Hello!

Quietly filched by yours truly from David J. Schow’s generous emailings, here we have a rather interesting covert investigation of an Abandoned Retro Movie Theater Complex. The video host, a commando trespasser-tourist, wears a breathing apparatus to avoid the mold that creeps into abandoned buildings. He thoughtfully removed all identifying text from his images, so that the video won’t inspire vandals to follow in his footsteps.

The unidentified multiplex shown here closed in 2006 or so, so he’s investigating a place that’s been sitting for a full fifteen years. It’s still showing Episode 3 of Star Wars and Madagascar, both 2005 pictures.

Then, this Detroit Metro Times article by Michael Jackman has a title that explains itself clearly enough: A decade later, Detroit’s crowdfunded RoboCop statue is finally complete — but still awaiting a final home. If Philadelphia can have a statue of Rocky Balboa, why can’t Detroit have one for RoboCop?  Maybe they can get OCP to fund it…

Fringe benefit: the article includes a link to a fairly amazing page where you can buy a replica of your favorite movie robot. They appear to have located the original Tobor robot suit but I’m leaning toward my old pal Gort, who would look great in my back yard. Anybody have a spare $10,000 to loan me?

By way of explaining the ‘link’ photo way up top today … the image of the monster coming through the door only looks like it comes from a feature film. It’s actually a doctored Super-8 frame from from a fun movie I shot at my first quarter at UCLA, in November of 1970. The three images above are successive frames chosen to highlight the Ed Wood-worthy climax, where my evil monster-man (Lawrence Noel) uses his ‘evil vision’ to kill various people that chance to see his lethal eyes. I’d tell you that normally he wore a hood, but that’s another story. The upshot is that the monster makeup was performed by the ‘victim #2’ on the right, Randall William Cook. I had known Randy less than a month but had already talked him into helping with my little movies.

This came about because I’m in the process of scanning all of my old 8mm films in addition to a tall stack of home movies from both sides of our family. It’s going to take months, off and on. Will anybody want to look at any of them?  What difference would that make?

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson