I have been a libertarian, to varying degrees and levels of enlightenment, for all of my adult life and probably most of my childhood as well. There is not really a defining event I can point to as a road to Damascus moment regarding politics. If there is one thing, however, that I can hold up as a shining example of why I believe that government is inept, corrupt, and generally full of more shit than the third member of the human centipede, it is the National Firearms Act. The NFA is quite possibly the worst law in America. It simultaneously violates the constitution, endangers human health, gives bureaucrats massive power, places unreasonable burdens on civil rights, bans or heavily restricts otherwise common products, and does all of this while not actually performing any useful function. Add in the fact that we have had this dumpster fire on the books for over EIGHTY FUCKING YEARS and the prospects for recovery are grim. In order to keep this post out of the novella section, I won’t go too deeply into details, but the cliff notes version is that rifles with barrels less than 16 inches in length are considered ‘short barreled rifles’ and are a royal pain in the ass to buy and make. They cost an extra $200 dollars per gun to register and registration can take up to a year. Silencers are also similarly restricted because… reasons? I honestly don’t know. I guess they just hated gun owners so much they wanted them all to blow their eardrums out. If you want to know more the Wikipedia page is linked above.
The gun on the left is considered a short barreled rifle, subject to heavy regulation and a federal felony for unlicensed possession. The gun on the right is an AR pistol, legal almost everywhere with no special permits.
Fortunately, like most bad laws, the NFA is complex and poorly written. This allows freedom loving capitalists to find loopholes to exploit for fun and profit. And exploit them we have! Using just a bit of technical understanding and a careful reading of the law, some clever individuals have found suitable workarounds for most of the restrictions that the NFA has created. The most common of these available are AR/AK pistols. As I stated before, if you have a rifle with an overall length less than 26 inches or a barrel less than 16 inches, it is considered a sbr. If the gun does not have a stock, however, then the ATF has decided in their benevolence that this is a pistol. I wrote about these kinds of pistols in my last post so I won’t repeat myself too much, but these can be extremely fun and useful guns if you need something handy and compact with lots of firepower. By themselves, these guns are fairly awkward to handle, but if you attach a single point sling or an arm brace (more on that below), they become extremely viable systems. They are very common and affordable. You cannot, however, just take a normal rifle and cut it down. If you make a pistol out of a rifle, then by law you have made a SBR or AOW even if you remove the stock. It has to come from the factory as a pistol or you have to build it as a pistol from parts. You can take a pistol and make into a rifle though, and then take that rifle back to a pistol with no problems. The other thing you cannot do is attach a vertical foregrip to a pistol, ANY pistol. Doing this makes the gun an AOW in the eyes of the ATF and you go to prison. Angled foregrips, however, are completely kosher. I told you this law was retarded.
I mentioned before that a SBR is a gun that has a barrel length less than 16 inches or an overall length less than 26 inches. What if you have a gun with no stock, a barrel length less than 16 inches and an overall length greater than 26 inches? Is it a rifle? Nope. Is it a SBR? Wrong again. Is it a handgun? Not that either. What you have is a class of weapons known simply as ‘firearms’. This is a relatively new breed of gun that first came to the forefront when a company named Franklin Armory debuted their XO 26. It is an AR with an 11 inch barrel, no stock, and a foregrip. Normally foregrips on this type of gun are verboten, but because it is longer than 26 inches it is beyond the purview of the NFA as long as you don’t put a stock on it. The vertical foregrip doesn’t sound like much but it actually does make a gun like this a lot easier to shoot. Plus it’s a nice fuck you to the gov, which is a reward unto itself. You don’t have to buy that version, you can make your own if you like. As long as the gun was not originally a rifle, it can be made into a firearm. Just make sure the overall length is greater than 26 inches.
Dual wield for extra DPS.
Okay, so a foregrip on an AR is probably not the most exciting thing ever. How about a short barreled pistol grip shotgun? As I said before, a shotgun must have a barrel length greater than 18 inches. Unlike rifles, there are no pistol loopholes in regard to smooth bore guns, so you can’t simply build a stockless shotgun and call it a pistol. BUT, if you have a shotgun with an overall length greater than 26 inches, a barrel length less than 18 inches, and no stock, you officially have a ‘firearm’. Enter the Mossberg Shockwave. This is a pump action 12 gauge with a 14 inch barrel. The secret is the shockwave birds head grip. The grip sticks out almost inline with the barrel, unlike a traditional pistol grip. This grip is what gives the gun the overall length needed to beat the NFA and escape regulation. They still lack a stock so they are not the most stable shooting platform, but they are definitely useful at close range, and they are short enough to be holstered like a large handgun. They would make an excellent car gun or even home defense weapon. I plan on picking one of these up when prices level off.
Now let’s get into some really fun stuff. How do you get around the machine gun ban? When you get right down to it, the functional difference between a semi auto gun and a full auto one is simply a matter of how fast you can pull the trigger. Some of you may be familiar with a technique known as bump firing, in which you hold a gun in such a way that the recoil of the gun causes your finger to bump the trigger, resulting in what appears to be fully automatic fire. A company figured out a way to design a stock that slides freely and allows you to bump fire the gun while actually controlling and aiming it. Enter the slide fire stock. They make models for ARs and AKs that start around $200. It is a bit gimmicky and it takes some practice to get used to it, but it does work. It’s still more than I am willing to pay for such a device, but anything that make gun grabbers shit their pants can’t be a bad thing.
So slide fire stocks are a good first step, but let’s take things to the next level. The legal definition of a machine gun is any gun that fires more than 1 bullet per motion of the trigger. The ATF considers pulling the trigger and releasing the trigger as two separate motions. Some clever guy decided to make a trigger that fires when you pull the trigger and then fires again when you release the trigger. The result looks something like this:
That is not a full auto AR. It is a binary trigger. It is completely legal and stamp free. I can hear you creaming your panties from here. They are pretty expensive though, coming in around $400 for just the trigger pack. It is considerably less expensive than even the cheapest full auto gun, however, and much more accessible. Franklin Armory was the first company to come out with a binary trigger (I think their unofficial slogan is ‘We love to fuck with the ATF’) but there are now a few of them on the market.
Now it’s time to talk about a slightly more controversial topic: pistol arm braces. These caused quite the stir when they were released a few years ago. They are designed so that a person who is disabled or has weak arm strength can put a brace on an AR pistol, slide his or her arm into the brace, and hold and fire the pistol more easily. If you remember my last post, I showed you a picture of one. They look a lot like a stock. They also work a lot like a stock, too, if you shoulder them. When these first came out, the ATF issued an opinion letter that stated that these were not considered stocks and would not make your pistol into a SBR no matter how you used them, as long as they were not modified. Thousands of these braces were sold, most of them probably not to disabled veterans. People declared it the death of the SBR. Videos popped up showing smiling people happily shouldering and firing AR and AK pistols while wiping their asses with the ATF logo*. The world was at peace. Then people got a little reckless. Other companies came out with their own, more stock like designs. People started modifying the braces, increasing their lengths, making them collapsible and foldable. The tipping point was when a company called Black Aces Tactical actually put one on a short barreled shotgun and got it declared as a firearm. The ATF took the unusual step of specifically articulating that people were not allowed to shoulder these guns. Why were these guns singled out? Well, they weren’t. A few weeks after that declaration, the ATF sent out a new open letter stating that, in their opinion, touching a gun equipped with an arm brace to your shoulder was redesigning a pistol into a short barreled rifle, and that anyone doing that was making an unregistered SBR. Was the ruling arbitrary, capricious, completely devoid of legal backing, and nigh impossible to enforce? Of course it was, it’s the fucking ATF! Despite this, few people wanted to risk their freedom over such a thing, and the pistol brace craze was over… until recently. Last month, in a stunning bout of clarity and common sense, the ATF reversed their reversal, and once again you can shoulder your arm brace like a boss. Being the ATF, they may change their mind again at any point, so buyer beware.
Silencer? What silencer?
The last thing on this list requires a bit of explanation. Say you’re an environmentally conscious gun owner. I mean a really environmentally conscious one. You only use lead free, shade grown ammo, you only buy guns made from non old growth forests, and you ensure your targets are made from 100% recycled paper. Yet that still is not enough to soothe your aching guilt. Well, my friend, you need a solvent trap. Simply thread one of these cylindrical tubes full of tiny cups onto the end of your rifle and it automatically catches all 8 drops of the used, contaminated gun cleaner that washes out of your barrel during cleaning, ready for proper disposal at your nearest hazardous waste facility. What’s that? It looks like a silencer? Gee… I guess it does. Huh, that is one strange and completely uncanny coincidence. It can’t be a silencer, though.. I mean, you would have to own a drill press and at least 1 extra long drill bit to make it into a functional silencer, and everyone knows that kind of technology is far out of the reach of your average yokel. Okay, okay, fine, how bout this: For a more heavy duty option, you can buy one of these handy adapters that let you thread a common automotive filter right onto the end of your gun. That thing will hold enough solvent to last a lifetime, and there is simply no possible way that an oil filter could be used as an effective silencer. Nope, no way at all.
All kidding aside, don’t fuck with these. You can probably bullshit your way through even the most flagrant violation of one of the other rules listed above. It’s not like cops are going to pull out a tape measure and check your barrel length if they see you at the range. But there is no way on God’s green earth you are fooling anyone into thinking that big fucking can on the end of your gun is anything other than a silencer. You can buy these online and at most large gun shows, but ffs just say no. Assuming the republicans pull their heads out of their own asses sometime in the next 18 months (asking a lot, I know) we might even get silencers off the NFA list. Until then, you’re just going to have to wear ear plugs and deal with it like we all have. Oh yeah, and for the record, I am not a lawyer so don’t take anything I just said as legal advice.
Hello my macabre menagerie of malcontents, and welcome once again to the only thing on the internet better than Asian spit-roast porn, Reviews You’ll Never Use. This week, we’ll review…the sequel to the movie we took a look at last week *sad trombone sound*.
Actually it was a stroke of fortune; the reason I dusted off Class of 1999 last week was because I saw it on El Rey Network as I was channel surfing one evening, and it turns out they started playing the sequel, as well. So I taped it (yes, I’m old enough I still refer to all program capture off of a television as “taping”, even though it’s done on the dvr) and gave it a whirl. And let me say: worth it. I mean, not really, but in the sense of, it was every bit as dumb as I thought it would be, and so in that perverse sense, did not disappoint.
Released in some territories as “Class of 2001”, which I think goes with the theme of “Class of 1984” and “Class of 1999” a little better. But like everything else having to do with this movie, they took the stupid way out.
First, let me say some lovely words about El Rey Network. I’m not being paid to do this, but this and Chiller (the horror channel; I used to have two horror channels, but the superior Fearnet was bought out and ceased operations, to my never ending regret) are my go-to channels when turning on the television. Ostensibly started by Robert Rodriguez to try and cater to the young Hispanic market, instead it is simply a reflection of Robert Rodriguez’s (and my own) taste in film. Which is to say, grindhouse, kung-fu, big dumb action, and z-grade horror. Seriously, look at the site I linked and scroll down just a bit to where it says, “El Rey Is…” and see the categories. I watch that channel like 5-6 hours per week, and that’s a lot for me as outside of live sports, I’m not a big TV guy. What the fuck any of this has to do with young Hispanics I’ll never know, because I’m 90% certain from the many that I am acquainted with and friends with both professionally and personally (I live in Texas) that most of them aren’t into this shit. Robert Rodriguez is into this shit, and apparently nobody has the stones to tell him he isn’t representative of the young Hispanic zeitgeist in this country. I was zeroed in over the Memorial Day break because they ran a three day marathon of old The Incredible Hulk episodes. Over Christmas, they had Kaiju Christmas, and just ran Godzilla movies on loop for like three or four days. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH WEED THIS CAUSES ME TO BURN THROUGH? I DIDN’T GET OUT OF THE FUCKING CHAIR EXCEPT TO STUMBLE TO THE DOOR TO GET DELIVERY FOR LIKE 48 STRAIGHT HOURS. I LOVE THIS NETWORK!!! They do have some sort of Lucha show, which I suppose is Hispanic-y, but that’s about it.
But I digress. Four years after the world-record smashing success of Class of 1999, some sharp marble decided it would be a good idea to do a sequel. Most of the top names in Hollywood were attached to direct at some point or another, but the studio was very choosy, and told Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola, et al to take a fuckin’ hike. I heard Spielberg even offered to pay them to be allowed to direct this film, but was given Saving Private Ryan as a consolation prize when he couldn’t get this one. What’s that Cameron? You already did a successful killbot movie, and want in on this action? FUCK you, I’ll kill your family. There is no one smarter than studio execs, and they knew that there was only man who could bring this puppy to life. And that man was career stunt coordinator Spiro Razatos. You will undoubtedly remember him as the deft hand behind six episodes of Team Knight Rider from 1997-98 which, if taken collectively and combined with this movie, constitute 2/3rds of his lifetime directorial experience. And so was born Class of 1999 II: The Substitute.
Eyeliner, lipstick, and purple hair spray? Once again, upper middle class white America, *this is not what a gang member looks like*
So now that they had their director, they needed a star. And nobody on the whole wide Earth was a bigger star in 1994 than Sasha Mitchell. He played the dumb older kid on Step By Step. The handsome leading man needed a sexy lady to play against, so in steps Caitlin Dulany, from no fuckin’ thing. She makes up for lack of pedigree by showing her tittays in a romping sex scene with none other than…Nick Cassavetes! That’s right, the much less famous son of the great John Cassavetes steps in to give Caitlin the ol’ D, and otherwise kind of play an on-again off-again douchebag. I shouldn’t make fun of him too much, though – he directed his own mother Gena Rowlands in The Notebook, so that’s legitimately kind of a big deal. Good for him. More than I’ve done with my life. I bet he got to fuck Rachel McAdams. I’d fuck Rachel McAdams. If I was a director, I’d be one of those sleazy old-timey ones you always hear about who makes the actresses “audition” their sucky-fucky skills. Hey, it’s a condition of employment, no physical coercion, and thus fully libertarian, so, you know…blow.
Anyway, the film is very loosely tied to the events of the previous one by the exposition of Department of Educational Defense agent G. D. Ash, played by some dude named named Rick Hill. I almost didn’t even check the link to his name while doing my prelim work for this article, but I’m glad I did, because hole-ee fucking shit, lookee lookee what I found. That bitch is goin’ on the list hard. That shit makes The Beastmaster look like big-budget Oscar bait. I literally have a hard-on in anticipation of the lovely, melty pure Velveeta that is that movie. Soon *strokes penis back to sleep*, soon my pet (for this one time only, “strokes penis back to sleep” is not a masturbation metaphor…or is it?). A hilarious part of the exposition and occasional flash-backs is that they only show the killbot played by the unfortunately named Patrick Kilpatrick. I get not showing Pam Grier, because she’s a “name” and the money to use her image might have been too much for this no-budget schlock-fest. But why not show any of the old English professor killbot, played by John Ryan? The only fucking thing that guy’s ever done of note was be the lead in It’s Alive, which is admittedly a pretty good thing to have done. That’s a badass movie, and I may review it at some point in the future here. You can’t go wrong with Larry Cohen directing, I’ll just leave it at that. If you check that link, ignore the “Known For” bullshit and just look at the directorial work. If you’re into this kind of stuff, at least three or four of those will jump out at you as classics.
I…I…I just can’t. It’s too easy. Feel free to caption this one yourselves in the comments.
Moving on, turns out there was one killbot left in a bunker after the whole operation went south, and it broke out and has posed as a substitute teacher going up and down the west coast murdering delinquent students. He winds up in a small California town, where a teacher (Dulany) is set to testify against one of her own former students, whom she saw fatally shoot another student. There’s a lot of tension as gangs in the school are trying to intimidate the teacher into recanting her statements and not testifying. Even the school leadership wants her to back down, because they can’t handle the heat. Here’s where Nick Cassavetes shows up and in one scene seems like a complete tool telling her how to run her life, and a few scenes later will seem to be all supportive. I don’t know if it was a ham-fisted way to try and display depth to the character or what, but it’s poorly written. He’s also some kind of military enthusiast who keeps a military “museum” consisting of a trailer full of memorabilia on his paintball range, which includes an underground bunker full of surplus MREs, weapons, detonators…you know, the usual. We never find out if he’s a militia guy or anything, but I suppose it was nice to show him as being a pretty normal dude for the most part who just happens to have an extreme interest in survivalism and military paraphernalia, instead of being the wild-eyed gun nut prepper of so many other films. He goes Rambo on one of the gang members at one point, but is strongly provoked into doing so, so I don’t think that counts.
Long story short (too late!), killbot Sasha does things like take inspiration from poems, look in on Caitlin as she’s undressing, and also look in her window while she’s fucking Nick Cassavetes. This is where we get to see her tits. Also, check out her bed – if this movie wasn’t made in 1994, I’d have sworn it was 1984, because her bed frame has functional neon lighting all over it. He alternatively saves Caitlin, and seems to be ready to kill her because she’s getting too close to him. Their whole relationship is very confusingly depicted.
I love this bed! So 80s sextastic! I’d do coke and fuck in this bed like a fucking champ. I’d fuck in this bed like Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet and listen to Flock of Seagulls while I PIIHB. Put the Disco Peacock from Suspiria on the nightstand, and it’s like my dream bedroom.
The day of the big JROTC paintball game arrives, and the nefarious gang-members are angling to arrange an “accident” to kill the stool pigeon teacher. Natch, Sasha shows up and kills everybody, including setting trip wires that somehow throw spiked metal ninja balls at people which Cassavetes describes as an, “old Navy Seal trick”. Uh-huh.
Eventually we find out that Sasha isn’t a killbot – he’s the demented son of Stacy Keach from the previous film, who is looking to take over his old man’s student-killing ways. He just acts like a robot because he’s apparently just fucking crazy. He wore a bullet-proof suit that looks like some Evel Knievel spandex because it’s future armor from the fantastic year of 1999. After taking several armor-piercing slugs point-blank and bleeding out, he still functions without any noticeable decline in ability, though eventually gets trapped in the bunker and blown sky high. It’s never explained how he found the damn bunker, or why he suddenly went off the reservation and started slaughtering innocent students along with the troublemakers. We end with Caitlin on the phone describing how she’s taking on a class of troublesome remedial students, because after all she’s been through, now she’s a badass I guess. A badass whose tits we got to see, as they were bouncing up and down while she was riding Nick Cassavetes like he was the horse son of a more famous horse, on her neon-bedecked bed.
The most hardcore paintball session evah.
Look, I ain’t gonna sugar coat it – this one’s bad. The performances from Caitlin and Nick are passable given what they had to work with, and kudos to them for giving it the old college try, but Sasha is trying to pull a Terminator stoic thing while still making corny one-liners (“Class is dismissed” after tossing a hand-grenade into a car full of kids). Even if atrocious writing wasn’t his fault, he comes across as wooden, but not in the way I believe the director had in mind. More like Anakin from The Phantom Menace, and less like a killbot. There are no fewer than two shots of two different explosions happening behind him while he dramatically faces the camera without flinching. I mean, one is bad enough, but two? And the whole, “He wasn’t a robot the entire time!” thing doesn’t work, because 1) the robots in the first movie already made dumb puns and displayed maniacal emotions, so taking an interest in poetry and peeping don’t seem like that far of a stretch even though it’s supposed to clue us in that he isn’t what he seems, and 2) he stands there without flinching while being shot many, many times. Even in bullet-resistant armor, the force of the impacts would still throw you backwards. I mean, he takes a full magazine from an Uzi at point-blank range and doesn’t even blink or push back an inch. I don’t give a shit how much you think you’re a robot, that’s fucking stupid. Oh, and don’t forget being treated to sharp exchanges such as this:
Caitlin: Go to hell.
Sasha: You first.
Nick, standing behind Caitlin: You first.
This is merely the first of two identical scenes you get treated to, that are in no way, shape, or form cliched.
That’s right, a surprise rescue from the kinda-hero just parrots back the antagonist’s words before shooting him. I hope they paid the scriptwriter in party tacos, because that’s all this drivel is worth.
Or Sasha’s mantra that without discipline, there can be no order, and without order, there is anarchy. This is used to justify his mass killing, by the way. If you aren’t willing to meet out the death penalty for truancy, you support unfettered chaos in the streets.
So ultimately I can’t recommend this movie. Hell, it still hasn’t even had a Region 1 dvd release – that should tell you something. Fucking Killdozer has a Region 1 dvd release. I mean goddamn dude, this is just sorry all around.
I have to give Class of 1999 II: The Substitute, a paltry 2 1/2 Corgi Butts out of 7. It would have been two flat, except for getting to see Caitlin’s tittay’s bouncing all over the place, which will automatically add extra credit to any film. This is the first time during the run of this column that I feel I’ve actually suffered for my art, and that means ultimately, for you, my legions of adoring readers. Never say Gojira doesn’t love ya.
Expecting your favorite barbarian sodomite? Not today, ladies! I kicked his happy ass to the curb* and we’re going to be talking about the most American of pastimes: Shooting shit! You need a dose of some good old fashioned testosterone up in this joint, and Vhyrus is filling your prescription weekly. This post was originally going to be part 2 of my get home bag series, but it’s now become the premiere post of Firearm Fridays. So sit down and start reading, and don’t mind that itching under your blouse… that’s just all the hair this gun talk is putting on your chest. This week I have a long, boring post in which I show off my guns and talk about how much of gun nerd I am. I promise future posts will be a bit lighter.
You’ll recall in part 1 we discussed a basic functional layout for a get home bag, of which the primary element is a long gun. For the sake of clarity (if not brevity), I did not go into great detail about the possible choices for a defensive rifle. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of different long guns available for purchase on the market. Some of these naturally lend themselves to a combat or defensive role more readily than others, while some are less obvious but have a few benefits that may outweigh their shortcomings in certain situations. We’re now going down the rabbit hole into hardcore ammosexuality to take a look at the various types of guns, their advantages and disadvantages, and what would make a good weapon for your particular case. SVD (that’s Standard Vhyrus Disclaimer, which is cool cause it’s also the name of a sniper rifle) that this is entirely based on my opinion and that I am a moron so you should stop reading and ignore everything I have to say.
I am going to organize these guns by tiers. Tier 1 guns are the absolute most effective in terms of overall capability. They are usually based around a proven military design and many are well known throughout the world. Barring any legal or financial obstacles, this should be the gun you want. Tier 2 guns lack either the firepower or the dexterity of tier 1 weapons, but make up for it in other ways. Tier 2 guns are still extremely effective, just not as much as tier 1. Tier 3 guns are guns that are picked because they are legal or more practical in places tier 1 and 2 guns are not. In this tier are the non self loading firearms. These guns usually have reduced capacity and rate of fire, but are still decent weapons in their own right, and some make up their shortcomings with excellent knockdown power and/or accuracy. Tier 3 guns are definitely compromises, but with training they can be wielded with great success. Tier 4 guns are not recommended except for very limited conditions. These weapons are hunting type rifles or WW1 or 2 era surplus rifles. They are simply too slow, too large, and too heavy to be effective. Mind you, these guns will still put a bullet on target, and they are generally the most accurate of the 4 tiers, but their disadvantages are numerous. Avoid if possible. One final note: I will avoid naming brands as anything other than examples, unless a specific model of gun does something special or noteworthy, in which case I will call it out for consideration.
We will start with the best possible choices, the tier 1 guns. The two most obvious, and by far the most common, are the AR 15 and the AK 47. The AR 15 is the civilian version of the M4 and M16 in use by the US and other various militaries since the 1960s. It is commonly chambered in 5.56×45, also called .223 remington. While 5.56 and .223 are not technically interchangeable, any AR made in the last 15 years will be able to shoot both so you can ignore the distinction. The primary advantages of the AR include light weight, low price, enhanced accuracy, commonly available parts and ammo, excellent ergonomics and extremely modular design. Disadvantages include a difficult cleaning, many small parts during field stripping, and a non folding stock. The AK refers to a number of semi automatic clones of the Russian AK 47 in service throughout the world. It can be found in the armories of just about every banana republic and tin pot dictator from Castro to Kim Jong. AKs are commonly chambered in 7.62×39, henceforth referred to as 7.62S. Advantages of the AK are a robust, simple design, ease of maintenance, available folding stock, and an abundance of inexpensive ammo. Disadvantages include reduced accuracy, higher weight, awkward controls, and a lack of customization. A decent AK is now also slightly more expensive than a base model AR currently.
The main difference between these guns primarily lies in their common calibers. The 5.56 is a very small, fast round. It uses kinetic energy over weight to inflict most of its damage. This gives the AR a very flat trajectory and long range. It also gives the AR one other distinct advantage: it can penetrate all but the highest level body armor using 55 grain M193 rounds, which are commonly available under the Federal ammunition brand. It is the only common semi automatic caliber I am aware of capable of doing this. While this advantage would be highly situational in use, it is still worth considering. The 7.62S round used by the AK is much larger and slower. It has more drop at longer ranges and slightly more recoil. As a result it is not considered useful past 300 yards. It does, however, possess superior wounding capabilities at close range compared to the 5.56. With this in mind, I offer this recommendation: If armor penetration, extreme accuracy, or long range effectiveness are of critical importance to you, the 5.56 is the better caliber. If close range performance is your most important factor, 7.62S is what you want. If you want 7.62S performance in an AR, there are conversions which allow you to shoot it from an AR platform using special magazines, or you can look into 300 blackout, which is specifically designed to feed in an AR platform. This is a bit outside the realm of this article so I will let you do your own research into those options if you are so inclined.
A whole article (hell a whole book) could be written about the various different calibers and options available for the AR platform, so I will add one final note about twist rate and move on. The most common barrel twist rates available for the 5.56 are 1:9, 1:8, and 1:7. This refers to the number of rotations a bullet in the barrel makes while travelling down the barrel. 1:9 means one rotation every 9 inches, 1:8 means one rotation in 8 inches, etc. The tighter the barrel, the heavier a projectile it will adequately stabilize, but a twist rate too high will over spin a lighter bullet and cause poor accuracy. Most military barrels are 1:7, and most higher end ARs are as well, but I actually recommend a 1:8 twist. A 1:7 will allow you to stabilize 70 and even 80 grain projectiles, but most people never shoot anything heavier than 62 grains. A 1:8 will allow you to stabilize everything between 40 and 80 grains, with the sweet spot right around 60 grains. This will allow you to shoot essentially every commercially available load for the AR with at least reasonable accuracy. This matter is still hotly debated, and I encourage you to research more, but I have noticed that many of the newest ARs are coming with 1:8 barrels from the factory so I believe this idea is catching on. A few years ago you would have been hard pressed to find any 1:8 barrels and now they are sold on almost every gun website.
While the AR and AK will give you the best bang for the buck in terms of an affordable lead slinger, there is another class of rifles I feel deserve mentioning, because these offer something a bit extra for those inclined. I am referring to bullpup rifles. A bullpup rifle is a rifle that moves the action behind the trigger, where the stock would be. On most rifles the stock is just a useless piece of wood or plastic to rest your shoulder on, but bullpups actually use that space to house the working components. The result is a gun with a full length barrel that is 20% shorter than a traditional rifle. This makes the bullpups the shortest rifles legally available without an NFA tax stamp. They are usually as short or shorter than an AK with the stock folded, yet they are always ready to go. They excel if you have to get in and out of vehicles or work in cramped hallways and doorways due to their small size. There are some drawbacks, however. Bullpups can be a little ergonomically awkward, requiring some extra training to master. They are generally not ambidextrous, although there are exceptions. They are also not cheap. While a base model AR can be had for as little as $400, the cheapest bullpups start at $1000 and go up past $2000. I am personally a huge proponent of bullpup rifles, and if you have the money I definitely recommend at least swinging by a gun store and checking a few out.
A small selection of the author’s firearms. From Top: IWI Tavor X95, Zastava M70 (AK clone) with stock folded, AR-15, and AR pistol with 10” barrel. You can see the pistol is actually longer than the bullpup at the top or the AK with the stock folded, with worse performance.
Now let’s discuss tier 2 weapons. These are guns that offer some sort of compromise or trade vs the tier 1 guns. This is a rather large category so I will have to break it into sections. The first set of guns in this tier are what I call the featureless or ranch rifles. These are guns that have the same basic function as an AR or AK but look more like a traditional hunting rifle. The two most common are the Ruger mini 14 and the Kel Tec SU 16 that I mentioned in the first article. Both of these guns shoot the 5.56 cartridge (Ruger also makes a version called the mini 30 that shoots 7.62S). The Ruger takes proprietary magazines while the SU-16 takes AR magazines. The Kel Tec has the added bonus of folding in half. These guns are less intimidating and/or conspicuous than the assault rifles** in tier 1, but they shoot just as fast and hit just as hard. They lack some of the features of the assault rifles, such a pistol grips or muzzle brakes, which means they can skirt some of the more onerous assault weapons bans in the less free states. If you want the most firepower but you live in a ban state, a gun like this is your best option. If you are on a budget you can also look for a SKS. These guns are a cousin of the AK and shoot the same round, but they feed from 10 round internal magazines and can be reloaded with stripper clips. You can usually get them from around $400 – $500. The trade off is that these guns will not have the level of aftermarket accessories and magazines available to them. You may have to pay more to get what you want, if they even offer it at all, and the controls are generally less user friendly on these guns. Some of these guns can also be fairly pricey for what you get, especially the Rugers. Also, if you are picking these to get around assault weapons bans then you are probably limited to 10 round magazines which makes these guns a bit of a weak choice. With so few rounds a larger caliber may be more desirable.
The next set of guns up for discussion are short barreled rifles or SBRs. These are rifles (usually ARs or AKs although there are others available) which have a barrel shorter than 16 inches. These rifles can be extremely light and compact, taking up no more space than a laptop, yet still able to give a high rate of firepower in a controllable package. In theory, these are the best of both worlds: the size of a large pistol, the firepower of a rifle. So why are they not tier 1 guns? Well, for one thing they’re almost illegal. In fact they are illegal in some places. Even where they are not banned by state law, they are heavily regulated by federal law. In order to make or buy one, you must go through a lengthy registration process and pay a $200 tax per gun for the privilege to have one. You have to keep this paperwork with the gun wherever it goes. You cannot allow anyone not authorized to possess it to use it or even have access to it outside of your direct supervision, and you must file paperwork with the ATF if you plan on taking it across state lines. That’s every time you cross state lines, not just once. Oh, and it usually takes 6 to 12 months for the feds to approve your application. In short, it is the definition of a pain in the ass. This alone should make you think twice about going this route.
The gun on the top is an AR pistol, completely legal and unrestricted in most of the US. The gun on the bottom is a SBR, an extremely dangerous and highly regulated assault weapon which will net you 10-25 in federal prison without the proper permits. See the difference? Yeah, me neither.
If you look at an AR SBR (the easiest one to make) you are not even saving any space. Because an AR stock does not fold, even an AR SBR with a 10 inch barrel is going to be roughly the same length as a bullpup, but a bullpup doesn’t come with a suitcase of red tape and you are not compromising your barrel length. Furthermore, because the gun has a short barrel, you are significantly hindering your firepower. In general, the shorter the barrel, the less velocity you produce. Reduced velocity equals reduced power, which means your rifle isn’t hitting like a rifle. In fact it is this reason that I do not recommend using any short barreled AR weapon chambered in 5.56. 5.56 is a very velocity dependent cartridge and using short barrels cuts too much velocity off the round for it to work effectively. There are commercially available rounds that are effective out of a 10 inch barrel but that is beyond the purview of this article so I leave it to you to do your research if you want to go that route. The only SBR I can comfortably recommend is an AK SBR with a folding stock. It is small enough to actually gain significant movement and concealment but still large enough to hit with authority. You are still going to pay out of the ass for it and have a suitcase of paperwork to haul around, and God forbid if the thing gets stolen out of your car.
Modified SKS on the top, AK in the middle, AK pistol bottom right. You can see how much smaller the pistol is compared to the rifles.
So, if SBRs are out, what can you do? Well, there is another option. It is called the AK pistol. You see, we have kind of screwed up gun laws in America. If you take an AK and chop the barrel down, that’s a short barreled rifle, but if you chop the barrel down AND take the stock off, that’s a handgun. Makes total sense, doesn’t it? With an AK pistol, you can run a single point sling off the back of the gun and use the sling as a stabilization point, kind of like a reverse stock. This gives you a nice small gun with lots of maneuverability and plenty of power. The downside is that an AK pistol is simply not as stable as a rifle. The stock adds a lot to the accuracy of a gun, and your follow up shots are definitely going to be slower and less consistent. AR pistols also exist but because the problems with AR SBRs extend to AR pistols I would not recommend them either. If you want maximum concealment and maximum firepower, this is the only way to roll.
Or is it? You see, there is a third way. A company called SB Tactical makes something called an arm brace. Here is a picture of it on my AR pistol:
Now, you are probably thinking “Gee Vhyrus, that looks an awful lot like a stock.” Why, yes it does! Despite this, the ATF has ruled that this thing is not a stock and can be placed on any pistol without making it a SBR. I am not going to sugar coat it: this thing is the definition of ‘grey area’. Up until very recently, the ATF publicly stated that if you had one of these on a gun you could not legally touch it to your shoulder or you would be making a short barreled rifle. They backed off of this very shaky and nigh indefensible stance in the last few weeks, but being the arbitrary and capricious motherfuckers that they are, they could change their mind at any moment. Still, as of this writing, there is nothing explicitly forbidding you from equipping a brace to your pistol and using it like a short little stock. I have used one of these, and while it is short it is definitely usable, especially if you’re wearing a plate carrier. The only way to really get the most out of it is to put one on a folding stock tube so you can get the smallest possible package, otherwise you might as well just get a bullpup. This adds about $200 – $300 to the price of the gun but you are getting an almost SBR with none of the SBR legal entanglements. The brace comes with it’s own legal baggage though, so you have to weigh the pros and cons. FWIW, if you’re dead set on a SBR I would go with a AK pistol equipped with a brace on a folding tube. You can get a Yugo M92 with the brace and 3 mags for about $650 right now and then you would need to do a little work to add in the folding mechanism.
AK pistol (specifically a Zastava M92) with a folding arm brace.
On the other end of the spectrum are the .308 rifles. These are semi automatic military rifles of usually cold war origin chambered in .308 winchester or 7.62×51 (also called 7.62 NATO). The 308 is a considerably more capable round than 5.56 or 7.62S. It flies farther and hits harder. There are many effective guns chambered in this caliber that make excellent defensive rifles. The AR-10, M14, SCAR, FAL, CETME, HK91, and their derivatives are all available and reliable systems. I would never feel outgunned with one of these in my hands. The drawbacks are primarily related to size and weight. A 308 is simply overkill for most situations. Most people do not need an 800 yard effective range in a defensive rifle, and the additional power is wasted. Recoil is increased significantly over 5.56 or 7.62S. Furthermore, a 308 is going to be larger and heavier than an intermediate caliber rifle, and the ammo is larger and heavier as well which means you won’t carry as much. These guns also have reduced capacity compared to the tier 1 rifles, with magazine capacity typically around 20 rounds. 308 is also twice as expensive as 5.56, and the guns are usually more expensive as well. If you live in a ban state and are limited to 10 round magazines then it would actually make sense to go with 308 since you need all the power you can get to make up for the lack of capacity, but otherwise it’s a lot of unnecessary weight.
A VEPR 12 semi auto shotgun on top, a Hawk 982 pump action 12 gauge in the middle, and an AR 15 at the bottom for comparison. You can see how much larger the shotguns are compared to the AR. There are folding stocks available but you’re still looking at a large package.
The final type of guns in this tier are semi auto 12 gauge shotguns. A shotgun is a very versatile and capable platform, able to shoot many different kinds of ammo to fill various roles and can adapt to many different scenarios quickly. In terms of close range lethality, there is absolutely nothing more powerful than a semi automatic shotgun loaded with buckshot. Each trigger pull sends nine 9mm sized shots at your target, and you could easily empty 10 rounds out of a modern shotgun in less than 3 seconds, making a semi auto shotgun as powerful as a full auto mp5. Using slugs, a shotgun can make hits at 100 and even 200 yards with practice. Ammo is plentiful and readily available, and can be changed at will to suit your particular needs. Sounds like an excellent platform, so what are the drawbacks? There is a reason the shotgun is a niche weapons in all modern militaries. Shotguns are large and heavy, for one. Secondly, ammo capacity is severely limited. The average tube fed shotgun has a maximum capacity of about 9 rounds, and even magazine fed shotguns usually top out at 10 unless you use heavy and expensive drums. Recoil is punishing, especially with slugs. Reliability can be hit and miss with certain loads or models. Reloading is slow, especially with tube fed guns. Ammo is large and heavy, which means you will be able to carry less. Accuracy is considerably diminished over rifles, and range is greatly reduced. Groups at 100 yards will be around 6 inches with slugs, and will most likely require some holdover to get on target. Buckshot is essentially useless beyond 50 yards.
Now we get into tier 3 guns, which includes pump and lever guns, and pistol caliber carbines. Pistol caliber carbines (henceforth abbreviated at PCCs) are rifles that shoot handgun rounds. 9mm is the most common, but you can get PCCs in just about every popular autoloading caliber, including 40, 45, and 10mm. PCCs can use either proprietary magazines or feed from commonly available handgun mags. GLOCK mags are the most common. Obviously one immediate advantage is that your rifle and pistol can use the same round and the same magazines interchangeably, which greatly simplifies your loadout. Also PCCs tend to be light with almost zero recoil. The disadvantages of a PCC lie in their ammo. To be blunt, pistol rounds suck. They are low power, have poor penetration, poor ballistics, and poor range. 200 yards is a stretch for a PCC and would require significant hold over. Not only that, but because of our barrel length laws, a PCC is going to be roughly the same size as a full size AR or AK. You aren’t gaining any advantage size wise but you are taking a real firepower hit. These guns are usually subject to the same assault weapons bans that the rifles have, so you aren’t winning on that front either. The only major advantage is magazine commonality, and that is a lot to pay for a relatively minor advantage. Unless you are extremely recoil sensitive I would not go for a PCC as my first choice.
There are two notable exceptions to this that I must mention. Two specific PCCs get a pass into tier 2 due to their design. The first one is the Kel Tec Sub 2000. The Sub 2k is a PCC chambered in 9 or 40 that takes mags from one of several major handgun brands. What makes the S2K unique is that it can fold completely in half without tools and deploy in seconds. This gives you a gun no wider than a standard laptop that can deliver rounds on target and then fold back up into a small backpack. You are still dealing with a PCC so range and firepower are limited, but it’s extremely low weight and folding ability are enough to put it above the rest. If you have to pick a true PCC, pick that one. The second gun that moves up a slot is the FN PS90. The PS90 is the duck billed platypus of the gun world. It is neither a rifle nor PCC but it shares characteristics of both. The centerpiece of the PS90 is the 5.7×28 round. It is designed like a shrunk down 5.56 cartridge, so while technically a handgun round it has similar ballistics to a rifle. It is effective out to around 200 yards with minimal drop. The gun itself is a bullpup design which keeps the size to the minimum allowed by law. What makes it really stand out is that the proprietary magazines can hold 50 rounds, almost double the standard capacity of an AR or AK. The rounds themselves are very small and light which means you can carry more. A standard loadout consists of only 2 or 3 full magazines vs the 4 or 5 needed for an AR. Ammo and mags are somewhat pricey and you aren’t going to find them at your local walmart, but it is definitely one to look into if you have the money.
The other half of the tier 3 guns are lever/pump action firearms. These are manually operated firearms usually fed from a tube under the barrel, although some do use detachable magazines. If you’ve ever seen an old west movie, you have probably seen a lever action. These are chambered in older rimmed calibers like 357, 30-30, 44, 45-70, or 45 LC. They are simple steel guns with wood stocks and basic sights. Some have been modernized and can mount a scope or a red dot. They are very light, simple, and reliable firearms. Their greatest asset is that they are not semi auto so they can get around even the most restrictive firearms laws in the US. Since they are not scary black assault rifles there is a very good chance that most people that would normally get agitated from the sight of a rifle would ignore or discount a simple cowboy gun like a lever action. Make no mistake, though. These are serious guns. They fire fast and hit hard. They have the added bonus of being chambered in revolver calibers, so if you carry a revolver you only need to carry 1 type of ammo for both. A 357 or 44 magnum out of a 16 inch barrel is no joke, and will do a real number on whatever you hit. Range is limited by ballistics but 100 – 200 yard shots should not be too much trouble for most calibers. The downsides are the obviously low rate of fire and low capacity, as well as outdated cartridges. No lever action is going to keep up with a semi auto, and rounds must be hand loaded individually. If you do get a lever action, I strongly recommend getting one with a side loading gate which will greatly decrease your reloading times. Rossi makes a very affordable version in many calibers. If this is the best you are able to get, train hard with it and learn what it can and cannot do. As for shotguns, pump action is much more common than lever action, though both do exist. Manual shotguns have the same drawbacks as semi auto shotguns but a slower fire rate. Their reliability is much better, however. The main advantage to pump shotguns are their low price and accessibility. Many people already have a pump shotgun they can simply put a shorter barrel on, and those that don’t can pick up a simple 12 gauge for as little as $200 brand new. Many police still carry 12 gauge pumps as their long gun, so they definitely have their uses as defensive weapons. If you want simple, reliable, and cheap, you can’t do much better than a 12 gauge.
There is one shotgun I feel I should call out as a cut above the rest feature wise. I don’t feel that it’s good enough to be considered a tier 2 weapon, but if you really want a pump shotgun and money is not an issue, I would recommend looking into the Kel Tec KSG. The KSG is a pump action 12 gauge but it is nothing like any other gun on the market. For one, it is a bullpup, which makes it a very compact and handy weapon. You could easily stash one in a large backpack. Secondly, the KSG had dual feed tubes. Fully loaded it holds 15 rounds. That is double the average shotgun and more than even most magazine fed shotguns. Because it feeds from each tube independently, you could do some really clever things like fill one with slugs and one with buckshot, which would allow you to switch back and forth whenever you like. They are considerably more expensive than a standard pump 12 gauge, coming in around 700, but the added features are worth the extra price.
Finally, we’ve reached the bottom of the barrel, tier 4. These guns are simply not recommended for defensive use. They are fine weapons, but they are simply too outdated or outclassed by more modern guns. I am talking about bolt action and single shot rifles and shotguns. These can be hunting weapons or surplus arms from the world wars. They can also be super expensive precision rifles for shooting the wings off a fly at 1000 yards. They come in literally every known caliber and price range, from $100 all the way up to many thousands of dollars. Most are fed from internal magazines, although some do have detachable box mags. They are simple, reliable, and ballistically they can have impressive numbers, but the downsides are just too great. They are slow to load, slow to reload, have very limited capacity, and are not ambidextrous. If you live in a very rural area where shot placement and extreme accuracy are your only considerations, then a bolt gun may be the ticket, but in a defensive situation it would be extremely rare to justify shooting at someone from hundreds of yards away from ambush, which would be the only place a bolt gun would really work. It simply doesn’t make sense.
That about covers it. This was considerably drier than my last post so hopefully it was at least somewhat educational. This is a huge topic but I tried to give the best possible overview of the situation without going too deep into any particular detail. If you have specific questions or want to call me a moron, comment below.
*Not really. I begged them to let me do this and they felt sorry for me.
**I know they’re not really assault rifles. Just let me trigger some progs for a bit.
Welcome once again fellow aficionados of the absurd to another round of your favorite thing on the Information Superhighway, REVIEWS YOU’LL NEVER USE! This week, we’ll do something a bit unusual, and review a sequel to a film instead of the original. Why? Because this movie came in one of those four-movie $10 DVD multipacks when I bought it several years ago, and I had no idea it was a freaking sequel until I was doing my preliminary research for this column, so fuck me I guess.
To be fair, it’s only a sequel in the loosest sense of the word. The film is Class of 1999, by veteran action director Mark L. Lester. Middle name starts with an L, huh, and last name is Lester. I never liked that. I don’t like alliteration in names, or even using the same beginning letter. I don’t know why, it just rubs me the wrong way. I dislike it just like I dislike it when people have two first names, like Clippers roundball player Chris Paul. Chris Paul? FUCK…YOU, get a last name! Be Chris Paulson, or something like that. Anything, just don’t have two first names! I hate it SO MUCH! I hate you for not changing your name, I hate your parents for having that name, just fucking die!
Stacy Keach, menacingly eating a banana. The crudely stereotyped gay jokes write themselves.
Anyway enough about my hang-ups. Mark Lester directed such endearing childhood memories as Firestarter and Commando. Lately, however, his IMDB reads like the resume of a director only someone like me could love. Dragons of Camelot? Poseidon Rex? Dragon Wasps (the cover art is of a giant wasp breathing fire)? Sand Sharks? Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon? Game of Swords? Holy shit man, I’ve hit the junk cinema jackpot. Oddly, he’s credited as a producer for all of these things on his IMDB page, but if you actually go to the links for the movies themselves, he’s the director. I wonder what that’s all about. Whatever’s wrong, I’m sure it’s the fault of a progressive.
Our three killbots. For some reason one of the military robots was designed to look like an old professor, complete with smoking a pipe. FFS.
Moving on, apparently in 1982 he directed a film called Class of 1984. I’ll not link it, in case I run across it and review it someday. By not linking directly from here, I have thereby prevented any of you from being able to access any information about this film on the World Wide Web on your own initiative. But the gist of it seems to be another one of those, “The kids aren’t alright” movies about an inner-city high school overrun by gangs, new teacher comes in and has to get shit done, yada yada yada.
In 1990, still not satisfied that society wasn’t spiraling downward into an inevitable collapse, he trotted the idea back out and directed Class of 1999. Only now instead of an inner-city decay theme, he decided to make it an action movie about street gangs vs. killbots. It was the right, nay, only move. No shit, this movie stars Pam Grier, Stacy Keach, and Malcolm McDowell as The Principal! Well, they all have supporting roles, but significant screen time, even if the titular stars are the teenage gang-bangers (not people in gangs, but rather, people who regularly engage in gang-bangs).
The film was produced by Vestron Pictures & released by Vestron Video, and had only a very limited theatrical release, but really, check out those links. I thought it sounded familiar, and I immediately saw why. Scroll down a bit and take a look at the gems this company produced back in the day. Great low-budget awesome crap like Street Trash (which I wouldn’t have seen without the recommendation of one of the original H&R schismatics, who unfortunately left prior to the website launch) and Chopping Mall, all the way up to Princess Bride and Dirty Dancing! I had completely forgotten about these guys, but reading through this company’s history brings back a lot of fond memories. Do check out both, as the films for the two branches of the company don’t entirely overlap.
So our film opens with some lazy exposition detailing how by 1999, gangs had taken over the city cores of most major American urban centers and turned them into “free-fire zones” where cops were scared to enter (HA, if only! -ed). In response to the crisis not of apparently ceding sovereignty to gangs but of the fact that the damned gangs aren’t going to school, the gubbmint creates the Department of Education Defense. They’re like hyper-militarized truancy…divisions. One would think that it would be a better use of resources to regain control of the cities first and then run the schools like normal, rather than simply run military ops in no-man’s land for the sole purpose of getting kids to and from schools over which no adults exercise any control, but what would I know, I’m not the visionary director of Dragon Wasps.
This is what upper-class white people thought gangs looked like. Shit, maybe in Seattle, it *is* what gangs look like.
The former gang-leader of the Blackhearts gang, “Cody” (because badass gang leaders are always named that), is let out of prison to resume school in his free-fire zone of Seattle as part of a pilot program. The Blackhearts, by the way, all have this dumbass little tattoo of a black heart on their cheeks to show their affiliation. It doesn’t make me afraid of them, it just makes me want to help them sign up for HIV screening. Cody acts like he wants to lay low to not violate his parole, but bizarrely insists on driving home through the turf of the Blackheart’s rivals, the Razorheads (this is what middle-aged white people actually thought gangs were named). A firefight ensues, and he makes it home only to find his friends, younger brother, and mother all living in decrepitude and addicted to drugs.
Going to school, he meets the new principal’s goody two shoes daughter, Christie. They bond over his bad-boy image and not wanting to be in a gang anymore. We’re introduced to evil corporate CEO Stacy Keach’s trio of new teachers, two of which are people you’ve never heard of, and one of which is Pam Grier. They’re androids programmed to teach, and to be able to physically handle the violent students.
Well of course since Stacy Keach is the head of a profit-making kkkorporation, it turns out he’s evil and only in it for the money, without caring about killing kids, because hey, what’s a few (dozen) dead kids when there’s a buck to be made? THAT’S HOW CAPITALISM WORKS. You see, the three android teachers are actually reprogrammed military robots, and this whole setup is a test run to see how they’ll work in urban combat environments. Unfortunately when Malcolm McDowell finally gets wise, he gets his throat punctured for his troubles.
Robo-view camera angle. Notice there is a selection for unspecified, “Karate Moves”. That’s Grade A schlock for you, right there.
So the androids first discreetly kill a few troublesome kids, then for some reason flip their shit and decide to spark a war between the Razorheads and Blackhearts. While this war of many people firing automatic and semi-automatic weapons at each other from like 10 meters apart with nobody hitting anything rages, the androids sneak behind the lines and go on a murder-spree. There is one rather delightful scene of a kid being pulled backwards through a small hole in the wall, snapping the kid’s torso in half. Afterward, they kidnap Christie and take her to the school, trying to lure the competing gangs into a trap to restart their earlier battle. The gangs figure out what’s up, heroically join forces to defeat the androids, and after a bloodbath battle in the school, literally only Cody & Christie remain alive at the end. At one point, Cody also hilariously accurately hurls a fire axe across a classroom. Seriously, like 50 kids are killed over the course of this movie – it’s like Total Recall only with teenagers.
The effects are workable for being a low-budget grindjob. At the end, when the androids are showing more of their robot parts, it isn’t too hysterical. Also you get to see a fake Pam Grier titty after her chest rips open. There is a gratuitous enough amount of violence to satisfy most people watching this who went into it with eyes open for what they were getting. Unfortunately the writing and directing are where this falls short (the director of Commando not being particularly adept? Gasp!). It suffers from something all of the movies of this particular subgenre suffer from, in a wildly unrealistic depiction of gangs, how gang members interact with each other, what gangs are named, what symbolism they use, etc. It’s more like what worried parents imagined in their heads when the first Hot Topic opened in their lily-white suburban mall and they saw their kids with a Dead Kennedys CD, which, as you probably know, bears precisely zero resemblance to actual gang members and activities. Movies pull shit like that all the time though. What bothers me more is that the robots really go off the reservation, and begin making stupid, witty remarks. At one point, one of them with a drill-hand (which seems much less useful on the battlefield than the other robots’ flamethrower hand and rocket-launcher hand) is drilling into a kid’s head, and he says, “I love to mold young minds!” while grinning manically. They’re robots, dude. They don’t get a boner for killing and make puns. The stupid killbots even slaughter their own support staff. During an earlier chase scene when the robots are driving after Christie & Cody after the teenagers broke into the robot’s shared apartment looking for clues, as they’re flying off a dock into the ocean, one of them says he hates getting wet. I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but I really think the whole Terminator approach to killbots is preferable to the hokey-jokey variety you see here.
Pam Grier finally shedding her limiting human outer shell to reveal the foxy killbot beneath. Notice the look of rapturous joy on her face? I don’t think Mark L. Lester knows what robots are.
Also the guy who plays Cody sounds oddly like Corey Feldman. It was bugging me the whole time.
So to sum up, if you’re not looking for much except a mildly amusing way to kill 90 minutes, it certainly isn’t that bad. Christ knows I’ve seen a lot worse. But don’t let the somewhat interesting premise trick you into thinking you’re getting anything particularly great here, some overlooked low-budget gem. Those movies exist, but this isn’t one of them. It’s one rung above a made-for-TV SyFy Channel Saturday Night Special, which is apparently what Mark L. Lester is churning out these days. The real waste is seeing three good-to-great actors slumming it here.
And oh yes, lest I forget: there is a third film in this series. But that’s a tale for another time.
Greetings once again, my fellow luxuriants of the ludicrous, to another edition of Reviews You’ll Never Use. This week, let’s dip our toes into another great and underappreciated genre of film, Hong Kong wuxia (kung fu) films of the 70s & 80s. Today we’ll be taking a look at 天龍八部, or as you round-eyed devils have dubbed it, The Battle Wizard.
Magic thigh-bone gun of ultimate devastation!
I must profess to having a soft place in my heart for old trashy kung fu movies. Those of you my age or a bit older probably remember these as being staples on late-night cable, when they were just trying to fill air space. The silly dubbing, ham-fisted acting, convoluted story lines, and most importantly, the high-flying martial arts action are ambrosia for the aficionado of trash cinema.
And brother, The Battle Wizard delivers on all these fronts. It’s a Shaw Bros. production, which may not mean anything to you, until I tell you that if you ever saw a fucked up cheesy Technicolor kung fu movie on tv at 2 a.m., it was probably from this production company. This particular film is based on a serialized novel whose title variously translates as Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils or Eight Books of the Heavenly Dragon. The novel deals in archetypes based on Buddhist cosmology, so it’s all a bit complicated to explain in a blog post.
Pew pew!
The film opens with a guy getting caught in bed with his mistress, by her husband. Rookie mistake. Of course they immediately fight, but it turns out the philanderer has mastered the ancient martial art technique of shooting lasers out of your finger. He shoots the husband in the knees, and then as he tries to flee, injured, he gets shot again by the finger laser, which results in both of his legs falling off below the knee. Somehow the husband disappears over the roof, running away on his stubs. Back inside, the philanderer’s wife reveals to his side-piece that he’s actually a prince and could never marry gutter trash like her. Take THAT, bitch!
Reptile laughing uproariously. Seriously, if you watch these movies, the bad guys are *constantly* laughing their assess off for no reason. It’s really weird.
Twenty years later, we cut to an underground cave. The cuckold has built extendable iron bird-legs for himself that can destroy rocks, because of course he has. He’s hanging out with a half-human reptile-man of some sort, whose provenance is never explained. Through the magic of exposition, we learn that Prince Philanderer is now king, and has a boy. Killing the son should be just the revenge Iron Bird Legs is looking for, so he dispatches Reptile to the surface world to enact his revenge labor for him.
On the other side of the street, Gutter Trash’s daughter by Prince Philanderer is all grown up, and has mastered the ancient martial arts technique of firing lasers out of the end of an oversized novelty thigh bone. Her mother sends her out into the world to enact her revenge labor, on Prince Philanderer’s wife. She also tells Bone Shooter to always veil her face, because all men are worthless scum. See, SJWs aren’t new, they even existed in China 1,000 years ago.
MEANWHILE, AT THE HALL OF JUSTICE, sonny-boy is moping about because his old man, now King Philanderer, is trying to make him study kung fu. All the boy wants to do is read old Chinese sages and be a scholar-philosopher. After fighting with his parents over it (who claim that no one can govern unless they can also kick ass), he sullenly runs away to prove that you don’t have to be Chuck Norris to make it in the world.
Ambush by Iron Bird Legs, who it turns out 2/3 of the way through the film can also breath fire!
Here’s where shit really starts to get weird. Deep breath: he meets a woman who can mind-control snakes and kicks his ass because she knows kung fu. They’re captured by bandits, but Snake Woman uses her powers to help Pacifist Son escape. She sends him to find a particular woman that can rescue her. Pacifist Son asks several wanderers in the forest, and eventually learns that the chick is a hated witch. Heart in throat he approaches her hideout to beg for help for Snake Woman. Turns out, the witch is Bone Shooter. What a twist! So Bone Shooter shows up, kills the bandits, frees Snake Woman (who promptly fucks right off until near the end of the film), and has to allow Pacifist Son to see her face because he sucked poison out of her wound sustained during the fight with the bandits. They’re then ambushed by Reptile, but survive because it turns out a giant red snake lives in the river and because it ate nothing but ginseng and deer antlers it’s whole life, it somehow grants magic super martial arts powers to anybody who drinks it’s blood (I swear that is the exact explanation given in the film). So in desperation Pacifist Son bites the snake and drinks it’s blood, sending Reptile scurrying back to tell Iron Bird Legs about this intriguing development. Pacifist Son and Bone Shooter go back to the palace because they want to get married, but find out they’re half-siblings through King Philanderer. Iron Bird Legs springs an ambush and captures Pacifist Son and Bone Shooter, throwing them into a pit (after an awkwardly weird scene of Reptile stripping and fondling the woman) where they have to fight a super-strong man in a cheap gorilla costume. Pacifist Son uses his snake invincibility to eat a magic poisonous frog that Snake Woman had given him earlier; this somehow makes him go Super Saiyan, and he defeats the magic carnivorous gorilla and escapes from the pit. There’s a final show-down with Bone Shooter, Snake Woman, Reptile, Pacifist Son, and Iron Bird Legs, where everybody shoots a shit-ton of lasers out of their hands at each other. Eventually the good guys kill all the bad guys, the end.
Seriously, lasers everywhere.
This is an amusing diversion for a variety of reasons. The effects are, of course, garish and silly by today’s standards, but I profess a certain fondness for the earnestness of the efforts of people burdened by a lack of both money, and skill. The plot is simply marvelous. Everyone trying to get revenge on everyone else, magical beings all over the place, the most crowded fucking forest I’ve ever seen in my life. The most interesting aspect to me, though, is the explicit turning of the usual trope of the weakling Chinese valuing faggoty scholarship in the classics over the vigorous manly martial valor that we value in the West. In this movie, the protagonist explicitly tries to be the very model of a perfect Confucian ruler, and is ridiculed for it, and basically gives up on it like 15 minutes into the film when he first agrees to let Snake Woman try and teach him kung fu.
Carnivorous gorilla of doom. I hope Iron Bird Legs takes revenge on a lot of people, because that seems to be the only way the ape gets fed.
If you’re already partial to this kind of film, you’ll love it. It’s got everything you could ever want from a 1970s low-budget Hong Kong import, including a hilarious scene of a horse falling to it’s death over a cliff. If you don’t already like this kind of film, it has nothing for you that would make you change your mind. I rate this film 3.5 Glowing Hands out of 7. Props to anybody who can name the movie this image is from without looking it up.
Greetings one and all, and welcome to an unusual installment of Reviews You’ll Never Use. This week, I shall recount to you, my reluctant audience, my adventures, foibles, and heroic deeds during this past weekend’s Texas Frightmare Weekend. This will follow a slightly different format, with all wordy word words up front and then all the photos at the end. I tried sprinkling them throughout but thought it looked too cluttered. Also, some quirk of the site makes it very difficult to line photos up next to each other when captioned, so they’re just all in a vertical line, which also looks weird. Sorry.
My favorite weekend of the year. Now I have to bide my time until October, when shit gets real for me again.
This was TFW’s 12th year, and the convention continues to grow. They’re going to have to change locations again soon, methinks. The Hyatt Regency DFW’s entire bottom floor is a convention center, but on Saturday especially, it’s just wall to wall, to the point it’s barely fun and you can’t move. The logo doesn’t lie, however: this is the southwest’s premier horror convention. People come from all over; in Ted Raimi’s panel, he asked who was from out of state, and fully half the room raised their hands. I spent time standing in various lines with a lovely couple from Montreal, a man who claimed to hail from San Francisco and yet quizzically was not a gayhomofag, and some boisterous fellows from Monterrey, Mexico.
The wife and I always stay at the hotel from Friday through Sunday, as there is simply too much to see and do for a single day, and it’s much more conducive to drunkenness to be able to just go up to our room, rather than get an Uber back and forth to our house, about half an hour away. Friday night we dedicate to signature hunting and finish that task on Sunday because the lines during Saturday are just unbearable. Also, if you’re reading this, Hyatt, your $15 breakfast buffet is barely passable as food, and a lot of places don’t charge for that shit, particularly when it is of such low quality. Literally, the only good thing is that the bacon is made thick and soggy, just the way I like it. I am not a fan of crisp bacon, and if you are, I hate you, because people like you make restaurants think it is not only acceptable, bur desirable, to make crispy bacon. Seriously dude, fuck you.
There are always lots of guests, lots of interesting vendors selling interesting things, lots of costumes, panels, and film screenings. There’s a theme party on Friday night, a VIP party for people who pay more on Saturday, and a free Saturday night option of karaoke. I’ll let you peruse the guest list yourself rather than listing them all here, but this year we had quite a good haul of signatures and bought a few fun items. We attended the Friday night theme party (the theme was an Antarctic research post from The Thing), but Saturday I’m afraid we were simply too drunk to participate in any of the other festivities. The Friday night party was crowded but boring, so we broke open the glowstick necklaces laying about and made an art project on the tablecloth. We really only went because the decor and props were done by our friends at Dark Hour haunted house, and it would have been shitty of us not to show up to support people we hang out with. Seriously, we have season passes to this haunt, and had our 10th wedding anniversary there last month.
Saturday we managed to sit through a midnight screening of Karate Kill, with director Kurando Mitsutake in attendance to field questions afterward. I pointed out to him that the Texas flag was upside down the two times it appeared in his movie, which I’m proud of myself for having caught, it being 2 in the morning and my being drunk. Somebody asked him the budget of the film, and he said he wasn’t supposed to say prior to US distribution, but fuck it, he’d had too much whiskey, and he spilled the beans. Don’t worry, Kurando, I won’t tell. The film was a welcome re-introduction to actress Asami’s titties, which I had seen in previous films. She was in attendance at a TFW a couple of years back, and we got her signature. She was dressed conservatively in traditional Japanese female clothing. I wanted to tell her it was no use since most of us had seen her have fake sex on screen, and seen her boobies, but I suppose it made her feel better. Seriously, check out the movies she’s been in. Read that list and revel in its awesomeness. I have a couple of those movies and may review them in future.
One of the commenters, it may have been Suthen, mentioned The Legend of Boggy Creek once before. Well they had a screening of a 2016 sequel, Boggy Creek Monster, but unfortunately it had an early (8 pm) start time, and I was still getting blasted at the bar. But just know that it’s out there, waiting for you to see it : )
I only caught three panels this year: first was The Thing, which featured Keith David, Wilford Brimley, the guy who played Windows, and the cinematographer. Turns out Brimley is a hilarious dirty old codger with a lot of crusty old man stories, which is awesome. I also got his signature this year, and you’ll never guess the photo. The dude actually had an 8×10 of an old Quaker Oates advert featuring him. I couldn’t believe he’d be that cool. So of course that’s the one I got signed.
The second panel was Suspiria. This was the big one. Dario Argento doesn’t make it to stateside cons very often, and often cancels appearances. We had him, Stefania Casini, Udo Kier, Barbara Magnolfi, and, one of the founding members of Goblin, Claudio Simonetti. Dario’s limited English made it difficult for him to articulate complex thoughts, and Barbara and Claudio had to step in to translate for him increasingly as the panel wore on. The most interesting audience question, to me, was a person who asked the great director what he thought of the current generation of Italian horror directors. Argento responded that there was no current generation; just a bunch of retards mindlessly mimicking the giallo masters (specifically himself, Bava, and Fulci). Claudio chimed in his agreement with that assessment. They all thought Italian cinema had one glorious moment in the sun, and then decided it would retire as champion and never do anything innovative ever again.
Also, it turns out that while my full name is a common enough one to Italians, my nickname is a purely English diminutive. The first two Eye-ties I had sign things stumbled over it, and they spelled it out in block lettering, before adding my wife’s name in more natural-looking handwriting. It looks like we just crudely added my name onto all the photos after the fact. So for the last two pasta-eaters, I just gave them the Italian version of my name.
They were all hilariously stereotypically Italian. Overly expressive, waving their arms about as their spoke, everything was Brava! this, and Grazie! that, with several of them telling us in the audience that they loved us and each other a thousand times over the course of the panel, and while speaking with them while getting autographs. I did get the guy from Goblin to sign one of their LPs, which is better than a photo I think.
The last panel I went to was Ted Raimi’s. He didn’t have a moderator for some reason, so spent the whole time engaging the audience, running about, and is one of those guys who is always, “on.” When I asked my question, he asked me what was on my shirt. Of course, it was a Warhammer reference, so I had to explain to him in one sentence about the Skaven. I had two other people in the audience whoop in support of the Great Horned Rat. The audience respectfully (mostly) stuck to questions about him and his career, rather than only asking about Bruce Campbell and Ted’s famous brother.
We also secured Keith David’s signature, Amanda Bearse (she was there for the Fright Night panel), Ric Flair (why was here there? Who knows. But he did write, “Woooo!” under his name when he signed the photo, so I’m happy), and Michael Berryman. Mr. Berryman, as you may not know, has had to overcome tremendous physical obstacles in his life to become a successful actor, and he gathered all of us in line around his table to tell us stories of perseverance and positivity. He invited anyone who has a positive image, video, or story to post it on his Facebook page, so I’m relaying the good word to all of you.
We also got Chris Sarandon this year, of course as Prince Humperdink. He’s a humble guy if you talk to him. Or at least he says humble things. He claimed to not know whether any of his characters will stand the test of time. I think Humperdink is already pretty well there. He’s also much smaller in person than you’d think from seeing him in Princess Bride or Fright Night.
We also picked up Dee Wallace, who has been in so many classic films (E.T., The Howling, Critters, Cujo, et al) that she was kind enough to have a photo montage of them all, to keep me from having to chose. Rounding out the list was Ken Page, voice of Oogie Boogie in Nightmare Before Christmas.
There were a few others that are repeat guests, so we had snagged their signatures in previous years. Udo Kier, Meg Foster, Malcolm McDowell, and Tom Savini all fell into that bucket.
A lot of the cast from Bates Motel was there and had huge lines, but I don’t watch that show so who gives a shit.
Oh and last but not least, Misfits guitarist Doyle was there, looking menacing and still with a great devillock. Except he probably wouldn’t want me to associate him with the Misfits, because I heard from several others that I spoke to while waiting in different lines that he just talked trash about the band, about how it was entirely his talent that drove them, Danzig is lucky that Doyle made his career, etc. Seemed kind of bitter. Oh well. Looks like the kind of guy Warty would like.
Ultimately it was a sad drive back to the casa on Sunday, as this, our big weekend of the year had come and gone. I love the experience, and my wife gamely tags along. There’s a wonderful buzz in the air, and you’re surrounded by people who dress like you, think like you, act like you, who understand every one of your obscure references, and who are just as passionate about the Dark as you are. The whole thing is a shrine dedicated to group worship of Death, in His manifestation on film. I get to spend a whole three days walking around with people who have fake intestines spilling out, fake eyes hanging by plastic nerves, t-shirts with catchy pictures and slogans, neon hair styled every which way, tattoos like you wouldn’t believe. Not to mention the occasional sluttily dressed hot chick, to compete with the fatties that seem to make up half of the female contingent of horror fandom. This is our fourth year, and we’re already looking forward to the next go-round.
Alright, some words about the photos. A lot of the guests charge extra for a photo op with the signature. I don’t care about any of you that much, so sadly many of the people I got to meet, I don’t have photos of. At first, I tried creep-shotting them, but my complete lack of skill with phone cameras, combined with the crowds, soon showed me the folly of this approach. So there aren’t as many pics of celebrities (or in some cases, “celebrities”), as I would have liked. This leads me to my next point: most of the photos are of very poor quality. What you see below probably doubles the number of photos I’ve ever taken in my life. I have never had any desire to visually document anything for any reason except insurance purposes, and so never take pictures, and have no facility with this. I don’t even have a picture of my wife. Why would I? I know what she looks like, and it’s not anybody else’s goddamn business. Nothing grinds my gears more than people who have photos of their own family. It tells me that either, 1) you frequently forget what they look like, or worse 2) you think I give a damn what they look like. Protip: I don’t. Anyway, I’ve never taken pictures at any previous TFW, and only did this year to have content for the site, so they’re terrible. The only time that sucked is when William Sadler looked genuinely deflated that we didn’t want a photo with him after getting his signature a few years back. If I mentioned meeting a guest up above, but don’t have a photo of them below, it’s because they upcharged for it. The only creep shot I kept was of Argento since I promised that one. You can see from how bad it is why I deleted the other attempts. Most all of these were taken late Friday night or Sunday afternoon. I had a lot more from Saturday, but the crowds were just too thick and the pics were all even worse than the ones you see below. You’ll also notice I stand somewhat awkwardly – I have some chronic lower back pain from a pretty bad motorcycle accident a few years back, so I have to stand pretty ram-rod straight if I’m going to be on my feet all day to mitigate it. Just thought I’d address it before somebody else brings it up because I agree, it looks weird. Anyway, you have been warned.
Our art project at the Friday night party. Several of our friends noticed this and stopped by our table to take part. The staff kept giving us the stink-eye, but hey, you work in the service industry, so fuck you.
Some kind of Alien Freddy family, who the fuck knows.
One of the many fantastic shirts available for sale. I thought about buying this and having Brimley sign it, but couldn’t resist the Quaker Oats poster instead.
People dressed like the ice necromancers from Game of Thrones. Actually I think the littler one is one of those green people who grew the tree up Max von Sydow’s ass.
This is my good friend’s daughter, who also works at Dark Hour haunted house. The character is from something called Five Nights at Freddy’s, which is bizarrely *not* a Nightmare on Elm Street property. The robot hand is actually battery powered and articulates. This was on Saturday, but thankfully since I was assisting I was able to get the shot before general admission opened, after which she was swarmed the rest of the day.
One of the set pieces created by Dark Hour haunted house for The Thing theme party on Friday night. You can’t tell in this shot, but it glows from within and pulsates. It’s the kennel dog-monster thing. They also had the head spider thing, of course, but I wasn’t able to get a good shot of it.
Yes, they set up a tattoo area, so you can immortalize your weekend with a flash tattoo. The dude is from LA, which he advertises prominently on his banner. I guess that makes it trendier somehow. Fuck people who live in SoCal.
The Suspiria panel. From left to right: douchebag moderator; Barbara Magnolfi, Stefania Casini; Udo Kier, Dario Argento, and Claudio Simonetti.
Great t-shirt. If you don’t know what A Serbian Film is, kiss your wife and children while you still have your innocence and watch it. Or just read the summary and see why it’s awesome to have a shirt that says this.
My buddy Alex belting out Country Roads on the accordion wearing his normal flayed human face mask and utilikilt. He is the owner/operator of Reindeer Manor haunted house, which is quite good. His lovely wife is also possibly the best dessert baker I’ve ever met.
My wife really wanted the crocheted nosferatu because it’s unique. I thought he looked lonely, so bought him a plush Godzilla to play with. The day we got home our fucking mastiff chewed up the vampire’s head. He is currently out with some old woman for repairs.
Great Americana melting pot moment. You can’t see the mom as she’s off-camera to the right, but she was in full Muslim woman-be-gone hidey dress, but with a grin plastered on her face as her kids took pictures with all the various monsters and seemed to be having a great time. Good feelz all around. Welcome to the States, young horror fans.
MacReady and dog-monster wife at The Thing theme party on Friday night.
This guy makes weird shit out of bones. This is a Little Shop of Horrors homage that cost like $1,100. The mouth is a big turtle shell.
Great horror themed kids shirts for sale. Spawn of the Dead, I Don’t OBEY My Parents, Escape from School, and The Monster Squad Founding Member. We bought a few for the nephews.
Myself and mystery woman with Stefania Casini.
Myself and that damned mystery woman who kept following me around with Barbara Magnolfi.
Myself and mystery woman with Keith David. She’s wearing a t-shirt that’s a reference from Monster Squad, I’m wearing probably my favorite shirt: Skeletor trying to drink wine from the bottle but it’s just pouring through his bottom jaw and running down his chest. I think this may be the only other shot here from Saturday.
Myself and mystery woman with Claudio Simonetti. We got him to sign a limited numbered Goblin LP, which now I have to buy a record frame for.
Myself and mystery woman with Dee Wallace. She was a real sweetheart; besides Meg Foster, probably the single nicest lady I’ve met at this con. Look at her IMDB link up above, she’s been in a lot of great horror films, and I was excited to get to meet her.
It’s hard to tell in this shot, but this guy dressed like Groot has an axe in his back for some reason. He did awesomely only speak through a voice box built into the helmet that just said, “I am Groot”. Kids loved it.
Another great t-shirt for sale that I bought for my buddy who couldn’t make it this year.
If this is the cover to your movie, if this is the box art and that is the name of your films, I will buy them, no questions asked. It’s like heaven for a person like me; there are tables and tables covered in this kind of shit.
I doubt the efficacy of these gas masks.
Dude and chick dressed like at the beginning of the film Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
This was just laying on a table as a centerpiece in the middle of one of the rooms, as decoration. Because this is the kind of thing that counts as decoration at Texas Frightmare Weekend, which is why I love it so.
Creep-shot of Dario Argento. He’s signing an endless array of rare large posters brought by the people directly in front of me in line, a nice couple from Montreal. The dude put me to *shame* in obscure low-budget horror knowledge, and that ain’t easy to do.
Cinco de Skeletor. Plus it was a black dude, which is super weird, because 1) there’s like a dozen black dudes at this convention, total, and 2) they sure as fuck don’t dress up.
Chick dressed as Chucky. Child’s Play and Fright Night director Tom Holland was in attendance, but unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to meet him/get signature.
Part of what I love about conventions. You find the weirdest shit. This one guy had a whole series of little painted Chinese porcelain figurines, that just came in orange boxes that said “Myths and Legends Series” and labeled, “God of Luck”, or “God of Prosperity”, etc. No other info. He said a customer traded them to him at his physical shop, which he accepted because he thought to sell them at DragonCon, but no such luck. So we picked up the God of Luck and put him on our shrine to Guan Di once we got back to the house. Just a nutty little piece of the universe.
Prom Night Carrie.
Beetlejuice when he has the spikes sticking out of him. I’d hate to try and navigate a crowded con with… protrusions like that.
*1950’s PSA announcer voice* Are you worried about the threat of violence due to local or global sociopolitical destabilization caused by natural or man-made catastrophic events? Do you feel your current daily equipment loadout or everyday carry would be insufficient when responding to a large, agitated populace or large scale terrorist attack? Are you simply bored and have too much money and need an excuse to purchase more guns? Sounds like you need a Get-Home-Bag!™ In this installment, NRA certified* tier mall ninja Vhyrus will show you how to make your GHB (or ‘force multiplier package’ for all you operators out there) using affordable, off the shelf items available to most of us courtesy of free market capitalism.
For the well-equipped gentleman
Now, before I begin, I want to start out with a few assumptions that I have made in composing this article. First, I assume you live in an area where you can legally purchase long arms and store them in some manner in your vehicle at all times. So, this article is basically void outside of North America (and CA, NY, and the rest of the slave states). Second, I assume you are able bodied enough to carry about 40 pounds of equipment and function while doing so. If that is not the case you may need to scale back your gear according to your ability.
If you are new to guns or not much of a gun person, this article is definitely made for you. I tried to explain the more esoteric points as clearly as possible. Those of you into guns may find this article a bit oversimplified, and for that I apologize. I also want to add that much of this is based on my opinion. Well researched opinion, mind you, but opinion nonetheless. This kit as I describe it certainly will get the job done, but certain specific details may be up for debate among some of the more ballistically inclined among you. Feel free to tell me how stupid I am in the comments.
So, what is a get home bag? Put simply, it is an emergency battle kit that will allow you to defend yourself if a serious SHTF situation were to occur while you were not home. This kit is not designed to protect or defend against normal criminal activity, such as a carjacker or mugger. That is what your pistol is for. I mean, you DO carry a pistol, don’t you? This is more designed along the lines of a major violent riot, large scale natural disaster, zombie apocalypse, etc. It is designed to be a self contained unit that you can grab from your vehicle in case you need to bail out and hoof it due to impassable roads or other quickly developing events. A GHB is not a bug out bag per se, although it could be part of a bug out bag if designed properly. I am going to go over the simplest form of the GHB, which is a rifle or shotgun, ammo, and body armor. Also, many of the items I will describe in this kit are not one size fits all. Depending on your local environment and laws, your bag may be very different from the one I show in this article. For example, if you live in a high population urban area, you will be more interested in a gun that can shoot quickly and accurately and hold a lot of ammo, whereas if you live out in bumfuck Iowa, you may want to ditch the body armor entirely for food and water, and carry a gun that holds fewer rounds but allows for longer range shots and more power. In part 2 of this series (yes, there is a part 2. Strap in fuckers, we’re just getting started) I will go into more detail on different guns for different situations and what works best for your area. This article is going to focus on a budget minded approach, so I am going to illustrate the cheapest way to implement a GHB. If you have a lot of disposable income and want to go crazy, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with buying a 2000 dollar trunk gun and a grand worth of ultra lightweight body armor. The kit I have put together is what I would consider to be the minimum necessary for a decent kit.
The first and most important part of your get home bag is a gun. Depending on your budget and situation, this may be the only part of your GHB, in which case it simply becomes a get home gun. Slap some ammo in it, throw it behind your seat, and you’re good to go. I recommend more than that in most cases, but at least it’s a good start. There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of viable guns you could use for a trunk gun, and as I mentioned I intend to go into more detail in a separate article. If you’re pressed for time and want a TL;DR version, then the short answer is to buy an AR-15, which is what I ended up using for my kit. My initial idea was to purchase what I consider to be (at least in theory) the best get home gun currently on the market, the Kel-Tec SU-16CA. The SU-16 is essentially what you would get if you forced an AK to dress up like an AR. It is a piston driven, side charging rifle that takes AR15 magazines. It is lightweight, simple to operate, inexpensive, and has a few little features that make it unique amongst it’s peers. There are many different models, but the one we will focus on is the CA model. The CA model has 2 features in particular that are extremely useful for our purposes: It can fold in half for compact storage, and it can hold a 30 round magazine in the stock. This makes it the perfect grab and go rifle. The other great thing about this rifle is that it lacks features that would cause it to be classified as an assault rifle in the less free states, which should make it easier to acquire and carry in those second amendment challenged locations.
So, with my ideal rifle picked out, I set out to purchase one. The problem is, I can’t fucking find one! Right now it appears that the only model commonly available is the C model, which has an AK like underfolding stock. While handy and compact, it also gets rid of the magazine storage, which is kind of the whole point of the damn gun. The A and B models are also available, but the A has an 18 inch barrel which makes it harder to store and carry, and the B model has a pencil barrel, which makes it slightly lighter but also makes it much less capable of prolonged firing. Then there is the price. Right now these guns are running about $500-$600 new. While not expensive, currently you can get a brand name base model AR15 for as low as $400 and change, and the AR is a much better platform overall compared to anything kel-tec makes. The other nice thing about an AR is that they can be separated into two halves which allows very compact storage, even more compact than a folded SU-16. The only issue is that an AR does not have magazine storage in the buttstock. Fortunately, someone else took care of that since there are several options currently available that allow you to keep a magazine on the stock of the gun ready to go. The one I purchased is made by Blackhawk, but I actually recommend the Condorversion. The straps on the Blackhawk one that I purchased are only designed for use with a GI type collapsible stock, so if you have a magpul one you will have to buy different straps like I did. The condor one comes with longer straps that will better fit different stocks, and it is cheaper.
In the end, I used a gun I already owned rather than buying a new gun, which obviously saves a ton of money. If you have a gun that could fit the role of a trunk or get home gun and you’d rather not buy another one then perhaps your existing gun could simply be modified to suit your needs. The gun I have is a side charging AR which uses a Bear Creek Arsenal side charging upper. Currently these are a ridiculously low price, and if you are at all interested in making a side charging AR, I highly recommend getting one. If there is an interest from the commentariat, I can also write up a short piece on assembling your own AR. Getting back to the topic at hand, I picked a side charging AR for several reasons. First, a side charging AR is simpler than a standard AR, as the charging handle pulls triple duty as a forward assist and a shell deflector. It also gets rid of the god awful charging handle on a mil spec AR. The barrel is a mid length 1:7 twist, although if I could do it again I would make it a 1:8 twist. I will go into barrel twist in the rifle article, but if buying an AR try to get a 1:8 twist barrel. Failing that, the 1:7 twist is best for all around defensive use.
Black rifles matter
The two accessories I highly recommending adding to any fighting rifle are a sling and an optic. For slings, 2 point slings are better for moving, but 1 point slings are better for fighting. Magpul makes a convertible unit called the MS3 sling that I like very much, or you could make your own like mine but it will probably be better just to buy one pre-made. If you want to stay cheap and simple just go with a 2 point sling. For optics, this largely depends on your local environment, but it is hard to go wrong with simple red dot. For a good cheap red dot look no farther than the Bushnell TRS-25. I have 2 of these and they have never let me down. They can put up with the recoil of my VEPR 12 which had broken the other 2 red dots I tried on it within minutes, so you can be sure they will work. I wouldn’t go scuba diving with it or run it over with a train, but for normal use it should hold. I would also recommend iron sights as a backup. This may sound redundant but a lot of less expensive ARs do not come with any sights at all so you have to buy them. Remember, you want to keep this setup inexpensive in case it gets stolen from your car or wrecked in a crash, or you have to throw it in a lake for some reason. Now all you need are magazines and ammo. For my GHB, I used Magpul Pmags. The gen 3 pmags come with snap on dust covers that take the pressure off the feed lips, so you can load them up, snap on the covers, and store them worry free for years. Note that gen 3 pmags don’t fit in the stock mag pouch mentioned earlier, so you’ll need to buy 1 or 2 gen 2 or GI steel mags to fit in the pouch. Finally, ammo. To keep it simple and cheap you’ll want to go down to Walmart or your local gun shop and pick up some m193made by federal. This is the same stuff the military uses, so it’s nice and strong. It’s also very affordable. How many magazines you carry is up to you. I have 5 30 round mags ready to go in my kit.
The second major part of the bag is the body armor. I may also write a short article about body armor if people are interested, but the general idea is that there are levels of body armor from 2a to 4. The higher the level the more calibers the armor will stop. Everything below level 3 is only rated for handguns, not rifles. The advantage of lower level armor is that it is cheaper and lighter, but soft armor will not only not stop rifles; if you do get hit with a handgun, even if it doesn’t penetrate, it is going to ring your bell something awful. There’s no point stopping a handgun round if it knocks the wind out of you so badly that the bad guy can just walk up and pop you in the head while you’re rolling around on the ground. Level 3 and 4 armor plates are solid plates, either ceramic or steel. They are much heavier, but they can take multiple rifle hits without failing. Not only that, but because they don’t deform when hit, they won’t transfer the energy of the round into you like a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick, which means you will actually be able to react and either fight back or find cover. The minimum I recommend are level 3 plates. The ones in my kit are level 3+, which is not an industry standard but came up because certain commercially available rifle rounds (hint: I mentioned them back in the last paragraph) can actually penetrate level 3 armor at closer ranges. 3+ are slightly beefier but they can protect against everything not explicitly armor piercing. The company I recommend is AR500 armor. You can get a set of 3+ plates and a carrier for around $300 from them, which is a very reasonable price. Body armor prices have come down drastically in the last 10 years or so to the point that they are truly affordable, so there is no reason not to have a set. For guys, you want a rounded front plate, girls should have a flat front plate. Rear plate can be flat to save money.
Last, but not least, you need a bag to keep everything in. This part is trickier than it sounds. The most important thing is you want a bag that does NOT look like a gun bag. You do not want anyone to think there is anything valuable in the bag. It also should be something that you can transport easily, which means it should have a shoulder strap and/or backpack straps. If you plan on using an AR broken down you will need a minimum of 25 inches in the bag for the upper. If you get something like an AK with a folding stock, you will need about 28 inches, and if you plan on keeping the AR together, you’ll need about 33 inches. At first I bought a bag online with the intention of keeping the AR broken down into two halves and putting it together when needed. The bag I bought turned out to be too small. I was able to fit everything, but it was an extremely tight fit and it wouldn’t zip up completely. Frustrated, I decided to solve the problem the way I normally do: Drive to Wal-Mart and walk around the aisles until I find something that works. And find something I definitely did. I ended up with a 32 inch duffel bag. It’s larger than I originally planned, but it allows me to keep the AR as a whole unit ready to go and it has plenty of room for other things even after I put the gun and plate carrier in the bag. It also has a shoulder strap and backpack straps that tuck into a little pouch when not in use. It kind of looks like a large gym bag or maybe a bag full of laundry, which is exactly what I want people who see it to think. It was also less than 30 bucks. I don’t expect it to be super durable but it should hold up for it’s intended purposes. Remember most of this stuff is only designed to work for a few hours or days tops. None of this is intended to be a long term solution (except maybe the gun itself).
There is one last thing I added to my bag: a cable lock. The purpose of this is twofold. First is to discourage theft in case my car is broken into. I basically lock the gun to the car and thread the cable through the plate carrier. If they tried hard they could get the plates, but the gun isn’t going anywhere without a set of bolt cutters. This is not just for regular smash and grab, though. Depending on how far away from your car you are when something happens, you may not be the first person to get to your bag. The last thing you want is your own gun used against you. If you live in a rural area you can probably skip this, but it does make it a little less likely to be stolen.
Now that we have our kit laid out, let’s do a quick cost estimate so far:
Rifle: $500
Body Armor: $300
Bag: $30
Magazines: $50
Optic, ammo, accessories: $120
Grand Total: $1000
So there you go, one basic GHB for a grand. Not a bad deal if you ask me. Remember that this is a minimum budget based on my specific needs. If you need a 2 person kit or you have some of the items already purchased, this is going to change the amount you need to spend.
Once you start assembling your kit, you can’t just throw everything in your trunk and forget about it. Test your gun with the magazines you plan on using and the ammo you plan on carrying. Make sure the gun is 100% reliable. Sight in the optic, adjust the sling to your desired length. Wear the plate carrier with the plates in, and make sure it is adjusted and fits well. Clean the gun before you put the kit away, and make sure you take it out every 6 to 12 months and make sure everything is still working. Inspect the gun, mags, ammo, etc. That’s it! You’re now ready to fight the fascist capitalist pigs! I mean smash the patriarchy! Wait, which site am I on again? Oh fuck! Uh, I mean *reads notes* protect yourself from violent antifa mobs and other catastrophic events. There we go. Hopefully you learned something from this article…. aside from the fact that I have crippling paranoia, that is! *Laughter, studio applause, end credits*
Greetings once again my scandalous sojourners into scintillating cinema, and welcome to the final installment of our three-part exploration of perhaps my single favorite genre of film, giallo. Forgive me if this is a bit short; I slammed my right index finger in the car door like an idiot on Sunday, and even though it’s been a few days as of Wednesday evening, typing and using a mouse still hurts like eight bitches in a bitch boat.
The movie poster for today’s treat.
In part one, we took a broad overview of the genre itself. Last week, I provided a brief survey of three of the largest names associated with these films. Finally today, we will briefly look into giallo’s influence on cinema outside of Italy.
If you recall, giallo’s heyday was from the mid-60s to the late-70s. The films continue to appear even to this day, but their production tapered off severely by the end of the disco decade. The more astute of you may have noticed this coinciding with the rise of “slasher” films in the United States, and the eventual full-blown emergence of the splatter genre in the 80s. Mainstays of those genres, such as a mysterious killer, graphic on-screen violence, young people being killed in alarming numbers, antagonist POV shots, gratuitous use of nudity, and total ambivalence to acting quality all spring directly from the success of giallo. As I previously wrote, John Carpenter has repeatedly credited the influence of giallo on his own work, Halloween. Sadly, some of the artistic flair seems to have been lost in the translation; in my opinion, films like Friday the 13th are straw giallos, copying the form but without the unique substance.
Anyway, so much for the meta-analysis. Please note that you can’t spell analysis without “anal.” Also note that I can attest that a middle-management cubicle schmuck in his Kohl’s polo and Penny’s khakis driving his fucking grey Camry to work every day in a bizarre effort to be the most cookie-cutter office monkey who ever lived doesn’t seem to find it amusing when you say that, after he asks you to analyze something.
Famous self-cannibalizing ending scene.It’s kind of hard to tell, but that’s the “fetus” he’s eating. I thought about showing a shot of him ripping it out, but I’m too classy.
Today’s effort will focus on a weird little piece from Joe D’Amato called Buio Omega in Italy, Buried Alive in the initial US release, and eventually now Beyond the Darkness. You may remember that I initially said I was going to focus this third review on one of the seemingly endless and decreasingly topic-related Zombi sequels. The movie I had in mind was Anthropophagus (or, Zombi 7), also by D’Amato. But as I was standing there looking at the dvd, I decided Beyond the Darkness would fit better, as it serves as a sort of bridge between the latter stages of the giallo run, and what we would call slasher films. Besides, Anthropophagus is really only worth it for two scenes: one in which the killer pulls a pregnant woman’s fetus out of her and eats it on camera (the effect done using a skinned rabbit covered in corn syrup), and the very end when he’s gutted by the Final Girl and he begins scooping up his own intestines and stuffing them in his mouth in a final cannibalistic orgy. There, I just saved you 90 minutes. Anecdote: I found this one at a Movie Trading Company in a part of the city with a heavy black population. The clerk was black. The dvd cover had a picture of that ending self-consumption scene. The guy looks at me and says, I shit you not, “Man who da fuck wanna watch a movie like this?!” I gave him a Cheshire Cat grin and didn’t say a word.
Anyway, Beyond the Darkness is still super fucked up, but has more super fucked up scenes than Anthropophagus. D’Amato dabbled both in horror and porn, so it was inevitable we’d get a movie like this. Our young lead Kieran Canter loses his fiancée to a voodoo curse by his weird-looking housekeeper Franca Stoppi who wants the guy all to herself (I’d link to both of their IMDBs, but neither of them has really done anything you’d care about). In fact, she breast feeds him in his sorrow after the funeral. Except he’s really into taxidermy as a hobby, see, and it turns out he’s also a complete fucking loon. So once the fiancée dies, he digs her up (this scene shows the coffin having been buried, oh, I’d say about six inches deep), takes her back to his palatial villa, stuffs her, and puts her in his bed.
Creepy-looking housekeeper. She’s making sloppy joes.Just what the doctor ordered after a hard day of burying the chick you wanted to marry.
While returning from the graveyard, he has a flat tire, and a hitchhiker helps herself into his van. He takes her back to his place, and after she freaks the fuck out seeing him taxidermy-ing this much better looking chick, he kills her (after bizarrely taking time to rip her fingernails out with pliers). The housekeeper helps hack her fat ass up (and we get to see her giant titties flopping out hither and yon), and they turn her into sludge in a bathtub full of acid. Amusingly, the acid in Italy also comes wrapped in those wicker baskets like you see around bottles of table wine. It looks exactly the same, only huge, and with a warning label on it. After feeling bad about this, the housekeeper gives him a handjob to lift his spirits.
Seriously, the acid looks just like this, only in a much larger bottle with a generic warning label on it. I really sincerely hope that’s how they sold acid in Italy in the 70s.
Next, he’s out jogging, when he comes across a comely lass who has sprained her ankle. He takes her back to his place, and in exchange for wrapping her limb in a bandage, she basically jumps into bed with him, no dialogue needed. Upon seeing the stuffed corpse she freaks the fuck out (stop me if you’ve heard this), and Kieran rips out her throat with his teeth, and then swallows the chunk. Enter housekeeper, to burn the body in their giant pizza oven.
Eventually the funeral director starts snooping around, because he saw Kieran inject the fiancée’s corpse with something just before the funeral. Franca and he have a falling out, eyes are ripped out, twin sisters appear, and all hell breaks loose. There’s an interesting jump-scare ending that I don’t want to spoil, so we’ll leave it at this.
Now, this comes close to rising above being a gore-fest, but just falls short. Kieran’s character is alternately devastated and weepy, only to become enraged and murderous, and there is a definite feeling of his being trapped in a childhood twisted by the early death of his parents. But this thematic avenue is never really explored. Franca’s character has no such interesting promise, and is just a freaking weirdo. Her family appears at one point, and they also are shown to be…eccentric, would be the politest way to put it. Also quite interesting, is the fact that there is no real protagonist. The good funeral director (whose entire subplot is worthless except to set up the final shot) and the twin sister both appear too briefly to be said to have a meaningful role in the conflict. It’s actually just two antagonists doing crazy shit to other people and eventually, to each other.
Order up: one dead jogger.
Really though you’re watching this for the gore factor. There are great scenes, particularly two well known ones: the taxidermy and the acid bath. The sequence where Kieran stuffs his former love’s corpse is drawn out, using buckets upon buckets of animal guts, as we see him emptying her out. Upon removing her heart, he holds it up to kiss…then takes a bite out of it. The hacking up of fatty and turning her into slurry is also quite graphic and memorable. There’s an amusing transition from Franca dumping the liquid remains in a hole in the yard, to her very messily eating beef stew that will stick in your mind. Also the soundtrack is once again by Goblin, so that’s good.
What’s left of fatty after her acid bath. Serves her right for jumping in his car after he drove past her a few moments earlier. Also serves her right for being a fucking fatty.
Really though, even though this is widely considered to be D’Amato’s best work (he also pulls double-duty as cinematographer, under his real name of Aristide Massacessi), it doesn’t do a lot more for you than show the potential he had, and make you sick. I haven’t seen any of his porn work (though I can’t help but wonder what Anal Paprika is like), but I suppose great directorial skills are less important in that genre. Suspiria is giallo at it’s finest (as evidenced by the number of commenters who chimed in with how much they also enjoyed that film) – this is giallo at it’s most base.
Sorry this is a bit short and to the point, but like I said, my finger really fucking hurts, and I’ve got a big convention coming up this weekend, so that’s just perfect. Ultimately I give this film 6 pictures of my brindle mastiff out of 11.
I tried to get him to wear a hat, to make the photo “amusing,” but no dice. And my corgi wouldn’t even sit still for any photo at all. Also, I saw UCS’s review of Dawn of War III too late to chime in on it, but the next time any one of you motherfuckers does anything Warhammer related without getting ahold of me so I can impress everyone in the comments with how much I know about Warhammer, I will destroy you all in my wrath. I have Warhammer tattoos FFS!!!
Greetings once again, my fellow travelers in the transgressive, to another installment of Reviews You’ll (Probably) Never Use.
Last week as you’ll recall, we explored a little of the background of the wonderful Italian crime and horror genre called giallo. This week, before getting to our feature review, we’ll explore three of the main personalities which shaped and defined the giallo over the years.
Barbara Steele in the original, and still best, “Black Sunday”
Undoubtedly the father of giallo, and indeed of Italian horror in general, is Mario Bava. Born in 1914, Bava got his first taste of directing in 1956 when, as cinematographer for I Vampiri, he was asked to finish the film when the hired director walked out on the project. He later went on to direct the gothic horror masterpiece Black Sunday(not the one about the football game, this one is better) and began directing what are widely considered to be the first true giallo films in the early 60s. Bava’s start as a cinematographer and special effects man provided the early shape of the genre as being primarily concerned with the immediate visual impact on screen and the relegation of other aspects to subsidiary status. His son also made films, but aside from a promising turn with Demons, has utterly failed to live up to his old man.
Next, we have the great Lucio Fulci. His film Zombi 2 was the subject of last week’s review (not linked here because linking to my own posts seems weirdly like masturbating), and if you watched or read that, you know his game. While his wonderful Don’t Torture A Duckling showcased a fine directorial ability, in general, he became known as the king of Italian gore. Despite getting his start in comedies, eventually his films were watched with a grim fascination by folks eager to see just how much brutal violence someone could get away with putting on screen. Seriously, if you have a problem with a slow close-up shot of an open eyeball having a straight razor dragged across it, don’t watch The New York Ripper. But really you should to you know, not be a pussy. His Gates of Hell trilogy (City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, and The House by the Cemetery) are all good to excellent and worth watching for any serious fan of horror. The Beyond is probably my personal favorite Italian horror film from this era.
Finally, we come to the director of tonight’s film, one Dario Argento. He managed to have both a prolific and influential directorial career and to produce a pretty decent-looking daughter. He will be appearing at Texas Frightmare Weekend, and I will share a photo of the gentleman after I obtain my signature and regale him with stories of how much I love his movie because fuck knows he hasn’t heard that a thousand times from rando overweight white bald misanthropes. He started off as a screenwriter for Sergio Leone on spaghetti westerns but came into his own when he moved to giallo. In fact, his nearly flawless masterpiece, Deep Red, is considered by many critics to be the supreme expression of the giallo form. No less a personage than John Carpenter has frequently cited its influence on him when making American slasher innovator, Halloween. He’s fallen off recently (seriously, I bought his Dracula starring Rutger Hauer sight unseen, and returned it, it was that fucking bad), but man, when the guy was in his prime, he could make a fucking great movie experience. One thing I’ve always thought a bit off, however, was his willingness to direct his own daughter in nude scenes. How does that go? “OK sweetie, that was a good take, but now I want to see your titties a little bit more to the left, and rub that nipple a bit more sensuously. Yes, that’s the way…rub it slowly for daddy.” I mean, I know they’re Italian, and so their mores are going to be less “the corporation bought us lunch today so we can meet a deadline” and more “fuck it, let’s hit this bottle and sportfuck until the sun comes up,” but shit man, there are limits.
WHY DO OUR CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS HAVE TO BE SO DAMN BRIGHT?
Anyway, that brings us to our feature tonight, Argento’s Suspiria. The film was inspired by Suspiria de Profundis, a series of short essays by English author Thomas De Quincey. Argento thought to make three films out of the three Sorrows recounted in the essay: “Mater Lacrymarum, Our Lady of Tears,” “Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs,” and “Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness.” Argento would indeed go on to complete his plan with Inferno in 1980 and The Mother of Tears finally in 2007, but let’s not digress onto those paths and ruin future reviews.
The film follows American dance student Jessica Harper as she attends a prestigious academy in Freiburg, only to discover that it’s a front for witches, just like all Arthur Murray Dance Studios in real life. Suspiria is pretty much the only famous thing Harper did, though she apparently was in Minority Report in a role I don’t recall just from reading the name.
She’s feeling a little blue.
Jessica’s introduction to the academy is seeing a student flee from it while ranting during a storm. The fleeing student is then murdered in most satisfying fashion. She goes to her friend’s apartment, and a random hairy-armed intruder stabs her so damn many times in the sternum that her heart is exposed, then we get a nice close-up shot of the knife being stabbed directly into the beating heart. Then she’s hung from the skylight, the shattered debris of which falls and buries itself in her aforementioned friend’s skull. It’s easily the best opening to any movie ever made, and if you disagree, you can fuck right off with your incorrect opinions which can be disproved mathematically.
Seriously, how can you not love a movie that ostensibly takes place almost entirely at night, but is still so full of glorious colors?
So Jessica meets the various eccentrics who staff and study at the academy. Creepy things happen, people die, and she starts to get suspicious. There’s a great scene where the blind pianist’s guide dog is possessed and rips out his owner’s throat, and tears chunks of meat out of him until a couple of polizei come running over to chase him away. Her friend Stefania Casini tries to run away from an unseen murderous fiend with a straight razor, only to fall into a storage room filled entirely with razor wire. WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK? It’s giallo, it doesn’t matter or need any explanation! But seriously as she’s struggling with the razor wire and getting cut up she gets her throat slit with the straight razor. Very tragic.
Oh shit, I jumped into a room full of razor wire! I hope that guy with the straight razor who was chasing me doesn’t take advantage of this situation and come slit my throat!
Eventually, Jessica discovers that the academy was founded by an old evil witch, and after parsing out the meaning of the opening runaway’s rant is able to find the secret passage where the academy staff congregate to perform black magic. The main baddy animates poor Stefania’s corpse, crucified on a coffin and now with needles in its eyes for some reason, to attack Jessica, but our brave Final Girl is able to see through the witch’s glamour and kill her, which causes the other witches to apparently suffer cranial bleeding and migraine headaches while the whole house tears itself apart.
Honestly, the plot isn’t as convoluted as some critics make it out to be. You do have to pay attention and give the usual allowance for a giallo film’s somewhat blasé attachment to narrative flow, but that just comes with the territory. The real sparkle of this film is in the visual realm. The entire thing is shot in imbibition Technicolor, which was seen in films such as The Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind but was no longer widely used at the time. It produces a more vibrant, vivid color palette, almost to the point of garishness, though of course, that’s only a good thing in certain circumstances, of which this happens to be one. There is heavy emphasis on strong primary colors as the background in many scenes – the academy walls are deep blue and red velvet, and in a scene where sheets are set up as a screen so the ladies can sleep without a horde of maggots falling on them through the ceiling (watch the damn movie), as soon as the lights are out a nightmarish red backlight pulses through everything. Even in a bedroom, at night, there will be what looks like bright green or blue spotlights shining onto the actor’s faces. The damn skylight the initial victim is hung from is an enormous mosaic of bright colors. The entire thing is like a kaleidoscope given form and is really quite remarkable, and I can’t recommend it enough. Lord only knows how great it would be to watch it blazed (note to self: what am I doing this weekend?). Maybe the best part is what I have lovingly dubbed the Disco Peacock in the main witch’s bedroom. I desperately want one of these, and it also would be suitable for extended viewing while blazed.
I wasn’t kidding. I present to you: Disco Peacock.I also wasn’t kidding about the camp-out sheets having glowing red backlight. And nobody comments on this or thinks it sinister in any way.
Again, though, this is very much in the realm of art for the sake of art, so don’t go expecting some kind of Tarantino-esque dialog or Oscar-nominated stories of black folks overcoming oppression. It’s all enhanced with a great soundtrack by Goblin, long-time collaborators with Argento, and mentioned in my previous post. It’s less accessible to a standard horror audience than Zombi 2, but is ultimately superior. I award Suspiria 13 Sexy Witches out of 15.
Greetings fellow marvelers of the menacing and macabre, and welcome to another installment of what is indisputably at least the eighth best weekly recurring article on this site. For the next several weeks, we shall be exploring your humble wordslinger’s favorite single genre of horror, giallo.
I will preface the reviews with a brief history of the genre itself, the horror directors most well known within it, and its larger impact on American cinema.
First, lettuce define our terms. Giallo is greasy wop-talk for “yellow,” like the color of my wife’s skin, and refers to a particular style of Italian-produced murder mystery film which often includes elements of horror fiction (such as slasher violence and eroticism). The genre developed in the mid-to-late 1960s peaked in popularity during the 1970s, and subsequently declined over the next few decades. This description is copied entirely off of the beginning of the Wikipedia article, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, says I.
Is that a zombie riding a shark? MAYBE. Read on!
Without getting too into the weeds on the subject, the genre covers a fairly broad range of films, from pulp murder mysteries to straight supernatural horror. There are some common elements. First, there is almost always a psychological element to the films, some insanity provoked by trauma in one of the main characters. There is always killing, and it is always very violent and very much center screen – this is not a genre of happy fluffy bunnies. There is very (and I do mean very) little focus on the cohesiveness of plot or dialogue throughout the film. Don’t get me wrong – it isn’t the purposeful insanity of, say, House, or the purely so-over-the-top-it’s-weird-ness of Zardoz. More of a…benign indifference to strict logical flow. There is, essentially, just enough of a storyline to ensure that one event leads to another, and that’s about it. There is a great focus on cinematography, on capturing interesting or provocative or just plain unusual shots. The soundtracks are usually awesome, as in, done as if the keyboardist from an early 80s synthpop or electro funk band was on some mellow acid and just decided to score some movies in his spare time. There’s even a band, called Goblin, most well known for their movie soundtracks. I could go on and on, but this gives you the gist of it. Seriously though, if any of you guys want to just meet somewhere and listen to me wax philosophic about this genre and all the movies that I love in it for six hours while drinking beer, I am always up for that.
One of the many different posters for this film. Collect them all!
We begin our exploration with one of the seminal works of the great Lucio Fulci (more on him next week), Zombi 2. Or as it was known in America, Zombie.
Italian copyright law (pre-EU) was a funny thing. Any movie could be marketed as a sequel to any other movie, without having any direct relationship. We of the superior Anglo-Saxon lineage understand that George Romero’s masterwork Dawn of the Dead was a direct sequel to his groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead. As the science of phrenology teaches us, Italians aren’t nearly as intelligent as we are, and so were ignorant of this fact. Personally, I blame all the out-race breeding. Dawn of the Dead was released in most European markets titled Zombi, and the audiences thought it was simply a stand-alone. Ever one to try and turn a quick buck on the cheap, the Italian movie industry decided to cash in, and Zombi 2 was green-lit. The title Zombie is for the American release since over here, it is not a sequel.
As a brief aside, this started a bizarre and, for the collector, irritating trend of any movie involving supernatural cannibalism to be labeled as a Zombi sequel in Europe. So there are a shit-load of movies that all have multiple titles, but if you’re hunting them down, they might be known as one thing, or might be known as Zombi 3, 4, 5, etc., depending on which production company is doing the release at any given time, and varying according to release region. In two weeks I’ll review one such, chosen to show just how far afield this trend can go. Though not one of the chief offenders of appropriating the Zombi moniker, Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti (I Do Not Profane the Sleep of the Dead) is one of the worst, having been released with over 15 different titles. My personal favorite of the titles for that film, and the title on my copy is Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.
Anyway, I won’t go into a great deal of background on director Fulci, because I’ll cover him some in next week’s installment of giallo background since he is an important figure in the genre. Suffice to say the man has some kind of obsession with eyes. I own six of his films, and I’m fairly certain I remember seeing eyeballs punctured or mutilated up close on camera in every one of them.
That started with Zombie. After a brief opening scene in a hospital where a doctor shoots somebody wrapped in a sheet in the head, we cut to an abandoned boat drifting into New York City. Officers variously described as either Harbor Patrol or the Coast Guard find somebody dead inside, and a zombie, which bites one of the cops in the throat (they look like harbor patrol to me, though one of them makes a crack about getting a big bonus for bringing this ship in, so maybe they’re some kind of salvage crew mercenary harbor patrol cops?), killing him. His partner blasts the zombie back into the sea, and his dead partner is taken to the city morgue.
One of the “zombies” promised by the title of the film.
The daughter (Tisa Farrow) of the man whose boat was found adrift teams up with a reporter (Ian McCulloch) investigating the ghost ship, and they trace its route back into the Caribbean. There’s a hilarious scene where the cab driver on the island they fly to tells them there aren’t many boats about to be hired, and then we see them walk along a dock which is literally cluttered with civilian boats. There they meet Al Cliver (who was born Pierluigi Conti – cultural appropriation!) and Auretta Gay, who are just about to set out on vacation on their yacht and agree to take our investigators with them to try and find a sinister island that the natives are rumored to avoid.
Here’s where this movie gets fucking awesome. Auretta strips down to just a thong bottom and goes scuba diving. She encounters a tiger shark, which is attacked by an underwater zombie that keeps trying to bite it. This scene is pure cinematic gold. There was a diver, done up in water-resistant zombie makeup, and he actually fights a tiger shark they doped up so that it wouldn’t be too aggressive. When you see the guy biting on the shark, he’s actually doing that. Man, they just don’t do movies like that anymore, and it’s a goddamn shame.
So awesome it deserved another look.
While fending off the shark before the zombie showed up, the boat was damaged, and so the protagonists fire off some flares. On the island, doctor’s assistant Lucas sees the flare and asks if it’s the Devil. Yes, Lucas, the fucking Devil is firing off bog-standard emergency flares from just off shore. This is why a white guy is in charge of your island.
The foursome are rescued by Doctor Richard Johnson, who was also in one of the great all-time classic horror films, The Haunting. I’ll review it someday – it’s really superlative. A complete sense of dread built up with almost no effects whatsoever. Also, it lent the opening sample to a great White Zombie song.
Once ashore, we learn that Richard Johnson was friends with Tisa’s old man, and they were researching why the dead are increasingly returning to life on the island. The film never makes a definitive statement, but voodoo is mentioned several times, so I guess we’re going with “magic” in this one. He agrees to help the stranded newcomers but first asks them to check on his wife up the road while he tends to more zombie research right quick.
Of course, the fucking gardener was left in charge of security at the house, and he blew it. You already know the wife’s dead, because of a fantastic scene earlier in the film where she’s showering (yay, more titties!) and a zombie breaks into the house and kills her. Here you have another one of the great moments in horror history: for the first time in a major release, you get an agonizingly slow, up close, center camera shot of a big splinter of wood jamming right into and bursting her eyeball, no cutaways or wide angles to lessen the impact. I remember seeing a brief interview with Tom Savini for Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments where he recalls watching that scene building, and wondering if Fulci had the guts to do what even he hadn’t dared in Dawn of the Dead (for the tragically ignorant amongst you, Savini did the effects for that film).
See that spike on the right edge of the frame, just below the zombie’s wrist? It’s about three seconds from going straight into that eyeball.Don’t worry though, she has bigger problems to worry about than her missing eye. She gets eaten.
Fleeing in terror from the scene at the house, our protagonists are making their way back to the hospital when they stop to catch their breath. For some reason Tisa and Ian start making out when it turns out they’re in a Spanish conquistador cemetery, and the remarkably still meaty former Spaniards begin to reanimate.
Fight fight fight people die, eventually, we have a last stand at the hospital, and I won’t spoil the ending for anyone who decides to see it. But New York City at least gets overrun, so I’ll leave it at that. Serves all the progressives who live there right! If it wasn’t for major cities, there’d be no national democratic party! Down with urban dwellers! REEEEEGION WAAAAAR!!!
Look, everything I write about these movies is going to be biased because I love them all so very, very much. I could seriously sit down and watch this shit all day. The barely-there storylines, the garish, brutal on-screen killings with bright red pulsing blood, the horrifically rotting zombies dropping piles of worms out of their eyes, I even love how you can’t tell what language the fucking things are shot in (pro-tip: most of the time they’re shot without the dialogue being recorded at all, and dubs are put over it in post-production for each country that it’s going to be released in. Hell, in Zombie, half the cast were English speakers who had no Italian, and the other half were the reverse. This is because they were always filmed with an eye towards international release since none of the European nations were large enough to guarantee good gross receipts by only catering to their own native audiences). So don’t take my word for it, because I’m going to tell you to watch every one of these.
I picked this one first because I think it’s a good way for those of you unfamiliar with the glory of low-budget 1970s Italian splatter-horror to segue into the genre with a fairly familiar motif. Everybody knows zombie movies and has seen at least a few, so the transition from American “don’t show anything too graphic and try to make sense” movies won’t seem so jarring. The bottom line is, if you like horror, you will like this movie, I guarantee it. If you don’t like horror, then what the fuck are you doing reading this anyway? Fuck you too, buddy, and just get on with posting all your endless goddamn “hurr durr let’s all give HuffPo more advertising money by hate-sharing their posts” OT links in the comments below. Always remember how much Zardoz loves you all, my children.
I rate Zombi 2/Zombie six decayed heads out of seven.
So, with my ideal rifle picked out, I set out to purchase one. The problem is, I can’t fucking find one! Right now it appears that the only model commonly available is the C model, which has an AK like underfolding stock. While handy and compact, it also gets rid of the magazine storage, which is kind of the whole point of the damn gun. The A and B models are also available, but the A has an 18 inch barrel which makes it harder to store and carry, and the B model has a pencil barrel, which makes it slightly lighter but also makes it much less capable of prolonged firing. Then there is the price. Right now these guns are running about $500-$600 new. While not expensive, currently you can get a brand name base model AR15 for as low as $400 and change, and the AR is a much better platform overall compared to anything kel-tec makes. The other nice thing about an AR is that they can be separated into two halves which allows very compact storage, even more compact than a folded SU-16. The only issue is that an AR does not have magazine storage in the buttstock. Fortunately, someone else took care of that since there are several options currently available that allow you to keep a magazine on the stock of the gun ready to go. The one I purchased is made by 
