Bigfoot – Happy Entrails To You

Dang it. I hate when sequels come out to movies I haven’t seen yet, as is the case for The Lost Coast Tapes (2012), a horror movie about a murder-minded Sasquatch with fur of doom.

Now, seemingly a few short months later, comes Bigfoot – Beyond The Lost Coast Tapes. It comes out sometime in 2013, which still may give me time to get caught up, because I have it on my “who Bigfoot killed today” list.

To get you caught up, in The Lost Coast Tapes a “Bigfoot hunter” claims to possess the body of a dead Sasquatch. To gum things up, a disgraced investigative journalist stakes his comeback – and the lives of his documentary film crew – on proving the find to be a hoax. What a dick.

As briefly mentioned, I haven’t seen The Lost Coast Tapes yet, but I am crossing something in hopes that Bigfoot opens everyone’s torsos like a Christmas present, then decorates the forest in festive entrails.

I can only speculate as to what goes down in Bigfoot – Beyond The Lost Coast Tapes. Hopefully, Pine cones will be shoved in places where there were no pine cones before. That’d be fun to watch, but, like, not to experience.

Really Boring Zombies. Really.

Zombies can only do two things: eat as much as they want and never gain any weight, and take over the world. As always and forever, the undead roam the Earth while survivors try and not to look like food. Don’t worry – if a zombie eats you, it won’t need to hit the gym due to ingesting your saturated fat ass.

The hungry zombie in the hopelessly generically titled Edges of Darkness (2009), are “conveniently” exploited in three stories here: a hot chick with a sour attitude, who searches for additional survivors and packs a lot of heat (both ammo and fashion sense); a young, foul-mouthed African-American couple who are really vampires looking for human food as well as the zombies; and another young couple, one a computer nerd, the other a needy, whiny Jewish princess.

How are these elements related? They aren’t. And how satisfying is it to have the plot jump around with little regard to scripting feng shui? Not at all.

The vampire couple find a hot chick and bring her home to feed on. They have to take only a little fun gulps at a time because human blood is scarce, and zombie blood makes them gassy. This gal’s secret weapon is that her blood is somehow tainted. Probably with poison or something.

The computer nerd enhances his PC with a unique upgrade that turns the machine into a life-form that sprouts vine-like tendrils and sucks the “power source” out of humans. This, by the way, is the very definition of pointless.

The survivalist supermodel, who earlier rescued an African-American mom and her 10 year-old son, finds out the kid is actually the Anti-Christ and that some Holy guys are after him as much as the zombies. Now would be a good time to go, “Huh?”

The initial flesh-eating sequence is like watching a 50%-off sale at a cannibal butcher shop. But subsequent zombie action takes a back eat, uh seat, to these bone-headed plot elements. And why there’s no nudity is both depressing and disappointing.

Yeah, the zombies finally break into the apartment building where all the talk-talk is going on. But by then it’s too late, as you’ve already eaten your own flesh to keep from falling asleep waiting for something to happen that wasn’t totally stupid. (Hint: smear some butter or jelly on your arm first – it’s not half bad.)

An Eyeful of Aliens

The Eye Creatures (1965) is also known as Attack of the Eye Creatures. Also known as a really dumb sci-fi movie. Why do eye say that? Eye don’t know. Actually, eye do. Eye just wanted to work in that awesome twist of word dealie. Heh.

The military has been keeping their EYE on flying saucers that’ve been buzzing Earth. A UFO lands near a place where teens park their cars and make-out because they didn’t know how to have sex back in the early ’60s.

Stan and his girlfriend run over an alien after dry humping in Lip Lock Park (my name, not theirs), and severe its hand. The creature looks like a herpes-infected Michelin’s™ Tire Man icon with six more beady eyes and a slimy gaping mouth. This reminds me of wet marshmallows for some reason. The thought of wet marshmallows makes me pee shudder – and not in a good way.

Reporting the accident to the cops, Stan and his hot trim didn’t know a drifter had also been in the area, saw the saucer/creatures, and died of a heart attack. (And other booze related health issues, more than likely.) The cops think that’s the body Stan hit and arrest him. And thus begins Stan’s life of crime.

The military blows up the spaceship, but didn’t know the aliens were out picking berries and/or berry-flavored brains in the woods. Don’t worry about the extraterrestrials having no way to get back home – they blow up when exposed to light. Since the military can’t figure out how to conquer the herpes aliens, it’s up to the dry humping teens to save the day. And they kiss like two wet marshmallows being rubbed together. Ick.

Part sci-fi, part comedy, all boring. If you have more than two eyes, you’ll find it hard to keep ’em open all the way through this nap-inducer.

Slimy Fish God

Dagon is a slimy fish god who lives in the ocean and craves a supermodel to mate with in order to create a hybrid thingamajig (minus a slice of lemon and a side of tartar).

An island of smelly fishermen who couldn’t catch any fish summoned Dagon for a little help. Big D rewarded them with many stinky fish and gold and promised them eternal life, only if they revoke their Christianity permits.

As with all blasphemy, however, there’s a price to be paid. The island residents are slowing mutating into grotesque fish creatures who make noises that sound like a cross between a defective whoopee cushion and Flipper going through withdrawals.

A sailboat carrying a nerd and a stripper quality wife make it to the cursed island after the vessel, as if piloted by Gilligan himself, smashes into a sea rock. While trying to get some help, the couple is separated and the nerdy guy spends the whole movie trying to escape from the squishy, slimy cod folk.

His wife, unfortunately, is up to her gills in trouble as she’s selected to be the host for Dagon’s perverted mating ritual. Meanwhile, nerdy husband, who dreamt of topless mermaids with piranha teeth, finds out he may not be what he thought he was.

His new girlfriend is hot for his caviar, but she has tentacles and smells like fish, which is a turn-off come spawning time. The salmon people look really cool, though Dagon himself is a disappointing combination of Art Institute computer effects and wet fart sounds.

The best part – other than the sacrificial stripper being lowered into the aquatic dwelling of Dagon – is the de-skinning of a drunken bum’s head. In a really flinchy scene, the fish people cut around the bum’s head and eyes and pull his skin clean off, as though removing a really tight knit cap. A different sort of haircut, it provides them new faces to wear until their mutation is complete. You already know the ending.

Dagon (2001) is sick, horrifying and repulsive, which means fun for all!

Romantic Cannibalism in Black and White

Graveyard Alive (2003) is one of those tongue-in-cheek/campy takes on horror that’s actually kinda interesting, kinda like Cheez-Whiz™, but with blood and medical boobies.

Done as an eight-act play with dubbed voices (even though it isn’t a foreign flick), a farmer hick shows up at a hospital with an axe in his head. This doesn’t seem to bother him as he’s already dead after being infected by a viral thingamajig.

Farmer Hatchet Gash falls for the mousey nurse and bites her hand. She slowly starts to turn into a zombie, which means she craves raw meat, easily found in the hospital’s morgue grocery store. She also smells like panty hose that hasn’t been changed in a month. This makes all the other doctors drawn to her like flies. I can’t explain it, either, but I can totally relate.

As she eats more flesh, her decomposition reverses. The meaty goodness acts as a sort of fountain of youth, making her more sexy and sexually promiscuous. In other parts of the movie, the hospital’s supermodel nurse is getting jealous that the doctors no longer want to give her a pelvic examination, so she discovers her rival’s truth and sets out to make zombie nurse stop living/un-living.

This is all done in a very comedic sort of way, kinda like a silent film. It’s also black and white, which means you’ll need to use your imagination as to the color of the bloody body parts the nurse graphically snacks on. (Think a slightly lighter shade of chartreuse, something in a spent tampon, perhaps.)

Every so often I open my brain to let a little art in.

Rodan – Flapping Destruction

Car-sized bugs are eating the workers in an underground mining operation. (The miners were mining for car-sized bugs).

Upon further investigation (i.e., or aiyeee!), following the bugs deeper underground, a giant egg is discovered. And right as the authorities get there, the egg cracks open and an airplane-sized bird creature pops out. Talk about timing.

The bird is instantly hungry and starts eating the bugs. Okay, that problem solved. But the bird emerges from his shell and takes off, flying at supersonic speeds around the world. Since he’s moving so fast, people think it’s a UFO, which it kinda is because they don’t know what the hell it could be, hence the term “unidentified.”

Through with his site-seeing trip, the bird (or “Rodan” – pronounced “Row Dan”) ends up back where he started and begins re-designing the landscape with his whooshing around.

Navy jets are in pursuit, but Rodan can dive into the water, whereas they can’t. The city is being ravaged by the hurricane-winds kicked up by Rodan’s super-speed wing flapping and beak of doom. The blown humans might have figured out a way to bug-slap the monster, but all of a sudden, there’s TWO RODANS! Dang and/or curse the luck.

I’m told this was the first monster movie filmed in color. I could’ve checked, but didn’t get around to it. But even in black and white, this Rodan (1956) would still rock and/or roll.

Sci-Fi Pie

Here’s an alternative lifestyle sci-fi movie to ponder. In Pi (1998), a mathematician guy is obsessed with finding the numerical order of the universe amongst all the chaos that is our stinking lives. And to think he could’ve been a janitor. (FYI: Pi is a mathematical constant, kinda like a “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” of equations.)

His quest is to find the mathematical code to predict the stock market. (In Vegas they call this “Keno”). A cutthroat corporation wants the keys to Wall Street and supplies the man with a super computer chip to assist his work. Meanwhile, a bunch of renegade left-wing Orthodox Jews want the code, as it was foretold to reveal the true name of God. (It’s Jerry. All praise Jerry.)

The math man has yet another monkey on his back – he’s prone to seizures and hallucinations of sticky brains in the subway and bathroom sink. (Ajax™ should be able to get rid of it with just a little scrubbing. Not Pine-sol™, though. That crap will make your bathroom smell like a friggin’ super pine cone.) And there’s an unpleasant piercing noise in his head that randomly goes off like a car alarm. (That actually seems like it’d be kinda fun.)

In the end he takes care of all his problems by introducing his cerebellum to his new friend the power drill. Finally he’s at peace as his noggin can no longer process numbers due to the brainectomy.

Filmed in black and white, π (pronounced “pie,” as in math speak, not as in pumpkin) is slow-moving but gritty cool, though overly artsy. Clearly they needed some boobies to take this movie to the next level. That, or some pumpkin pie. With some Cool Whip™ maybe.

Werewolf Woman

The Legend of the Wolf Woman (aka, Werewolf Woman) is a 1976 Italian horror movie with sexy results involving a delightfully naked woman dancing inside a circle of flames. Did I mention she had no clothes on? Did I mention you can see EVERYTHING? Did I mention when the moon becomes its fullest she begins her transformation into a fuzzy stripper? I should have.

Wolf Woman’s eyes turn red and her teeth look ready for some chomping action, but her face remains more or less unchanged, with only her nose sprouting fur. That’s pretty dang amusing on several levels.

The local villagers, however, don’t think so and have had enough of her ass-wagging rituals. So they go into the woods to hunt her down. But not before she jumps on one guy and gives him a new throat hole. She’s caught and burned to death. Too bad – she looked like a fun date.

Leap ahead in the future to 1976 and the descendant of Loretta Lotta Fur is a sexually repressed chick living in her rich father’s attic. When her sister comes to visit with her fiancé, the psycho chick (I know, an oxymoron) peeks at them doing it. So she runs outside where the moon bathes her in moisturizing beams of madness.

The fiancé dude follows her into the dark forest, where she rips off her clothes and wants to have naked familiarities with him. But those repressed sex emotions interfere and she gives his neck two extra breathing vents. Here’s the kicker: he looks exactly like the guy her wolfy aunt chewed upon a century ago.

She’s later caught and taken to a mental hospital for evaluation. It’s there she meets a lesbian who obviously doesn’t like hospital food and prefers to snack on rugs. (You better know what I mean by that.) The gal pal is bitten to death and the mad woman makes her escape, where she kills again when guys try to have sexings with her. (When she freaks out she looks like Sandra Locke on five quarts of Red Bull™.)

Another guy invites her back to his house where he makes dinner and doesn’t try to feel her up. He’s a stunt man in the movies with killer abs and tells her, “I let women come to me.” A prudent choice of words. Had he tried to get a taste, she would’ve added more artery air conditioning.

Over the next few days they hang out together and he shows her how to take a fall off the roof without hurting herself. (Good skill to have.) They go running along the beach and eventually she lets him boldly go where no man has gone before. But she doesn’t freak out as it was her choice.

Later, three thugs break into the house and brutally sex her. The boyfriend comes home and kicks their asses because he’s got abs, but one criminal manages to stab him to death. She hunts them down and goes on an I Spit On Your Grave revenge killing jamboree.

The police later find her in the woods, eating what appears to be a hot dog minus the bun and mustard. Her brain is broken and she’s letting her boobs hang out for all to see because hey, it’s all about breaking the rules at this point in her career.

I’m glad she didn’t turn into a werewolf at this juncture, though, because I’m not from the country of European, and hairy legs on chicks goon me out. I’m sorry – I’m just repressed that way.

French, Casually Dressed – and Dead

Leave it to the French to wreck a good zombie movie premise. Without any warning or the frantically ringing of bells, hundreds of recently dead people begin showing up in a small city. Mostly older folks, these zombies were neither decaying nor oozing gunk from their primary orifices. In fact, they look like they just came from a Jimmy Buffet concert.

The city council convenes and decides to give the undead emergency shelter (?), food (?) and their old jobs (?) back. (They no longer need medical withheld from their paychecks, though.)

These returnos can do almost everything they used to do before their born-on freshness date expired, but something isn’t quite right. Instead of dancing or eating brains, the zombies are methodically working on a project out in the woods. They’re building a vast tunnel system under the city – to go back to their graves! Apparently, being alive a second time sucked as much as the first.

They Came Back (2004) moves as slow as the undead themselves, climaxing with the military gassing ’em as they meander towards their underground resting hole. This confuses the viennoiseries outta me – if the dead were returning to their graves, what was the point of having the military go after them and use up expensive gas that could be used on les hippies.

There are reasons no one likes France…and this flick is one of them.

P.S. Dear France: just kidding. Love your tarts – the pastries AND your ladies who don’t shave their legs/arm pits. (OK, maybe not that last one.)

Swampy Horror

Swamp Thing should get his attorneys to sue for identity theft. There is only one king of the bayou, and it ain’t Man-Thing, a swampy monster based on a Marvel™ comic and not real life, as it should be.

Now that I got that off my root system, an oil tycoon bought up all the prime gator infested swamp real estate in order to drill for oil. This is odd because the swamp water already looks and smells like oil, but people still swim in it and regard it as sacred stink water as deemed by the local Seminole Indians.

A new sheriff in town (you can tell he comes from the city because his uniform smells like Bounce™) is sent in to replace the previously living chief that was lost to the “dark water.” The more the sheriff investigates, the more people die, including an in-bred couple of trouble-making brothers, one of whom takes a crap out in the open, then proceeds to slip and fall in it. (They should use that on all Louisiana travel brochures.)

After several more bodies pop up, the local coroner claims them all death by croc, despite the green stuff leaking out of puncture wounds that match the size of the holes in non-floating canoes. So everyone sensibly goes wading into the swamp at night where everything is Matrix-green colored and ambient foggy, only to bump branches with Mr. Stick.

Man-Thing is 15 feet tall and looks like a seaweed version of that dreadlock thing the Predator wears on his head. M-Thing has glowing red eyes and vibrates. All these clues indicate he may not be a mythological creature, but rather a gigantic personal comfort device.

At the end of Man-Thing (2005), the right people get killed, the smooth-smelling sheriff gets the girl, the oil drilling is stopped and area crocodiles can go back to doing what they do best, which is to motivate the Louisiana Bayou Swim Team.