Editorials
Bill & Phil’s Music Video for “Dirty Eye” is Brilliant
What if I told you a horror icon and a metal legend teamed up to form a kick-ass super group? Is that something you might be interested in? Well, in case you didn’t know already, Bill Moseley (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, House of 1,000 Corpses, Devil’s Rejects) and Phil Anselmo (Pantera, Down, Superjoint) formed a band, appropriately named Bill & Phil. It’s pretty much everything you would hope it to be. Last week, they premiered their first music video for “Dirty Eye” off their debut album, ‘Songs of Darkness and Despair.’ It is available now via all your favorite platforms, from Housecore Records.
The video itself comes from director Ryan Oliver at Deathblow Productions. Oliver had previously directed a video for Child Bite, another band signed to Housecore Records. I was able to catch up with Ryan Oliver and ask him how he got the gig.
“Kate Richardson, from Housecore Records contacted me after the last video we did for Child Bite. She’s awesome and is super cool to work with. I’ve screened my films at their horror fest over the years and they’ve always been really supportive and encouraging of my work…Also working on two Bill Moseley projects back to back is a damn gift. I’ve been a long time fan of his work, can’t pass on the double down offer.”
Eye creatures from outer space are the new Killer Klowns
The video’s main concept centers around an alien race of eyeball creatures coming to invade Earth. In the meantime, Bill & Phil get into some crazy situations themselves. The whole video uses puppets and miniature sets. It’s pretty damn cool to see so much detail and effort put into a music video these days. When I asked Oliver about the ebbs and flows of puppetry, he responded, “The best part is actually making the stuff. I like being a shop rat and sitting around with my cohorts making things, playing music and bullshitting…None of us were trained puppeteers so there was a learning curve, but I got some talented friends and we figured it out. We had a good mix of styles including, marionette, rod puppets, and hand puppets.”
In a time when MTV has mostly dropped music videos and has been inundated with teen dramas and horrible reality shows, Bill & Phil’s “Dirty Eye” stands out from the rest. It’s reminiscent of the Tool music videos of the 90’s with the puppets and stop-motion nightmares. Who better to serve us up a slice of horror puppetry than horror icon Bill Moseley and metal legend Phil Anselmo? The music rocks and the video is brilliant.
Check out both Housecore Records for future releases and Deathblow Productions for future films and an upcoming podcast.
Now go watch the video, you dog dicks!
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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