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Horror Pride Month: Actor and Artist Adam Bucci

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Adam Bucci

Adam Bucci is a man who knows something about standing in two different worlds. In fact, it’s been a recurring theme throughout his life.

Born on a military base in Kentucky, the artist and actor grew up in New Jersey. His father’s family was strictly military, and his mother came from a long line of artists and musicians. He says he knew from an early age which path he would follow.

“I was always a visual artist,” Bucci said during our interview for this year’s Horror Pride Month. “I would always turn over a placemat in a restaurant and draw whatever was on the restaurant walls. I was always on that path of being an artist.”

Bucci stayed on that same path right into high school, where he discovered theater.

The painfully shy boy who had been a bit of a loner suddenly blossomed before the footlights and he quickly realized that acting was what truly spoke to him. In fact, it was transformative and when it was time to transition into college life, acting, theater, and dance took up every spare moment of his time.

After graduation, he worked in theater in New York for a while before making the move to Los Angeles as so many actors do. It was an isolating experience for him, and in that isolation, the visual arts crept back into his life.

“It’s a hard city to be in,” he explained. “Art came back as a tool to focus and just put my mind at ease here and there. I started painting again, but not really selling them. I was just stacking them in my closet. It really wasn’t until last year that I worked with someone who was painting on fabric and I thought, ‘I want to try that.’ So I just started kind of taking my love for the horror world and quirky, darker things and experimented with painting on fabrics, jackets, and bags.”

Since that time, his dining room table has become his art studio, and he’s opened up an Etsy shop called Small Town Weirdo to show off and sell his creations. The name was inspired by the idea that weirdos can be heroes, as well, something that really spoke to Bucci on a basic level.

This hand painted jacket is just one of the items Bucci offers on his Etsy Shop.

He had always been what he’d considered a “cool loser,” noting that he had lots of friends in school, but no one that would call him up to hang out on the weekends.

As a kid, he’d been fascinated with horror films and books, and he recalls making his mom take him to Blockbuster after school to rent Friday the 13thA Nightmare on Elm StreetThe Hills Have Eyes, and every other horror movie he could find.

When he was asked to write a story in the third grade, he wrote his own version of Stephen King’s Misery using the names of his classmates complete with graphic illustrations of the action, and he is surprised to this day that his mom and dad were not called in for a parent-teacher conference on that one.

“You always hear the phrase ‘small town hero,'” he said. “I became the ‘small town weirdo.’ I loved the way it rolled off the tongue. It had a double meaning that I could really relate to.”

Adam Bucci Michael Myers

Adam showing off another of his creations.

Coming into his own as an artist and actor was not the only revelation waiting for Bucci in Los Angeles, however. Three years after the move, he met and fell in love with the man of his dreams. It was a shock for the actor, who had previously only dated women.

He was understudying Adam Huss–yes, they’re both named Adam–in a musical and the two found an unexpected and profound connection with each other. That was eight years ago this Summer and the couple married last year.

Together, the couple is also working on creating a werewolf film titled Let it Kill You.

“We’re really proud of it. It’s a dark gritty movie with a lot of heart,” Bucci explained. “It has a gay love story built into it. We want to show people this love story that isn’t like other love stories. We want everyone to see it. We have this amazing werewolf transformation. We’ve already built the suit. It’s 7 feet tall with animatronics in the face and stuff. We’ve been working on this a long time.”

Adam Bucci’s journey to self has been a long one with twists and turns he never could have anticipated, but he says, he’s finally found exactly where he was meant to be.

“I’m becoming more myself; I’m embracing my weirdo,” he said. “I’m confident that I’m a little off center. I used to be afraid that someone would find out. Now I realize, I’m a better actor because of it. I’m a better artist because of it. I’m literally painting jackets on my dining room table. I’m embracing the Small Town Weirdo. I’m proud to be weird. I feel like everything in horror has that weirdness.”

Honestly, that’s a place we’re all trying to find, and more than a few of us in the LGBTQ community have found that space in the love of horror and the strangeness that it brings with it.

To learn more about what he and his partner are working on together, you can find them on their Patreon page. You can view more of Bucci’s designs on his Etsy shop. Every item there is a hand-painted, unique piece of wearable art. You can also find his creations on Threadless where you’ll find options to have a couple of his prints on t-shirts, phone cases, bags, and more so you can embrace the Small Town Weirdo in you.

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‘Blink Twice’ Trailer Presents a Thrilling Mystery in Paradise

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A new trailer for the movie formerly known as Pussy Island just dropped and it has us intrigued. Now with the more restrained title, Blink Twice, this  Zoë Kravitz-directed black comedy is set to land in theaters on August 23.

The film is packed with stars including Channing Tatum, Naomi Ackie, Alia Shawkat, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment, Christian Slater, Kyle MacLachlan, and Geena Davis.

The trailer feels like a Benoit Blanc mystery; people are invited to a secluded location and disappear one by one, leaving one guest to figure out what is going on.

In the film, a billionaire named Slater King (Channing Tatum) invites a waitress named Frida (Naomi Ackie) to his private island, “It’s paradise. Wild nights blend into sun-soaked days and everyone’s having a great time. No one wants this trip to end, but as strange things start to happen, Frida begins to question her reality. There is something wrong with this place. She’ll have to uncover the truth if she wants to make it out of this party alive.”

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Movies

Melissa Barrera Says ‘Scary Movie VI’ Would Be “Fun To Do”

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Melissa Barrera might literally get the last laugh on Spyglass thanks to a possible Scary Movie sequel. Paramount and Miramax are seeing the right opportunity to bring the satirical franchise back into the fold and announced last week one might be in production as early as this fall.

The last chapter of the Scary Movie franchise was almost a decade ago and since the series lampoons thematic horror movies and pop culture trends, it would seem they have a lot of content to draw ideas from, including the recent reboot of slasher series Scream.

Barerra, who starred as final girl Samantha in those movies was abruptly fired from the latest chapter, Scream VII, for expressing what Spyglass interpreted as “antisemitism,” after the actress came out in support of Palestine on social media.

Even though the drama wasn’t a laughing matter, Barrera might get her chance to parody Sam in Scary Movie VI. That is if the opportunity arises. In an interview with Inverse, the 33-year-old actress was asked about Scary Movie VI, and her reply was intriguing.

“I always loved those movies,” the actress told Inverse. “When I saw it announced, I was like, ‘Oh, that would be fun. That would be so fun to do.’”

That “fun to do” part could be construed as a passive pitch to Paramount, but that’s open to interpretation.

Just like in her franchise, Scary Movie also has a legacy cast including Anna Faris and Regina Hall. There is no word yet on if either of those actors will appear in the reboot. With or without them, Barrera is still a fan of the comedies. “They have the iconic cast that did it, so we’ll see what goes on with that. I’m just excited to see a new one,” she told the publication.

Barrera is currently celebrating the box office success of her latest horror movie Abigail.

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Lists

Thrills and Chills: Ranking ‘Radio Silence’ Films from Bloody Brilliant to Just Bloody

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Radio Silence Films

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, and Chad Villella are all filmmakers under the collective label called Radio Silence. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are the primary directors under that moniker while Villella produces.

They have gained popularity over the past 13 years and their films have become known as having a certain Radio Silence “signature.” They are bloody, usually contain monsters, and have breakneck action sequences. Their recent film Abigail exemplifies that signature and is perhaps their best film yet. They are currently working on a reboot of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York.

We thought we would go through the list of projects they have directed and rank them from high to low. None of the movies and shorts on this list are bad, they all have their merits. These rankings from top to bottom are just ones we felt showcased their talents the best.

We didn’t include movies they produced but didn’t direct.

#1. Abigail

An update to the second film on this list, Abagail is the natural progression of Radio Silence’s love of lockdown horror. It follows in pretty much the same footsteps of Ready or Not, but manages to go one better — make it about vampires.

Abigail

#2. Ready or Not

This film put Radio Silence on the map. While not as successful at the box office as some of their other films, Ready or Not proved that the team could step outside their limited anthology space and create a fun, thrilling, and bloody adventure-length film.

Ready or Not

#3. Scream (2022)

While Scream will always be a polarizing franchise, this prequel, sequel, reboot — however you want to label it showed just how much Radio Silence knew the source material. It wasn’t lazy or cash-grabby, just a good time with legendary characters we love and new ones who grew on us.

Scream (2022)

#4 Southbound (The Way Out)

Radio Silence tosses their found footage modus operandi for this anthology film. Responsible for the bookend stories, they create a terrifying world in their segment titled The Way Out, which involves strange floating beings and some sort of time loop. It’s kind of the first time we see their work without a shaky cam. If we were to rank this entire film, it would remain at this position on the list.

Southbound

#5. V/H/S (10/31/98)

The film that started it all for Radio Silence. Or should we say the segment that started it all. Even though this isn’t feature-length what they managed to do with the time they had was very good. Their chapter was titled 10/31/98, a found-footage short involving a group of friends who crash what they think is a staged exorcism only to learn not to assume things on Halloween night.

V/H/S

#6. Scream VI

Cranking up the action, moving to the big city and letting Ghostface use a shotgun, Scream VI turned the franchise on its head. Like their first one, this film played with canon and managed to win over a lot of fans in its direction, but alienated others for coloring too far outside the lines of Wes Craven’s beloved series. If any sequel was showing how the trope was going stale it was Scream VI, but it managed to squeeze some fresh blood out of this nearly three-decade mainstay.

Scream VI

#7. Devil’s Due

Fairly underrated, this, Radio Silence’s first feature-length film, is a sampler of things they took from V/H/S. It was filmed in an omnipresent found footage style, showcasing a form of possession, and features clueless men. Since this was their first bonafide major studio job it’s a wonderful touchstone to see how far they have come with their storytelling.

Devil’s Due

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