Ghosts, Pretzels and Shredded Nerves

What do you get when you cross a brutal family murder with a supernatural entity? If it’s a movie, thought-provoking entertainment. And that’s IF. Supernatural entities are well known dispatchers of the living, so we can only hope Sinister, a new horror thriller involving a killer ghost-y thing, is fictional.

Sinister’s plot seems to be cut ’n pasted from today’s headlines: “A true crime novelist who is struggling to find his next big story. He discovers a box of home videos showing other families being brutally murdered, but his investigation soon leads him to a supernatural entity that may be placing his own family in harm’s way.”

It’s like watching the evening news.

Sinister, which comes out on October 5, 2012,  was done by director Scott Derrickson, the same film dude who did the 2008 The Day The Earth Stood Still remake and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005). I kinda liked that movie. And I thought Jennifer Carpenter, the hottie who played the possessed chick, was feel up-worthy until I saw her bend her torso into a demonic pretzel. Evil or not, pretzels are not good for you. They’re just flour and salt. Sure, low on calories, but a sodium-rich diet will give you heart rot. I heard that on the evening news.

On a lighter note, Ryan Turek over at the generally awesome Shocktilyoudrop.com, had this to say after an early screening: “I love the way [Sinister] shredded, not just my expectations, but nerves.” Either Ryan hasn’t seen a whole lot of horror movies, or he’s kind of a wuss. Horror movies haven’t shredded nerves since The Exorcist (1973).

You want real nerve-shredding entertainment, watch the evening news. Their ongoing investigative reports on pretzels will make you go numb.

Zombie Tarot – It’s In Your Future

I put tarot card divining right up there in the hallowed halls normally reserved for palm and tea leaf readers. And those mechanical fortune tellers? Mechanized gods on Earth. In fact, everyone who works at carnivals should be given Mt. Olympus status.

Yeah, right.

Whether or not your balls are made of crystal, what if a deck of cards was able to help you traverse the zombie-filled apocalypse? You wouldn’t think forecasting the future by means of a magical poker cards would be a load of dark laundry then, would you, you stinkin’ disbeliever? With the release of Zombie Tarot, your flesh-eaten future is no longer unforeseen.

Spilled toxic sludge was ground zero for the zombie outbreak. That much is a given. With the beautifully illustrated Zombie Tarot cards (releasing June 5, 2012), you’ll be able to refer to the hand that is dealt in order to survive. The ZT can advise you either stay in your barricaded fallout shelter or head for the government sponsored refugee camps. (Heads up: best not to put your faith in government sponsored anything. For one thing, they’ll figure out a way to tax you.)

Zombie Tarot, selling for a mere $16.95, comes in a cool box, complete with 78 illustrated cards, a 96-page full-color instruction booklet to help you interpret your readings, and of course, much needed advice for the zombie uprising, including always keeping the shotgun loaded. (Pffft – like a divine force needs to tell me that.)

From the press release: “In this zombified parallel universe, wands become limbs, pentacles are biohazard symbols, and the Major Arcana is full of shambling corpses. Along with the 78-card deck, readers will receive instructions in a 96-page full-color book; its contents explain how to survive the zombie apocalypse and forecast your future using one of three different card layouts.”

Zombie Tarot was illustrated by Paul Kepple, who teamed up with Stacey Graham, a Washington D.C. based writer and professional tarot card reader. Says Stacey of her gift, “My philosophy about tarot is that it gives you a picture of the path you’re traveling, but at any time you can take a left at the donut shop or stop and sit in a tree or turn around for a do-over. You control your destiny – the cards are just there to show you what’s coming up if you follow that straight path and sometimes what’s around the bend.”

Or I could just stop at the donut shop as I truly believe there is a maple bar in my immediate future. Until then, I’ll just rely on the tried and true divination of coin tossing. Everyone else, click HERE to order a set of Zombie Tarot.

Bigfoot – A Star Among Stars

If you’re gonna do a movie about Bigfoot, you may as well state the obvious and call it Bigfoot. A little flat – especially when you could pump up the billboard with “The Killing Spree of…”, “The Secret Erotic Life of…”, or simply “The Time Traveling Adventures of…” added to the title. But hey, if anything, the name Bigfoot™ is a marketable international brand. If that can’t carry a film, what/who can?

Bigfoot, being prepped for regurgitation by The Asylum, a film collective that doesn’t have an original thought in its head, includes two more marquee added values: Danny Bonaduce, the original bass player for The Partridge Family, and Greg Brady (who later changed his name to the boring but serviceable Barry Williams), eldest brother of the Brady Bunch/clan. Even if Bigfoot does a walk-on cameo, both of Hollywood’s brightest stars can take this one all the way to the box office.

Shown above is how Barry and Danny look today. They appear happy and at peace with their glitzy past. The same can’t be said for Bigfoot, who – as illustrated below – hasn’t aged well. From his Yoda-esque days as a little chimp off the ’ol block, to the haggard, redwood swinging man beast he is today, clearly the relentless stress of constantly being pursued by tourists with cameras and hunters with bullets has taken its toll on a once high-steppin’ man about town.

As for Bigfoot the movie, expect it to show up on the SyFy Channel™, the dumping ground for all sub-quality horror/sci-fi. Not sure what the movie is about, though. Maybe Bigfoot kidnaps Marcia Brady (“The Secret Erotic Life of…”) and Barry/Greg enlists the aid of Sam the Butcher to rally the rest of the Bunch to rescue her. And then Danny writes and performs a song about it.

We can only pray this is what goes down.

Shadow People

As stealthily as their name, those spooky ass Shadow People have been sneaking their way onto screens of all sizes for some years now. As defined by the all-knowing Internet, shadow people are supernatural shadow-like humanoid figures that are seen flickering on walls and ceilings in the viewer’s peripheral vision. They are often reported moving with quick, jerky movements, and quickly disintegrate into walls or mirrors. (If shadow people are shadow peepers as well, I think I can explain the quick jerky movements.)

There’s a new horror movie called, astonishingly enough, Shadow People, which deals with the above subject matter. While there have been Shadow People movies going as far back as I can remember (five years – it’s a genentic thing), let’s start with the new one and move backward in time, which I’m often accused of doing…

SHADOW PEOPLE / 2012
People are dying and the CDC (Center for Douche bag Control) believes the deaths to be a rare medical phenomenon called SUNDS (Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome). But it’s really TGDSP (Those G*ddamn Shadow People). It’s up to the crack team of a small town late night talk show radio host and a supermodel CDC Public Health Agent to throw some light on this mystery. I hope they fail.

VANISHING ON 7TH STREET/2011
Just like the Rapture promised, people are literally evaporating right before your very eyes. But they aren’t going to the fictional get-out-of-jail free card known as Heaven – they’re going to an all too real Hell, compliments of the shadow people, who can grab you right out of your clothes once you step into their shadowy-ickiness. The few survivors left in Detroit are all too happy when the sun comes up. But not when the generator that powers their light sources runs out of juice at night. Who cares? Sun light could give you skin cancer.

THE SHADOW PEOPLE / 2010
Made for $2,000, The Shadow People got by on a slick premise and special effects that only required somebody casting a really inexpensive shadow. A chick wakes up from a 9-month coma (put there in that state because there was nothing good on TV) and finds out she’s knocked up and ready to pop out the Antichrist. Hope the diapers are fireproof. She and her friends try and prevent the birth, but the Shadow People are not only scary minions from the Seventh Layer of Hell, but highly-trained obstetricians as well.

SHADOW PEOPLE / 2008
A one-percenter tries to use his corporate paycheck to buy immortality. He can sorta do this by way of an ancient dark prophecy. Performing a ritual called the “Drawing of the Shadows” (they used dark crayons for that), demons of darkness, or “shadow people” come out and poke out everyone’s eyes with freshly-sharpened crayons. (OK, maybe not that last part.) But someone is gonna get deadened up because that’s what shadow people are supposed to do to you. True that – it’s in the Bible near the back, next to all those ads for Sea Monkeys and X-Ray Specs.

120 Hours of Purgatory

The plot for Contrition (sorrow for and detestation of sin with a true purpose of amendment), a long-overdue indie psychological thriller (i.e., horror headache) with religious overtones, gets right to the point: “An average man lives the same day over and over again, which inadvertently ends up with the same result…death!”

Replace death with boredom and it’s a movie about me!

While the plot has been ironically plotted time and time again (it was even an X-Files installment/Season 6, Episode 14, “Monday”/1999), Contrition throws down the sales pitch: “120 hours of Purgatory…in one day.” They have my attention.

So this guy who looks the polar opposite of Brad Pitt is caught in this sin loop, which has someone dying over and over again. Can’t tell if it’s his wife or the secretary he’s been giving dictation to on the side. (And back. And front.)

Of course it all has to be about something bad. We never get to see a guy going out and getting supremely wasted at a bar, then scoring a hot chick who presents her supermodel boobs to him, and later, after turning the mattress into Sponge Bob Square Pants with all the swapped body fluids, finds a winning Lotto™ ticket on his neighbor’s freshly-mown lawn as he walks her out to the bus stop so she can get a ride home.

Then again, the movie isn’t out yet (arriving summer of 2012, crossing fingers), so maybe all that stuff does happen. If so, I heartily proclaim Contrition to be the blockbuster must-see hit of the summer.

Ghost Pants

The Apparition, a new kinda sorta maybe spooky ghost movie opening in haunted theatres near you on August 24, 2012, purposes that while ghosts may be out there, your fear brings them to kinda sorta maybe life, where they kill you in the face.

Okie doke.

While it’s much easier to believe in UFOs and Bigfoot – BECAUSE THEY EXIST – it’s harder to make the sale argument for a ghost. For starters, why do ghosts often appear wearing clothes? Clothing can’t die, no matter how many times you stab a stylish cardigan sweater, put it in your trunk, drive it miles out of town to an obscure lake, wrap it in chains and toss it from your rental rowboat to its fishy-filled resting place.

In the trailer for The Apparition, it’s hard to tell if the conjured-by-a-university parapsychology experiment entity is wearing anything that matches at all. (Ghosts usually show themselves as shadowy blurs and trick of the light, those sneaky butt-heads.) But the apparition that appears isn’t down with fashion as it goes after anyone who believes its real. Kinda like an evil Jesus. And because humans are prone to hysteria and shadowy blurs, the fear is contagious, which means the ghost is gonna get more bang for its buck.

I’ll go see The Apparition even though the premise is weak and it looks like just another spin on the Paranormal Activity craze. Mostly because I need to know where ghosts buy their see-through pants. I could put a pair to good use. For university parapsychology experimental purposes. And parties.

Million Dollar Monster

Even a giant rogue gator isn’t immune from the wrath of an angry female. In the new Chinese comedy horror movie, Million Dollar Crocodile (awesome title), a vengeful chick who’s scheduled to be married hunts down an enormous-y predatory croc named Mao, recently an escapee from a wildlife preserve.

And the reason why will make you crap sideways – the crocodile ate her purse, the irony here being that the stylish handbag was probably made out of one of Mao’s relatives. But it wasn’t the tasty purse that got the chick so pissed – she had $100,000 Euros in it. Which means two things: she doesn’t have enough money to get married. That, and the movie title is misleading as $100,000 Euros falls a bit shy of $1,000,000 in bus fare. (And since when does China have Euros? Don’t the Chinese line their pockets with folding Yuans?)

With whatever money she has left not as yet eaten by a marauding bear and/or land raccoon, goes to hiring a pair of hunters to severely admonish the money hungry croc and give it the frowning of a lifetime – as emphasized with shotgun shells.

Million Dollar Crocodile opens in China on June 8, 2012. Hopefully, it won’t cost a million to see it. The  HD trailer shows a kick ass monster gator chomping its way through people and other stuff. So here’s to Million Dollar Crocodile taking a big bite out of the box office. Heh.

Man, that’s a hoot. I don’t mean to make light of the woman who lost all that bling, though. But what is life if you can’t see the humor in a bus-sized reptile eating your purse and all its contents? Then again, pissed off chicks rarely find anything funny.

Beyond Apollo – Lost In Space

Theories abound as to what happened to the missing captain of an in-flight two-man space capsule. Yep, he was in there a minute ago. That much was confirmed by the other astronaut. So when the rescue team zoomed out to, uh, rescue them, they brought two extra sandwiches, but only needed one. The big question remains: what did they do with the other sandwich?

Delicious lunar snacks notwithstanding, this is the premise of Beyond Apollo, a sci-fi space mystery due to land in theaters some time in the year 2012.

So did the captain step outside to take a leak and get left behind? Did the other astronaut freak out and eat his captain when it was discovered there were no more space sandwiches left? Did aliens need a new butt to probe? Venus commuter Harry Evans is returned to Earth (sounds like a stupid name for a planet) and has to answer to his bosses as to WTF happened to Capt. No More. As Beyond Apollo’s website teases, “The truth, as Evans will eventually discover, is far more terrifying than anything he could possibly imagine.”

The pitch line goes on to say that “Beyond Apollo captures the eerie isolation of delving into the unknown, begs us to ask the unanswerable, and marks the separation between the real, unreal and surreal.”

I’ll tell you what’s real, unreal and surreal – the fact that ANY mission, to Venus or some other stink planet, would not pack enough sandwiches for a round trip. That just seems so mind-bending.

Birdemic II: Flipping The Bird

How bad was/still is Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010), an homage to The Birds (1963) that cost less to make than a box of Hamburger Helper™? You’ll want to peck out your own eyes, that’s how bad. Computer-generated beaks of destruction, cut ’n pasted and hovering in one place while a software salesman and his fashion model girlfriend, making up dialogue on the spot, shoot at them with plastic guns (bang bangs added after the fact). What else do you need to know?

But wait, there’s more! We’re soon to be treated to Birdemic II: The Resurrection, due out before the end of the world, which seems to be any day now. In B2, the “plot” appears to be pretty much the same sack of crap as the first one: “Bill is a struggling filmmaker; Gloria is an aspiring actress. Rod, a Silicon Valley millionaire finances Bill’s film, a dream come true until eagles and vultures attack Hollywood. Now it’s up to Rod, his girlfriend Nathalie, new friends and old, to mount the resistance. Who will survive? Birdemic II, you asked for it.”

I did not ask for Birdemic II. I didn’t ask for Birdemic I. Nevertheless, we’re all about to become park statues.

Getting High on Horror

In The Secret Village, new horror thriller (new as of this writing, anyway), an entire small town is f’d in the b-hole when the ergot fungus (stuff that grows in the woods and on your Week 5 leftovers in the fridge) poisons everyone and makes ’em goon out in a grand display of mass hysteria. Sucks to be citizens of Secret Village.

A supermodel chick journalist and an unsuccessful screenwriter who just got a ride to Dumpsville by his ex, pair up to solve the mystery of this decades-ongoing hysteria and why the locals wanna keep it that way. If you know a hill of beans about ergot, you’ll know why. Here’s what my government grant research money unveiled…

Ergot is a plant poison used for medications that enhance sexuality.

Mystery solved.

But wait, there’s more; I clicked, uh, dug deep into library books and found that ergot is also a great source for the art of healing and the pharmaceutical industry. Those of you into mind-expansion and/or are hippies know the ergot derivative LSD is used almost exclusively as recreational drug with practically no use in conventional medicine. Which means its in huge demand.

Before you go out and start smoking/popping/injecting/distilling ergot, know that it is a fungus that lives on rye and other grasses and is pathogenic to its host as well as to humans and other animals that ingest it.

So all you worthless stink hippies go ahead and do society a favor. Everyone else, stick with Viagra™ and shots of Jager™.