More contests and giveaways at the Vault + Salt City Horror Fest!

Ok, before I get into the good stuff, I'd like to announce the first recipients of the dubious honor of "winning" March's "HORROR MOVIE EMP-TY HANDED" giveaway. Out of the (thus far) thirteen people who have sent me their invoices, the following two will be getting a Blue Underground Blu-ray in the mail. :: draws name from favorite NY Giants coffee mug :: Our first "winner" is... MICHAEL HADDOCK! You didn't seem to be too picky Mike, so out of the films on your invoice I selected Fulci's ZOMBIE! Enjoy!

The second "winner" for my HME-inspired giveaway is... :: draws another name from the NY Giants mug of destiny :: JEREMY SLATE! Jeremy, much like myself at the moment, is out of money and movies, as he missed the 45-day PayPal dispute window. Well Jeremy, hope you enjoy the new copy of NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS that I'm sending your way bud!

That's it for March; next month I'll be getting some more Blue Underground Blu-rays out to other random "contestants" in this giveaway. If you haven't gotten me your unfulfilled invoice, you have until April 6th to do so. After that, each month I'll randomly cycle through the names on my list, until each person gets a Blu-ray in their hands. That's right; there are no losers in this competition folks. The only downside is that some people will have to wait longer than others.

Moving on then..... here are two contests for everyone to jump in on during the month of April. But don't expect me to just GIVE this stuff away; you've gotta do a little work to earn your prize!

The first item up for grabs is a DVD of "DEAD IN LOVE," an indie love story involving two ghosts. From the back of the box: "Two friends, who happen to be ghosts, go in search of a girl they liked in high school. When one of them gets the chance to be with her, he has to do it in the body of an awkward nerd. Their lives will change forever in this heartfelt low budget comedy."

I've heard great things about this film, and would love to keep it for myself... especially since it is signed by Writer/Director Chris Watson and the cast! Want to win this signed, limited edition (#37 of 100) DVD? Well here's how!

Send an e-mail to vault_master@bmoviefilmvault.com with DEAD IN LOVE DVD in the subject line. In the body of the e-mail, include your full mailing address, and in a few lines (or paragraphs if you're into sending long-winded e-mails) tell me what you would do if you were a ghost. Would you seek out your long-lost love? Play pranks on people? Do some hardcore haunting? Be a total pervert? Tell me; and have fun with it! The person with the funniest and/or most imaginative entry gets this DVD! Contest will end on April 29th; winner will be announced on the 30th!

For those of you who do NOT want a mushy supernatural romantic comedy, I present to you an alternative: You can win BOTH of the original "The Hills Have Eyes" movies on DVD! Both discs are in mint condition (Part 2 has never been watched) and they can be all yours!

To win these two movies, drop me an e-mail at vault_master@bmoviefilmvault.com with HILLS HAVE EYES DVDS in the subject line. Include your name and mailing address (natch) and, since the films both star Michael Berryman, tell me about your favorite Michael Berryman role/scene/moment from any of the films he has starred in. Personally, I totally dig the guy in the first live-action "Guyver" film as Lisker. He goes from goofy to menacing in mere seconds and the practical effects in that movie rock my world! Now that you know what you must do, get your entries in by April 29th; I'll randomly choose a winner on the 30th!

Also, I'm still giving away two tickets to see THE DEMON MESSENGER on Friday, April 13th. It will be premiering at the Art Mission Theater in Binghamton, NY at 7:30 PM, and the cast, crew, and monster-suit maker Ron Chamberlain will all be attending as well. As stated in my previous post, all you've gotta do to win these tickets is e-mail me (vault_master@bmoviefilmvault.com) with a quick note about your fave Bigfoot and/or demon movie! It's quick, simple, and you've only got until April 6th to get your paws on these tickets! Hit me up ASAP before you miss out on this unique opportunity!

Finally, before I call it a night, I just want to do a quick shout out about the upcoming SALT CITY HORROR FEST! I heard about this show when I attended The Hudson Horror Show in Poughkeepsie, NY last December, and I am ready to rock n' roll! The event takes place at the Palace Theater on Saturday, April 14th and kicks off around noon! There will be food, beer (for the 21-and-over crowd), vendors, and an amazing lineup of EIGHT Horror films including:

The Bride of Frankenstein
Creature from the Black Lagoon (in 3-D!)
Tremors
Troll Hunter
Popcorn
Army of Darkness
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
Last House on Dead End Street

All films will be featured in glorious 35mm, with Tremors and Last House... boasting remastered prints! I'm getting giddy just thinking about it! Tickets are currently on sale for $15.00, so pre-order now (CLICK HERE for info) to reserve your seat and 3-D glasses!

Also, for anyone in the area on that weekend, Horror Movie Empire will be vending at this film festival and will be giving out refunds to anyone who has an invoice for items they have not yet received. Don't come down and try to pound the guy into dust, but do show up if you want your cash or movies that he owes you. Then when you get that unpleasant business out of the way, you can chill out with fellow Horror fans and watch eight awesome flicks with a cold beer in your hand! I'll be attending (as will Bill from Radiation-Scarred Reviews) so maybe I'll see you there!

That's all the news that's fit to print at the moment, but stay tuned for new reviews (like the one posted on the site yesterday for EL MONSTRO DEL MAR), b-movie news, and more as we MARCH into APRIL! (Zing!)

Horror Movie Emp...ty Handed? Maybe I can help!

Ok, so by now many of you have heard of the whole HORROR MOVIE EMPIRE debacle. This gent had a crazy Blue Underground Blu-ray sale on his site in late December and now, three months later, a huge number of people have not gotten any product or refunds. It is a total mess and there's a lot of anger and frustration out there on the world wide web. Why did this dude pull this stunt? Will he actually ship product or give refunds like he's promised? Who can we turn to for a resolution to all this bullsh*t?!

I have personally tried to speak with "The Emperor" over at HME and though it seemed like I was making some headway, he vanished as suddenly as he had appeared. Though he has shown some signs of life lately, the majority of customers who shopped at his site are pretty pissed off. He has been slow to answer e-mails and doesn't seem to be in a hurry to help the hundreds (thousands?) of angry folks who are walking away empty-handed.

Don't give up without a fight fellow Cult/Horror/B-Movie fans. E-mail this guy, bug him on Twitter (@horrorempire), and send in your grievances to www.horror-movie-empire.com. (A site set up by the guys from Film Rant in response to this entire fiasco.) If you used a credit card, dispute your purchases ASAP! If you bought stuff from HME via PayPal and it HASN'T been 45 days, dispute it! (After 45 days, PayPal will calmly tell you that you are SOL, and I don't mean "Satellite of Love.") Act quickly or you will find yourself cheated out of money and movies.

For those of you (much like myself) who are totally screwed at this point (unless "The Emperor" actually does follow through and fill orders like he has promised), I am giving you a chance to at least walk away with SOMETHING after suffering through this "nightmare."

Send your UNFULFILLED INVOICES (i.e. receipts for the stuff you never got) to vault_master@bmoviefilmvault.com! And when you send me your invoice(s), make sure that you highlight TWO of the discs that you wanted the most. Then cross your fingers because I will choose one lucky person each month (at random) and mail them a brand new, factory sealed, Blue Underground Blu-ray disc (or two, depending on their price and my available funds). Don't worry about shipping or anything else; I'm footing the bill for this.

Yeah I know this doesn't seem like much, but it is the best I can do. And why am I doing this? Because I'm pissed that someone has once again ripped-off the Horror community and seemingly gotten away with it. (There's some shades of John Gray here...) Even if "The Emperor" intends to fulfill all of the orders, he has tarnished his name permanently because Horror fans have a looooong memory.

In any case, get those invoices/entries in to me ASAP and we'll get this show on the road. If I can pull it off, I'll pick more than one winner a month, but for now let's just keep this small and see how everything pans out.

Good luck to you all, and godspeed!

UPDATE: The trickle of invoices has stopped so I'm setting a cut-off date of April 6th to get your unfulfilled invoices in to me. Also, you can only enter once and can only win once. This way a large number of people will walk away with a Blue Underground Blu-ray that they had originally missed out on during HME's sale. ALSO, Horror Movie Empire will be at the Salt City Horror Fest in Syracuse, NY on April 14th. I will be heading there so I'll be getting some movies or a refund from the proprietor in person. If you live nearby, come to the film fest and chill out with me... after you get your stuff from Demetrios that is.

New giveaway at the Vault, Hudson Horror Show update, and the Great Horror Movie Empire Fiasco of 2012.

Hey all, your friendly neighborhood movie riffer/scribe here to announce a new contest. How would YOU like to win a Fright-Rags' LIMITED EDITION "MY BLOODY VALENTINE" T-SHIRT (size: XL) and a copy of both MY BLOODY VALENTINE (the 1981 classic) and MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D (your choice of DVD or Blu-ray)?! Having second thoughts? Really? Then check out this shirt design:

You know you want it....

Now that I have your full attention, here's how to win this awesome prize pack. To enter, create a valentine and/or poem to your favorite Horror film slasher, be it Harry Warden, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, Freddy Krueger, Cropsy, etc. Entries can be done in a variety of ways. You can write a poem (which you can e-mail to me at vault_master@bmoviefilmvault.com), use your artistic skills and draw something up (e-mail it to me or post it on the Vault's Facebook page), create something with photoshop (again, e-mail it to me or Facebook it), or even shoot a video valentine and post it to Youtube. The sky is the limit here!

Get creative, start working your magic, and get your entries in by March 24th! The winner gets the prize pack mentioned above, but two runner ups will also walk away with a copy of My Bloody Valentine or My Bloody Valentine 3D (on DVD or Blu-ray).

Next up, here's a bit o' news about the upcoming (MAY 19TH!) HUDSON HORROR SHOW! The full roster has been announced (except for that pesky 5TH MYSTERY MOVIE!) and it is SOLID! If you attend (and you should) you will see 35MM screenings of FRIDAY THE 13TH (UNCUT!), DAY OF THE DEAD, PHANTASM, and the crazy awesome Hammer/Shaw Bros. co-production of LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES! Get your advance tickets now over at www.hudsonhorror.com (the last show sold out!) and save money for the vendors that will be there peddling their goods! It's a great show, with tons of giveaways, awesome trailer reels, and one of the best film festival line-ups I've ever seen, so don't miss out!

Finally, I'd just like to say a quick word to those of you who have recently (within the last two months) shopped at Horror Movie Empire. First off, I jumped right in and spent just under $200 on that site's (now literally too-good-to-be-true) Blue Underground and Code Red sales back in late December/early January, and have yet to A.) get any of the discs I ordered and B.) have a reply to any of the e-mails I've sent. As I understand it, the site is a one-man operation, and apparently this guy got WAY more orders than he had anticipated. Also, he probably did not expect the insane backlash that occurred weeks later when hundreds (thousands?) of angry customers started to blow up his Twitter feed and Facebook page. (The latter of which was taken down because things got reeeeal ugly on there.)

So as it stands, it has been two months since I have placed my orders and I'm still empty-handed, and I know there's quite a few of you out there who are too. Personally, I don't want a refund; I want the stuff I paid for because I most likely will never be able to find any of those discs that cheap anywhere else. And heck, even if I did want a refund, it'd probably be another few weeks before I saw the money. This is just a really shitty scenario all around.

With all that said, if you got burned by Horror Movie Empire in the last two months, don't feel left out. You are far from alone. But there is still hope for some of us....

Supposedly the Horror Movie Empire "staff" will be at the next Monster Mania convention in Cherry Hill (less than three weeks away! YAY!) so I am planning on paying them a personal visit. I am bringing my invoices with me in hopes of getting at some (but preferably all) of the stuff I've already paid for, or at the very least, get my cash back. And I figure if I have a few other people come with me to their table/booth, they'll be even more eager to help us out. (No, we're not going to perform a lynching, just you know... strength in numbers and all that.) So e-mail me (vault_master@bmoviefilmvault.com) if you're going to the convention, and we'll unite our powers for TRUTH, JUSTICE, and BLU-RAYS! (And DVDs too!)

However, if you cannot make it to the convention, feel free to e-mail me your Horror Movie Empire invoices (complete with added complaints, to vault_master@bmoviefilmvault.com) and I'll be sure to pass them along and maybe walk away with some of your stuff. (Which I will gladly ship to you, at no charge, because "The Vault Master" is awesome like that.) It's a shot in the dark, but this is the best plan I've got and totally hinges on whether or not they even show up at the con.

That's all I've got for you right now folks, but before I go, here's a quick recap: ENTER MY NEW CONTEST (be sure to like the Vault on Facebook too by the way, and share my FB page with your friends!), GO TO THE HUDSON HORROR SHOW ON MAY 19TH, and DO NOT SHOP AT HORROR MOVIE EMPIRE.COM UNTIL THE CURRENT SITUATION IS FULLY RESOLVED!

G'night all and stay tuned for new stuff!

Six Fright-Rags tees back from the dead, new Riff Brothers stuff, a plea from Underbelly, and more!

First off, HAPPY NEW YEAR b-movie fans! This is the very first blog post of 2012 (and truthfully, the first thing I've written in quite a while) so I'll kick it off with a ton of news regarding the Vault and some of its closest friends. First off, lets take a gander at what Fright-Rags has to offer at the moment:

Those glorious folks over at my favorite Horror t-shirt company have just brought six old designs back from the dead. You can pre-order any of them between now and January 8th, and get a nice 15% chunk off the final price! CLICK HERE to do some shopping! (Me? Well I ordered the "They Live" and "THRILL ME!" tees because my old ones are in pretty rough shape. Thank God they came back into print!)

Also, keep your eyes peeled next week, because I have a strong feeling that the Fright-Rags crew are going to be releasing something AWESOME on FRIDAY THE 13TH! Will it be a new Jason Voorhees poster? A shirt design? A huge collector's edition gift set? Guess we'll just have to wait until next Friday to know for sure!

Next up, my other web project, THE RIFF BROS., has done a crossover with a gent named Derek Huey. Derek is the mastermind behind the no-budget "The League of Science" web-series and invited us to poke fun at episode one of his show. So far it has been well-received (though I'm sure actor David Sitbon may want to throttle us) and it looks like we'll be doing the next three episodes. Until we get those completed, check out League of Science with Riff Bros. Commentary:



And speaking of web-series, UNDERBELLY is looking to storm the internet in 2012. They are regrouping, setting up a set "broadcast" schedule (every Thursday starting in February) and are looking for input from fans and viewers. Check out their latest vid, then send them some comments and help 'em get things sorted out for the new year:



Finally (for the moment) there's a helluva good deal going on over at HORROR MOVIE EMPIRE! They are currently having a sale on Synapse, Impulse, and Panick House DVD & Blu-ray titles: DVDs are $10, Blu-rays are $12, and DVD/Blu-ray combos are $15! This sale ends on January 8th so take advantage. Oh, and you get FREE SHIPPING TOO! CLICK HERE to start shopping! (Note: This site is a "one-man operation" and due to the large volume of sales, the owner is about a week behind on mailing out orders. So if you buy some stuff, prepare to wait a bit for it.)

Well that's all I've got for you at the moment. I'll be announcing the winner of last month's SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT GIVEAWAY tonight/tomorrow and I'll also be working on podcasts, videos, articles, and reviews. 2012 is going to be a landmark year for The Vault and its mini online empire, and the only way for that to happen is for me to get up off my lazy arse and get things done!

So Happy Belated New Year everyone! Here's hoping that 2012 is a good one for all of us!