model Well that's what I mean if you really look at it, they parallel and they hired very very good actors to be in these situations, which carries it as opposed to schlock actors which would have made the movie schlockier, instead of taking it up a level, which is what the Boris Karlovsabel Legosis, the Lon Chaney juniors.
I mean, honestly, it's a lot smarter. And even with Roger Corman stuff, they almost had. They always had the best people with the lowest budgets. They get the most out of it that way. You can't you know, it's you can't afford to make mistakes, you know, on that level. So you know, you you get the best actors you can get and the best cinematographers you can get because they can shoot a movie in two weeks. Yeah, and it's amazing.
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