Godzilla Day, Trolling For Trolls, Werewolf Games

To celebrate Godzilla Day (today, right now, let’s party), you might consider buying me (and get one for yourself while you’re at it) the Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide (Welbeck Publishing), releasing November 8, 2022 on Amazon™. Really, it’s the right thing to do.

Besides the subject matter, the $29.95 book, authored by Graham Skipper, measures out as 9.25 x 0.75 x 11.25 inches, has 256 pages, and weighs 3.08 lbs (or “pounds”). Best part — TONS of cool photos (or “pictures”). A Spanish review called it, “La mejor guía hasta la fecha de las películas de nuestro kaiju favorito!” Took the words right out of my mouth.

So while you’re cutting back on your Slim Jim™ budget enough to purchase Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide, here are a few upcoming horror movies that may or may not taste as good as commercial meat snacks…

TROLL / December 1, 2022 (Netflix™)

“Deep inside the mountain of Dovre, something gigantic awakens after being trapped for a thousand years. Destroying everything in its path, the creature is fast approaching the capital of Norway. But how do you stop something you thought only existed in Norwegian folklore?”

Norway’s version of Godzilla. The movie’s trailer is thrillable on a level that’s quite thrilling. (Redundant — is that a problem?) As stated above, a giant Troll comes out of his mountain retreat and trample stamps its way through buildings, public transportation, landscaped lawns, 7-Eleven™… Watch Trollhunter (2010) prior to get your folklore juices flowing.

BLOODTHIRST / Pending release 2022 (VOD)

“In a post apocalyptic world run by vampires, only the strong survive. John Shepard, Vampire Hunter, is one of them. John has to track down and eliminate the master vampire before he himself gets turned.”

While vampires are cool, I’m with being a vampire hunter. If the world was owned and operated by vampires, it wouldn’t take long to bankrupt their human food supply. And vampires sucking on cows, raccoons and/or hamsters (i.e., fuzzy juice boxes) is just biblically wrong.

WEREWOLF GAME / January 13, 2023 (Theaters)

“Twelve kidnapped strangers must play a game where they vote on who amongst them to murder. At night, the ‘werewolves’ hidden among them come out to brutally kill one of the 12 ‘villagers’ in return.”

This movie is adapted from the famous 1986 “who did it” adult party game, Mafia, which is also known as Werewolves. The other popular game from that year was Orgy, in which players try to gain enough wealth to become a Roman consul. The game’s name was TOTALLY misleading.

COCAINE BEAR / February 2023 (Theaters)

“A drug runner plane crashes with a load of cocaine that’s found by a black bear, who eats it. Inspired by true events that took place in Kentucky in 1985, during which a bear ingested 88 pounds of pure cocaine and went on a rampage.”

I read a news headline on that story: “Cocaine Bear — The Ultimate Party Animal.” That’s freakin’ funny. P.S. Cocaine smells good. (Old joke. Still freakin’ funny.)

Rubberized Werewolf

The Feeding (2006), makes no attempt at a plot: six college students set out to camp in the woods, smoke illegal drugs and have outdoor sex. A werewolf lives in the woods. Two game warden officials track it before it can eat the students. That’s all there is. Pffft — there’s more plot on the ingredients list on a box of werewolf-flavored oatmeal.

The werewolf, it is theorized, moves from state to state, eating all the animals until someone takes notice. Then they go out, shoot a rogue bear or penguin, thinking that was what consumed all the wildlife. The werewolf moves on, letting some other hairy stink beast take the blame and the bullet.

Besides being an irresponsible criminal, this werewolf has a plastic head and a perma-growl etched into the rubber. The facial features don’t move, let alone have any slobbering and/or action chomping articulation. So bad is this costume, the filmmakers decided it best to blur the screen whenever the werewolf shows up. Smart move.

The only thing weaker than the werewolf is the plot, dialogue, special effects and DVD box art. The box art on oatmeal is pretty cool, though.

Chupacabras, Kaijus & STDs

Get a lot of e-mails asking why I don’t have a Facebook™ page or a Twitter™ account to publicize this here blog-blog. Gotta say, I’m not a fan of social media. That, and I don’t get paid to do this, so why make more work for myself? I’d rather spend that time on a bar stool.

However, I have been putzing around with some video-editing software and am roughing out a promo commercial for Drinkin’ & Drive-in™ to put on YouTube™. While you’re impatiently waiting for its debut, here’s some new horror/sci-fi to help pass the time…

TUNNEL (April 4, 2017 / VOD – May 2, 2017 / DVD)
“Jung-soo is a car salesman fighting for survival inside a collapsed tunnel while rescue workers race against time to free him. The ensuing rescue operation becomes the subject of widespread media coverage and frenzy. But days go by, nerves stretch thin and Jung-soo must struggle for his life in the suffocating darkness alone.”

Too bad Jung-soo wasn’t a scuba tank salesman — just kick back and suck some sweet compressed air while everybody does all the work digging you out.

COLOSSAL (April 7, 2017)
“A woman moves back home after losing her job and being dumped by her boyfriend. Her life takes a sudden turn when a giant kaiju-like creature appears in South Korea and she begins to suspect she may be connected to it.”

Yeah, I already wrote about this back on January 20, 2017. But couldn’t pass up the opportunity to show off the nutty cool Russian key art for this movie. From what I’m able to discern from the trailer is that whatever the chick does, so does the giant monster. Really hoping she doesn’t come down with a case of painful rectal itch.

CHUPACABRA TERRITORY (April 11, 2017)
“Four friends hike into the Pinewood Forest to find evidence of the Chupacabra, an ancient creature believed to be responsible for the disappearance of four experienced hikers a year earlier. As they journey deeper into the forest, their innocent search uncovers more than they had ever hoped for, and with it a darkness that threatens to consume their very existence. One by one they are hunted down, their survival tested, their lives hanging in the balance of fear, friendship, disbelief and horror.”

You could swap out Chupacabra with Bigfoot or Moth Man or a stink bear and it would still be the same movie we’ve all seen time and time again. I bet they downloaded the plot template from the Internet. I do it all the time.

SHE KILLS (April 11, 2017)
“Sadie’s life is destroyed when a vicious gang called ‘The Touchers’ targets her for their sadistic fantasies after witnessing her sexy but innocent naked frolicking in a nearby field. On her wedding night they attack her and her husband Edward, brutalizing both of them. But during the attack the virgin bride discovers a dangerous secret about her body – she is cursed with the legendary STD ‘Fire Crotch’, a condition where Satan has laid claim to her vagina. After visiting her fortune teller friend Casparella, a space exorcism is attempted, but it only ends up unlocking secret hidden powers inside her.”

They had me at “naked frolicking” but lost me with “Fire Crotch.” And yet I’ll still watch every man-cringing moment of it. For educational purposes, of course.

Medium-Rare Bear

A city doctor and his pregnant wife go to the ultra-busy woods of Maine to tend to all the sick Native American kids covered in pine cones and sores that won’t heal. Mercury poisoning, it’s discovered, is behind the face herpes.

The doctor discovers the saw mill has been polluting the local waterways with Mercury-based chemicals used to make logs all nice and shiny. Fish swim in that water. The fish mutate. The local Native Americans eat the fish. The Native Americans mutate.

Evidence to this outlandish claim lies in a horribly disfigured baby bear cub, found almost drowned to death. Unfortunately, it’s a long way back to camp and horribly disfigured mama bear is looking for her crusty kid. But she’s been busy, killing sleeping bag campers as though they were foreign tourists. Ripped, shredded, half-eaten, mangled, chewed, regurgitated… It was if they were human snack cakes at the last Drinkin’ & Drive-in Bake Sale.

Plenty of great moments, but the best comes when the monster bear chases them across a lake and goes into the drink in an iconic horror movie sequence. Thinking that gosh-darned thing drowned, they don’t see the bubbles heading towards shore. The bear walks all the way under the lake without scuba gear or anything resembling a snorkel!

No matter what they throw at mom, it still keeps coming. She looks like a reverse bear with melted skin and gut stuff on the outside where fur should be. Prophecy (1979) is loaded with gnarly nature-gone-awry action that sets you up for a sequel (pregnant mom has been eating the tainted fish).

 They never made another movie, though. Too bad; I felt Underwater Bear deserved to be been fleshed out a bit more. Oh, hey — I just got my own joke. Sweet!

Werewolf Vampire Mix Tape

Rage of the Werewolf (1999) finds Earth infested with lycanthropes (and vampires and mutants) whose dormant genes have been activated by the moon’s gravitational suck, which was pushed closer to our ozone by a meteor. Stupid space rocks – always up to atmospheric assh*lery.

A power mad werewolf captures a vampire to mix their blood in order to create a super monster hybrid (this concept pre-dated evolution by years), the plan being to rid the world of stink humans who hunt them for their pelts.

Horror icon Debbie Rochon plays the delicious Kessa, a female vampire who is used for the biting experiments. Working on a $1.50 budget, Rage of the Werewolf can be excused for the silliest looking werewolves this side of Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988/bear costumes with rubber fangs). The monsters growl like they’re working on a stubborn stool, but there is a nice amount of gore — and Debbie.

To think what they could have done with a $3.00 budget.

LOL Horror & Sci-Fi

Three new horror hopeful hits headed in this general direction. There’s probably more movies coming out, but I need to spend the day combing my hair YET AGAIN, so three is all you get from me on this 23rd day of the third month of the year 2016.

First up is The Snarling. Cool title. It could be in reference to anything from a werewolf or mad raccoon, to a bitter bear or my neighbor lady whose facial muscles are botoxed to the point she looks like her stretched skin is gonna pop.

Anyway, here’s the skinny on The Snarling, already screened in the U.K., but not here. I don’t know why: “When a cursed new horror film is being made in their village, locals Les, Mike and Bob see their chance to cash in and get famous. As the local Detective Inspector and his hapless sergeant Haskins eventually trace a link in recent bloody mutilations to the film, the race is on to stop the killings before our local heroes get caught up in the real blood and guts.”

Bloody mutilations is an oxymoron.

Next up is First Man on Mars, a spoof on The Martian (2015). In this one the send a guy to Mars, but he comes back infected with space gunk, turning him into a “crazed, savage monster with an unquenchable thirst for human flesh.”

Here’s the splashdown on First Man on Mars (release pending 2016): “In 2003 billionaire astronaut Eli Cologne began his journey through space to become the first man on Mars, but something went horribly wrong. The space craft crashed undetected in a remote part of Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina, and he’s been hunting both human and animal prey in the swamps for years. For small town sheriff Dick Ruffman, it’s a race against time to find the man-turned-monster before he kills again in this horrifying and hilarious satire of low budget drive-in grindhouse creature features from the 1970s.”

Crazed, savage monster with an unquenchable thirst for human flesh is an oxymoron.

Lastly, the brilliantly punned Australiens (releasing June 14, 2016) is a comedic take on an alien invasion set in the Land of Roo: “An extraterrestrial armada launches a nationwide assault on Australia. Seems the other nations of the world are far too insulted by their exclusion from the attack to come to Australia’s aid. Car-chasing spaceships, martial-arts aliens, giant killer robots and more.”

Australia doesn’t need our help – they have tasty beers. And you can never lose when you have tasty beers.

2015 Horror: Best of the Worst

Movie commentary website ScreenRant.com recently posted their 12 Worst Horror Movies of 2015 list. They totally stole my idea, along with every other horror movie blog in existence. I feel mildly violated.

But rather than let it ruin my refreshing alcoholic beverage, here’s ScreentRant.com’s smack down along with my think tank thinkings on the subject(s). [Note: ScreenRant.com’s article, written by Scout Tafoya, is really quite good, accurate and well-researched – just the opposite of anything you’ll get outta me until I start getting paid to do this.]

From last to first…

12. MONSTERS: DARK CONTINENT
What it is: The sequel to Monsters (2010) wherein the title beasts have infected the Middle East where there’s already a war going on. Nice timing, stupid space creatures.
What SR said: “The monsters (admittedly still beautiful in design) are glimpsed from the sideline of the action and never meaningfully interact with the interchangeable leads.”
What I think doesn’t matter: Monsters: Dark Continent is two movies – military guys dealing with the horror of war, and military guys dealing with the horror of giant ick monsters. M:DC needed to pick a lane and drive in it as the two conflicts conflict with each other. Kinda like drinking a Budweiser™ and a Miller Genuine Draft™ at the same time. In theory it works, but it just doesn’t once the tops get popped. Still, the monsters are outrageously cool, especially that Mt. Everest sized one at the end.

11. KNOCK KNOCK
What it is: Two hot “stranded” chicks show up at a married guy’s house, get naked and entice him to stain his marriage vows. Then they try to permanently divorce him before his wife gets home.
What SR said: “As repugnant as it is arrogant, Knock Knock is a lose lose.”
What I think doesn’t matter: Did not see this one. Read some reviews, though. Not sure it qualifies as a horror movie in the traditional sense. Maybe if everyone wore a hockey mask…

10. THE GREEN INFERNO
What it is: Severely annoying student activists travel from New York City to the Amazon to save the Rain Forest. When their plane crashes in said foreign foliage, cannibals show up to invite them to/as dinner.
What SR said: “Cheaply made, obnoxiously written and not even half as extreme as it thinks it is, Green Inferno is an insult to the cannibal films of the ’70s it pays tribute to.”
What I think doesn’t matter: What they said. Embarrassing and irritating, GI, while filled with insides being turned outside, it’s really hard to get past what ScreenRant accurately calls “colossally stupid stereotypes.” Ironically, my complaint is with the cannibals – it took them one hour and forty-one minutes to finish their meal.

9. INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE
What it is: A freakishly intelligent (and bottomless hungry) grizzly bear turns actors into bit parts.
What SR said: “The bear of the title is a mess of bad CGI effects and behaves conspicuously more like Jason Voorhees rather than a wild animal.”
What I think doesn’t matter: Yep. Though I will point out that the bear doesn’t just attack humans – it stalks and then rips them apart like jungle taffy. That’s what bears in horror movies are supposed to do.

8. BACKCOUNTRY
What it is: Vacationing campers are attacked and made into shredded meat by a bear of all things.
What SR said: “A couple of bland people for a weekend retreat to a wilderness trail that’s been closed for the season. That doesn’t stop them or a killer black bear from roaming around anyway. The kids get lost and it takes the bear entirely too long to show up and start chewing on hamstrings.”
What I think doesn’t matter: Mostly just fast-forwarding to the hamstring chewing action. Everything else was a waste of valuable drinking time.

7. SHARK LAKE
What it is: A black-market exotic species dealer unleashes a shark in Lake Tahoe where it chews out the swimmers.
What SR said: “No professional actors, terrible special effects, a sixteenth of the budget and lots of hilariously awful dialogue. Shark Lake will make you laugh an awful lot.”
What I think doesn’t matter: Every since Sharknado (2013), the ocean’s most feared apex predator has been rendered to a bad comedy punchline. And Shark Lake shamelessly gets in the feeding frenzy and continues the mockery. Note to Shark Lake filmmakers: Why don’t you dangle an errant limb in the ocean? Then we’ll see who’s laughing.

6. POLTERGEIST
What it is: An inferior remake of 1982’s superior Poltergeist
What SR said: “No one needed another Poltergeist; The monsters have a sort of evocative menace to them in their ten seconds of screen time, but when they’re represented by 3D screw bits and vomit fantasies, they’re a touch less formidable.”
What I think doesn’t matter: Just the thought of redoing Poltergeist is far more horrifying than the movie turned out to be. Hollywood must need the cash. P.S. “Vomit fantasies” – heh.

5. BURYING THE EX
What it is: A guy’s dead nagging girlfriend comes back from the grave and wants to continue their relationship. A guy’s worst day and nightmare.
What SR said: “Crazy sexist and smug, Burying The Ex is unquestionably [director] Joe Dante’s worst film.”
What I think doesn’t matter: ScreenRant may have missed the point – Burying The Ex is a comedy and supposed to be crazy sexist and smug. And hey, funny naked and horny fat guy to help keep things swingin’.

4. THE LAZARUS EFFECT
What it is: Medical researchers discover a way to bring animals/people back from the dead. For commercial applications, of course.
What SR said: “There isn’t a scare in the whole film and it loses steam right around the time it starts offing cast members, the film’s equivalent of shrugging its shoulders when it runs out of ideas.”
What I think doesn’t matter: Horror snobs not unlike myself recognize Lazarus as pilfering Flatliners (1990) and Pet Sematary (1989). In other words, nothing new here. That said, when was anyone ever brought back from being dead and not all f’d up in the brain hole?

3. MAGGIE
What it is: A Midwest small town girl is infected with a virus that’s slowly turning her (and select others) into a zombie. Living in a Midwest small town does the same thing.
What SR said: “The filmmakers never quite figured out when this experience starts benefiting anyone crazy enough to watch a low-budget Arnold Schwarzenegger film. Take away his explosions and he’s lost without a map.”
What I think doesn’t matter: Casting Arnold Schwarzenegger with his famous Austrian accent as a Midwest farmer was a big pitchfork in the rump. Arnie doesn’t say much in this one, but when he does he stands out like a sore cow. His job, though, is to keep the authorities from moving his slowly rotting zombie teen daughter to a containment camp where they never come back because they just can’t. Maggie moves really s-l-o-w and there’s no brain eating. But I did like the last two minutes where she finally goes through zombie puberty and…

 2. HARBINGER DOWN
What it is: Mutated monsters get defrosted from Russian space junk at the bottom of the Bering Sea – and their first food order is grad students on a fishing trawler. Zazdarovje!
What SR said: “Harbinger Down could have used a few rewrites, a better cast, and a sense of purpose beyond its creepy crawly.”
What I think doesn’t matter: I’m a total sucker for giant monster movies. And it’s always a gratifying experience to see nauseating grad students being eaten by said giant monsters. You know what I say? Go giant monsters!

1. THE PACK
What it is: Man’s best friend turns Man’s best leg into a chew toy.
What SR said: “These dogs are just too cuddly and never look like they want anything more than belly rubs and behind-the-ear scratches.”
What I think doesn’t matter: Didn’t see The Pack. But I did see it in 1983 when it was called Cujo.

The Joi of Bigfoot

The best bait to lure Bigfoot out into the open? Gorgeous women in bikinis. Shocked that Bigfoot hunters haven’t thought of this before.

This isn’t the plot of Bigfoot, a 1970 sub-budget “horror” movie, but it should be. Rather, it’s just one part of a bigger tapestry that weaves together a horror legend (John Carradine), a supermodel (Joi Lansing), and dynamite-packin’ bikers with semi-combed hair. (What a bunch of disrespectful punks.)

Parachuting into the forest after her plane quits flying, Joi, with her flotation devices stored safely under her blouse, runs smack into Bigfoot. Elsewhere, a biker guy horizontally makes out with his bikini-clad new girlfriend, only to discover they’re  swapping spit on a Bigfoot burial ground. Guess who shows up to punch out the boyfriend (wicked right hook) and make off with the make-out girl?

The local sheriff doesn’t have time for this hair-covered nonsense, and pretty much doesn’t do much to solve the mystery of the missing women. So Biker Rick (the guy whose bricks were earlier flipped by Bigfoot), turns to hucksters for help. Some help – they plan to capture B-foot to exploit for financial gain. (“People will pay 50 cents to see it!”)

Meanwhile, the top-heavy abducted gals are tied up (!) by Bigfoot, where they hypothesize about their situation and give away a big clue as to the what lies ahead. (More than one Bigfoot, as it turns out – and they seem to be gooning out over something at the top of the mountain everyone’s partying/making out/peeing on.)

Finally, after much hippie bongo music, noisy motorcycles tearing up the woods and great one liners (“They’re practically sub-human, but they look like animals…”), the hucksters and Biker Rick (cool name) slog through the forest until they happen upon the abducted gals and the Bigfoot lair (not quite an apartment as it doesn’t even have a kitchenette).

And it’s here we get the “slap your head in astonishment” big surprise. The thing at the top of the mountain the other Bigfeet are fearful of is… I’ll just say that the hint lies in the Bigfoot creatures themselves, all of whom are female. Run with it. And the end? Has something to do with dynamite – and Joi Lansing running through the woods, barely keeping her mountainous region from popping out of her top.

P.S. Bigfoot fights a bear in this one. I thought they were friends. The bear probably owed him money. Or a honey-dipped pine cone. Man, I could sure go for one of those right now.

This Bear Is Grizzly

Like comfort food for the eyes, there’s nothin’ like a good ‘ol “nature strikes back” horror movie to reinforce why hiking/camping is not good for you, and that sitting on the couch watching hikers/campers being torn apart by our woodland friends is very good for you.

Because of that, can’t wait for Unnatural (2015), a heartwarming story about a massive, genetically altered bear, possibly polar in nature, to light up my couch life.

Part of After Dark’s 8 Films to Die For (hitting theaters October, 2015), Unnatural takes us into snack canyon: “A morally ambiguous corporation experiments with genetic modification resulting in the advent of a bloodthirsty man hunting creature. When it escapes, a group of unsuspecting Alaskan Natives and their inexperienced guests, which includes a high maintenance celebrity photographer and a pair of models, become prey for the abomination in a horrifying game of cat and mouse.”

It may be coincidence, but Unnatural comes in the wake of Into The Grizzly Maze, another rampaging giant bear movie just released in February 2015. Unfortunately, it only got a two-star rating. How can that be? Bears eating humans should automatically get four stars.

There have been bear eating humans movies for decades. Two standouts are The Night of the Grizzly (1966) and Prophecy (1979). Both made me stain my britches. Two not standouts are Grizzly Rage (part of RHI Entertainment’s man-eater series, which came out in 2007) and Grizzly Park (2008). Both sucked huckleberries.

For a superior bear attack horror movie, though, give the simply titled Bear (2011) a spin. That one will make your fur stand on end and possibly cause you to stain your britches. As for me, been there, done that.

Pregnant Werewolf

Tough being 16 and pregnant and forced to give up your kid to someone who could provide a better life (i.e., Xbox™) for your kid. Even tougher to find an abandoned baby in the ruins of a castle in the middle of the Scottish Highlands rented out by a werewolf.

Fortunately, for the baby anyway, there’s someone within the group of teens out hiking who is carrying around a packaged meal under her blouse. Not so fortunate for the rest of the group (three guys, one girl), who become unhappy meals for the werewolf.

While managing to kill the burly beast (it looks like a cross between a fake bear and Alf), they think they’re in the clear. But that’s the problem with today’s teens – they just can’t wrap their heads around basic math, meaning that where there’s one werewolf, there’s probably two.

Running across the moors with a lycanthrope on your heels while carrying a crying alarm horn is the last chance for all involved. The girl makes her way to a farm house where the werewolf tracks her down. It was all pretty good up until this point: acceptable levels of gore versus screaming, blood versus attacking. But the last two final scenes were so comical as to water down all of the above. As if you couldn’t figure out who the baby belonged to.

But if there’s one thing to take away from this heavily-accented Wild Country (2005) – so much so as to need sub-titles – it’s that you probably shouldn’t breastfeed the animals. I know I won’t from this point moving forward.