Greetings once again, boils and ghouls, and welcome to the final regular installment of Reviews You’ll Never Use. I regret to announce that the column will be ending as a recurring piece, though may reappear now and again in the future.
Our topic tonight is a film that I followed with some interest through its development, The Boy. Often with horror films, writers and/or directors will have a short film, a treatment, or sometimes even a fully finished movie (though usually badly in need of editing), but cannot get distribution. It’s a fairly common phenomenon that affects most low-budget filmmakers when they’re just getting started. Such was the case with director Craig William Macneill. The Boy was only his second full-length feature as a director, and I recall reading some years ago about how he was trying to drum up financing to turn his short, Henley, into a full-fledged movie. The concept he outlined was to do a trilogy, following the life of a serial killer through early childhood, into young adulthood, and then as an older man. I thought it was an interesting idea, and looked forward to the first installment. Certainly the whole, “what makes a serial killer tick” shtick has been done before – even Rob Zombie took his reboot of Halloween in that direction (though for my money, nothing has yet topped the excellent Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer). However, it had never been done over the course of three films (unless you count the trials and tribble-ations of Anakin Skywalker). Eventually, the movie saw the light of day due in large part to Chiller Films, which is part of that horror-dedicated cable channel I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.
A boy and his deer. Would have been creepier if it didn’t remind me of that scene in Freddy Got Fingered. At least the antlers come in handy later.
Truth be told, that was a few years back, and I’d kind of forgotten about the whole thing until recently when I saw it for sale on the cheap at Movie Trading Company. So I brought that bastard home & popped it in the ye olde Blu-Ray player. And an hour and forty-five minutes later, I awoke with a start as something finally fucking happened at the end of the movie.
So let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: the director, bless his heart, had more brains and artistic chutzpah than your average trash low-budget horror filmmaker and didn’t want to do another throw-away slasher. Okay, cool, I get it, more power to you. But I think he goes a bit off the rails in trying just so damned hard to make you take this film seriously, and to not lurch into being a stereotypical horror film. Camera angles are static, the background sounds are exaggerated for effect (with no background music through the entirety, except what characters play on their stereo), and there are just too many cock-tease moments before the final payoff.
We open in 1989, at a crappy roadside motel run by David Morse, and his troubled son, Jared Breeze. The motel is clearly dying, and Morse has taken counsel of despair and despondency. He does pay his son a quarter per carcass to keep roadkill scraped up off the highway, I suppose to make the place less creepy-seeming to passersby. Breeze is stultified by this life, never interacting with other children except when the increasingly scarce guests happen to have their own crotch-fruit. His father, though going through the motions, seems to have checked out of having any sort of vitality, and his mother ran off years ago with one of the guests.
Rainn Wilson and Jared Breeze, shooting the breeze. Yeah, I went there. This movie is that fucking boring.
Eventually, curiosity gets the best of him, and instead of simply waiting for the highway to provide his income, he decides in true capitalist fashion to go out and make shit happen. So he seeds the middle of the road with potato chips & chicken feed, to draw animals that will then be hit by cars. This plan goes slightly awry when Rainn Wilson (I always hated that fucking first name) hits a deer and totals his car, causing him to have to stay at the motel. The titular Boy grows close to Rainn over a number of days, though the reluctant guest gives plenty of clues to us in the audience that he may not be a wholesome person. Another couple with a little boy stop in, and Breeze disables their car so that they’ll stay an extra day (and almost drowns their son while playing in the swimming pool). Our little protagonist (antagonist?) displays unusual behaviors, such as stealing Rainn’s dead wife’s ashes and looming over the guests in their beds at night.
By the end of the film, he’s managed to coerce Rainn into chasing him through a junkyard where he laid a tarp over a deep pit, trapping a severely wounded Rainn presumably for forced boy-on-man sex at a later date. He also cops a feel off a drunk girl at a prom party that has rented out a few of the motel rooms. The boys at the party kick his ass pretty bad, and his drunk father only yells at him for having disturbed the guests. So Breeze takes things into his own hands, waits until everyone is passed out asleep, and burns the fucking motel to the ground while everyone screams inside.
Fucking FINALLY something happens. The kid takes the antlers his dad sawed off the carcass, wires them to his head, and kills a bunch of people by burning them alive. He was inspired by heated political rhetoric.
I don’t want to bash this movie. It was ambitious, to do a slow-burn think piece as your first big horror film, and that takes both guts and some level of thinking above and beyond what most hacks in this field are capable of. So I applaud Mr. Macneill for that. I would much rather someone make this attempt and not quite succeed than give in to the siren song of doing Friday the 13th Part Eleventy. The problem is, up until the end, the entire fucking thing is nothing but an hour and thirty minutes of atmosphere and set-up, and by the time you finally get to the payoff, it’s too damned late. Nobody cares anymore. Shit fucking fire, I’d fallen asleep in my (admittedly very comfortable) Lay-Z-Boy. The vanishingly few non-superhero films that are being made anymore should find their strength in being the opposite of Fortress Mouse and its motto of “There Is No Such Thing As Too Many Overwrought CGI Battles”. These movies should take their time with pace, and rely on solid performances and writing to build engagement with the characters and situations. And this film does that. Both Morse and little Jared turn in quite good renditions of their bleak characters, never going into absurd “look how awful our lives are” hyperbole. But it does it too fucking much. At this point, I realize I’m starting to sound like a crank, but it really is like Goldilocks stealing the porridge from those fucking pedobears. Just because some things are too much one way, and you quite rightly realize that a correction is in order, doesn’t mean that you necessarily go a full 100 mph in the exact opposite direction until you hit a wall. It’s okay to go partway. Just the tip. It won’t make you gay, and you never have to tell anyone else about it if you don’t want to.
Anyway, I think Macneill has promise. My criticisms are harsher because I perceive the film to have so much more potential than what was realized. There’s honestly a really good movie lurking in their editing room somewhere, and that’s nothing to sneeze at considering what most young auteur horror directors crank out. This one just doesn’t quite rise to the occasion.
I typically read a lot of other reviews online to try and help focus my own sense of how I view the films I write about, and also to make sure my criticisms aren’t solidly addressed by some aspect that I might have just plain missed. I found one that seems to echo my thoughts entirely, only better written.
Weighing in at 105 minutes, “The Boy” traps itself in a corner by giving its sights, sounds, and story so much room to breathe that the suspense ratchet cannot retain its tightness. The movie has more time than it needs to get where it wants to go, giving excess duration free reign to defuse dread with unfulfilled setups and unnecessary asides.
Preach it. I award this film two Pretty Marines and one Cat out of three possible of the former, and two possible of the latter.
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.
It’s the last Friday of the Month, which means it’s time once again for Oprah’s The Glibs’ Book Club:
SugarFree
I’ve been reading the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch off of jesse’s recommendation. I’m through the fifth book and I am really enjoying it. It’s a deft mash-up of The Dresden Files and British police procedurals. I’m not sure how many books he is shooting for, but the formula is set-up for dozens and dozens if he felt like it. And the series is popular enough to have tie-in comics series. The most baffling part of reading them is that it hasn’t been made into a TV series yet. Aaronovitch started as a TV writer and he has the rhythms of serial television down pat.
Speaking of The Dresden Files, I also read Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera series this month. I liked them quite a bit. They magnify both Butcher’s strengths and weaknesses as a writer. His battle and fight scene are superb; his character’s relationships with women range from baffled to mildly horrified. People are either really, really good or really, really bad; Butcher doesn’t care much for subtle. They are big books, widescreen epics that manage to pull-off the central conceit entertainingly, despite leaning on many of the most groan-worthy of fantasy conventions.
jesse.in.mb
Put a hustle on to finish the books from last month as this month’s What are we reading? approached, and have mostly succeeded (Luz Gabas writes better sex than Dan Simmons’ turgid descriptions of erections could hope to match). I’m lollygagging on picking the next read as Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 has been staring at me (literally one eye is poking out from my shelf) for years, and I want to reread Gaiman’s American Gods before I watch the series or Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman before the movie comes out. Ultimately I’ll probably settle on Beach Lawyer by Avery Duff, part of the Kindle First early release program for novels (underrated Prime perk). As far as I can tell many of the novels they select are blander versions of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with heavy themes of violence against women. Zygmunt Miloszewski’s Rage was the most emblematic of this trend.
JW
He dead.
Old Man With Candy
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that my reading this month, beyond technical stuff, has comprised re-reading. I have to get out more. Nonetheless, I’m rereading these because I think they’re damn good.
Tom O’Bedlam is very underrated scifi written by Robert Silverberg, a very underrated writer. Ever since reading Stephen Vincent Benet’s “By the Waters of Babylon” when I was a kid, I’ve had a deep love for post-apocalyptic stories. And I also have a weakness for the sort of novel that develops several different storylines, then skillfully brings them together at the end. Combine that with hallucinogenic ecstasy and a deliciously ambiguous conclusion, this is my favorite Silverberg and a novel that seems almost tailor-made for my tastes in fiction. Chungira-he-will-come, he will come.
My geeky side drew me to Uncertainty, a retelling of the early history of quantum mechanics. The book’s focus is much more on the personalities and dynamics of the theory’s origins than any explanation of the wonderful weirdness of the new physics, which was just fine for me- get your physics from Feynman. The author, David Lindley, transforms the names I only knew from various equations and theories into three dimensional human beings. As a bonus, he shares my scorn for the pomos and sociological types who, without any actual understanding of the uncertainty principle, love to invoke it to support their confused world-views.
I blew through the latest installment of Nathan Lowell’s Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series To Fire Called. Although the books have gotten a little darker, and certainly the universe a little deeper since Quarter Share, it remains the same fun kind of low-calorie high fun series you can inhale in short sittings, feel good about universes where they (mostly) live happily ever after, and capitalism works thanks to having to get a long way from habitable space before you can magically be somewhere else. I’m also slogging through Gaiman’s Norse Mythology. As someone who liked a couple of his books but doesn’t think he’s THE towering literary figure of the 21st century that this is a labor of love where he has (thus far) failed to sway me to his love of the mythology. I remain entirely bored by the canon mythology. Stay tuned for June when I binge read Neal Stephenson’s attempt to jump into the (thus far British) “magic is real and there’s a government agency for that” genre. And I think in July I’ll be (based on the story arc as I understand it) hate reading Charlie Stross’s latest Laundry File like it was written by an ex-girlfriend I’m still not over.
SP
I tend to read several books at once, one of which is usually a mystery or spy thriller. While I’m waiting for the new Scot Harvath from Brad Thor (out on June 27), and the new Chief Inspector Gamache from Louise Penny (out on August 29), I’m reading through the V.I. Warshawski novels by Sara Paretsky. I’m currently on book 11, Blacklist. Set in Chicago and the western suburbs right after 9/11, the usually very lefty Vic is thrown into several puzzles involving events around the HUAC and complications from the Patriot Act. There is much to please a libertarian heart in this one, from diatribes against the gutting of the Bill of Rights to our heroine actively subverting the police. DO NOT read any of the reviews. They all seem to contain spoilers. (What’s up with that?!)
Also in process: Daybook by Anne Truitt, a look into an artist’s journals (recommended to me by an older artist I admire whom I was recently privileged to meet); and 3 Steps to Yes: The Gentle Art of Getting Your Way by Gene Bedell. It seems to be working. It’s been much easier to live with OMWC since I started this book.
Banjos
Banjos is currently reading Everybody Poops for the 127th time per her toddlers’ request. It is their most holy text.
sloopyinca
Sloop is reading The Neverending Story and will have an update when he’s done.
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*
People have been justifiably lambasting Bill Nye and Netflix over Rachel Bloom’s performance of “My Sex Junk” in Nye’s new series, Bill Nye Saves The World. And yet it seems that Bloom’s performance itself has, by and large, undeservedly escaped censure. Although “My Sex Junk” spectacularly plunges into unintentional self-mockery, allow me to have a grab at some of the lowest-hanging fruit ever produced.
I’m no expert on song lyrics – in fact, I listen to mostly instrumental music – but I feel rather secure in thinking that Rachel Bloom’s “Sex Junk” doesn’t rise to the level of Paul Simon, Sarah McLachlan, or Noel Gallagher. It doesn’t even rise to the level of “Louie Louie”.
It begins on a stupid note, and only gets worse from there:
DJ SEAHORSE
This one goes out to all my bipeds
who identify as ladies!
And now enter…Rachel Bloom.
BLOOM
This world of ours
is full of choice
But must I choose between
only John or Joyce?
First of all, way to other Suzanne Somers there. But when did “choice” enter into this discussion? I thought this stuff was decided for you by biological urges.
Are my options
only hard or moist?
My vagina
has its own voice
So, you opt for “moist”, then? Or were you trying to look into adding teeth? A Doomcock? Tentacles? We’re two verses in, and we’re farther away from a point than when we started.
Not vocal cords
a metaphorical voice
Kudos on rhyming “voice” with “voice”. This is Shakespearean stuff.
[speaking]
Sometimes I do a voice for my vagina
Please don’t tell me I’m the only one who does that.
I’d like to think that Rachel Bloom (born 1987) was a fan of Bill Nye’s as a little kid, and when she heard that Netflix was going to reboot his show, she was excited. And because she was a fan, she arranged to meet him; however, as so often happens, meeting your childhood heroes can be underwhelming, if not an outright disappointment. Nevertheless, during the meeting, she agreed to contribute something to his new project.
With the “meh” of their meeting fresh in her mind, Bloom moved the Nye project onto the back burner for months until, suddenly, the deadline loomed large on the horizon. Frantically, she scratched words on to the page, all the while cursing herself for not backing out of the project. The midnight oil burned through the smallest hours, there wasn’t a single grain of cocaine anywhere in sight, and she was falling asleep at the keyboard. She looked over the latest revision of the first draft: It’ll be fine. I’ll do a stupid dance, I’ll do the vagina voice joke. No one’s going to be parsing every single word, they’ll be laughing too hard.
If that isn’t what happened, if this is the best that Rachel Bloom could come up with, and if Bill Nye and his people reviewed the material and said “This is great!”, then fuck it. I’m going on a shooting spree. I can’t believe producers threw money at a bunch of placeholder lyrics written by an insane person and then presented this material as educational and/or entertaining. Wrapping my shoes in duct tape is more enlightening than this stuff, and way more fun.
Power bottom
or a top off
Versatile love
may have some butt stuff
WHEN ARE WE GETTING TO THE GENDER IDENTITY PART??
It’s evolution
ain’t nothin’ new
there’s nothin’ taboo
about a sex stew
Well, we’ve touched on Jack and Janet, sexual organs, role-play, sex acts, and evolution. Nothing about the topic du jour.
Just add salt
or Gerard Depardieu
[spoken]
French treasure
If we’re forced to live with the heavy hand of the state anyway, I’d like for everyone involved with this travesty to be arrested, and their assets seized, on the grounds that this video is promoting pedophilia. My justification goes like this:
1) Bill Nye,The Science Guy was a show aimed at children. His reappearance on Netflix could fool parents into thinking that his current show is aimed at children, thus exposing them to age-inappropriate content like this
2) Gerard Depardieu starred in 1993’s My Father The Hero with a then-14-year old Katherine Heigl. One of the film’s set-pieces involved a musical number in which Depardieu’s character was misunderstood to be singing about the joys of romantic love with underage girls. Clearly, Bloom’s reference to Gerard Depardieu is expressing solidarity with that idea
3) As is well-known, the French Treasure is a particularly sordid sex act involving foie gras, spools of pastel-tinted yarn, a half-dozen Gauloises, and a schoolgirl uniform. Or so I’m told
4) The French are all a bunch of perverts
CHORUS
Cause my sex junk
Is so oh-oh-oh
Much more than
either or-or-or
If they’re alive, I’ll date ’em
Channing or Jenna Tatum
I’m up for anything
Don’t box in my box
Let me rewrite this so that…let’s say, “it’s less incomprehensible”. Because “it makes sense” is the wrong phrase here:
I’m not very selective
about my sex partners
I’ll even have sex with super-hot celebrity couples
It’s so cool how I’m not a prude
Still waiting on something – anything – about transgenderism.
Give someone new a handy
then give yourself props
I’m not even going to comment on this toe-jam posing as a couplet, because the video now takes a sudden nosedive into the darkest depths of stupid.
[ENTER: Man with glasses taped in the middle. He is wearing a collared shirt, dark tan khakis pulled up too high. His shirt pocket is loaded with pens. He is a NERD]
NERD
Oh, you think you’re so smart
Did you learn gay in college?
I told you he’s a nerd. See, only nerds have prudish ideas about gay being a lifestyle choice which young people are fooled into choosing at liberal universities. Who isn’t aware of that particular nerd stereotype? That’s what makes “My Sex Junk” so funny and hard-hitting – how true to life it is.
BLOOM
Chill with all of that
while I drop some knowledge
“Give yourself props”, “drop some knowledge”? Awfully problematic, this white girl using language found in hip-hop, isn’t it? But I suppose the super-woke deserve a pass.
When she says “drop some knowledge”, I assume she means from the top of a ten-story building, shattering it into a million tiny shards of derp. Let’s see:
Sexuality’s a spectrum
everyone is on it
even you might like it
if you sit up on it
Oh, so this was about sexual orientation after all? Also: Rachel Bloom seems to think we can use the sexuality spectrum to pleasure ourselves with.
Drag queen, drag king
just do what feels right
You’re a tall pansexual
flirty wood sprite
But…but being a drag queen =/= sexual preference. We’re back to sexual identity now. Or are we?
This guy again? Because this dumpster fire of a performance wasn’t stupid enough?
BLOOM
Damn skippy, home slice
sing it with me all night
Is it wrong of me to wish that Rachel Bloom ends up in a dog-fighting ring as a contestant?
[The NERD and BLOOM slap high-fives and then the NERD pulls off tearaway pants. Goddammit, I hate my well-functioning eyeballs sometimes]
BLOOM
Sex how you want
it’s your goddamn right
Which amendment was that again? Because if you thought the whole gay wedding cake fiasco was a shit-show, wait until you’ve received a court order to bang Lindy West or Matt Yglesias.
CHORUS
Cause my sex junk
Is so oh-oh-oh
Much more than
either or-or-or
Get off your soapbox
get off your soapbox
Get off my soapbox? MY soapbox?? Excuse me, but one of us spent lots of time and many thousands of dollars to make an insipid music video on the subject of human sexuality AND IT WASN’T ME.
My sex junk’s better than
bagels with lox
With lots of schmear
“Excuse me, waiter? I’ll have the sex junk and a cup of Americano, please.”
[Performance ends with BLOOM, NERD, and RANDOM DANCER standing in tableau. MORONS in audience applaud wildly. VOTERS look on in horror, prepare to re-elect TRUMP]
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!!!
Hello, my name is UnCivilServant, and I have a problem with Plastic Crack – I simply don’t have enough time to assemble and paint the thousands of dollars worth of miniatures I’ve acquired. But that is not important right now. What’s important is that the latest entry in the long-running Warhammer 40k video game series Dawn of War has recently dropped. The first entry was released way back when I was still in college, and I own the whole set. It was the gateway by which I took up the tabletop game. Entries came out fairly regularly until Dawn of War II: Retribution. After which things went quiet, and the publisher THQ went bankrupt. Not because of Dawn of War, but because the people running the company were a bunch of gits.
For those of you unfamiliar with Warhammer, here is a quick exposition dump of backstory. In the beginning, there was a company that made miniatures for fantasy roleplaying games. Citadel looked at their books and went “We need to find a way to sell more miniatures.” Someone had the idea of writing a ruleset to fight tabletop battles with their miniatures. And thus Warhammer Fantasy Battles was born. People who wanted to have bigger armies would have to buy more miniatures, and most of their existing stock could be worked into the product line. At some point around here, Citadel changed their name to Games Workshop but kept the brand for some of their products, like paint.
So they looked at their books and said: “We need to find a way to sell more miniatures.” Someone had the idea of “Let’s do more Warhammer, but IN SPACE!” And so Warhammer 40,000 was born. Being the eighties, there was a lot of cocaine-fueled insanity included, including outright rip-offs of other works given a new coat of Citadel paint, and it was good. Over the years they fed the Space Dwarfs to the Space Bugs and introduced the Space Weaboo Communists, but it developed an aesthetic distinct and yet familiar.
So they looked at their books and said: “We need to find a way to sell more miniatures.” Someone had the idea of licensing their totally original and not a shameless amalgam of ideas to these newfangled video game producers. After all, gamers were the same geeks who buy their main product lines, so there was money to be had. And if there is anything Games Workshop likes, it’s money. Dawn of War was not the first of these titles. But it is a contender for having the most entries. It depends on how you count expansions and DLCs.
Let’s get to talking about this particular entry.
I open it up and find out that the opening cinematic was used as the announcement trailer. Disappointing, but it’s still fun to watch an Imperial Knight knock a Wraithknight off its feet like a linebacker that took a wrong turn and broke a referee in half. And then it asks me to either sign in to or create a Relic account. Being an antisocial git, I refuse and see if there’s a way to ignore it. Fortunately, this proved to be optional, and it hasn’t asked me again. Finding out there was a tutorial, I decided to start there. I always play the tutorial missions as it gives me an idea of the developer’s attitudes. We start out telling some Blood Ravens to wander about.
After bossing around the generic, nameless tactical and scout marines for a bit, I get told to summon Gabriel Angelos to the battle. Gabe first appeared way back in the original Dawn of War. Where he proceeded to make an awful mess of things that the Imperial Guard had to come in and clean up. To be fair, he did try to make things right, but he got beat down by the mess he made. But since he was the last Captain left not interred in a Dreadnought or self-demoted to the chaplaincy, he became Chapter Master by default. Anyway, we teleport him in and he arrives wearing a shiny suit of Cataphractii armor – and he’s freaking huge! Now Cataphractii armor is bulky, but this is not Cataphractii big, he’s the size of an original XBox. Compare him to the regular tactical marines:
I mean his head is bigger than their helmets. He’s supposed to be able to wear that same armor.
I thought maybe this was part of the new visual direction for the game. Make the hero units bigger so they stand out. But here’s the Eldar hero:
She’s the same size as the rest of her people.
Maybe the artists Relic hired mistook Gabe for an Ork. Orks do allot authority by size, so it’s perfectly reasonable for Gorgutz to be three times the height of the boyz around him.
This Git – Gorgutz
Since I brought them up, let’s talk about the Space Elves and Space Orks. The Eldar are like politicians, they lie and change sides so much that no one trusts them. They’ve even been known to lie when the truth would have worked better. They also have a tendency to get eaten by a Chaos god after they die, so it evens out. The Orks are the exact opposite. They are direct – engineered for fighting they’re happy to fight anybody, including each other. There is one batch of Orks stuck on a Daemon world that gets resurrected each morning to fight an eternal battle against the native inhabitants. They’ve gone to Orky heaven.
A thousand words in and I now get to the game proper. Outside of the fact that Gabe is fuckoff huge and somehow able to make giant leaps in Cataphractii armor (a suit which in the tabletop has the special rule “Slow and Purposeful”), I haven’t yet really had much to complain about. The first real irritant was in finding that you get one active campaign at a time. To start from scratch you have to delete the existing one. But there is not much reason to do so, since you can replay levels at will, and your advances are independent of the campaign. Indeed you can even get them through skirmish and multiplayer games. This still irritates me. It means that if you have a computer shared between more than one person, they don’t get to keep separate save games and thus separate progress. I don’t personally have this problem now, but I remember when I did.
Anyway, on to the campaign. The next irritant is that it is only one unified campaign that rotates between factions. It had started with the cycle “Space Marine – Ork – Eldar” but on chapter seven, it skipped Space Marine and went to Ork. So I’m not even sure if there is a pattern. You can’t play just a Space Marine campaign or just and Ork campaign. The story bounces around between the factions and you have to play the other guys to unlock the next mission for your chosen group. Fortunately, it doesn’t pretend to be anything but linear. Despite being called a “Campaign Map” in the game, here is what pops up:
The units depicted change by which faction the selected mission is for.
Each of those flags is either a mission color coded to the faction or a cinematic. It’s not so bad since they admit it’s linear and don’t try to pretend otherwise. The interface remains consistently meh as we progress through the mission briefing to choosing which elite units we’ll be able to deploy.
I have no idea where this room is.
The screen is not terribly intuitive, and it took a while to figure out how to unlock the other elite options for each faction. Definitely a place for improvement. We’re finally to the gameplay proper. Base building is back, but there is a dearth of defensive turrets. And they screwed up the cover system. I didn’t want to complain about the bubble system, but there’s not even an in-game excuse for capturable cover locations. Earlier incarnations had dynamic cover systems where objects on the field could be used depending on where the enemy was. Now you have to capture a cover point, and it soaks up some incoming ranged damage. Anything else on the battlefield is just there to obstruct movement. Bolt shells will fly through it without a problem – for the shooter at least.
The basics are stock standard RTS mechanics, with the attempts to be “more tactical” in terms of unit special abilities. The problem is the actual fights degrade into blobs of combatants. Figuring out who was in the correct position to use a special ability tactically is not terribly straightforward, so it ends up being hero abilities and items like jump packs for mobility assists. Personally, I don’t take umbrage at it, as even in earlier iterations I found that problems went away when locally overwhelming numbers were applied to the enemy positions.
Why yes, I am an Imperial Guard player in tabletop 40k, why do you ask?
The story is well, no more or less deep than other Dawn of War titles. The voice acting is middle of the road to decent. The change in voice actors for Gabe from the previous game is the most noticeable. But it’s not that the new guy is doing anything wrong, he just doesn’t sound right. In all, the game is just all right. The worst thing I can say about it is that it was too easy to get up and walk away. There have been times where I’ve had to call into work on the day after a release because I got hooked and could not rip myself away. There was no risk of that here. Given the addictiveness of other entries, this is a bit of a letdown. A low mark in the franchise, but not beyond salvation.
I give it seven of ten skulls for the skull throne.
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 
