Flesh Re-imagined

Surreal, grim and taboo enough to make the needle on the moral compass start gooning out, Horrors of Malformed Men (aka Horror of a Deformed Man) is about a guy searching for his father and ends up on an island full of naked chicks, half-human/half goats and his mom who lives in a cave by the ocean and eats live sea crabs without the benefit of dipping sauce.

This cult horror film is still banned in Japan to this day. I don’t see what the big deal is; So what that dad is a mentally rearranged tweeker with a melted hand whose vision is to create a race of malformed men in order for the world to suffer as he has? Cut the guy some slack, for cryin’ out loud.

And those naked chicks swimming in the water? They’re fish. And those naked chicks sucking on tubes attached to open wounds in their stomach? They’re hungry. And those naked chicks spray-painted head-to-toe in silver and gold? They’re shiny.

Of course, I’m just highlighting some of the highlights. The topless torso of a woman sewn onto the body of a goat reminded me of that kindly ’ol Dr. Moreau, who made animals into men. But as datable as Goat Woman might be (take her out to dinner – she’ll eat anything), it was the 200 or so topless gals that made my pants feel nice.

The ending of Horrors of Malformed Men leaves one speechless. Be warned that this was in 1969, so don’t expect explicit gore or sex, just a lot of boobies and madness. The story is heavy in its complexity, but hey – naked fish and goat chicks!

Heavy Metal Godzilla

Harvesting spare parts from Mecha-King Ghidorah in hopes the technology the Futurians turned them onto will permanently smack Godzilla, Japan Self Defense Forces salvage the three-headed junk heap from the bottom of the ocean and construct a badass version of MechaGodzilla. Let’s hear it for run-on sentences.

They gotta do something – Godzilla’s been laughing, yes laughing, at years long attempts to do him in. He’s even blogged about it. But while those guys are working on new add-on weapons, a team of explorers finds several Volkswagon-sized prehistoric eggs on an island. Omelettes for all. Oh, crap – one of the eggs has hatched and a new version of Rodan (he’s red this time as opposed to his green casual wear) is flying around, causing migraines and destruction. (This model is referred to as Fire Rodan and pronounced “ray-don.” I wish they’d get their linguistics straight.)

But what the explorers don’t know is that the other unhatched egg is Godzilla’s latest rug rat. This is odd as they refer to Godzilla as daddy. Pick a lane and drive in it – does Godzilla going around knocking up Broadzillas, or is he/she one him/her self?

MechaGodzilla wasn’t prepared for this scenario and, in a mind-blowing battle, falls to the champ. Now all Godzilla has to do is grab his kid and go for a long walk into the ocean. Only thing left to do is find a junk yard big enough to dump MechaGodzilla.

Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla II (1993) succeeds where other G-movies sometimes don’t quite step up when it comes to the battle scenes. These chaotic sequences are violent, brutal, explosive and devastating – much like my latest proctology exam, but with way less crying.

Roman Vampire

Before zombies took over as the “go to” monsters, it was vampires who ruled our wasteful lives. And while it probably won’t restore bloodbathers to their former glory, the upcoming Nightfall by Italian FX maestro/director Sergio Stivaletti looks to bring something new to the vampire mythology.

Good luck with that.

Stivaletti, as you may or may not be aware of because you’re checking Facebook all day long, is the guy who did the kick ass effects in Opera, Demons 1 & 2 and directed The Wax Mask, wherein a couple are horribly murdered in half by a masked man with a metal claw who rips their hearts out. Then that happens to more people. I’m thinking the mask was made of wax.

So Nightfall has this going for it: “Two friends uncover a vampire conspiracy to enslave the human race.” That’s all we know about the movie, which according to Facebook hasn’t even begun filming yet. Or maybe it has. I’ll have to keep checking Facebook, which is the real vampire. That thing sucks your life in half.

Giant Rats Eat Your Face

It doesn’t matter where the eerie “food” that boiled up through the ground came from. All you need to know is that when fed to a variety of animals, it causes a growth spurt of B-movie proportions.

Living on an island with no pet store in which to buy canned food for their chickens, farmer Skinner and his wife feed the crud to their livestock. But worms, rats and bees eat it, too, then pull the dine-n-dash bit. No worries – they’ll be easily found now that the island is teeming with giant rats, worms and bees.

Mr. and Mrs. Skinner are about to earn their last name. Investigating these swollen pests, Jack Bensington, a dog food company CEO, wants to grab some of the grow chow and market it. Smart man – no wonder he’s the boss. He’ll never see it go to market as he and some others get trapped in a farmhouse being attacked by giant rats. (The rats are real, the farmhouse is not. Can’t decide on Bensington.)

A rather ambitious plan is formulated to blow up the local dam and drown those damn rodents. The problem with leaving giant rat bodies laying around is that they’re gonna be eaten, say by a raccoon or a…cow. And what comes from a cow? And guess what age group drinks what comes from a cow?

The conclusion of Food of the Gods (1976), while udderly ridiculous (how could I not say that?), sets up a sequel. For once, milk is good for every body.

Deader Snow

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead. Finally – a sequel to a movie that actually deserves to have a sequel. [se•quel / noun / a literary work, movie, etc., that is complete in itself but continues the narrative of a preceding work.]

The plot, as if one is really needed – “Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead follows the sole survivor of a Nazi zombie attack who battles an even larger army of zombies with the help of The Zombie Squad, a professional gang of zombie killers from the U.S.”

If you saw the utterly awesome Dead Snow (2009/Norway), you know what all of the above means: someone’s torso is gonna get opened like a wet Christmas present and the contents therein strewn across a landscape of pristine white snow. Happy entrails to you.

Dead Snow situated a bunch of med students on a ski vacation in a cabin on a snow-lathered mountain. They find a cache of gold, which belonged to a WWII Nazi Einsatzgruppe, who probably stole it. Nazis can be so mean.

By taking the gold, the party people resurrect the Nazis who are now flesh slurping zombies who need the money to buy services and goods. Or just to have it in their retirement portfolio. Once the undead dig out from the frozen sliding area, full on intestine-flinging action ensues. Put Dead Snow in the “Top 10 Zombie Movies of All Time” category.

As for Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead, put me in the “I’m writing my name in the snow with total excitement to see this one” category.

Lady Terminator

The South Seas Queen is a sexually insatiable monarch that has unsafe sex with a LOT of men. Unsafe because if you don’t satisfy her, an eel in her crotch bites off your Willy Wonka and you die (mostly from embarrassment). Still, men line up around the block to get some ’o that South Seas free lovin’.

One guy, though, manages to ring her bell and the eel slithers out of her love grotto. The man grabs it and the darn thing turns into a dagger. This makes the Sea Queen mad because he won’t give it back, so she curses his great-great-great-great granddaughter that he’ll be related to 100,000 years from now. This ancestor of Johnny Humpalot will pay the price for her well-endowed grandfather’s treachery.

Jump forward to 1989 and a Flashdance-type archeologist in a bikini sets out into the vast ocean to snorkel among the ruins where the ancient dagger is supposed to be laying right out in the open for anyone with a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus to find. But the South Sea Queen has other plans, and takes over the young woman’s body and resumes her mate/terminate sex spree.

Lady Terminator (1989) is full of cheesy stupidity, LOTS of naked stuff, paintball splatter and guns a’plenty, dialogue that’ll give you the runs, and one of the worst lounge songs – performed in its entirety – you’ll ever hear. What’s not to like?

Fair-Haired Horror

What birthday present should you give to a 15 year-old kid who doesn’t know how to swim? A row boat, of course! And what good is a boat without a bottomless pond out back in which to not float in?

A Carnegie Hall husband and wife piano/cello team looses their son to the lilly pads and invokes Satan to bring him back. In order to do so, they must sacrifice 12 virgin teen girls (good luck finding that many) to Johnny, the fair-haired child in the basement.

Tara, an outcast at school and the last required virgin, is abducted and tossed in the cellar where she bonds with mute basement boy. Every 15 minutes he turns into a really cool looking freak creature with sticks growing out of his white bald head and an upside down cross burned into his skull.

This creature eats virgins and gains a bit more humanity in the process. In almost human form he tries to kill himself (hanging, stabbing), but it doesn’t work. To make matters worse, he ends up disemboweling Tara. Before dying, she writes a message in blood: “I forgive you, Johnny.” That she had nice penmanship makes him all the more anguished as he was just getting to first base with the girly girl.

Now he can turn into the 100% fair haired child (or, “teenager”) his folks bargained all those virgins for. But Johnny did a little wheelin’ ’n dealin’ himself, and turned the tables on his ghoulish-but-musically-talented parents. Invoking the demon thing, which looks suspiciously female, the parents are ripped to shreds. Guess who the demon is? No, guess!

Despite all the blood and innards and satanic stuff, Masters of Horror: Fair-Haired Child (2006)  ends on an up note – and not one that can be played by even the most accomplished of musicians. Heh.

Helix: Disease TV

I’m often wary of made-for-TV horror and sci-fi as they water it down so much as to be a non-alcoholic beverage. Then along comes brutally brilliant stuff like The Walking Dead and American Horror Story to set things right for TV again.

So it is with these same high hopes I wish for Helix, an intensely gripping sci-fi series about disease-gone-wild, premiering on the improving SyFy™ Channel in January, 2014. If you haven’t seen the trailers, feast your face on this: “Helix is an intense thriller about a team of scientists from the Centers for Disease Control who travel to a high-tech research facility in the Arctic to investigate a possible disease outbreak, only to find themselves pulled into a terrifying life-and-death struggle that holds the key to mankind’s salvation…or total annihilation.”

Total annihilation. Those two words go together like “cold” and “beer.”

What gives me excitement pee shivers is that Steven Madea is on board as Helix’s co-executive producer. You may have seen his credit on Lost, CSI: Miami, and The X-Files.

All things being equal, Helix is a contemporary spin on 1971’s Andromeda Strain, which I deftly reviewed and posted on January, 9, 2013. As I recall, the seas were rough that day. I had finished the first of what was to be an entire half rack of Budweiser. Sharing was not an option.

To let the review enrich your life, click HERE

Existenz – The Ultimate Gameboy

Thematically picking up where Videodrome (1983) left off, eXistenZ, filmmaker David Cronenberg’s 1999 sci-fi flesh machine, goes Nintendo™ and X-Box™ one step further by turning your body into a game cartridge. Creating a “bio-port” in the base of your spine, you can plug yourself in to the game pod (made out of hi-tech fish guts and wires) and play cool virtual games. (I bet Virtual Outhouse is a top-seller. Satisfying replay value.)

Allegra, the gaming industry’s most heralded creator, brings select gamers together to test-run eXistenZ, her latest creation. A rival company interferes with a botched assassination attempt, and the fun begins. Sort of. At times, moving as slow as a 14.4 modem, the plot almost swamps itself by adding too many confusing elements and no bare bio-butts.

Cool parts include lots of goopy gore (a gun made from fish bones shoots human teeth), mutant creatures harvested for their weapons and fish ’n chips applications, and Jennifer Jason Leigh looking replay value hot hot as a sultry, bed-warming blonde genius.

The finale has a nice hook, but since nobody gets gainfully naked – digitally or otherwise – it all falls a bit flat. In short, eXistenZ is a wry statement on how gaming has replaced sex in our lives, it has nothing on that stud, Super Mario™.

Zombie World

A new zombie flick that reverses the role of zombie vs. human. Be right back – I have to yawn.

Yeah, a bit snarky, but enough with the zombie crap already. No matter how you spin it, zombie movies are so overdone as to be my neighbor’s holiday meatloaf. (Ironically, that thing keeps coming back to life, year after year.)

So Zombie World (2014), a Spanish horror flick at that, pit zombies against an inhuman enemy: humans. Synopsis: In a world where zombies are on the planet, a terrible event will transform humans with a rage that will be unleashed on all zombies. Now it is they who have to hide to avoid being killed or becoming infected humans.

Hmmm – zombies by nature are already dead. So how can they be killed and/or infected by humans? The only “virus” I can think of that’s capable of doing that is BOREDOM.

Incidentally, Zombie World’s plot is a twist on an old Twilight Zone episode from the ‘60s. Go look it up; it’d be a nice distraction from YET ANOTHER zombie movie.