Review: 'The Simpsons Comic Strip Cavalcade'

From 1990 through 1996, The Simpsons was the hands-down, unchallenged, funniest show on television anywhere in the universe. What made it so funny? Its ever-lasting avalanche of funny lines and gags, written by the most brilliant minds television had to offer. 

So why the 1996 cut-off date when The Simpsons is still on the air forty decades later? Because things changed around the half-way point of season eight. A lot of the best writers had flown before or around that time: Conan O'Brien, Mike Reiss, Josh Weinstein, Sam Simon, etc. The insane work schedules the writers kept to generate so much A-list material per episode started to go slack, and with it, the rhythm went slack too. The Simpsons' three secret weapons—the quality, volume and rapidity of its hilarious morsels—had been defused. Without that triple-threat, The Simpsons is nothing but an empty shell. 

Review: 'Star Trek: The Original Voyages'

This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the Star Trek phenomenon, and I've reviewed two very good books published to mark this momentous occasion. However, neither provided a total plunge in the thing 2026 is really the sixtieth anniversary of: the original series. Sure the chunk The Star Trek Archive: 100 Objects and Stories from the Final Frontier focused on Roddenberry's original TV show was nothing to sneeze your nose at, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home-The Making of the Film afforded more time with the original cast, but what I really wanted was a great big lovely book devoted to the hippie-era adventures of Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, and the rest of the gang. 

Review: 'Madonna: Into the Groove'

The entirety of the eighties feel like they existed under the supreme rule of Madonna, but even in 1985 she still hadn't achieved full dominance. The same year she released her signature song and first number one, "Like a Virgin", she was still willing to sing back ups with The Thompson Twins at Live Aid and was deemed unworthy of the ghastly "We Are the World" (Lionel Richie or Quincy Jones or whoever apparently felt that Cyndi Lauper fulfilled the female-pop star quota). She also surprised many when she was deemed worthy of the cover of People Magazine, including the photographer of that shoot, who initially mistook her for a prostitute.

Review: 'Son of Monster Mash'

Pulling Mark Voger's Monster Mash off the shelf is an integral part of getting into the Halloween mood every year, but it's been eleven years since Voger unleashed that menagerie of horrific monster movies, monster toys, monster actors, monster toys, and monster memories. I love it, but I want more to satiate my monstrous appetite for all things monstrous! 

Voger used his psychic abilities, which rival those of Criswell, to hear my mental cries into the void and get to work on a looooong overdue sequel. Now some eleven years after the debut of Monster Mash, Son of Monster Mash is finally crawling its way out of Twomorrow Publishing's crypt. 

Review: The Jimi Hendrix Experience's 'Magic Boy: Live At Berkeley First Show'

On May 30, 1970, Jimi Hendrix played the Berkeley Community Theatre. Apparently fans who couldn't get into the sold-out show felt so slighted that some stormed the venue, smashing windows, climbing walls, and physically abusing their fellow Hendrix freaks. 

Hearing the performance 56 years later, it's hard to not kind of understand all that unacceptable behavior. Anyone without a ticket missed a manic, brilliantly performed show. Hendrix sings and plays with possessed power, making even hoary old warhorse "Johnny B. Goode" sound vital. It wasn't all his gig either. Mitch Mitchell punishes his kit with equal fire, and Billy Cox attacks his bass with the fuzzed ferocity and nimble ingenuity of John Entwistle. Seeing the band billed as "The Experience" without Noel Redding feels a bit disrespectful to the departed bass player. It also feels disrespectful to Cox because they sound like such a different band with such a different bassist. 

Review: 'Surf-Age Nuggets: Trash & Twang Instrumentals'

I love The Beach Boys, but they never were a true surf band. They sang about catching waves and driving woodies because they just needed something to sing about, and really, surf music wasn't made for singers, even ones with voices as heavenly as The Beach Boys. Surf music was supposed to be something rougher, darker, more on the same wavelength as the actual sport, which is pretty dangerous. 

So you shouldn't expect sunny Brian Wilson—let alone goofy Jan and Dean—harmonies when diving into a collection like Surf-Age Nuggets: Trash & Twang Instrumentals. Like a legit Nuggets compilation, RockBeat Records' set aimed to convey the rougher underbelly of its subgenre. The Shan-Tones pound tom toms on "Sheba"like a bushy, bushy blond head pounding the rocks after a wipe out. The Velvetones wield guitar strings like switchblades on "Doheny Run". The screaming, rough-and-tumble "Don't Call Me Fly Face" implies what will happen if you do, indeed, insult The Reekers by calling them Fly Face. Even the band's name is nasty!

Review: 'Horror of Dracula' Blu-ray

In 1957, the world gasped before the film that defined Hammer Horror. With Terence Fisher behind the camera, and Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, classic monster source material, and an unprecedented degree of violence and sex in front of it, The Curse of Frankenstein laid out the Hammer essentials. 

The following year the same elements perfected it. Fisher's Dracula was even better than his excellent Frankenstein adaptation, this time matching a great villain with an equally formidable hero. Lugosi's Dracula may have still been a bit too iconic for Lee to beat, but Cushing's charming, action-packed Van Helsing was definitive. With Jack Asher's colorful, autumnal photography and Jimmy Sangster's tight script—as well as strong support from Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling and Carol Marsh—Dracula proved to be the finest film from one of horror's defining studios.

Review: The Beatles' 'Rubber Soul' Special Edition Vinyl Box Set

Apple Corps lets loose a big box of Beatles around this time every year, and for every year since 2023, I've been prefacing my reviews of those sets with a little reminder that that year's box was not the one most Beatlemaniacs have been screaming for since the Revolver Special Edition in 2022: a similarly super deluxe set devoted to Rubber Soul. As much as I liked the sets released during those years, I am relieved to say that I will no longer have to remind fans that they're not getting a Rubber Soul Special Edition this year. Why? Because they're getting a Rubber Soul Special Edition this year.

Was it worth the wait? That depends on your expectations and what you most desire from these super deluxe editions. I mainly come to them for the unique outtakes, preferably those with vocals. The Revolver set had these by the barrelful. The Revolver sessions were The Beatles' first fully experimental, exploratory ones, as the guys spent nearly three months running their strange assortment of new songs through a plethora of permutations. Rubber Soul only took a month to record at a time before The Beatles started partying with tape loops, backward tapes, horn arrangements, string octets, guest French horn players, and guest tabla players. Sure, it's the album on which George Harrison first took a crack at his sitar, but otherwise Rubber Soul consisted of guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards and songs that mostly didn't go through radical rearrangements. The two that changed most, "Norwegian Wood" and "I'm Looking Through You", had already been released in their most different forms on Anthology 2 thirty years ago.

Review: 'The Hammer Story: Revised and Expanded Edition"

The first book on Hammer Horror I ever read was A Thing of Unspeakable Horror. Sinclair McKay's study is a thorough, witty, and critically astute trek through the history of Britain's most important and adored purveyor of blood and beastliness. It's a great read, but the little paperback barely tries to convey the ghastly, often sexy, always vibrant imagery that usually outweighed mere matters of storytelling in Hammer pictures. For that you'd have to dig in to The Hammer Story (or, you now, watch the movies). 

Review: 'Frankenhooker' Blu-ray

What is there to say about Frankenhooker that Bill "If you see one movie this year, it should be Frankenhooker" Murray hasn't already said? Needing to explain to someone why they should see a movie about a grieving mad-scientist who uses the body parts of prostitutes to rebuild his fiancée recently deceased due to a routine lawnmower accident doesn't seem like something a grown man should be doing, even if Patty Mullen comes right to the precipice of genius in her face-contorting performance as the title creature. Will this kind of thing fly amongst those with 2026 sensibilities and sensitivities? What am I, a psychiatrist? All I know is that, much as it is with Bush-era terrorists, you're either with Frankenhooker or against Frankenhooker. If you fall into the latter camp, you probably do enjoy your bong hits.