Bible-Belt Zombies

For all the bitching and/or moaning I do about the non-stop assembly line of zombie movies, they just keep coming out. Apparently, no one is listening to me. Fine. Keep not listening to me as I yell to warn you when you go to cross the street and you don’t see that 1973 Nova with a broken handle on the driver’s side (which forces the driver to get in via the passenger door) run the light and flatten you like road crêpe.

Heat Land, due out sometime this year along with 800 million other walking dead movies, is YET ANOTHER movie about zombies. In their defense, the filmmaker’s insist Heart Land is different from all the rest, describing it as “Lord of the Flies meets 28 Days Later.” Let’s see if their argument stands before the swift justice of a rule-breaking 1973 Chevy Nova…

“A group of children in Middle America struggle to survive in the brutal aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.”

Stock, but a serviceable premise.

So a bunch of hillbilly kids (Middle America, remember?) are left standing after a viral infection takes out all the adults. Sounds like a spin on Children of the Corn (1984). Some of the ’tweeners capture a zombie and torture it. Sounds like a spin on Day of the Dead (1985).

That the tortured zombie is one of the kids’ dads, causes some conflict amongst the rag tag group, which erupts in violence, screaming, chewing and being chewed. The house they were hiding in catches on fire, forcing those not yet chewed into a fall-out shelter basement, where they hole up to keep from being chewed. Sounds like a spin on Night of the Living Dead (1968). Then they turn on each other.

Of course they do. I would. Anything to ensure the survival of myself and my post-apocalyptic 1973 Chevy Nova war machine.

With few new ideas to make fast food burgers, using kids in zombie movies is admittedly a fresh spin. But at the end of the day, it’s STILL a zombie movie. And we have enough of those. And yet I’ll probably still go see it…in my 1973 Chevy Nova. Pedestrians – you have been warned.

UFO Destroys Seattle. Not Cool.

The makers of Seattle Superstorm, a sci-fi natural disaster movie (OK, that didn’t sound right), didn’t do enough homework before INSULTING the people of Seattle, Washington, i.e., ME. Airing Saturday, March 31, 2012 on the SyFy™ Channel, Seattle Superstorm’s premise is a UFO crashes into the Puget Sound and “somehow” triggers a catastrophic weather system, causing lightning that splits the Space Needle in two and fireballs raining down on our somewhat clean sidewalks like spit wads shot out of God’s very own milkshake straw.

Then there’s the DVD cover, which depicts the Space Needle, looking the aftermath of a rap music house party, laying in shallow water, as the city of Seattle, with damaged buildings explode in the background. This is to say nothing of helicopters dodging lightning and tornadoes ravaging downtown where I window shop for shirts with catchy slogans, Coach™ purses and delicious hot dogs.

Here are my irreconcilable problems with Seattle Superstorm…

UFO crashes into Puget Sound
Not crashes, but actually happened in 1947. (The Maury Island Incident took place on June 21, 1947 when seaman Harold A. Dahl claimed to have seen six UFOs near Maury Island in the Puget Sound…three days before Kenneth Arnold, Washington pilot/extraterrestrial conspiracist, saw a bunch of ’em zooming around Mount Rainier.) This gives Washington, and by extension ME, credit for having UFOs pay Earth a visit 38 days before the ones that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. In your face, Roswell. And these UFOs did NOT make the weather go all crazy face. Liars.

Lightning and tornadoes
While Seattle has enjoyed the occasional lightning storm, we’ve never had downtown tornadoes. And what tornadoes we do have take place further inland, smashing up the yards and storage units of non-downtown people who probably deserve it.

Destroyed Space Needle
It would take a lot more than a wussy tornado or weenie lightning to bring down our vertigo-inducing tourist attraction. It’s made of phat steel, people. Only Zeus’ lightning bolts could even put a dent in it. And to have it laying in observation deck deep water in Puget Sound is total fiction. For one thing, the water is freakin’ deep along the city’s waterfront; and the Space Needle wasn’t designed to float. FAIL number two: Even if it fell over, the Space Needle wouldn’t come close to hitting the beach. It’s only 605 feet tall – and over a mile from the closest clam.

Helicopters
Big mistake here. Seattle is home to Boeing, the aerospace industry giant that makes airplanes. As long as I’ve lived in Seattle (believed to be since birth), there has never been a helicopter sighting in the city’s history. Heck, we’ve seen more flying saucers than the mythical whirly bird. The only exception to this is I may be wrong.

As in all disaster movies, there’s one science butt-head who has all the answers and can save the day. Not sure how you turn off tornadoes or make lightning and fireballs knock it the heck off. But someone has to step up, even if it’s FICTION. Better they should work on Seattle’s real problems – non-winning Lotto™ tickets, TV news anchors with unnaturally white teeth, and hot dog department stores that charge banking fees for their healthy goodness.

I bet Seattle Superstorm wasn’t even filmed in Seattle. It looks like it was shot in Tacoma, about 40 minutes south of Seattle. All kinds of f’d up weather/UFO things happen there on a daily basis. Say what you will about Tacoma, though – Coach™ purses are way cheaper at their outlet stores.

The Corridor: Snow-Covered Horror

There are a ton of books and movies with the word “corridor”in the title, some good, some filled with dumb-assery. The latest one to use this well-worn word (doesn’t anyone use “ingress” anymore?), is The Corridor, a Canadian dude-cast sci-fi flick scheduled for public scrutiny on March 30th, 2012, by IFC Films.

Having only read the description and viewed the trailer, The Corridor seems to frame the story ala Dreamcatcher (2003), in which five high school buddies reunite after 10 years to spend the weekend in a cabin in the snowy mountain woods. (Snow rocks.) Little did they know, the cabin is on top of…BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN! (Not really, but it’d kinda change the gist of the film a bit. The rating, too.)

While up there, um, bonding, they discover a ghostly “corridor” deep in the woods. It kinda looks glassy and somewhat wavy as to indicate spookiness. In effect, a ghost ingress. Entering it unleashes madness, hurt feelings, bloody noses and all around general un-bonding. But in a FAIL by the producers, they gave away The Corridor’s ending in the description: “It will lead these five men into fear, into betrayal and into the biggest change of them all: by weekend’s finish…they’ll be dead.”

Well, crap. If they’re all gonna end up dead, what’s the point of watching the movie? Geez, what a rip-off. Next thing you know, they’ll be telling me what I’m getting for Christmas. (It better be a pony…KEG. Ha!)

The Aging Face of Horror

We know horror is timeless, but is it ageless? What happens when the spotlight dims, the crowd roar dies off and the inescapable reality of getting older sets in? This is the subject of the killer photography of Federico Chiesa and his project “Horror Vacui” (Latin for “fear of empty space”).

It’s one thing to maintain your looks with human Botox™, like Dracula does. (Drac, like some sort of supernatural supermodel, refuses to grow old gracefully.) But if you didn’t invest well in your salad days, a once-fearsome slasher, now a senior citizen, is reduced to living on the street or in a flop house, or relegated to an old creatures home with neighbors who smell like mold. And this is where Federico’s photos kick ass, by bringing much-needed attention to the plight of the forgotten and low-to-no income homeless monsters.

Halloween’s Michael Myers using a walker; the dead Shining twins using food stamps to buy groceries; Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees living on the street with no machete to call his own. It breaks your heart. Much like circus performers past their prime, these photos of mass murders and ghosts shows the less glamorous side of growing old and not having a stage with which to shine.

Kinda makes you think twice about putting enough away for a dark and stormy night. Check out more of Federico’s amazing work by clicking HERE. And please continue to support AARK [American Association of Retired Killers].

Kissing Vampires

Before Twilight (2008), the only product vampires used in their hair was hemoglobin sculpting gel. Now we have teen angst vamps who use moisturizers, exfoliating cremes, and scented bath soaps. The world has officially gone to Hell in a Pottery Barn™ decorative hand basket. (Note: you can buy all this crap at the brilliantly named ToiletpaperWorld.com, an online store that has everything for any body part that emits visible stink lines and needs a good douching.)

The high school bloodsuckers in the rock musical I Kissed A Vampire look like GQ Teen models, slathered in hair salon product and made socially trendy with Abercrombie & Fitch™ casual wear. (Strike one.) And they sing. (Strike two.) And they dance (And you’re outta here.)

Unless they’re written and performed by The Who, rock musicals suck bag. In I Kissed A Vampire, Dylan, a teen dude finds himself wistfully fantasizing about Trey Sylvania (get it?), a Goth rock star. Here’s what I copied almost word for word off the movie’s website…

“It all started when Dylan was bitten by a voracious fanged exchange student, and it’s a process he is desperate to stop – but how? His demented dentist can’t do anything about Dylan’s aching teeth and emerging fangs, and the anti-bloodsucking pills he gets from his para-psychologist just give him a rash. Dylan is terrified and he doesn’t know what to do – especially about his beautiful girlfriend Sara.”

So apparently Dylan’s coffin lid swings both ways. While he’s socially experimenting, you get to see the cast smooch, bite, pout, sing, and dance, all of which will make you shout at your shoes. And if projectile vomiting is your thing (I experimented with it in college, even though I never enrolled), I Kissed A Vampire hits the mall movie theaters on March 30, 2012.

I plan on being sick to my stomach that day.

Planet Dead

It was so much nicer around here when there weren’t 100 zombie movies coming out every month. Most of the population was uninfected; ripe faces, like so many unpicked cherries, were left uneaten; quarantine zones were nothing more than urban pea patches surrounded by white picket fences; and the military, with no undead to gun down, just shot people in other countries.

Those days are but fond memories as zombie films, like the undead themselves, simply won’t die. Hence, the upcoming Planet of the Dead, YET ANOTHER zombie movie. Clearly, there’s a plaque that’s been unleashed – and it’s all these movies with the same flippin’ plot being released as fast as the one-page scripts can be written.

Planet Dead’s story line is not going to win any awards for originality: “The world falls into chaos after a rogue scientist unleashes a virus that turns the living and the dead into flesh eating monsters.”

“A Special Forces Team is sent into a growing danger zone to recover the cure from the scientist, but as they enter the hot zone they must seek refuge in a nearby nightclub with a few civilians as they wait for the rescue chopper to arrive. Armed with limited ammo they must battle the ever growing number of once human monsters.”

What is memorable about Planet Dead is that it was done on a budget that rivaled what I paid for some new pants down at the mall. (I love going to the mall.) Looking at the trailer, while the explosions and assorted cheesy special effects are all done digitally (it’s a tad pricey to blow up the neighborhood with real rocket launchers), the sheer number of zombie extras mean either the filmmakers have a lot of friends who will work for pizza, or they promised an entire town fame by way of a screen credit.

Despite my growing dissatisfaction with cash-in zombie movies, a message to the producers of Planet Dead: I sincerely hope your movie makes trillions of dollars and that you’ll never have to work again a day in your uninfected lives. This will leave you with more time to make other types of films, like porn for instance. There can never be enough of that genre of horror movie.

One More Road For The Road

It’s hard to run over ghosts with your car. They just stand there gooning you out with their ghostly facial expressions and your car, with foot on the gas, goes right though ’em. Very frustrating.

In The Road, a Philippine horror movie arriving May 11, 2012, three teens that went missing on an abandoned road also tried running over a ghost. They never came back. Either they’re now ghosts themselves or in jail for attempted polter-murder. I know that sounds redundant. I’m not that stupid.

It was 12 years ago the teens disappeared. (I bet they’re at a mall somewhere.) During the course of the way late investigation (you waited 12 years why?), stories of abduction and gruesome murders surface. Now someone has to drive out to the haunted road and solve the case. What a waste of taxpayer money. They’re gone. Let’s move on already.

The Road (with a backward “R”) was written and directed by Filipino director Yam Laranas. (I bet his parents didn’t realize until it was too late that they had named their son after a sweet potato.)

Yam is also the filmmaker behind another ghostly flick, Sigaw (2004) and the American market version retitled to The Echo. Sigaw translates to “shout.” This explains why the lyrics in the Asian version of  “Shout,” the 1984 hit Tears For Fears song, read “Sigaw, sigaw, let it all out…” (Sorry – I’m on a lot of Nyquil™ right now. Not sick, just needing to cleanse my palate after a week of binge drinking.)

Expect The Road to have some nice twists (Yam’s trademark) and a few ghost-y moments. It’s more of a cerebral experience, though, than a “crap your pants” spookfest. Foreign ghosts rarely rip your head off and feast on your neck stump, whereas it’s a rule that neck stump feasting be in all American ghost movies.

Sorry – Nyquil™ not only tastes delicious, it makes your brain all gooey.

Ghosts In Your Freakin’ Head

Darkness and depravity. Two words that go together like peanut butter and jelly. And when applied to the description of a horror movie, just as tasty. The dark and depraved Lovely Molly (releasing 2012), a feel-good story of nightmares, malevolent forces and psychosis, appears to be all that and more.

Here’s how the feelings unfold: the just-wedded Molly Reynolds has worse things to deal with other than being married. She shows up at her childhood home, now abandoned, and remembers horrific nightmares she had there as a kid. (Note to homeless hippies: this house is haunted by evil. Feel free to squat there. Heck, I’ll even buy your bus ticket to drive you to the doorstep.)

Just being in the house lifts up those rocks in her head, exposing all the dark icky stuff underneath, like the aforementioned malevolent force that “tirelessly seeks to overwhelm her.” (She must drink a lot of beer like me.) What follows is a physical and mental assault by this supernatural thingamajig and possession, which spurs a deep, dark infidelity within her.

Dark infidelity. Two more words that just belong together.

I should like to drink beer with Molly and see if the promised depravity is real or just in her head, and if she’s open to some third date therapy.

Lovely Molly was made by the creators of The Blair Witch Project (1999). Don’t hold that against Molly. You know the BWP sucked, so don’t give me that e-look.

Battleship vs. Battleship

The Asylum, the “movie studio” that bloats themselves on the intellectual property of others, is set to do it again with American Battleship, a mock-off of the incoming sci-fi summer blockbuster Battleship. They could make a movie about you (mine would be a romantic comedy) and just add a word in front, middle or back of your name and it would be completely legal, and you couldn’t do a thing about it. (see Battle: Los Angeles vs. Battle of Los Angeles.)

Asylum’s attorneys must be billionaires.

In American Battleship (I bet they had a power meeting in a gas station bathroom to come up with that title), a Naval warship goes explosive to explosive with an alien spacecraft in the middle of the ocean.

In Battleship, (based on the popular 1967 board game by Milton Bradley) a Naval warship goes explosive to explosive with an alien spacecraft in the middle of the ocean.

As with ALL Asylum rip-offs, they spend more on the advertising one-sheet than the movie itself. Shot primarily with hand-held cameras and sporting Art Institute-grade special effects, these “mockumentaries” not only test the legal system, but your patience as well. (I’m looking in your direction The Amityville Haunting, the worst excuse for a ghost movie ever in the history of cinema.)

American Battleship comes out before Battleship, as if anyone cares. And if you think this rip-off is an affront to your intellect (and it should be), Asylum has another one planned for summer: Alien Origins, which is right in time to chase the ambulance that is Prometheus, the highly-anticipated prequel to Alien (1979).

It is my fondest wish a Naval warship and/or acid-spitting alien pays a visit to Asylum’s corporate office and has a power meeting with their face. Knowing Asylum, they’d probably film it.

Apartments of Ghosts

In Apartment 143, an upcoming movie billed as “the first real ghost story” (I’ll be the judge of that), a team of parapsychologists sets out to investigate a series of anomalous phenomena taking place in a newly rented abode. (Note: “abode” is a noun and is another word for a place in which a person resides; residence; dwelling; habitation. Just as “emergo” is another name for Apartment 143. I don’t really know what an emergo is. This is all too confusing.)

Releasing in Spain on April 27, 2012 (VOD) and June 1, 2012 limited theatrical) as Emergo (whatever that is), Apartment 143 was shot entirely in English. Good, because those Rosetta Stone™ lessons aren’t doing my brain any good. Other than ghost-hunters checking out the hauntability of the emergo, the only thing anyone seems to know is that the movie uses a bunch of different types of cameras: video, HD, 8mm, 16mm, and 35mm. I’ll have to consult Rosetta to see what all of that jibber-jabber means, although I think the “mm” stands for M&M’s candy. I sure hope it’s the peanut kind. The plain M&M’s don’t rock my emergo the way they used to. I could sure go for a pack of 35mms right about now.

Here’s what I accurately think happens in Apartment 143: they’ll use shaky hand-held cameras to film alleged anomalous phenomena jiggling the handle when they’re done making brown ectoplasm in the bathroom.

Consider that a spoiler.