Halloween Pulp Fiction

Filmed in a Tales From the Crypt comic book style, Trick ’r Treat (2009) plays as a dark horror comedy with five overlapping stories (think Pulp Fiction/1994) that demonstrates the consequences of breaking Halloween traditions. 

The first one is that you don’t blow out the candle on a Jack-O-Lantern until Halloween is over. OK, I’m guilty of that. What can I say, hot pumpkins stink. Secondly, you’re not supposed to take your decorations down until Halloween is over. No problem there — I usually leave mine up through Christmas. Thirdly, always check your candy. I trick-or-treat for booze, so unless it’s non-alcoholic beer the top comes off, followed by my pants. 

The atmospheric stories all take place on the same Halloween night. “The Principal” revolves around a grade school principal whose homework includes pain, suffering and dismemberment. In that order. “Surprise Party” is a hairy take on the Little Red Riding Hood tale, but this time with hot high school chicks. Let’s just say these girls don’t shave their legs. This story is followed by “The Halloween School Bus Massacre Revisited” and the legend of a school bus driver who drops his mentally-handicapped kids off — in the lake at the bottom of the quarry. (The reason why he did it is actually quite grim — pay attention to this segment. I mean it.)

Local kids round up eight pumpkins as a tribute of those that perished in the “crash.” It was supposed to be a trick played on one of the kids (a gal hinted at being mentally-challenged), but the tables are turned when the drowned students make their way back to the bus stop. “Meet Sam,” the final — and best — story takes place at Old Man Kreeg’s house where Sam, the embodiment of Halloween (this kid is friggin’ creepy), shows up for his treat. Pet Sematary (1989) and the ankle tendon-slicing scene is given a tip of the hat here, while Sam reinforces Halloween’s lessons.

If you’re keeping track, all the characters show up in each other’s stories and give clues as to the secret of each. Very clever stuff. No nudity (dang it), lots of screaming (expected), gushes of blood (spills like a slashed trick-or-treat candy bag), and the smashing of pumpkins. Trick ’r Treat, seasonally appropriate and highly educational, could very well become A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) for this and every Halloween. God bless us all.

Watered Down Sharks

The hard-to-chew Empire of the Sharks (2017) is the cousin to Planet of the Sharks (2016), and once again puts apocalypse survivors on floating shacks (docks with outhouses) on a world turned into a global fishbowl. Think of it as Mad Max (1979) meets Waterworld (1995), with a budget about the cost of bottled water.

The bubbles are ruled over by the self-proclaimed master of the ocean, Ian Fien. He’s able to command sharks to do his bidding by way of electronic poker chips affixed to the fish heads. A signal is routed through electric gloves, and when Fien waves his arms around like he’s conducting an invisible orchestra, the sharks — swimming in packs — come out of their metal shark head pen, shoot out of the ocean like dolphin missiles, and feast on human leftovers.

A bunch of young girls are taken hostage by Fien’s hammy henchmen and their friends hatch a flawed plot to get them back. They go to Criminal Island (a floating bar with no happy hour) to assemble a team of “specialists” to take down Fien and his pet sharks. Too bad they didn’t know Willow, one of the abducted young girls, is a shark whisperer. Guess what happens next?

The sharks look like something out of a 1980s video game. They growl when in attack mode and usually go for the head, or “crunchy malt balls.” There’s even a bomb-dressed kamikaze goblin shark sent in to make explosions happen.

Gallons of pixel blood pollutes the water and body parts are turned into buffet sides. The big showdown happens when Fien and Willow battle for control of the sharks by frowning hard at each other while waving their arms at the apparently easily-manipulated fish.

Tedious plot, boring shark attacks, minimal gore and over-acting clichéd characters. What did you expect from watered down sci-fi?

Evil Dead Christmas, Earth Gone Wild, Sci-Fi Jellyfish

It’s a good time to be alive if you’re a fan of The Evil Dead. For instance, there’s an officially sanctioned Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn escape room coming this summer to Seattle (about three miles from where I’m currently escaping) and long hoped for Evil Dead trading cards. It’s like Christmas plus.

The Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn escape room costs $30 to get into and goes like this: “When players enter that all-too-familiar cabin in the woods, they will have until dawn (or sixty minutes, whichever comes first) to find the Kandarian dagger and destroy the Book of the Dead before the evil dead swallows their souls. Fans of the classic film can expect deadites, chainsaws, a very strange deer head, a chained-up cellar door, and plenty of horrifying surprises.” When I go I better wear Depends™.

Up next is The Evil Dead trading cards by Fright Rags. You can get ‘em as a single wax pack (nine cards and a sticker — $5.00), sealed box (two full sets of cards plus a pile of exclusive extras – $35.00) and the coveted factory box (the full 68 base card set and a few extras – $120.00). Time to dip into my 401k and do some impulse buying.

While you do the same, here are a few available now/upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not cause you to wear Depends™…

THE WANDERING EARTH (in theaters now/Netflix™/2019)
“When the sun dies out, the people of Earth build giant thrusters to move the planet out of orbit and sail to a new star system. After 2,500 years, young people continue the fight for everyone’s survival.”

Man, there’s a lot of e-chatter about this one on the Net. Apparently, the film hit box office gold in China with $603 million…in just two weeks! That’s more than I make in a month. And Netflix™ is betting big on this pony by making it available for the U.S. market. No set date for its premier on the world’s biggest movie streaming channel, but it’s having a limited run in theaters/theatres right now. (It’s on four screens in parts of the city that are too hard for me to get to without cursing out traffic jams in Chinese.) Sounds like The Wandering Earth, in all its epic-ness, should been seen on the big screen. Time to buy a bigger TV.

CHIMERA STRAIN (March 15, 2019)
“A scientist freezes his children alive while he races to cure their deadly genetic disease by decoding the DNA of the Turritopsis jellyfish.”

Okay, what?

THE FIELD GUIDE TO EVIL (March 29, 2019)
“A feature-length anthology film. They are known as myths, lore, and folktales. Created to give logic to mankind’s darkest fears, these stories laid the foundation for what we now know as the horror genre.”

Great title. Too bad its an anthology and not an instructional manual.

THE HAUNTING OF SHARON TATE (April 5, 2019)
“The film’s plot is supposedly inspired by a quote from the real Sharon Tate, from an interview published a year before her death, where she revealed ‘having a nightmare’ in which she saw a strange man in her house and then discovered herself and her friend Jay Sebring tied up with their throats cut open.”

You know Hollywood is strapped for ideas when they take a quote and turn it into a movie. I’m looking in your direction, Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000).

The Dammed Damned

The best way to get rid of evil is to chain it in a basement in a village at the foot of a new dam and flood the entire town, thereby washing all your problems down the drain and creating fishing and revenue streams. Good start for the evilized Beneath Still Waters (2005).

Problem is, you can’t keep a good demon and his followers down. Forty years later, a big party is planned to celebrate the dam’s anniversary. Guess who’s coming to the festivities?

Silas, the above-mentioned totally satanic guy who initiates you into his Club of Wrongness by ripping your face in half with his bare hands, needs to complete a ritual in order to exact his revenge. During the course of his flame-y eye influence, the townsfolk start rotting and gleefully dismembering themselves and doing naked stuff. (The orgy scene is a riot, with a priest getting busy with a goat and a nun using rosary beads in places the church deems not cool.) 

There’s a patience-testing sub-plot involving an underwater photo journalist who floats…beneath still waters…and takes pictures of the sunken village (with lights still on in some of the houses). But it’s the wholesale slaughter, chunkified gore and stink demons that make this one worthy. That, and the female untethered tops.

A much better name for this flick, though, could’ve been, The Dammed Damned. Heh.

Vampire TV, Intellectual Grave-Digging, Cellphone Evil

A couple of cool new key art posters for the impending What We Do In The Shadows TV series arriving March 27. 2019. Cooler, still —  like radioactive flatulence, these things glow in the dark.

I’ve tagged this before, but anything worth peating is worth repeating: “Set in Staten Island, FX’s™ What We Do in the Shadows series follows three vampires who have been roommates for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

The same-titled 2014 movie from which this is derived was one of those unexpected home run hits and, like that spore-like stuff in my fridge — continues to grow — will, without hyperbole, become the greatest comedy vampire movie of all time. Okay, clunky sentence. My head hurts.

Until the series debuts next month, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not make your farts glow-in-the-dark…

PET GRAVEYARD (April 2, 2019)
“A group of friends are tormented by the Grim Reaper and his sinister pet after they undergo an experiment that allows them to revisit the dead.”

You’d think this Pet Sematary (1989/2019) rip-off is coming from Asylum Studios, who are pros at ripping off original ideas. But someone else is using Asylum’s own business model to get away with the same thing. Hey, Asylum — how does that taste?

SADAKO (May 24, 2019/Japan)
“A YouTuber tries to awaken Sadako’s curse.”

Not much to go on, but Sadako — along with Kayako — are two of Japan’s most bankable horror movie icons. Outside of Godzilla and his frenemies, that is. And yes, you’ll have to go to Japan to watch this when it comes out. Bring me back something, ‘k?

WE SUMMON THE DARKNESS (2019)
“The killing spree of murderous Satanists has already led to 18 deaths throughout America’s Heartland. Three best friends Alexis, Val and Beverly embark on a road trip to a heavy metal music festival. Naive, they bond with three seemingly fun-loving dudes and soon the group heads off to Alexis’ country home, a very secluded place, for an after-party. What should be a night of fun and youthful debauchery may instead take a dark, deadly turn. With killers on the loose, can anyone be trusted?”

Who cares about generic Satanists? I wanna know what bands are on the bill at the heavy metal festival. Hopefully, a few that kill with riffs and solos instead of sprees.

LARRY (2019/20120)
“A troubled young boy and his family become the target of a monster that materialized through electronic devices such as smart phones and tablets.”

The irony here being that smart phones and tablets are already the monsters in our lives. And yes, they took the concept from 1989’s Shocker. Horror never forgets.

196 Days of Zombies

28 Weeks Later (2007) picks up where 28 Days Later (20020) left off, with downtown England quarantined because of the Rage virus that turns people into extreme zombies quicker than you can say, “Ouch — stop biting my arse, you arsehole!” 

A man and his wife are outside of the city, holed up in a cottage with some old people and a few others. The zombies find them and start projectile barfing virus blood all over their victims, which tuns them into zombies in, like, three seconds. Cornered, the man manages to get away, but cowardly leaves his wife to be overtaken by the flesh-eating horde. He makes it back to the city where the U.S. military has declared Martial Law and is letting people back in through a screening process. They think the “infected” are all confined to the outlying areas.

The coward man and his two kids are reunited, but the law-unabiding children sneak out of the containment zone and make their way back to their former home for some penny candy, whistles and House of the Dead Playstation™ game. But someone’s there and it’s…MOM! Yes, she was bitten by the zombies. No, she didn’t “turn” as she carries a gene in her blood that keeps the Rage virus from messing up her hair and vomiting gunk all over bit Britain. 

The military brings her back for studying. About this time the coward man is notified his wife is still alive. Um…OOPS! He uses his security clearance to visit her and even gives her a kiss as if to say, “Sorry ’bout the whole abandonment ’n zombie attack thing, honey. So, what’s new?” But she bites his lip as he’s going in for the apology smooch. You know what happens next.

Along the way, more flesh eating, flesh burning, flesh running, flesh screaming. And the camera work, which at times feels like they strapped a camcorder onto a frog hopped up on meth, is quite dizzying. But the story line holds and cowardly dad’s hottie teen daughter is about one year away from a Zombie Maxim center spread: Uninfected Girls of Great Britain.

Dirty Laundry Monster

In the small, unwashed Texas town of Sublime, a horrible secret exists. Hunters are being viciously attacked by a mythical Wild Man of Navidad, their guts strewn about like Texas litter.

Locals with intact guts form a hunting party, or “Texas Prom Dance.” They chase down W. Man Nav, shoot him in harmful areas, hang the bullet-ridden corpse up in the middle of town like a Texan piñata. Even in broad daylight no one can figure out what he/it is. But he/it has big tusks. Maybe it’s a land walrus. I’m fresh outta ideas here.

In summation, The Wild Man of Navidad’s (2008) starring creature grunts like a razorback, damages stuff, runs through the bushes, eats skinned animals (because fur tends to get caught on his tooths), and disembowels red necks, tossing entrails around as if in a spaghetti throwing competition.

This stuff is OK. This isn’t: Wildy is dressed in what looks to be piles of dirty laundry. No big hairy creature that smells like freshness-expired skunk, just an overturned laundry basket as a fright fashion statement. The hick locals they cast as extras were far more frightening. (Don’t people in Texas ever brush their tusks?)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m taking my dirty laundry down to the river and shooting it.

Game Sharks, Evil Warehouses, Dreadful Angels

If you’re looking to do some pre-Christmas shopping done, there is no better gift to get me than the new Jaws board game by Ravensburger. And here’s the supremely cool part — one player gets to be the shark!

Coming late June 2019, the Jaws board game will bite into your wallet for $30. Heck, I’d pay at least $35 for such a cool game. Here’s why…

“Like Steven Spielberg’s classic film, Jaws the board game plays out in two major acts. The first part has the player controlling the shark terrorizing Amity Island by attacking swimmers, while up to three other opponents — playing as Quint, Brody, and Hooper — try to cooperatively figure out exactly where the shark is hiding in the surrounding murky depths. Once the shark is located, the game switches to a second act.”

While you fight over who gets to buy me the game, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies/TV series that may or may not be as ridiculously cool as a cardboard shark…

1st SUMMONING (February 22, 2019)
“As four student filmmakers unearth a bizarre history of occult practice tied to an abandoned warehouse, it becomes clear the horror they set out to document may have been lurking among them all along.”

Of course abandoned warehouses are where evil lives — the rent is cheap.

STRAY (March 1, 2019)
“An orphaned teenager teams up with the detective investigating her mother’s murder. They soon discover a supernatural force threatening the city and realize the teen possesses hidden powers of her own which might be the key to stopping it.”

Potential spoiler: The supernatural force threatening everyone is…REPUBLICANS. Time for Democrats to tap into their hidden powers and veto them back to Hell.

DARLIN’ (2019)
“Darlin’ picks up 10 years after the events of The Woman, when the titular character escaped with the then-young Darlin’ in tow. Now Darlin’ in is a Catholic home for girls while the Woman resides in an all-female homeless encampment.”

Didn’t see The Woman (2011), so I have no idea what they’re talking about. I looked it up and it was a sequel to Offspring (2009). Didn’t see that one, either. The internet says it was about cannibals. Sounds yummy.

PENNY DREADFUL: CITY OF ANGELS (2020)
“City of Angels will be set in 1938 Los Angeles, a time and place deeply infused with Mexican-American folklore and social tension. Rooted in the conflict between characters connected to the deity Santa Muerte and others allied with the Devil, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels will explore an exciting mix of the supernatural and the combustible reality of that period, creating new occult myths and moral dilemmas within a genuine historical backdrop.”

If this is even half as good as the Penny Dreadful TV series (2014 – 2016), which starred Count Dracula, Dr. Frankenstein and his science project, Dr. Jekyll, Dorian Gray, the Wolf-Man and a bunch of witches thrown in for flavor, then I plan on spending all my waking time binge watching it.

Zombie Kingdom

Do you like watching skin-snacking zombies tearing into soon-to-be-expired flesh? Who doesn’t? Which is why, if you aren’t already, you might wanna watch Kingdom, a period piece Korean zombie six-episode flesh-fest that showed up on Netflix™ on January 25, 2019. I do believe with all my heart that was just a few weeks ago as of this writing.

I previewed this a period piece ago, but in case you were combing your hair and missed it, here’s the premise…

“The deceased king rises and a mysterious plague begins to spread; the prince must face a new breed of enemies to unveil the evil scheme and save his people.”

Sort of tantalizing, but it doesn’t begin to hint at the slaughterhouse gore and zombie action therein. The first episode, set back in the days where starving poor people lived in house made out of bamboo and mud and rich people wallowed in the mud of wealth and much cleaner clothes, takes nearly the whole one hour first show to get going. But when it does, have something to clean up the mud you’ll no doubt fill your pants with.

An overloaded “hospital” (made of bamboo and mud) is getting desperate for food and medicine. The 100 year old head doctor hasn’t been seen for days. And when he finally shows up, he’s carrying the rotting corpse of a young unlucky previous human. Well hey, cook that sucker up and feed it to the ecstatic starving people! Just don’t tell them what they’re eating. (It tastes like Peking duck — a bit gamey, but lip-smackingly tasty.)

Once consumed, people go into mouth-frothing spasms, die painfully, then come back to life and go all World War Z on everybody standing nearby not yet dead. And like the zombies in World War Z (2013), these undead heads relentlessly run, tackle, climb and throw themselves off roofs. And they do something else not usually seen in zombie movies. (No spoiler, but there’s a hint in 2007’s I Am Legend.)

It only takes a few seconds for a zombie bite to get you up and running, which means this plague is a flippin’ pandemic. Tons of butt-clenching close calls, explicit gore and a sub-plot involving the royal elite abandoning their lower than lower class subjects. It will make you mad if you’re lower than low.

Get past the political positioning first episode and get ready for a top notch flesh-snacking, which does a good job of leveling the social class playing field.

Icy Horror, Nazi Snowballs, Dumb Artificial Intelligence

All this apocalyptic Seattle snow (the worst in 70 years, according to the panicking news) got me in the mood to watch a few guilty pleasure snow horror movies, the irony being that we’re buried in huge, steaming piles of snow with more predicted to seal us in igloo coffins.

I have The Day After Tomorrow (2004), 30 Days of Night (2007), Dead Snow (2009), The Last Winter (2006), Frozen (2010/the teen horror movie, not the same-titled Disney horror movie), and Unnatural (2015) queued up. All that’s left to do now is crack an ice cold beer and chill. Heh.

While we’re waiting to thaw out — probably by the end of March — here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not bite like frost…

THE HOUSE (March 5, 2019)
“Set in the frozen wilderness of Norway during WWII, two German soldiers escort a Norwegian soldier and prisoner of war, but the weather is taking a toll on them. They find an empty house near the forest where they finally can get some rest. However, what seems to be a warm and welcoming shelter turns much more sinister and deadly. They begin to wonder if they have somehow have stepped into a sort of psychological hell from which there may be no escape.”

Finally — Nazis on the other end of the pain stick. I bet they start a snowball fight to end all snowball fights.

DEMON EYE (2019)
“A young girl returns to her father’s country house in the Moors following his mysterious death. There, she finds a cursed amulet that will grant her greatest wish, but at a price.”

The cursed amulet that grants me my greatest wish is a beer bottle.

AMI (2019)
“Cassie has become a recluse ever since her mother died in a car accident. In an effort to fill the void, she downloads AMI, the latest intelligent personal assistant. As their relationship quickly deepens into a twisted co-dependency, Cassie falls deeper and deeper under AMI’s spell; not realizing that everyone she knows is in serious danger.”

I wish I had artificial intelligence.