Punk Rock Space Bird

The “giant claw” is a gigantic, squawking space bird that sounds like a panic-stricken monkey and a car alarm, and looks similar to those novelty toys you win playing ring toss at the carnival. Except they give this to you when you lose.

G. Claw is here. Deal with it. Mitch MacAfee, aeronautical engineer, sees the bird first during a radar test in the North Pole. He thinks it’s a UFO and is mocked for it. Given that the monster first appears as nothing more than a blur, like laundry fuzz in the corner of your eye, it’s a sound assumption. It isn’t until this hungry bird attacks a plane and eats the skydivers — and their parachutes — like gum with the wrapper still on, that MacAfee is taken seriously.

All attempts to blow that darn thing out of the sky are futile. Seems it emits some sort of deflective anti-matter shield around itself. So now the race is on to figure out how to burst its bubble. Meanwhile, Claw is eating teenager filled cars, trains and anything else with a nice satisfying crunch. (G-Claw chews into the U.N. building as if it were a skyscraping Graham Cracker™.)

Assisting MacAfee and his experiments with meson atoms is his smooch-able girlfriend, Dr. Karol Noymann and the non-smooch-able General Considine and General Van Buskirk. Working around the clock, experiment after experiment fails, while Claw is making a nest the size of a parking lot in which to lay goop filled eggs.

Finally succeeding at creating a machine that renders the bird’s anti-matter invulnerable, they rig it to a B-52 bomber and lure Big Bird into a trap, complete with armed warheads. And Claw shall shriek no more.

The Giant Claw (1957) is two movies, one loaded with tight acting/rapid fire hilarious dialogue, and the other a discount puppet show, with the bird’s Sesame Street™ hairdo and strings visible, flapping askew around the sky like it was on drugs. You’ll like this movie better if you were on drugs.

P.S. Don’t do drugs.

Predator Tourists

A replacement alien Predator (the first one blew himself up) chooses downtown Los Angeles as his fertile hunting grounds, and turns up right as the drug wars are in season. Crooks who are more comical than comic books are shooting everything, including cops who are all but wearing shirts from Target™. Whiz bang start to Predator 2 (1990), and a solid sequel at that.

The Predator cares not for social woes and stabs, impales, slices, dices and collects skulls with spines attached for his trophy wall. The Feds attempt to capture this armed extraterrestrial, but that doesn’t work out so well. The Predator, as you know, can blend into the environment. Not quite invisible, but enough to become 97% transparent. As a hunting advantage goes, I feel this is cheating.

One cop chases the monster all over L.A. and lays some slappy down upon its articulated face. He’s the only one to actually do hand-to-claw combat with the creature and walk away with most of his entrails still in place.

The chase extends to the elevator shaft, which has a deeper hole leading beneath the building. This is where the Predator’s flying saucer is parked and where the final battle takes place. On that note, the saucer’s interior is freaking cool. I really need to decorate my apartment in that same color scheme.

Like the first Predator, this one doesn’t end as planned, with the mortally wounded open-face sandwich monster having its carcass collected by an entire spaceship filled with a gang of Predators. As a sign of warrior respect, they give the cop a 300 year-old pistol from their collection. I would have preferred to get behind the wheel and take the saucer out for a spin around the block. Then I would have the biggest grin on my articulated face.

Man Skunk, Twin Ghosts, Hobo Maniacs

Yeesh, 2016 was a craptastic year. Good year for horror, though. Here’s some upcoming and uplifting new horror flicks to cleanse the palette for 2017…

I WAS A TEENAGE WERESKUNK (available now)
“Wholesome teenager Curtis Albright’s world is thrown into chaos when he’s sprayed in the face by an enchanted skunk. Now whenever Curtis feels sexually aroused — which is damn near constant for a teenage boy — he turns into a MURDEROUS WERESKUNK!”

An enchanted skunk. Just when you think you’ve seen everything. Still, this one sounds pretty funny. Hope it doesn’t stink. Heh.

SADAKO VS KAYAKO (available now in Japan / January 26, 2017 on Shudder)
“After watching a cursed videotape, Natsumi has only two days before she will be killed by demonic entity Sadako. Her only hope is to pit Sadako against Kayako, a menacing spirit that inhabits a haunted house.”

Sadako from The Ring series and Kayako from The Grudge series are practically the same vengeful, long black hair ghost thingamajig and collectively have appeared in two dozen prequels, sequels, reboots and remakes. Makes sense to get ‘em in a box office lock-up, ala Freddy vs. Jason (2003). Heck, they can even share clothes and hair tips.

POOL PARTY MASSACRE (2017)
“When Blair, a high maintenance young socialite invites some friends over to her parents house for an intimate pool party, they are unaware that a serial killer is hiding inside the house. What started out as a relaxing summer day by the pool quickly turns into a nightmare as the unknown killer begins to stalk and murdering the young girls one by one.”

Not a lot of plot. But hey, watching over-privileged snots get Cuisinart’d isn’t a bad way to waste time.

PARASITES (JANUARY 24, 2017/VOD)
“The industrial barbarianism of downtown Los Angeles is equal parts player and punisher in this survive-at-all-costs tale of a group of friends who get lost in the seedy streets where they encounter a crazed gang of homeless derelicts that captures and maims them one-by-one. One lucky man escapes on foot, naked and unarmed, with a pack of depraved transients in pursuit, staying only seconds ahead. Clinging to sanity and reduced to helpless prey, with only instinct to guide him, can he survive this coliseum of horror?”

Industrial barbarianism. Sounds like a metal sub-genre. The songs practically write themselves. Time to start a band.

Animal People

A mad scientist (okay, not really mad, but maybe a bit peeved) lives on an island where he’s been experimenting turning humans into animals, or “manimals.” Sound familiar? It should — Twilight People (1972) is an unintentionally cheesy second attempt at adapting the 1896 H.G. Wells’ novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau, the first swing being Island of Lost Souls in 1932. (Note to manimals: Dr. Moreau was remade two more times — in 1977 and yet again in 1996, both with equally laughable results.)

Professionally handsome Matt Farrell was out skin diving when he’s caught and pulled out of the sea like the catch of the day. He’s brought to an island where Dr. Gordon, in a huge mansion with spare dungeon, has been making animal/human hybrids to create a super race to outlive Earth’s eventual demise via war, pollution and 7-Eleven™ Truckstopper microwave burritos. Gordon’s plan is to use Matt’s physical and intellectual superiority to advance his medical aspirations.

Assisting Dr. Gordon is Neva, his supermodel daughter, who falls under the spell of Matt’s overpowering handsomeness. But Gordon’s henchmen, led by the cocky, gun-happy Steinman (even his name sounds arrogant), wants Matt shot in his good looks.

The animals are the real stars, though. There’s a panther woman, an antelope man, a bat man, an ape man, a wolf woman and a tree woman, Gordon’s first attempt at combining plant DNA with a human. The result? Oops.

An epic chase scene wraps things up when Matt and Neva escape with the manimals while Steinman pursues with meaningful gunfire. The fun explodes when the hybrids, now released back into the wild, do what animals do — after a few pooper scooper moments, of course. Can you blame them?

The manimals fight back, ripping faces and throats while Matt and Steinman settle their differences. But it’s when Darmo the bat man regains his ability to fly that the movie — and his revenge on Dr. Gordon — is the money shot. The overhead dive bomb view is so classic, he could give pointers to gangsta seagulls.

P.S. You can be highly entertained by Twilight People on YouTube™ for free.

Our TVs Are Filled With Horror

It’s been a banner year for horror/sci-fi TV, the nightly news notwithstanding. While I’ve dipped my couch into stuff like The Strain, Preacher, Van Helsing and Outcast, due to there being only 24 hours to a day, I was only able to watch 1,825 hours of quality genre programming. Doesn’t scratch the surface of what’s out there. That established, here’s a few 2016 horror/sci-fi viewing habits…

THE WALKING DEAD
Like it or double love it, season seven’s opener was one of the all-time jarring shockers of this or any other year, setting the bar unreachably high on all out line-crossing torture porn. New hammy villain Negan (rhymes with “vegan”) makes season three’s Governor look like a Wal-Mart™ door greeter.

FEAR OF THE WALKING DEAD
Barely made it through season one. Then I watched the season two opener and walked away from it. Too many unlikeable characters in implausible circumstances. The zombies, ironically, are the most believable aspects of the show.

STRANGER THINGS
By far and away THE best new horror/fantasy series hit of the year. A monster called Demogogon exists in an alternate dimension called the Upside Down. (I’ve been visiting there every since discovering alcohol.) The darn thing gets into the regular dimension and all mystery heck breaks loose with pre-teens — and the magnificent Winona Ryder — Scooby-Doo’ing the heck out of said mystery. P.S. The Upside Down would be a great name for a dive bar.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: MY ROANOKE NIGHTMARE
Like goat cheese on pizza, this season did not work at all. The problems? Start with the first episode and end with the last one. I’ll give ‘em props for trying to mix a reality show premise with found footage. But there’s a reason why reality shows and found footage suck. And the muddled, no questions answered season end was indeed a nightmare. P.S. Lady Gaga was vastly underused this season.

ASH VS. EVIL DEAD
As amazingly corny, campy and killer as you’d expect. Why didn’t they think of doing a TV series years ago? (Ash should’ve been elected president.) The evil dead still have it in for Ash after all these years. Good for us. Not so good for him.

STAN AGAINST EVIL
Stan Miller, a grizzled, forced-into-retirement redneck sheriff, Archie Bunker’s his way through an inexhaustible stream of demons stinkin’ up his New England town. One great crack after another: “My shirt smells like low tide at A**hole Beach,” and “Ever been beaten with a bag of oranges?” An easy and obvious successor to Ash.

FROM DUSK ‘TILL DAWN
On its third season, the Gecko Brothers really flesh out the franchise’s storyline and take it to new extremes with a shocking (and satisfying) amount of blood and violence. Pushing the boundaries of censorship, TV vampires have never looked this nasty cool.

THE RETURNED
One of the quiest, unsettling and beautifully creepy made-in-France eight-episode series (based on a French movie of the same name) in 2016. Will make you rethink what a zombie is/should be. Don’t worry about moving your lips to the sub-titles; there’s not a lot of wordings. Or screamings. As I said, quiet.

THE EXORCIST
Who knew they could take one punchline and make a tense and nervewracking TV series out of expunging demons from beleagured souls every week? Looks fun. Wonder if I can schedule an exorcism appointment for myself? My stupid health insurance probably won’t cover it, though.

CHANNEL ZERO
A tooth monster. Yep, you read me right. There’s a monster made of human teeth in this slow-burn awesome SyFy Channel™ original series. The show has bite. C’mon — how could I not say that? The joke was sitting right there.

SALEM
Tried to get through the first season of Salem a while back. Even with plenty of icky, gnarly witches and the demonic gunk/insects drooling/crawling out of their orifices, was not able to emotionally invest in it, which is why I haven’t pursed it in subsequent seasons. Probably should should go back and recommit to evil and see where the show takes me.

Of the sci-fi superhero stuff, watched most but not all. (Looking in your direction Arrow season 5 and D.C.’s Legends of Tomorrow.) Speaking of Arrow, his famous line before shooting criminals in the chest with his name always says, “You have failed this city…” At the beginning of season 4 his girlfriend attempts to make him breakfast. He looks at it and says, “You have failed this omelette…” That’s not just funny, it’s dang funny.

Anyway, here’s what else I warmed the couch cushions to…

SUPERGIRL
Season 2 episode (“Changing”) is where Supergirl gets drunk — on one drink — and her Black-Ops step-sister tells her she’s driving her home. Supergirl: “Well, I’m sure not flying!” I LOL’d over that one. Supergirl gets smacked upside the “S” in almost every episode, sometimes by space alien criminals instead of delicious adult beverages. I’ll give it to that super cutie — she can take a punch. Just not from the punch bowl. Heh.

P.S. Digging the crossover stuff, like when The Flash showed up in Supergirl’s world. Her day job boss at Catco (media conglomerate), not knowing who Flash is, named him The Whoosh. Priceless.

THE FLASH
Turns out there’s hundreds of Earths, each one accessible with the help of a user-friendly meta-human. This means more Flashie knock-offs, more meta-criminals, more storylines and more opportunities for the Flash to get beaten up every time he slows down. Quite nifty they’re invoking Flashpoint (time-travel and the Butterfly Effect) from the cartoons. Even still, a bit on the lightweight side. It’s not like I can change the channel or anything. Wait a sec…

GOTHAM
Pleasantly graphic and unflinchingly violent re-imagining of the classic Dark Knight universe, with a pre-pubed Bruce Wayne (not quite Batman) sporting a bat-a-rang for Selina Kyle (Catwoman as a street kid), the Penguin (criminal turned mayor — there’s a stretch), Edward Nygma (Riddler), Joker (killed off way too soon, but coming back somehow), Poison Ivy (played by three different plant species), and a D.C. sampler of legacy super criminals (Mr. Freeze, Mad Hatter, Hugo Strange). Despite all these tasty elements, it’s police detective Jim Gordon and Bruce’s now-legal guardian/servant Alfred (cast as a former member of the the British Special Air Service) who are the standout ass kickers here.

DAREDEVIL
Season one was good at establishing Matt Murdock — blind and struggling public defender — as a serious defender of justice with the business end of his fist. Season two’s storylines were better developed, but it’s the all-out slobber-knocking fight scenes, which often leave Matt a candidate for emergency medical attention, that leaves one’s mouth agape. Simply agape.

AGENT’S OF S.H.I.E.L.D.
This was a personal fav, but the storylines are jumping around like meta-frogs. Finding it interesting that Marvel and D.C., both of whom boast superheroes with the same abilities (Green Arrow/Hawkeye, The Atom/Ant-Man, Flash/Quicksilver, Hawkman/Angel, Aquaman/Sub-Mariner, El-Diablo/Human Torch), are using similar terms, if not story lines with Hive/H.I.V.E. It’s kinda like comparing apples to, um, windows. Heh. And an Aussie beer swillin’, womanizing, obnoxious Ghost Rider? Brilliant.

LUKE CAGE
Best surprise hit of the getting-crowded-by-the-minute superhero TV series. Luke, first introduced in Jessica Jones as her “friend” with mattress benefits, returns as a super smooth, reluctant, big city neighborhood hero impervious to artillery and sharp stuff while dispensing much-needed street justice with super strength, all against a backdrop of current day Harlem. (You’ll forget you’re watching a contemporary show and not back in the ’70s. An excellent homage to Shaft.)

Besides being a top-notch African-American superhero, the show’s music, performed in a criminal’s nightclub with today’s artists (Raphael Saadiq, Charles Bradley, Faith Evans, The Delfonics and more), is beyond groovy. I could easily dance to it. That’s MY super power. (Yeah, I prefer metal, but that’s where I let my neck dance.)

P.S. And why the flip is there not a second Jessica Jones season? Do I need to go all Daredevil on someone’s decision-making process?

P.P.S. And where the flippin’ fudge is iZombie season three? The CW’s™ website says it’ll be a two-hour season premiere on Tuesday, April 4, 2017. Get your cookbook ready for more brain-eating recipes.

You’ve Got Poltergeists

Thanks to their hottie 15 year-old daughter whose drunk driving/baby-sitting skills left her three-year-old brother unable to talk, the parents wiped out their entire savings account on medical bills and were forced to move into a dumpy shack and grow sunflowers. (Personally, there’s more money in hamburger trees, but hey, what do I know?)

Transplanting from downtown Chicago to rural North Dakota is enough of a culture shock without having eerie ghosts crawling all over the walls like some transparent Spider-Man. Only the little boy can see them and is always staring at the ceiling and pointing.

The teen daughter suspects something is way wrong and her theories are proven to be better than her ability to operate a car when ghost arms come out of the basement and try to pull her in.

Of course, mom and dad think she’s dealing with “issues” after nearly killing her brother and not having enough baby-sitting juice to drink. No one knew about the house’s previous tenants, who were violently deathed in half.

Several kinda cool ghost moments, including the woman coming out of the stained wall. (Pine-Sol™ could easily get those stains out, if not the poltergeist.) The acting is solid, especially from the three year-old whose pointing could very well earn him an Oscar™. But the pay-off is standard issue horror lite and, if you didn’t see it coming, a total Hallmark™ ending.

I have a message for The Messengers (2007) for the sequel: use more blood, crows (give them guns), and have at least one character get scared out of her blouse.

The Horror of 2016

“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”

Best line in recent contemporary horror as whispered by the tempting, unseen evil thing in The Witch, one of the 2016’s least conventional but deliciously grim horror movies. I haven’t heard a line that good since “I know you are, but what am I?” from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985).

The second best line of dialogue of the year comes not from a horror/sci-fi movie, but from the TV series Supergirl: “It’s time to punch you in the face…” (Note to anyone not using glitter chapstick – Supergirl is faring far better under the CW™ tweener banner than it did with CBS™, who had no idea what to do with superheroes sporting abnormally perfect teeth and Clearasil Ultra Rapid Action™ complexions. This is CW’s™ wheelhouse, man.)

In a year fraught with horror (politics notwithstanding), there were more than a few genre movie and TV stand-outs. And while I’m a world famous (ahem) blogger of horror/sci-fi, this e-offering is not even close to being comprehensive and I am by no means an authority on the subject. (I’m an expert at being NOT an expert.)

Of the ton of big/low-budget genre movie/TV crap I’ve watched all year long, the following represents a few chunks of interesting crap therein. You don’t have to agree with me, though, just because I’m a world famous blogger [insert nervous cough here]…

THE WITCH
This unforgettable chiller introduced horror’s best new figurehead: Black Phillip, the Danny Trejo (or “Machete”) of badass barnyard animals.

SHIN GODZILLA
F-word amazing. They gave reboot G several insanely cool upgrades while holding true to Godzilla’s original hairstyle, including his “one-blow-blows-up-all” destructo breath: purple-y AND flame-y. That’s pretty sweet. Shin Godzilla, almost all filmed in broad daylight, shows Godzilla doing what he does best: making smash hits. I’d buy his album.

TRAIN TO BUSAN
A South Korean zombie movie that mops the floor with every other zombie movie released this year. So ridiculously intense is this thing (passengers trapped on a speeding commuter train while zombies board without passes), you don’t need English translation. (I went legit and watched it without sub-titles. That’s how I roll.)

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE
Was this a sequel to 2008’s Cloverfield? There are those who walk among us that say yes. Doesn’t matter — while the movie climaxed with alien stuff (if you didn’t already know that — ha!), it’s the premise of several super tense characters in a rural underground survivalist bunker (two of which are there involuntarily) that brings the real horror.

ROB ZOMBIE’S 31
Like him or not, Rob Zombie always makes stomach-turning, gritty and gory horror movies. This one puts a group of traveling carnival white trash performers in a huge maze inside a huge warehouse-y type building, facing off in a brutal do-or-die obstacle course with highly colorful and pretty darn mean maniacs (Doom-Head, Sick-Head, Schizo-Head, Psycho-Head, Death-Head, Sex-Head), all wielding power tools. Make it out of the building, you live. Sort of.

PHANTASM RAVAGER
Does this final installment of the surreal and beloved Phantasm franchise deliver the groceries? Yes and not yes. Given that it’s been nearly 20 years since the last one (Phantasm IV: Oblivion/1998) and brings back the original characters, all of which puts you in the zone, Phantasm Ravager still leaves a pile of unanswered questions, like what happened to Reggie’s 1971 Plymouth Barracuda (second only to the Batmobile in sleek coolness)? But hey, those iconic flying death spheres, aka, gasoline-powered sharp things? All over the freakin’ place.

DEADPOOL / CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR / BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE / SUICIDE SQUAD / DOCTOR STRANGE
Great year for great superhero movies. All of the above kicked ass to varying degrees of ass kicking. And Suicide Squad’s dementedly drop dead sexy Harley Quinn ranks with Deadpool and Black Phillip as a top genre icon of the year. (Godzilla’s already in the Hall of Fame, so giving somebody else a chance here.)

Honorary mention goes to Ben Affleck’s Batman, who puts the dark in Dark Knight. (He drinks the hard stuff, two syllable swears, horizontally smooches the ladies, takes pill-shaped drugs, beats people like drums then tortures/shoots them, and socks Superman right on his justice-shaped jaw. On top of that, he drives really fast and crashes into stuff. Batman gives driving lessons, not takes them.)

A few thoughts on some other this and thats…

ARRIVAL
Not just a good movie, but a great UFO movie that doesn’t rely on all out paranoid military warfare on our space brothers, who look a heckuva lot like seafood appetizers. P.S. to the Internet: I’ve seen nearly every UFO video on YouTube™ and they’re starting to look fake. I’m beginning to think UFOs aren’t real. But that’s probably just crazy talk.

THE SHALLOWS
You can still be the most heavy metal, human-gulping shark with extra teeth in the ocean, but you still take second seat to Blake Lively’s seat in a string bikini worn throughout the ENTIRE MOVIE.

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM
An enthralling movie set in 1920s New York with wizards and a menagerie of off-the-hook mythical creatures and monsters, the likes of which have not been seen since the last WWE pay-per-view. Y’know, I bet Harry Potter fans might like this.

MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN
In my day a home for peculiar children was called “summer camp.” A bunch of mutation kids with unique abilities: floating, projecting movies through eyes, starting fires by touching stuff, super strength, control of nature, and my fav, eating through a mouth on the back of your head. You could take down a Frisko Freeze™ double deluxe burger in one mouth while sucking down a chocolate shake with the other. I wouldst like to live deliciously.

THE BOY
Featured The Walking Dead’s walking gorgeous Lauren Cohan. I wasn’t aware of anything else in the movie. I think it had some sort of boy in it. I think he was a puppet, which is just plain weird.

MORGAN
A genetic experiment gone wrong — or right, depending on where you stand on a contemporary updating of Frankenstein (1931).

There were a few genre misfires this year, though, including Independence Day: Resurgence, (we need to issue a formal apology to extraterrestrials), X-Men: Apocalypse (yeesh, what a mutant mess) and Star Trek Beyond, which relied more on blowing up things than the story line. Speaking of, why do they have to keep exploding the USS Enterprise over and over? Man, I wanted to drive that thing.

So what do we have to look forward to from here? According to IMDB.com there’s approximately 1,000+ horror/sci-fi/fantasy/superhero movies (Wonder Woman – I await you) slated for release in 2017. Butt — meet couch. Like Doctor Strange, I’m looking through space and time (and Collider.com) for Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Godzilla, King of Monsters (2019) and Godzilla vs. King Kong (hopefully before I croak). All the other stuff watched is what I’ll do to pass time/pass gas/pass out until those movies come to enrich my life.

Topless Aliens With Bottomless Desires

James Word is a handsome British spy more interested in hooking up with the ladies instead of shooting other spies in the face. But he gets paid to do both, so score for James. Speaking of scoring, the first half hour is nothing but him and a hot blonde playing strip poker. He loses, yet wins, if you know what I infer/imply.

The gal he’s “getting to know” wants to talk instead of, you know. She’s highly interested in his last mission, which involved investigating topless/bra-less alien chicks from the planet of Angvia. (Rearrange the letters.) They came to Earth to kidnap woman to repopulate their home meteor. One such candidate is a stripper, who doesn’t really dance, but kinda wiggles around and at the last note of the song she’s gyrating to, throws her arms up, thus revealing her means of employment. She’s a star.

Zeta One (aka, The Love Factor/The Love Slaves, 1969) is bouncingly bountiful with the aforementioned topless aliens. The characters spend more time naked than being clothed. And when they do decide to cover their shame, they’re bright red dresses with over the knee white vinyl go-go boots. Who knew extraterrestrials could look as good with britches on?

In the end, James is the one kidnapped and “forced” to get all of the Angvians preggo. The scene where he’s being pumped full of raw oysters and booze while a hand-painted naked alien chick dances spastically in front of him while the other alien chicks wait in the lobby for their turn at bat is yet another reason to watch this sexified sci-fi comedy, which borrows liberally from Barbarella (1968). Works for me on several levels.

Charlie’s Devils

Did you know the Salem Academy for Women, a chick only boarding school, has a curriculum based on satanic principles and rituals with flimsy nightgowns? Surprised more gals aren’t applying for scholarships. This provides the framework for Satan’s School For Girls (1973), a great titled but thrill-less attempt to mix females with anti-Bible teachings.

Nevertheless, when Elizabeth Sayers’ sister, one of the school’s students, hung herself after being pursued by an unseen nemesis, she decides to enroll at the house of evil education herself to find out what the Hell happened. What she discovers is the school is having problems hanging (sorry) onto their students. They’ve been suiciding themselves after episodic freakouts, thereby leaving many homework assignments unfinished.

So what’s causing these mood swings? Girls don’t usually get all crazy emotional (or so I’ve heard). The handsome Dr. Joseph Clampett, one of the teachers, strikes meaningful poses and concerned looks when Elizabeth and her hot schoolmate/fellow clue digger upper Roberta try to Nancy Drew this mystery.

And this madness isn’t just affecting the ladies. One of the male teachers goons out, rants about some evil this and that, and ends up murder dead. This causes Headmistress Williams (she can be a real b-word) to go brain bonkers. Who can blame her? Bodies are turning up all over the place.

As Elizabeth and Roberta get closer to the truth, a saw-it-a-mile-away betrayal reveals that the entire school is participants of a satanic cult and Dr. Clampett, claiming to be the devil incarnate, is teaching the parent-less girls in the ways of non-God. He even wears a black cape with a collar so high, it looks like one of those medical cones they put on dogs. Outdated, but can still be worn to almost any ritual.

A face off and roaring fire, which is like a pleasant, warm foot soak to satanists, ends with one of the most face-slapping endings in made-for-TV horror. A notable side note: Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd appear in this one and later went on to become superstars in Charlie’s Angels (1976 to 1981 on ABC). That was a mighty fine way to get through puberty.

Alien Bonehead

Can’t imagine what might augment my new Marin Shiitake™ coffee table from Crate & Barrel™ better than a three-foot long Xenomorph skull. Come to think of it, that skele-noggin would look great atop my Forsyth 3-Drawer Chest™ (with storage!) as well.

Too bad the NECA™ Xenomorph skull won’t arrive in time for Christmas so someone could buy it as a gift instead of me shelling out earmarked trendy furniture money. But hey, it’ll make a nice St. Patrick’s Day present when it goes on sale in March 2017. No price yet, but you’ll have plenty ‘o time (is that an Irish saint?) to save up.

Here’s the juice…

“NECA just announced that in March of 2017 they will be releasing a highly-detailed foam replica Xenomorph skull, which measures a massive 36” long and comes with a display stand for tabletop use or wall mounting.”

They go on to say that the hand-painted skull is “based on the deadly creatures from the classic Aliens 1986 movie.” There’s a drawback, though; the stand requires minor assembly. No need to call a bonded carpenter — instructions included. Can’t get much sweeter than that unless you poured Trader Joe’s™ Organic Cane Sugar on it.

I bet the Predator would like to get him some sweet alien head like this. Shoot, that didn’t come out right. So what? Head (heh) HERE to get your own skull.