By Hunter Bush
Welcome once again pizza punks and movie goons, to another installment of MOVIEJAWN'S The Last Slice, where I will be relaying the minutes from the previous month's meeting of the Pizza 🍕 Film 📼 Club ♣ which - if you're not savvy - is our monthly meeting where we watch fun flicks, eat pizza and other goodies and generally socialize together as a group! We publish this newsletter to lead by example: we hope you'll see that we watched a movie or made a snack that perks your ears up and you'll want to get your own bunch of buddies together and host a Pizza 🍕 Film 📼 Club ♣ of your own!
In October, we celebrated another birthday coinciding with our meet-up, this time of P 🍕 F 📼 C ♣ co-founder, Moviejawn matron and host of the Cinematic Crypt podcast, Rosalie Kicks! She and husband Ben hosted (wait til you see the decorations) the group of us for a double feature viewing of The Devil Bat and The 'Burbs!
THE FLICK: The Devil Bat (1940)
The story of The Devil Bat is straight out of an old E.C. horror comic, which is mighty appropriate for October viewing I think you'd agree: Bela Lugosi (Beyla to his friends) plays Dr. Paul Carruthers, your classic mad scientist who has scientifically augmented a bat, making it huge and therefore deadly. Using a special chemical / pheromone cocktail disguised as a new aftershave he's workshopping, Dr. Carruthers directs the bat to kill his enemies in a classic bid for revenge!
Directed by the wildly prolific Jean Yarbrough, The Devil Bat is a perfect little, weird, at times unintentionally funny, horror movie (the bat shriek! I want it to be my ringtone!) with solid characters / caricatures and a great (GREAT) Devil Bat puppet. At just 1 hour and 8 minutes, its comparatively brief run time lead Rosalie to pick a back-up feature, which brings me to...
THE OTHER FLICK: The 'Burbs (1989)
Joe Dante (notably the director of Gremlins) is a good director. If you ever need proof, look no further than The 'Burbs, the 1989 suburban Rear Window - meets - The Addams Family black comedy starring Tom Hanks (in full-on manic physical comedy mode) & featuring Bruce Dern, Corey Feldman, Henry Gibson and Carrie Fisher. While Ray (Hanks) is on a short sabbatical from work, he becomes obsessed with the Klopeks, the creepy new neighbors who've moved in next door. Spurred on by his enabler best buddy Art (Rich Ducommun), Ray leads an increasingly unhinged campaign to get to the bottom of the Klopeks' household (literally) that goes fully off the rails once he becomes convinced that they're responsible for the disappearance of aging neighbor Walter (Gale Gordon).
Nothing in this movie should work as well as it does. The story is unfocused, the characters are cartoonish and the humor is bizarre & slapsticky - yet it works. Hanks' chemistry with Ducommun feels realistic especially as they begin to swap points of view, with Hanks becoming more suspicious and Ducommun attempting to calm him down. Having Corey Feldman and his crew act as obvious audience surrogates should feel grating and distracting, but thanks to Dante's direction and Feldman's dunderhead affability you kind of start to like them.
Both films are a lot of fun in very different ways, for very different reasons but they made for excellent group viewing.
THE COCKTAIL: The Devil Bat's Kiss (a Vampire's Kiss cocktail)
Recipe provided by Allison Yakulis
At least as complicated to make as Dr. Carruthers' aftershave must have been, this 1920's concoction is a bit sweeter than what we usually imbibe, thus perfect for a Spooky Season gathering!
1½ ounces vodka
¾ ounce Chambord (raspberry liqeur)
1½ ounces sparkling wine / champagne
Red sugar for rim to garnish
Rim a cocktail glass with red sugar (these ratios are for a cocktail glass). Pour in the vodka and half of the chambord. Add the champagne, then pour the remaining chambord over the back of a spoon so that it floats atop the body of the drink.
THE MENU: S'pooky S'Burbs S'Mores (cereal bars)
Recipe provided by Hunter Bush
What better way to welcome newcomers to the neighborhood than with a nice tray of rice crispy treats? Since we were pairing The 'Burbs up with The Devil Bat, my first instinct was to make them with Count Chocula instead of traditional Rice Krispies but as it turns out, the Count is not vegetarian-friendly as their marshmallow bats contain gelatin. Once I'd decided to substitute in the marshmallow-less Cocoa Puffs, I realized I was metaphorically living right next door to s'mores bars!
1 large (13 oz) container marshmallow fluff (vegetarian friendly!)
4 tablespoons butter (+ slightly more for lining baking pan)
7 cups cereal (4 Cocoa Puffs / 3 Golden Grahams)
½ - 1 cup semisweet mini chocolate chips
In a very large pot, melt butter over medium / low heat. Gently butter a 9 x 13 baking pan. Stir in fluff until creamy. Add cereal approx. 2 cups at a time. Mix thoroughly. Turn heat off and add chocolate chips. Quickly fold in before the chocolate can melt. Pour into buttered pan. Let sit a minimum of 1 hour before cutting and serving.
Crystal Lake Chocolate Cake
Recipe provided by Allison Yakulis
Rosalie once famously hosted a Friday the 13th franchise marathon on her birthday (which that year fell on a Friday the 13th, natch) so when deciding what kind of cake to make her, Allison knew one thing with a certainty: it should look like Jason Voorhees' hockey mask! She used a skull-shaped novelty cake pan like this one to achieve this, and then just iced it accordingly.
1½ cups flour
1½ cups sugar
¾ cups cocoa powder
½ tablespoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
2 eggs
¾ cup buttermilk
¾ cup warm water
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour cake pan(s) (this made more than just a single skull cake pan's worth FYI). Combine dry ingredients in stand mixer on low. Add other ingredients & mix on medium until smooth. Bake 30 - 35 minutes. Test with toothpick before removing.
Allison used store-bought icing this time and just mixed small amounts with some food coloring to mimic the necessary palette to achieve the look of Jason's hockey mask.
PIZZA REPORT CARD: La Rosa Pizza
We attempted to make the Pizza Report Card as smooth as possible by clearly explaining it before too many Devil Bat's Kiss cocktails had been consumed. So this may be the most successful and accurate Report Card yet.
Crust: (8) 🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
Sauce: (4) 🍕🍕🍕🍕
Cheese: (9) 🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
Temperature: (7) 🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
Greasiness: (9) 🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
Toppings: (4) 🍕🍕🍕🍕
Herbs & Flavor: (6) 🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
Overall Presentation: (3) 🍕🍕🍕
Total Averaged: (6.25) 🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
There were many additional snacks besides those detailed above, including Allison's now-traditional hummus (the recipe for which can be found here), copious amounts of candy provided by Ben & Rosalie and Mystery Oreos (I believe the general consensus was that they tasted like ginger snaps)! Below are some photos of the decorations, the evening's festivities including appearances from Lil' Foxie and Moviejawn contributor VHJess!
After having heard Rosalie talk about The Devil Bat on the first episode of Cinematic Crypt, I was thrilled to finally be able to see it! I think everyone enjoyed it, enjoyed themselves and enjoyed the libations! If you'd like to join in the fun, you can join us remotely via Slack by clicking here [LINK] but as always, we encourage you to book your own Pizza 🍕 Film 📼 Club ♣ meetings with your pals and let us know if you do! Send us photos from you meetings and we'll share them here on Moviejawn!
We're taking a breather in November to shoot Pizzaman - Moviejawen's debut short film! - but for our December meeting we will be screening Clue (1985) and Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013)! That's another double feature! So come back to read all about it! That's all for now. Til next time, may your movies and your pizzas always be just the right amount of cheesy!
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