A Brain Is For Eating. Duh.

A book that teaches kids – zombie or not – how to eat brains. Oh, how I wish I had this book as a kid. I spent my entire youth choking down “vegetables” when I could’ve had a juicy noggin as the most important meal of the day.

A Brain Is For Eating, written by Dan and Amelia Jacobs (what are the odds they have the same last name?) and illustrated by Scott Brundage, could end up being THE coffee table book of the year. Or, if you’re one of those annoying tech gadget freaks, THE e-book of the year.

40 pages of brilliance that shows zombie kids how to find and savor their next meal. Example: “Though brains is our diet, let’s not waste a sliver, enjoy heart, spleen and lungs, both kidneys and liver.” The only thing cool I ate as a kid was anything buried in sugar. I’ve wasted my life.

So yeah, you need to own this book. Click HERE to get a copy, which ranges in price from $19.99 for hardcover and $9.99 for your iPad™ or Kindle™, whatever those are.

Revolving Door Future

In the 2009 sci-fi stunner Franklyn, there exists several parallel cities – one in the present and one in the future – with inter-connecting heavy metal dramas happening in each at the same time.

This scenario totally messes with your head. Especially when one minute you’re watching a masked vigilante in Meanwhile City – a place that looks like a steampunk version of London, doing battle with The Nemesis – then the next you’re seeing a present day suicidal art student looking to create the ultimate art project, and another heartbroken dude who really needs to get over his ex. (She’s gone man, deal with it.)

The head-twisting surrealism blends the story lines together and brings them back in the final scene so artfully, you’ll slap your own face as if to say “Wow!”

Yeah, it’ll be confusing for a while, but the pay-off is as sweet as sci-fi Sweet ’n Low™.

OK, that sounded just plain dumb. I blame the other me in the parallel city. I just hate that guy so much.

Computer Ghost

A crazy mean serial murderer believably comes back to life as electricity after crashing his car on the way to kill a single working mom. That totally makes sense.

As an evil electrical current he can get inside a host of handy kitchen appliances, which he uses to zap the gorgeous baby-sitter whom the young boys she’s sitting, pay her cash money to lift up her shirt. (Why did I spend all my allowance on comic books when I could’ve put my puberty on fast-forward? Sometimes I can’t believe how stupid I was.) But like the “ghost,” you don’t get to see anything.

Things start to really byte when the killer gets inside the family’s computer. He wants to delete them all. Heh.

Ghost In the Machine (title taken from British philosopher Gilbert Ryle’s derogatory description for René Descartes’ mind-body dualism and/or the Police album of the same name featuring the snappy 1981 song, “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”) is kinda sorta maybe cool given that it came out in 1993 and computers weren’t anywhere near the life-destroying machines they are today.

Godzilla Snow Cone

Curious, this Godzilla Raids Again (1955) as it was originally released in Japan as Godzilla’s Counterattack and then later in 1959 Gigantis, The Fire Monster in the U.S. Why would anyone want to wreck Godzilla’s christian name by calling him Gigantis? This makes my tummy hurt and my face very upside down happy face.

Godzilla was killed to the bones in the original 1954 movie, so they brought him back exactly as before, except with a different name. Didn’t fool anyone. They should’ve made him wear a hat and fake glasses.

A volcano wakens Godzilla/Gigantis and he gets into a chest bump with Anguirus, a giant porcupine that looks like four-legged toilet brush. Madcap craziness ensues.

Problems I continue to have with Godzilla Raids Again: The U.S. version was clearly edited by a meat butcher. Gaping chunks of the movie’s narrative were summarily tossed in order to speed up the action. And they changed Godzilla’s iconic roar. That’s like turning Pavarotti’s operatic tenor into a mezzo-soprano.

So how did Japan stop Godzilla, the Captain of Crunch, from completely Riverdancing the entire town into landfill? They shot missiles into a snowy mountain, thereby causing an avalanche that buried Godzilla up to his ass in…ice cubes. The kind you put into 40 gallon cocktails. No massive jolts of electricity or discount napalm. Just frozen water squares.

Just thinking about it is taking me to Frown-y Town.

Canadian Alien

Infected (2008), a genre derivative Canadian television adventure/science-fiction thriller, is also known as They’re Among Us and The Hatching. Stinkweed by any other name is still stinkweed.

An X-Files re-dux, which also borrows heavily from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), a newspaper reporter and his ex-girlfriend (also a reporter, who won’t put it on the glass for him anymore), uncover an extraterrestrial plan to take over human bodies so that aliens can live more comfortably on this toilet Earth.

Most of Infected is spent running, hiding, and uncovering proof of the colonization. What little pay-off there is comes in the form of a naked humans wrapped in sheets that probably won’t be able to be cleaned and kept under alien sedation in a facility that looks suspiciously like my proctologist’s office.

Once the aliens have been outed their true selves emerge, looking like a cross between a lobster and black. The reporter risks his neck to save his ex, who previously did not want to put it on the glass for him anymore. But it’s amazing how alien intervention can mend broken glass.

So does Infected end happily for the aliens or the humans? I am beyond caring. 

Friday the 13th, 2455

So how did Jason, the unstoppable killer of camp counselors at Crystal Lake, end up on a 24th century spaceship with a new hockey mask and his a shiny new stabby device?

For starters, he was eventually caught and put in suspended animation (just like the plot of all the nine Friday the 13th movies that came before this one), being thawed out 500 years later at the Crystal Lake Research Facility (oh, good grief).

During a misunderstanding about future manners and protocol, Jason gets loose and resumes the doom. During his killing spree, Jason’s legs and arms get sheared off. But as this is the future, they can rebuild him.

Seems the people of tomorrow are just as stupid as the people of today. Jason is reconstructed as an unstoppable killing machine, punching heads off and the what not. Note: future people scream, bleed and die, just like their dumbass ancestors.

If you think Jason X (2001) is a laugh, then the ending will make you hurl previously injested proteins and starches.

In space, no one can hear you chuck.

Heavy Metal King Kong

That flaming a**hook Dr. Who has an evil plan so complex it couldn’t possibly fail. An unnamed country – as represented by the alluring-yet-undatable Madame Piranha – needs Element X, a radioactive organic material found in the North Pole’s ice hole. With it they can fashion designer nuclear bombs and, by extension, rule the world.

Dr. Who has been contracted by said unnamed country to mine said radioactive mineral. So he builds Mecha-Kong, a 60-foot replica of King Kong, to dig it out. Because MK’s a robot, it’ll be able to withstand the rock’s harmful glowing rays and…oops, Mecha-Kong shorted out and can’t do the minimum-wage job he was hired for.

The plan is changed to hunt down the real King Kong on the south seas island of Mondo and take him to the North Pole after they hypnotize him into working long hours with no employee benefits. This actually works. Kinda.

Kong’s hairless-but-real friends – a U.S. submarine commander, his second-in-command and a blonde nurse with a weird voice – race to assist our fuzzy hero as he swims to Japan to have a re-match with Mecha-Kong. (An earlier bout had Mecha-Kong punching Regular Kong in the face with a banana-loosening roadhouse right.) Payback’s a b*tch as Regular Kong pursues Mecha-Kong up the Tokyo Tower and returns the Hawaiian punch sustained earlier.

As fun as King Kong Escapes (1967) movie is, a couple of issues need to be addressed. 1. Mecha-Kong does not slip on the North Pole’s slick permafrost, even though his feet are made of non-grip metal. 2. Regular Kong doesn’t get drunk on jungle juice and make cool faces like he did in King Kong Vs. Godzilla (1962). 3. While under hypnosis Kong understands English commands. (That hairy butt always pretends to “no comprende´” whenever I want him to do stuff.)

Lastly, their movie names are “Kingukongu” and “Mekanikongu.” That does not work for me. What does work for me is watching giant monsters punching each other in the nuts. So, like, mission accomplished.

Time-Eaters

Without hyperbole, I can emphatically overstate that The Langoliers (1995) is the all time worst movie adaptation of one of horror author Stephen King’s books ever made in the history of the everything. (The wretched Rose Red/2002 is a close second.)

A commercial flight full of passengers goes through a time rift (like a regular rift, but with more colors), and come out the other side with most of the people gone, as though they turned into transparencies and departed the plane in mid-air.

A handful of wildly disparate characters – including a 10 year-old hyper-intelligent blind girl and a freakishly paranoid corporate executive – discover there’s no one left on land, either. Also, beer doesn’t fizz when opened, farts don’t smell and sandwiches taste like cardboard. And not that cool designer cardboard, either. All the while they hear a strange, ominous crunching sound off in the distance, like someone rolling around on bags of potato chips.

As the corporate exec slips his grip and goes off the mental high dive, the rest struggle with the theory of what is believed to be the Langoliers, creatures that eat leftover time itself. They need to get their ass out of the past and back into present time where beer fizzes the way its supposed to.

The ground and buildings around them are being devoured by the laughable Pac-Man type creatures as everyone not dead (um, there was a few regrettable incidents) re-boards the plane and heads for the time rift. Unfortunately, they have to be asleep in order to sync back up with the present. Someone needs to be awake to fly the plane and… No sequel for one lucky person.

Interesting premise, but the unlikely characters (they work better in book form) and the horrendous Langoliers that look like giant clams with teeth (dumb name, dumber monsters) make you wish you could go back in time and not watch it all over again.

Mexicano Hombre-Lobo

Something is killing off all the goats in the goat capitol of Furlough, Texas (population 327 – for now), and it’s not for lack of tourist dollars. The small toilet town on the Texas/Mexico border is ravaged by racism, boredom and grisly death.

The Mexicans think it’s a Chupacabra. (They’re wrong.) The redneck in-bred whiteys think it’s the Mexicans. (They’re stupid and wrong.) The police think it’s a coyote. (They have guns and can believe anything they want.) And the bored-and-looking-for-excitement high school students think it’s fun that something cool is finally happening in their dustbowl of a town.

Whatever the case, first it’s the goats, then tasty humans, who become carne asada, with a trail of outer and inner body parts strewn all over the pristine unswept sidewalks. Mob rules dictate it’s definitely a Chupacabra, so the townsfolk get guns and wait for it to come a’bitin’.

The local mortician – less than happy his teen daughter is dating a Mexican – gets the idea to fashion Chupacabra evening wear out of coyote pelts so he can eliminate the boyfriend problem and conveniently blame it on Chupie. Meanwhile, the slaughter continues, with the locals being ripped into chorizo.

The best moment comes when the marauding monster is chomping away at the Toyota™ truck containing two high school gals, and the town slut flashes her boobs at the frenzied beast. This stops our hirsute hero dead in his tracks for a brief moment (me, too), giving the resourceful girls a chance to give Chupie a taste of Japanese steel by running him down. Five times.

He’s really a werewolf (okay, a hairy dog with an alligator head), even though everyone is more ready to believe in the Chupacabra than a lycanthrope. That’s small town thinking for you. All told, Mexican Werewolf in Texas (2005) is mildly entertaining horror flick that strays off the eaten path.

Frankenstein Vs. Aliens

Despite the misleading title of Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster (1965), this is not the iconic Frankenstein monster with the bolts on his neck, looking like a droopy-faced Cure fan. This Frankenstein is a robot astronaut made up of car tires, parts from an old radio, a ratty wig and human intestines, which may or may not include functioning bowels. (That an oil stain on the back of your pants, dude?)

NASA built Frank (his name in the movie – really) to fly a risky mission to Mars, which the NASA geniuses estimate to be 49 million miles away. Hello, I think it’s a bit closer than that as I sometimes go there on the weekends on a single tank of rocket fuel.

Before Frank can lift his space hopes into the upper stratosphere, nearby aliens think that despite their radar-jamming techniques, Earth people have spotted them and are launching a preemptive strike. So they blow up the rocket with energy beams. But Frank manages to eject and float back to earth with thoughtfully-provided parachutes.

The aliens pursue Frank so he won’t tell on them. A short ray gun battle leaves Frank with his face half melted off and his circuits on the bleep, which causes him to kill a few people with a sharp thing. The aliens botch capturing Frank and go back to their original plan, which is to round up sweet Earth ladies for a breeding program to re-populate their planet. Seems an atomic war has wiped everybody out. That happens on a LOT of planets. So they capture a bunch of girls in bikinis. That’s where I’d start.

The scientist in charge of Frank tracks him to an underground cave in Puerto Rico (!), attaches scientific alligator clips to his exposed circuits and has him rescue his hottie assistant who has just been taken aboard the space craft – for breeding purposes. Once inside, Frank goes all Earth justice on ’em. But they have a secret weapon – a space monster with fangs and abundantly hairy underarms.

The girl escapes, but Frank knows this is a fight to the finish as his logic board won’t let those g-damn bikini-apprehending aliens make off/out with our Earth skanks.

Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster is padded with awesome NASA and military footage. The scene where Air Force jets are pounding the space craft with missiles is an appropriate show of military strength. That the bombs don’t even leave a scratch on the UFO is beside the point as the message is clear: Join the Army – and beat the stinkin’ crap outta aliens. USA! USA!