Charley, the Wereshark

Sharks eat Hawaiian tourists on a daily basis. In fact, it’s in the travel brochure: “Come to Hawaii…and get eaten by a shark!” Man, how can you turn down an offer like that? (I wonder if the vacation package also includes an authentic Hawaiian luau and a tour of the Dole™ pineapple factory? That’d be sweet if it did.)

But during tourist season, Hawaiian sharks may be fat and glutted on sun-block smeared mainlanders, so you’ll have to rely on Makua Charley, a wereshark, to give your vacation some bite. In the indie movie of the same title being filmed in Hawaii right now, this ancient Hawaiian legend comes out of the sea and eats your face clean off, because that’s what ancient legends do. This means you don’t have to go in the water to be eaten by a shark, thereby not getting your hair wet and poisonous clams in your bathing suit.

There is a problem, however. Makua Charley, scheduled for release in September of 2013 (that’s way too long – I wanna see it NOW), will only be completed if the filmmakers raise enough fins to cover filming costs/ambulance rides. They’re only asking to raise $7,777.04 (I added the four cents to cover my costs of promoting their cause.) As of this writing, they’ve raised $2,405.02. (I threw in my two cents worth.) That’s good, but not good enough – the film only has until May 26, 2012 to scare up the rest or this fish is dead in the water. Here’s why you should donate to their Kickstarter campaign:

“Folks are disappearing from the Shark’s Cove youth hostel on the North Shore of O’ahu. When young and innocent Karen Palmer visits for a two week vacation, she meets a handsome and charming local boy named Charley. He promises to show her some sights “off the normal tourist path”.

Karen finds herself irresistibly drawn to her mysterious tour guide. Unfortunately, Charley is the embodiment of an ancient Polynesian curse, and he’s torn between his basic human nature and his predatory killer instincts. Makua Charley is a feeding frenzy of horror set amidst the gently swaying palm trees of idyllic Hawaii. In this paradise turned to hell, the scent of fresh spilled blood is carried on a tropical breeze.”

I’ll say it for you: WOW! Don’t deprive the handsome and charming Charley a fresh human snack; click HERE to support his grocery bill today.

More Grave Encounters

I’ll get right to the point – 2011’s Grave Encounters, a found footage “ghost” movie about a team of TV paranormal investigators spending the night in an abandoned mental health facility called “the most haunted building in America,” was cliched, inept, tedious and insulting. Other than that, I didn’t have a problem with the movie. So it makes sense there’s going to be a sequel.

Grave Encounters 2, arriving Halloween of 2012, picks up where GE left off, which as I recall, was some guy eating rodent sushi. Press release: “A group of film students who break into the hospital from the first film to do their own paranormal investigation and quickly realize that Grave Encounters was not just a movie…it was real.”

I just excited in my pants. [inset sarcasm HERE]

So this means all the things that were wrong about the first movie will get another chance to screw it up again. Just so I’m sayin’ it and not sprayin’ it, here were my complaints about Grave Encounters:

Cliched – a haunted abandoned mental hospital? Been there, spooked that, about 100 times.

Inept: Dialogue that real people wouldn’t utter while screaming and running from noises and unseen forces. Smacks of Blair Witch Project, which sucked fake paranormal ass.

Tedious: The scare set-ups were rank amateur; And to just follow the jerking camera as people scream, swear and run up and down dark corridors starved my brain of oxygen, the result of which was assembly line yawning.

Insulting: Figuring out the plot was going nowhere, the filmmakers, in the last five minutes, throw in everything but a cameo from Casper. The few second scene with ghost doctors experimenting on patients? What’s up with that? Besides being a photocopied premise (House on Haunted Hill/1999), there was no back story to explain it. The real surprise was that you didn’t see the push-pins they used to tack it on. [To read my full assessment, click HERE].

It may sound like it, but I didn’t hate Grave Encounters. More like I double disliked it. Part of the problem is I regard found footage films as annoying and lazy. Like karaoke and non-alcoholic beer, found footage has worn out its welcome. But hey, maybe Grave Encounters 2, with the unfortunate tag line (“Just when you thought it was over…”) will bring something new to the party. Doubtful; it hasn’t been released yet and you’ve already seen it.

Germ – It’s Good For Every Body

Icky stinky germs are apparently not groovy for you. Who knew? Contracted in a variety of ways, these often invisible viruses can render a somewhat harmless 7-Eleven™ Truckstopper Burrito into an explosive shock and awe. And touching a bus station toilet seat and then rubbing your eyes? Only if you want ’em to painfully swell up and shoot out of your head like bloodshot marbles from a cannon.

So it is with disease-phobic optimism that I await Germ, a new indie sci-fi (that’s short for science fiction, by the way) film that unleashes infectious bacterium over a small town, turning the citizens into rage-filled killers that need to wash their hands with $1.99 anti-bacterial soap. (Not to split pathogens here, but wasn’t this the plot of 1973/2010’s The Crazies?)

Germ premiered for some TV bigwigs in Hong Kong on March 29, 2012. I was not invited. Now I hate Hong Kong and everything it stands for. What the suits got to see that I didn’t was the military shooting down an orbiting satellite, which rains down space-borne microorganisms on the remote upstate NY town and makes everybody go on a double crazy murder spree. On the positive side, the military popped a cap in that satellite with one shot. Snap!

A press quote describes Germ’s climactic confrontation as the male uninfected lead “battles his way through a crowd of zombies; wrecked cars, trash and bloodied bodies littered the street after the fight.” Sounds like they filmed this sequence on my block during “Get To Know Your Neighbors Week.”

Germ will spread (heh) October 1st, 2012. Wear a wet suit to the theater – you never know what orbiting satellite was sitting in that seat before you.

Potato Vampires

Of all the freshness-expired crap in my refrigerator, the last food group I’d suspect of being a vampire is the potato. (Not the factory-made frozen kind that rocks the frying pan, but one of those weirdo vegetables that comes out of the ground.) And a bloodsucking tuberous is just what you get in the delightfully titled Potato Vampires.

So how does a potato become a vampire? First, the potato has to be a hybrid grown in a science lab. Next, the plant from which it grows sprouts tendrils, which drill into your flesh and removes all that pesky blood gumming up your system. Then you get high. Then you die.

You heard me correct. The by-product of having a lab altered potato suck the goo outta you is that you get stoned. (This could be an interesting way to get hippies to eat their vegetables instead of smoking ’em.) Needless to say, drug dealers are seeing dollar signs aplenty. And hey, what cop is gonna bust you for selling potatoes to school kids?

Potato Vampires was filmed on the cheap (corn cobs are just too expensive – and vain – to work with). So don’t rent it and expect Hollywood veggies or even stunt salads – this is fun, not art.

Potato Vampires. I bet the filmmakers ate the star afterward.

Ghosts, Demons & Cold Hard Booze

The kicker line for the Malaysian-made evil-flavored horror movie, The Darkest Night: “The price of eternal life is eternal death.” Sounds like something Dracula would say at an emo cocktail party.

But don’t let the inherently BORING title and hammy tag dissuade you from seeing it; The Darkest Night is one HELL of an ambitious “found footage” endeavor that mixes Western and Eastern mythological traditions with a family during a holiday reunion. Think of it as a demonic throw down with festive snack platters. And cold hard booze.

So this family is partying at a secluded home in the Sagada Mountains. (I’ve been there – lots of really nice demons bringing meaning to the holiday seasons.) While everyone’s rockin’ the house, the party is shattered by “bizarre demonic and tragic terrors no one can explain.” Pffft – I can explain it in three words: cold hard booze.

The Darkest Night is said to be inspired by actual events reported to have happened to a Chinese family in Malaysia in February 2003. I knew those guys – it’s true; they most certainly were a Chinese family.

During the night the family in The Darkest Night begins dying or disappearing one after the other in “weird and terrifying ways, defying natural laws.” At the end, two are left standing (and by process of elimination, get all of the snacks and cold hard booze). The synopsis goes on to say that “a mystical book they find seems to hold the key to controlling unseen dark forces that threaten to unleash ghosts from an evil past.” This is not something that happens only to Asians. In Tijuana, for instance, you eat a food truck burrito (evil), and soon you are unleashing ghosts (evil flatulence).

The Darkest Night, arriving in the States and UK in August of 2012, contains a minimum of gore, violence and graphic special effects. That’s what it said on their website and I believe it. They also say that there are no cliché or oft-used thrill gimmicks, and that the viewer is led step by step into a dark, demonic world of sinister and fantastical events, where the familiar meets the supernatural, and your most cherished loved one could be your mortal enemy.

Good for them.

P.S. Cold hard booze.

Radioactive Ghosts

On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine suffered an ultimate FAIL, blowing up and spreading death all over the city of Prypiat and surrounding towns like freshness expired peanut butter. Needless to say, the worst nuclear power plant accident in history with enduring and severe ramifications. Now, all these years later, someone has made a horror movie about it, with fashion model young tourists who go there for kicks and discover something paranormal is inhabiting the abandoned and still radiation-hot ruins. Way to mock the 4,000 people who died and were catastrophically affected by the meltdown.

Arriving May 25th, 2012 is the Chernobyl Diaries, which was penned by Oren Peli, the guy who hit the lottery with Paranormal Activities and subsequent sequel cash infusions that, ironically, could help the Soviet Union pay off the 18 billion rubles the disaster cost. So these tourists, looking to do some “extreme vacationing,” go off the beaten path with a hired Russian guide into the deserted city of Prypiat. Not long after extreming, they go to leave and discover something’s not about to let them or their hair product leave.

Straight up, Chernobyl Diaries’ trailer is weak. Just a bunch of smug tourists screaming and running away from whatever still lives in the dead city. But given the radioactive nature of radiation, that “something” could be anything from ghosts that glow in the dark, feral animals turned into blood-seeking mutations, homeless people that can fry you with beams shooting out of their face… In a perfect world, this would be all of the above. But given how bloodless Paranormal Activity was/is, doubtful.

Horror movies made using real world disasters seems insensitive and distasteful, kind of like living next door to me. But I’ll probably go see Chernobyl Diaries to see the glow-in-the-dark-ghosts. If you live next door to me, you can come along. You gotta pay for your own radioactive popcorn toppings, though. This ain’t a charity.

Beyond The Grave

There’s not much to see beyond the grave. There are no shiny angels floating around, no rent-free condos made of gold, no strippers that will give you lap dances for all eternity. Nope, the only thing beyond the grave is just dirt. And not Hollywood dirt, either. More like Home Depot™ potting soil with, I don’t know, spit in it.

So yeah, nothing much to do after you become after. Unless you consider Beyond The Grave, a Brazilian-made horror story about a vengeful polícia officer who pursues a supernatural serial killer after the world ends. Or something like that. And with zombies, magic, samurai swords, and strippers who give you lap dances for all eternity (OK, not that one), life beyond the grave just got a lot more interesting.

The film’s website describes Beyond the Grave as an art-house mixture of road movie, spaghetti western and different horror sub-genres such as zombie and black magic. They had me at art house. Viewing the trailer, it’s clear that a.) Beyond The Grave bends the rules as much as it bends reality, and b.) sub-titles are really hard to read without moving your lips.

Beyond the Grave is due out something this year. (2012, in case you’re reading this from the future. Or beyond the grave.)

P.S. Hey film studio – re-do your boring and craptacular advertising poster. It looks like I did it.

Alien Tornado

Apparently it’s not enough for aliens to invade our interplanetary party pad with UFOs, robotic war machines and swirly laser beams. Now they’re attacking us with weather. And not good weather like naked waterski sunshine or naked snowboarding snow. No, these outta towners are now chucking tornadoes at us. Stupid aliens. I hate them so much.

In Alien Tornado, premiering on the SyFy Channel on Saturday, April 21, extraterrestrials, pissed off at us again for some reason (I blame Republicans), whip up some electrical tornadoes and set ’em loose on our faces. And this just isn’t for fun – it’s a cover for an invasion. Some guy teams up with some chick and tries to warn the public. Good luck with that.

The SyFy Channel will get all the credit for presenting Alien Tornado, but it was made by Active Entertainment, the same film studio that brought us weather-gone-wild movies as Miami Magma, Quantum Apocalypse, Weather Wars, Ghost Quake, Arachnoquake, and the entertainingly contagious Flu Birds. Here’s a quick look at Active Entertainment’s menu of digital destruction…

QUANTUM APOCALYPSE
A rogue space anomaly is approaching Earth, and it is up to the world’s top scientists to stop it from wrecking the planet. Any attempt of preventing disaster is futile. Cities across the world are destroyed. You won’t have to go in to work tomorrow.

MIAMI MAGMA (aka, SWAMP VOLCANO)
An oil rig has tapped a lava tube system, awakening a long-dormant underground volcano, the core of which lies directly beneath Miami. You’ll pay a penalty fee to have Expedia™ change your Florida vacation plans to Hawaii, where you’ll likely be eaten by lava sharks.

WEATHER WARS (aka, STORM WAR aka, TWISTER APOCALYPSE)
A series of freak weather occurrences around Washington D.C. (Yet another excuse for Congress to not go to work.) A once prestigious climate scientist has figured out to control the weather and wreak havoc on the political system that f’d him in the metaphoric b-hole.

GHOSTQUAKE (aka HAUNTED HIGH)
An earthquake in the vicinity of Helville High unleashes long dormant ghost spirits that have been trapped in the walls of the school for years. More than a little ticked off that they’ve been made to stay after school permanently, these ghosts possess the teachers and trap and torment the students. And because the students are teenagers, they deserve it.

ARACHNOQUAKE
National Earthquake Day is celebrated with a New Orleans quake that releases one hundred billion million fist-sized Albino spiders. To make it interesting, these spiders breathe fire. The National Guard has been called into make them quit breathing fire. Good luck with that.

Jersey Shore Shark Attack

Just when you thought shark movies were safe to watch again, now comes Jersey Shore Shark Attack, mixing truth with TV reality. Too bad it’s a comedy.

In order for a shark movie to work you need a bunch of tools just begging to be chomped on. In Jersey Shore Shark Attack, you get that in the form of a bunch of self-obsessed knockoffs of the Jersey Shore reality show (i.e., tools begging to be chomped).

The plot, if you could call it that: “Many years ago, hundreds of locals and tourists were massacred by giant man-eating sharks in the infamous 1916 Jersey Shore attacks. But that’s just a legend…or is it? It’s a holiday weekend on the Jersey Shore and, unbeknownst to anyone, underwater drills have attracted dozens of albino bull sharks to the pier. When a man goes missing, TC (The Complication), Nookie and friends fear the worst and plead with the police chief to close down the beach. It isn’t until a famous singer is eaten alive during a performance on the pier that the shark hunt begins. Now, the Preppies must work together with the Guidos in order to save the Jersey Shore and its inhabitants from another vicious slaughter.”

Joey Fatone, my favorite N’Sync singer (during their heyday, anyway), makes a guest appearance and gets chomped on for his efforts. That’s kind of disturbing. More so when you wish the shark would’ve chomped on Joshua Scott “JC” Chasez, the one N’Sync member that belongs in a shark’s mouth. (I have nothing against JC; with all that grease in his hair, he looks like he’d be flavorful to a bull shark.)

Yes, the special effects are ridiculously cheesy. Yes, the premise reeks of cash-in. Yes, you wish the real cast of Jersey Shore were the ones being chomped on instead of actors with too much product in their hair. And yes, you feel sharks are being exploited and that no one except me seems to care. I hope a shark chomps on all of New Jersey.

Chomp. Kind of a theme with me today. I must be hungry. Maybe for some Italian food.

Bodies Gone Wrong

Without errors of the human body, we wouldn’t have horror and sci-fi films. Or awesome bathroom humor. Everything from reanimating the dead and biogenetics gone wrong, to reconfigured life forms and uncontrollable farting during church/family reunions/third base dates, life would be pretty darn boring without DNA FAILS and/or perfectly timed body “errors.”

And that’s the name of the new sci-fi thriller. (Errors of the Human Body, in case you need a reminder.) Still in production as of this word barfing, EotHB is about a Canadian scientist working within the fun and exciting field of genetic engineering in order to redeem himself from a personal tragedy that befell him some years ago. (My theory: the bathroom the morning after a Cheetos™ and beer bong marathon.)

The trailer doesn’t give additional clues as to what the haunted Dr. Geoff Burton is hoping to achieve through the miracle of test tubes, microscopes, cherry-flavored chemicals and testing on street bums. Whatever it is, though, once it gets inside your body, it makes you extremely mad. (My theory: non-alcoholic beer.)

Errors of the Human Body. I’m doing that as we speak. You may not want to go in the bathroom after me for a while. Unless you have a scented candle in your pocket.