Terror Birds: Droppings From the Sky

Terror Birds, as the ad poster indicates in entry level Photoshoppery, is “hatching soon.” As you can see, there is a monster bird claw coming out of a giant egg. And hatching is what giant eggs do. So that makes it a clever turn of phrase, yes?

No. It’s Art Institute™ grade advertising at best. But I digress. The real reason for griping is that Terror Birds, an obvious cash-in to Jurassic World’s (2015) rampaging box office success using once-thought extinct dino birds as the movie’s antagonists, has already been done. Several times, in fact.

One example: Pterodactyl, starring “terror birds,” was released in 2005 and had rap star Coolio shooting machine guns at the prehistoric monsters. (Not a fan of rap music, but Coolio is pretty dang cool.) Terror Birds stars a bunch of generic, scrubbed and polished white kids straight outta Scooby-Doo™ and/or Disney™. There’s your target audience right there.

On top of this, Terror Birds even steals concept art from Pterodactyl to the point of plagiarism. But that’s the least of anyone’s worries, as you can see by the plot:

“When Maddy Stern discovers her father has gone missing during a routine birdwatching excursion, she and her college pals trek out into the wilderness to find him, only to end up in a wealthy scientist’s desolate ranch aviary, where they encounter a pair of giant, hungry terror birds believed to be extinct for centuries.”

Now compare that to the plot of Pterodactyl: “A dormant volcano deep with the Turkish forest holds within it a deadly secret. Perfectly preserved, a nest of pterodactyl eggs are ready to hatch…”

Couple that with Coolio, steaming piles of pterodactyl droppings, machine guns, a volcano, and you have quality sci-fi entertainment. (Note to anyone who gives a dropping: stick it out to the end; there’s a final scene that’s pretty coolio.)

P.S. For all you hard-core pterodactyl fans, seek out The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (aka, Les Adventures Extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec/2010): “A popular (and supermodel hot) novelist flies around 1912 Paris on the back of a pterodactyl, dealing with her would-be suitors, the cops, and monsters.” Fun movie, but unfortunately no machine guns. Or Coolio, who wouldn’t be born for another 51 years. Pitié.

Dead and Buried: Obscene But Not Heard

Dead & Buried, a 1981 lurid crap classic and, despite its budgetary limitations, actually added a new twist to the zombie genre without evening knowing it or promoting itself as a zombie movie. But to tell you what it is, I’d have to spoil the entire thing. By doing so, as the neighbor’s 4 year-old kid says, will have me “going to jail for a very long time.”

Since I don’t want to go to jail for any length of time, I’ll just give you a few of the juicy details – and by that, I mean oozing, shiny juicy gore.

Potter’s Bluff is a small coastal New England town where its residents act nice at first, then bash you over the head with hard objects, tie you up, then light you on fire while you’re still screaming about being hit with hard objects. As you’re doing your best Joan of Arc impersonation, this large group of PB’s citizens take pictures and home movie footage, all the while showing about as much emotion as someone totally wasted on Zima™.

If you somehow manage to live, you get taken to the hospital, where a nurse will give you a co-pay lethal injection in the eye. Then off to the coroner you go, while the local sheriff searches for clues as to who is wasting gasoline and matches on tourists.

Daily explicit and grisly deaths, with the recently deceased showing up soon thereafter, fit as a fiddle, looking no worse for wear and tear (emphasis on the tear). The sheriff is flummoxed (word of the day calendar –sweet), but slowly starts to assemble the clues. It isn’t until he stumbles across footage of the townsfolk’s handiwork that he loses it, especially since one clip involves his wife and… Uh oh.

During this, the emotionally distraught sheriff also discovers who is behind all this madness. And it’s right here we get the money shot. In a sweet twist, the horror of all this “bringing ‘em back to life” whack-a-do pays off like a max bet penny slot machine. Did for me, anyway.

FYI: Due to its unflinching gore and violence, Dead & Buried was initially banned as a “video nasty” in the UK in the early 1980s, but was later acquitted of obscenity charges and removed from the Director of Public Prosecutions’ list. Whew!

Phantasm Ravager Has Big Balls

You know how life totally sucks and then every once in a while something comes along to make things not so totally sucky? The announcement that not only is there a new Phantasm movie, but that it’s already done and gearing for release, is one of those somethings.

Filming completely off the radar, Phantasm Ravager (cool flippin’ title) is the fifth and final Phantasm movie, one of the coolest horror franchises ever. How they did this without anyone blabbing all over the Internet is almost as astonishing as the sequel itself, of which promises us the biggest sphere of all. (Think Godzilla-sized pinball.)

Phantasm, released in 1979, pitted an ice cream truck driver and friends against the Tall Man, the iconic otherworldly undertaker that robs graves and takes the dead bodies into his dimension, squishes the corpses into hooded zombie dwarves, and brings them back to life. And why does the Tall Man do this? To take over the world. Duh.

And Reggie Bannister, the ice cream truck driver? Easily right up there with Ash of the Evil Dead series as a regular guy going against horrific, apocalyptic and supernatural throw-downs, all the while getting in a few good one-liners and driving a seriously cool car – a 1971 Plymouth Barracuda. (The ice cream truck was pretty cool, too, especially since it’s refrigerated – heh.)

So what’s the deal with Phantasm Ravager? Still stars Reggie, our fav hero. Still stars the original Tall Man. Still written by original writer/direction Don Coscarelli. Still features those insane flying chrome spheres that sprout Swiss Army knife sharp things that drill into your face and pump out the yellow goo that used to be your thought goo.

And just when is Phantasm Ravager scheduled for release? Got bumped out to 2016, probably because they needed more ball polish. Okay, that didn’t sound right.

P.S. Here’s your binge homework for the week: Phantasm (1979), Phantasm II (1988), Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994), and Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998).

Zombie Pigs: Pork and Beings

Word of warning before you watch Proie, a 2010 French horror movie about zombie hogs. There are numerous, highly graphic and gory depictions of animal damage. If that kind of stuff goons you out, this is not the movie for you. (It’s double icky.)

Proie, or Prey as it was released in the States, finds a tempestuous family reunion gathering out in the French countryside (or “woods”), where there’s a lot of back story stuff to color the characters so that you feel emotionally invested in them. What ev. The family runs a pesticides business and is headed up by dad, one cranky and tough S.O.B. Have to be if the contaminates your slinging is your only source of income.

Several recent violent animal behavior incidents have the men in the family heading out to see what the fudge: panicked deer ramming themselves into electric fences and maddened feral pigs, rotting from the inside out, chasing anything and anyone who ventures out into the overgrown forest. (Even the flora looks mean.)

The men keep hearing ominous screech-y sounds, augmented by lots of heavy grunting. (Like my neighbors on date night.) Words are said, swearing exclaimed and the men are systematically being hunted by zombie hogs who are beyond rabid, violently hungry, mega-aggressive and double icky.

It’s determined that the contaminated pesticides leaked into a nearby lake. The area’s woodland creatures chug the water. Then they mate. (Who wouldn’t after loosening up with a drink or two?) Then they give birth to mutated offspring that pursue all things human with extreme prejudice.

Where Proie excels is when they don’t show you these animal attacks –you hear the pant-soiling growls in front, behind and on the sides of you and see the tall weeds indicating something is heading your way. And they do this at night. Nerve-wracking set-up to balance the food chain.

There’s so much goopy gore and blood gushing towards the end, you kinda feel the need to bathe after watching it unfold, which it does nicely. (Just when you think this madness is ending, it throws some more twists and gunk at you several more times.)

With that, Proie is subtitled, even the animal noises. Just wish I could read so as to get a much more satisfying movie experience.

Spoiled Horror

Julia, a grisly, revenge-type horror movie, premiered 2014 at Screamfest. This accounts for all the online reviews/spoilers. Thanks a lot, jerkwads.

And while I now know everything that happens in the movie via those reviews and trailer, I guess there’s no reason to rent the movie when it releases to theaters on October 23, 2015. But for those of you intrigued enough to keep reading, here’s the movie’s press quip:

“Julia is a neo-noir revenge thriller centering on Julia Shames, who after suffering a brutal trauma, falls prey to an unorthodox form of therapy to restore herself.”

You already know what this “form of therapy” is, even without me spoiling it for you the way the early reviews spoiled it for me.

Man, I really want to wreck it for everyone. Not this time, though. My online anger management courses must be kicking in. $4.99 well spent.

Poetic Alien

You can forget about Prometheus 2 right here and now. Just walk away.

But don’t walk too far as what we all assumed would be the sequel title for Prometheus (2012) is now being called Alien: Paradise Lost (release date none of your beeswax). This was revealed by director Ridley Scott, who is crafting the sequel as we e-speak.

To all you literary types: The title is an intentional reference to Paradise Lost, the John Milton classic. (Milton, a 16th century poet, probably wore shirts with poofy sleeves and drank wine out of a bucket.)

So what is the connection to the mammoth master work and the Alien franchise? Pretty clear to me that the new alien creatures will recite poems with their outer mouth while they punch a hole in your face with their inner extend-o mouth.

Sometimes I’m embarrassed by my smartness.

Underwear Godzilla

Because of all your generous contributions to the box office for Godzilla (2014), the Japanese are planning to satisfy our yen (sorry) for more ’Zilla, this one officially titled Shin Gojira, and is set for release in 2016 thereabouts.

The filmmakers state that the 29th Godzilla film (31st if you add the American versions) will be one of the strongest Godzilla of the series. The plot? The King of Monsters smashes everything like he’s always done. (If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. And yes, I get the iony of that statement.)

While details are sparse, the one thing being told is that Shin Gojira will be even taller than the 2014 version. Use this handy comparison chart to wrap your reality around it…

• Godzilla 1954: 164 feet tall

• Godzilla 1985: 260 feet tall

• Godzilla 1992: 325 feet tall

• Godzilla 1998: No one cares as that Godzilla blew sea donkeys

• Godzilla 2000: 180 feet tall

• Godzilla 2014: 350 feet tall

• Godzilla 2016: 355 feet tall (possibly bigger)

Factfiend.com reveals that Godzilla’s height was specially chosen to make him “tall enough to adorably peek over the tippy tops of buildings.”

Directors Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi promise to provide the “most terrifying Godzilla that Japan’s cutting-edge special-effects movie-making can muster.” This clearly means Shin Gojira will be smashing everything in hi-def.

The prefix “shin” has 13 different meanings, ranging everywhere from “new” to “true.” There’s even 54 more meanings when “shin” is added in conjunction with another word or letter. Example: “shin’i” means “underwear.”

Shin’i Gojira – the implications are staggering.

Zombie Winos

The Raisins of Death. That’s how the title of the 1978 French zombie movie sorta translates. I don’t know why, but this rocks my world. Probably because I occasional sprinkle death raisins atop my dinner cereal.

So Les Raisins de la Mort (aka, The Grapes of Death) is a nicely gory horror flick that uses contaminated grapes (or “les raisins”) squished into wine that, when consumed with pinky extended, turns one into a rotting zombie. And here all this time I thought drinking wine turns you into a snob, or “snombie.”

How did the grapes get contaminated? Glad you asked. A worker at the Roublès winemaking vineyard becomes ill, complaining of a pain in his neck. (Either his boss, wife, or both is my guess.)

As the infection spreads to others via this pain in the neck, people meet painful ends: throats cut, assorted mouth bites, cars parking on your torso, stranglings, garden forks jammed into chests instead of nutritious salads, and best of all (or worst, depending on which side of the handle you’re on), living heads being chopped off with a hatchet. Makes sense when you think of the rudimentary wine-making tools they had back in the late Seventies.

As previously hinted, blood gooshes from every orifice, opening and so forth. Bright red blood, too. Not like that fake stuff you see on the news. But wait, there’s more – full frontal chick nudity, which comes with a side of bare naked boobies and glistening infected open wounds that look like someone glued rubber novelty vomit on said fun bumps. Lots of endless shrieking and screaming, probably caused by drinking face-pinching, sour ass wine instead of cold, refreshing beer.

Since everybody in France slurps wine – especially so during last week’s wine festival that infected the small village and made their faces turn into freshness-expired mini-mart soufflès – there’s no shortage of zombie attacks. That’s pretty much it, except that every single one of The Grapes/Raisins of Death actors and actresses have tongue-tangling names that no one but their mothers can pronounce. (Jean-Pierre Bouyxou? This guy is just begging to be turned into a zombie.)

Still Lost in Space

Now that everyone’s suitably worked into a froth over all things space truckin’ (thank you Interstellar, The Martian, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Deep Purple), it’s a no-brainer for Hollywood to jump on the launch pad and get more space-y films into orbit.

Filmed in Los Angeles but made to make us think we’re on a distant planet (not too much of a stretch), 400 Days (2015) puts four astronauts into a simulated mission to put the screws to the psychological effects of space travel. Pffftttt – I can do that from a bar stool – before last call.

As the plot goes, “Locked away for 400 days, the crew’s mental state begins to deteriorate when they lose all communication with the outside world. Forced to exit the ship, they discover that this mission may not have been a simulation after all.”

Thanks for the spoiler, Hollywood jerks. And since we’re on the subject, this has already been done – in 1959. Titled “Where is Everybody?”, The Twilight Zone’s very first episode (thank you, Rod Serling), reads almost exactly like the plot of 400 Days…

“His name is Mike Ferris, an astronaut in training who has been confined to an isolation room located within an aircraft hangar for 484 hours and 36 minutes. He has been undergoing tests to determine his fitness for spaceflight and whether he can handle the psychological stress of a prolonged trip to the Moon alone.”

And to think all he had to do was go to a dive bar, which is where Hollywood seems to be going for inspiration these days.

Sex Monsters

Sexually transmitted diseases seem to be making a comeback in horror movies lately (Contracted, Contracted: Phase II, It Follows), and look to replace science/space virus recipes normally used to make zombies. About time that old hat got an upgrade. But the message is clear: get a boner, become a donor.

The aforementioned crotch cooties gone wild are at the root of Night of Something Strange (2015), in which five teenage friends set out for the beach on their Spring Break vacation.

While it seems to be a contemporary spin on The Evil Dead (1981), the gory story goes like this: “Good times are cut short when one of the group, Carrie, contracts a deadly sexual transmitted disease during a bathroom stop. When they stop for the night at an isolated motel, the real terror begins when the STD virus starts running rampant, turning those infected into the living dead. However, there’s more going on at the motel than meets the eye.”

Contracts a deadly sexual transmitted disease during a bathroom stop? Super ick! What is it with young people these days that the urge to merge is so powerful that they seek out the nearest super ick-infested gas station bathroom to get momentarily romantic in?

Back in sensibly horny days, a vacationing neighbor’s garage was a veritable Chateau Marmont. The smell of old gas-y lawn mowers and half-used cans of fragrant paint brings back a few puberty party memories.

My next door neighbors knew me too well, though, and set up guard dogs, snipers and booby traps around their property when they left town. Took me three weeks to dig a tunnel.