Not The Stairway To Heaven

The instructions to make The Doorway (2000) must’ve come off a box of Count Chocula™: Take four college kids, put ’em in a haunted house, have a doorway to Hell in the basement, and let unnatural nature take its course. 

Of course the ancient medallion keeping the doorway to Hell from swinging both ways is knocked off the sacred nail holding back epic evil, and a succubus (female demon that likes to get jiggy) roams from bedroom to bedroom, wreaking mattress havoc and sticking out her plastic green tongue.

The students try and solve the mystery of the skanky spook by hooking up with their ghost-hunting college professor, Roy Scheider. (Hey, this was the guy who kicked Jaws’ wet butt, so it was a strategic move.) The only thing missing is a dog named Scooby Doo. Rory doesn’t last long, though, getting his entire face ripped in half by the face-ripping face-ripper. Then everybody else falls prey to the smelly forces emanating from the basement. 

There’s a happy assortment of boobs and a lingering sex scene, which was pleasant on an R-rated sliding scale. The creatures that come a’knockin’, however, aren’t particularly scary, nor unique. In fact, the whole flick lamely rips off The Legend of Hell House (1973), The Amityville Horror (1979), Night of the Demons (1988),  and Hellraiser (1987), without batting an evil eye. 

The girls are cute (especially the short blonde chick), but the guys are dorks of chess club proportions. In the end, it all sucks. But the thing about doorways is that you can always go out the same way you came in.

Lunar Health, Camping Aliens, Home Groan Farming

In a quest to contact my space brothers, I found a recent Outer Space: Where Science Meets Science Fiction video article on AOL.com (is that thing still around?) about the five effects space travel has on you. Think of it as primer, not unlike going to a tanning booth several weeks before a tropical vacation so you don’t go up like a piece of bacon in a microwave while sucking down artificially colored adult Slushees™ on the first day at the beach without sunblock or a big foofy hat.

1. Height. According to the laws and physics of science as it applies to space travel, zero gravity can expand your vertebrae by 3%. This means you’ll have to pack extra long space britches. Warning: you will return to normal height once back on Earth. Don’t know about you, but I don’t plan on coming back. Wonder if Big & Tall™ sells extra-large Speedos™?

2. Being in space weakens your muscle and bones. Pffft — so does laying on your couch after binge watching Lost in Space on Netflix™. 

3. The size and shape of your heart can be affected. That’s if you even have one. I don’t.

4. Isolation in space can weaken your immune system. It’s claimed that unhealthy microbes can easily pass from food and other space travelers like swapping spit in a meteor shower. Solution: Just drink Romulan Ale and don’t try any lip locks in the air locks.

5. Your airless environment can be a cause of depression and sleep disorders. This is because there’s a 90-minute light/dark cycle in space versus the Earth’s 24-hour cycle. We Earthers have already solved that problem by leaving our TVs/iPads/smart phones on all night, bathing us in refreshing blue wave light. Some say that’s not good for you. I say it gives us more time to watch more TV and Internet cat videos. How can that possibly be depressing?

So it looks like I’m all set to fill out my immigration papers to gain citizenship on any planet other than this. And while I wait for a green card light signal from a distant galaxy approving my space visa, here are a few now available/upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not affect the size and shape of your heart. Or vertebrae.

THE ALIENS (available now)
“A UFO believer must choose between the aliens above he has never seen or the mysterious guide who appears in his campsite week after week.”

The mysterious guide is probably Yogi Bear coming for your pic-a-nic basket. (I knew watching old cartoons would someday pay off.)

WHO’S WATCHING OLIVER (July 3, 2018)
“A mentally unstable loner is lost in a life forced upon him. By night Oliver aimlessly wanders the streets and bars on what can only be described as a truly shocking and humiliating killing spree. His only savior and possible way out of a life he is desperate to escape comes in the form of the beautiful Sophia with her sweet eccentricity and naivety to the danger she has put herself in.”

Sophia could very well have been my babysitter, though I didn’t go on shocking and humiliating killing sprees. More like shocking and humiliating cookie jar assaults.

SOLIS (2018)
“When Troy Holloway wakes up to find himself trapped aboard a drifting escape pod shooting towards the Sun he quickly realizes the true terror of his situation. With rapid oxygen depletion and a burn-up rate of 90 minutes, Commander Roberts leads a rescue party to save Holloway before time runs out.”

Two words for Troy before plunging into the Sun: Bring marshmallows.

MANIAC FARMER (2018)
“A group of street punks led by the murderous Blasphemous Rex meet their match when they choose to terrorize a seemingly helpless farmer who ends up turning the tides on the group, and the hunters become the hunted.”

A plot so weak, even a spinach-less Popeye could rip it in half. So what does this “maniac” farmer do on his farm? Grow killer tomatoes? (Tell me you got that reference.) 

Venomous Coffee, Demon Soul-Sucker, Biker Biters

What instead of you drinking coffee or discount vodka from your favorite mug, the mug drinks from you? That’s the genius behind Moldy Mugs, a series of handcrafted and expertly designed (by Joe Rowles) horror drinking cups (ranging from 12 oz. to 17 oz.).

While these mugs carry a hefty price ($90.00 for a the 12 oz. version), how flippin’ cool would it be to wrap your coffee/discount vodka sucking mouth hole around one of these magnificent hand-washable art pieces?

While you FINISH READING this blog, click HERE to visit Moldy Mugs — featuring their new Venom™ entry — and get ready to have the life sucked out of you for a change. In the meantime, here are a few now available/upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not transport you the way discount vodka never fails to do…

ANOTHER SOUL (available now)
“Megan cannot stop the nightmares. Her parents, Rob and Susan, are at their wit’s end. When a couple suggest Megan’s soul may be the target of a soul-hungry demon, the family find themselves in a battle for Megan’s life.”

Megan rhymes with Regan, another young girl the target of an evil entity about 45 years ago. So would this be a rip-off 1973’s The Exorcist, but with higher-def projectile vomiting? Of the 23 possible answers, The Magic 8-Ball™ says, “Signs point to yes.”

DOWN A DARK HALL (August 17, 2018)
“Kit, a difficult young girl, is sent to the mysterious Blackwood Boarding School run by eccentric headmistress Madame Duret. While exploring the labyrinthine corridors of the school, Kit and her classmates discover that Blackwood Manor hides an age-old secret rooted in the paranormal.”

I liked it better when it was called Suspiria (Italy, 1977).

HOWLERS (2018)
“A mysterious monster hunter from the Old West who returns from the grave to stop a bloodthirsty werewolf motorcycle gang from terrorizing a small town.”

Not a new concept. Anyone remember the cult schlock classic Werewolves on Wheels (1971)? If you don’t, your mom does.

WEST OF HELL (2018)
“A gunslinger and a vengeful ex-slave board a midnight train to Atlanta. They discover that the train is haunted by a sinister force…and may not be headed to Atlanta after all.”

Yep, they got on the train to New Jersey by accident.

Death By Boredom

And I thought Final Destination 3 (2006) with “death by tanning bed” was 

bad. The fourth — and hardly final The Final Destination (2009) — dispenses with the plot altogether, and just goes for the “set ’em up/knock ’em down” kill scenes, in which Death, only temporarily deprived, gets what it came for. They did this one in 3D. So what?

Nick O’Bannon, his girlfriend and another Guess Jeans™ couple are white-trashin’ it at a race car track. Foreseeing a horrific accident that ends up with a good portion the grandstand viewing audience getting either cut in half or turned into human Jell-O™ by ricochetting car parts/tires, Nick barely gets his friends, as well as a few others, out of exploding harm’s way.

As with all the FD movies, they were supposed to die. Now Death hunts them down and sets up elaborate traps that end in all accounts being paid in full. The mousetrap scenes are so evenly paced you could set your watch to ’em. Even then, they’re just not that innovative. One guy gets his butt/innards sucked out through a swimming pool drain. Really? That’s all you got?

Another one finds a girl trapped in a car wash about to get her face sheared off by those big roll-y things. Big time flinch — she gets out…and later dies by impalement. Hang on a sec — gotta yawn.

Another guy gets plowed into by an ambulance (plagiarizing the bus scene in Final Destination/2000). Another is dragged down the street by a runaway tow truck and catches on fire, burning alive. Man, this yawning is contagious.

But the biggest rip-off of all comes at the end when a semi plows into a coffee shop and smashes into the last three remaining survivors. It’s right here they cut to a computer-animated x-ray “cartoon” of the bodies getting mangled, broken and busted. They even showed an x-ray of the truck!

Stick with Final Destination and Final Destination 2/2003, and leave the rest for Death to clean up.

Metric Tons of Godzilla Fun

Godzilla seems to stomp all over the news these days, what with Godzilla II being renamed to Godzilla: King of the Monsters, then being moved to May 31, 2019. Then there’s Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle, the sequel to the 2017 hit anime Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters, just released in Japan on May 18, 2018. (Rumors had the follow-up as being named as Godzilla: Planet Eater, which I totally heart.)

Then Toho, Godzilla’s legal guardians, have scrapped plans for Shin Godzilla 2 in favor of expanding the Godzilla Cinematic Universe after 2020. Then there’s the Godzilla vs. Kong, also set for 2010. Why, it’s enough to ’Zilla to make you go silla!

Here’s the official plot (if not art, which is clearly fan made) of Godzilla: King of the Monsters: “The new story follows the heroic efforts of the crypto-zoological agency Monarch as its members face off against a battery of god-sized monsters, including the mighty Godzilla, who collides with Mothra, Rodan, and his ultimate nemesis, the three-headed King Ghidorah. When these ancient super-species — thought to be mere myths — rise again, they all vie for supremacy, leaving humanity’s very existence hanging in the balance.”

Humanity sucks. I hope the monsters win.

And if all that wasn’t drool-inducing, here are some renditions of MechaGodzilla from Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle…

Unsteady as to be unsure about the release of Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle here in America, USA on Netflix™. But just dry your tears as it’s coming. It better be, because I’m all out of Kleenex™.

The Blank Expression of Horror

Henry’s life sucks. His wife plays with his boss’ not-so-private parts. His best friend and stockbroker have robbed him blind. His upscale house is left in construction limbo because he’s overdrawn at the bank. His housekeeper is swiping valuable drink coasters. Everywhere he goes, somebody is always wiping their feet on him.

No big surprise when Henry wakes up one morning to find his face gone: a completely white mug — no features except for his mouth and two pinholes for eyes. He looks like a crash-test dummy. Where Henry was the Invisible Man before, he now becomes the Phantom of the Opera, skulking around with a fedora and black cape, looking to balance karmic scales.

He catches his wife riding his boss’ baloney pony and tosses her out a four-story window. See ya! He corners his stockbroker in a locker room and cuts his losses with a bullet to the Izod. Later, alligator. He gets in a little batting practice with his housekeeper’s head. Base hit!

Henry is able to do as a faceless man what he couldn’t do as a browbeaten corporate schmuck. While there is blood and a head being squashed by a train wheel, Bruiser (2000) is more of a character story and not a bowel-chewing special effects flick.

 

The ending seemed tacked on, but it put a grin on my faceful face. Two more in the plus column: Henry’s wife is really hot and we get to see her unfaithful nudity, and white-faced punk Goths, The Misfits play at Henry’s boss’ party where Henry upstages them all. Too bad Henry didn’t turn into a zombie and just eat everybody’s faces instead of losing his.

Horror Kids, Old UFOs, Fighting The Devil

If you’re a fan of the Garbage Pail Kids cards, check out Horrorible Kids, a line of illustrated horror movie icon trading cards/stickers from Magic Marker Art. These things are so cool, you could give ‘em out as wedding gifts or just carry one or more in your wallet to replace that mug shot that is your driver’s license photo.

From the press release: “Now up for pre-order through Pingitore’s Magic Marker Art, you can grab single packs, 5-packs and 24-pack boxes, as well as a ‘Horrorible Kids’ retro collector album!”

At $4 for a single pack and $65 for an entire box, you pretty much have no excuse not to rummage through your mom’s purse to get the credit card coinage needed to purchase these must-have cards. Mom won’t mind, especially if you give her a pack or two for Mother’s Day and/or Christmas.

Horrorible Kids cards are due to arrive July 2018, so plan on skipping rent in June. And while you’re clicking HERE to pre-order, here are a few now available/upcoming horror/sci-fi movies/documentaries that may or may not make good Mother’s Day/Christmas gifts…

ROSWELL 70 YEARS LATER (available now)
“70 years after the supposed UFO crash in Roswell, NM experts shed light on what may have happened that night in 1947.”

Not “may have happened,” it’s what DID happen. All the extraterrestrials I’ve hung out with insist one ‘em had a little too much moon juice at the Little A’Le’Inn, tried driving home drunk and crashed its saucer. The insurance company covered it up and the rest is folklore history.

BLEEDING STEEL (July 6, 2018)
“Lin is a police inspector in modern Hong Kong. While tracking down a deranged, mecha-enhanced villain, Lin discovers that a geneticist’s lost bio-chemical invention has been surgically implanted into his missing daughter. With the help of a young hacker, Lin connects the dots between the device that haunts his daughter, his enemy’s sinister army, and a strange cultural phenomenon called Bleeding Steel.”

Bleeding Steel sounds cool as a movie title, but better as a heavy metal band name. Metal bands are mecha-enhanced and drink blood, so it all fits together like some sort of album.

GAGS (2018)
“It’s been eight days since the clown first showed up in Green Bay, WI. Now, over the course of one night, four different groups of people cross paths with the clown everyone calls ‘Gags’ and his true intentions are finally revealed.”

Never understood the whole “silent scary clown on the roadside/neighborhood” craze that went on a few years ago. Seemed kinda dumb considering it was overkill — bars are still loaded with enough clowns as it is.

LUCIFERINA (2018)
“Nineteen-year-old nun-in-training Natalia reluctantly returns home to say goodbye to her dying father. However, when she meets up with her sister and her friends, they all decide to travel into the jungle in search of mystical plant. But what they find instead is a world of black masses, strange pregnancies, violent deaths, as well as a climactic, shocking clash with the Devil himself that will leave you speechless.”

I’ve met the Devil. She’s not such a bad guy.

Horror That Gives You Wood

When a ventriloquist dummy is sent to a newly-wed couple’s apartment with no return address on the package, they think its a cool, though unusual wedding gift. But when the husband returns home from the store to find his wife sitting up in bed with a huge hole in her face and her tongue ripped out, he gets all sad. (No big loss — she wasn’t that good looking.)

The cops think he did it but can’t prove it just yet. So the sad guy traces the dummy’s origins back to his haunted home town to get to the bottom of the brutal face-holing. His estranged rich dad still lives there in a dark mansion and is confined to a wheelchair and oxygen tank due to a recent stroke. But he has a young supermodel for a wife who married him for his charming personality and not his vast amounts of cash.

The town, though, has lived under the never-ending curse of Mary Shaw, a theatre-caliber ventriloquist who was murdered and her tongue cut out because they thought she murdered one of the sad guy’s great uncles 50 some odd years ago. As the legend goes, she had a lot of dolls and something about not screaming if you see her…I forget.

Anyway, the journey for the truth takes the guy to the old theatre where Mary Shaw used to perform. This place looks like Dracula’s grandma lives there. The cop, though, has followed the guy to the small town and is there to arrest him for taking case evidence (the creepy ventriloquist dummy) and burying it in the cemetery. That it keeps coming back is just one of its special abilities. The other one is when he poops his pants, sawdust comes out. (Not really, but that would be really funny.)

This is all where the story, created by the same guys who did the brilliant Saw movies, gets downright wicked. The two men discover 99 dummies encased in glass. This almost matches up with the 100 missing bodies in the cemetery. The ghost of Mary Shaw is present and what she does to/with the dummies is awesomely gross. You’d think the big face-off (no pun intended) with Shaw would be the end of the movie. But you’d have to be punished harshly for even thinking such a wrong thought as Dead Silence (2007) takes a wonderfully sick turn.

If you’re gooned out by demonic ventriloquist props, rotted old ladies that are capable of painting entire towns with evil (looks like red, but is redder) don’t be a dummy and watch this movie, you big wooden wuss.

Satanic Honor Student

Devils Offspring (1999), or Gwai pin Wong ji joi yin hung bong, is a plodding, cliché-ridden Cantonese horror movie that enrolls Satan’s daughter in a private school dormitory for the summer with four other teens and a hot teacher.

Connie (devil daughter) is gorgeous, but doesn’t do much other than compel those around her to commit suicide. Heck, she doesn’t even make spooky faces or stick out her black tongue. She did, however, poke one girl in the eye with a stick and then cut her head off, so that must’ve made her father proud.

Connie’s arrival was prefaced by the refrigerator death of the school cook’s four year-old granddaughter. Later, the dead girl’s puppy, was made into gamey soup and fed to the students. (They should’ve served hot dogs instead. Heh.) One student, seemingly possessed by an unnatural force, walks into the bay and forgets to hold her breath. She later comes back with all of her non-waterproof ghost friends and sucks another classmate into the surf.

Most of the movie has everyone running up and down the hallways under pale fluorescent lighting, designed to make you think something evil is about to go down. The “shock” moments are saved for the last 10 minutes, with headless basketball players shambling toward the living. Yep, so scary I made rice noodles in my pants.

The sub-titled dialogue is amusing and does nothing to give any insight as to why the Devil’s daughter is there, why her name is Connie instead of Hellena, or why she doesn’t eat anyone’s brains. In fact, her hair doesn’t even get messed up. Seems to me if you come from Hades, then you at least need to look the part. Hardly convincing when you don’t even have glowing eyes or poop breath. 

And the teens she goes after have the dumbest names: Nokia, Clown, 123 (yes, they named somebody with numbers), so right there you know this class needs to be permanently dismissed. The hardest part about watching Devils Offspring, though, is staying awake.

Kill Count, Real Bigfoot, Undead Wives

If you’re like me and prefer TV over reading, then you missed Death Count: All of the Deaths in the Friday the 13th Film Series illustrated book, which came out October 20, 2017 from Two Things Press. But fear not — now you can get it for $9.99 on Kindle™, which is kinda like a TV version of a book.

At 124 e-pages, author Stacie Ponder goes into groovy gruesome visuals/stats on all who fell before Jason Voorhees’ pretty hate machine. And just how many tasted the pain? You wouldn’t have a reason to watch the book if I told you. But here’s the press release to convince you to wallet up: “With humor, love, and a lot of cartoon violence, Death Count celebrates the victims, survivors, killers, and other random characters encountered in the long-running Friday the 13th film series.”

You might recall a similar concept done in poster form back in 2011 by Andrew Barr of Canada’s National Post and illustrated by Mike Faille. But Sir Voorhees has since added to the terror tally, so Death Count might be the way to fulfill your splatter-y needs.

While I get over my aversion to books (oddly, posters don’t bother me), here are a few now available and upcoming horror/sci-fi movies/documentaries that may or may not make you download in your pants…

BIGFOOT ENCOUNTERS (available now)
“Many believe Bigfoot does not exist. But for those who have seen the creature face to face, there is no question.”

Never been a question for me as to Bigfoot’s existence. I see him face to face every day in the bathroom mirror when I thoroughly brush my teeth. (Bigfoot could use a Rudy’s Barbershop™ shave and a trim. Just sayin’.)

AVENGERS GRIMM: TIME WARS (available now)
“Unhappy being ruler of the Underworld, Rumpelstiltskin frees himself and plans to take over Earth. As the Avengers Grimm fight to stop him, they discover it’s not where he is hiding, but when, forcing our heroes to fight through the ages.”

This one has legendary kick-pants ladies, like Red Riding Hood (the color matches her season), Sleeping Beauty (I hear she snores like someone raking gravel), Snow White (she likes chili — heh!), and Alice of Wonderland fame. (Go asker her when she’s 10-feet tall. Tell me you got that hippie music reference.) So there’s four reasons to watch the movie, even though it rides the cape of that other group of Avengers. You know, the ones who hold iron-gripped dominion over the box office.

BETWEEN WORLDS (2018)
“Joe, a down-on-his-luck truck driver, is haunted by the memory of his deceased wife and child. He meets Julie, a spiritually gifted woman who enlists Joe in a desperate effort to find the lost soul of her comatose daughter, Billie. But the spirit of Joe’s dead wife Mary proves stronger, possessing the young woman’s body and determined to settle her unfinished business with the living.”

No wonder Joe’s down on his luck— his wife comes back from the dead to nag him to death.

AUTOMATA (pending crowdfunding)
“Antique expert Brendan Cole is sent to authenticate a 300 year-old clockwork doll with a notorious history, known as ‘The Infernal Princess.’ In the remote Scottish mansion where it has been discovered, Brendan soon finds himself the victim of the automaton’s legendary curse.”

Aha! So that’s who Annabelle’s grandma is!