Sea Ya Sharks, Mansion Ghosts, Farm To Market Cannibals

On July 25, 2018 we’ll be saying goodbye to the gooftacular Sharknado universe with the latest, as-yet-untitled Sharknado sequel. (They should call it Will The Last Sharknado Leaving The Ocean, Please Turn Off The Faucet? A bit wordy, but nail on the head.) Note to selves: I tagged this one on February 22, 2018. Then I washed and combed my hair for two hours.

The left-field hit series that started as a waterspout that pulls sharks out of the ocean and dumps them all over Los Angeles, started in 2013 with Sharknado, and successfully regurgitated the formulaic plots with endless celebrity cameos with Sharknado: The Second One (2014), Sharknado: Oh Hell No! (2015), Sharknado: The 4th Awakens (2016) and Sharknado: Global Swarming (2017). Even before the new/final one, this is like the movie version of Hokey Pokey.

While we cross our fingers that this will indeed be the last Sharknado, were are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not belong in a watery grave…

CARTEL 2045 (May 1, 2018)
“The year is 2045, the continuing drug war has caused havoc between The United States and Mexico. Gear Side International, a robotics engineering company on the brink of bankruptcy, sells off their technology to the Cartel on the black market. With the advanced military robotics technology in the wrong hands the cartel uses it to their advantage; replacing their enforcers, hit men, and soldiers.”

Who needs robots when you have Machete himself to take care of future business? (Note to reader: It’s really Danny Trejo, who played the iconic badass Machete in previous kick ass films, though I’m not seeing much of a difference). I live in Seattle, but I have friends in Los Angeles who regularly eat at his restaurant: Trejos Tacos. Wonder if they chop up the taco fillings with a…machete? That’s be SO cool.

WRAITH (May 8, 2018)
“After living in an old mansion for almost 10 years a family suddenly discovers a ghost-like presence trying to communicate with them.”

I would like to live in an old mansion that has a ghost-like presence. But does the squatting specter chip in on the cable bill, scrub toilets every other month and chase other ghosts out of the cellar, you know household chores everyone has to do? Might have to bring that up during the next family poltergeist pow-wow.

BEAST (May 11, 2018)
“A troubled young woman in a small island community falls for a mysterious outsider who empowers her to escape from her oppressive family. When he comes under suspicion for a series of brutal murders she defends him at all costs and learns what she is capable of.”

This one’s being described as a “warped adult fairy tale.” Works for me, though it seems like a really bad idea to a.) commit brutal murders, and b.) do it on a small community island. Unless you’re Aquaman’s cousin’s brother’s nephew and could swim away from the cops, you’re pretty much dry-docked in the zip code.

THE FARM (2018/2019)
“A young couple gets kidnapped and treated like farm animals after stopping at a roadside diner to eat meat.”

I don’t hang out in barns (anymore), so I’m not sure how farm animals are being treated these days. If I remember the Old MacDonald literary works correctly, cows and chickens and beavers get three hots and a cot. Doesn’t sound that bad to me.

Horror Legends, Crapping Aliens, Cowboy Grave Risers

Sad to report the passing of another another horror/sci-fi movie icon, Harry Dean Stanton (July 14, 1926 – September 15, 2017), whom I first saw as the affable Brett in Alien (1979). He was the first to make the Xenomorph’s to-do in list. In all, Harry starred in nearly 200 movies/TV shows, notably Escape From New York (1981), Christine (1983), Repo Man (1984), and even a small part in The Avengers (2012). (He saw The Hulk naked.)

And on this note, I was remiss in reporting the earlier passing of horror icon movie maker, Tobe Hooper (January 25, 1943 – August 26, 2017), the man behind Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Eaten Alive (1976), Salem’s Lot (1979), Poltergeist (1982), Invaders From Mars (1986), The Mangler (1995) and was a big part of the Masters of Horror series (2005) and many more. (Tobe even did the Billy Idol video, “Dancing With Myself.”)

I’ve watched all these movies, sometimes over and over (I’m looking in your direction Alien and your endless repackaging.) To say these men had an impact on my neverending love for horror and sci-fi is an understatement. Thank you, gentlemen — your work gave me a very rewarding life.

Here are a few just-released horror/sci-fi that may not exist without the talents and influence of Harry Dean Stanton and Tobe Hooper…

5TH KIND (available now)
“Three best friends try to get ‘internet famous’ by filming their own survival show out in the woods. A weekend trip to accomplish this project turns deadly when a mysterious and very foreign visitor ends up in their neck of the woods.”

This movie — which is not a sequel to The Fourth Kind (2009) — answers the question, do aliens crap in the woods. The key art gives it away, minus the doo doo part. I don’t wanna see that on any poster. Except Rise of Toilet Man. I hear it’s overflowing with horror. Ahem.

KM 31-2 (available now)
“Martin Ugalde is the detective who led the investigation into a series of mysterious deaths on a benighted stretch of road surrounded by woodland. Having been disgraced and even incarcerated for failing to solve the original case, he is now back on the case. Meanwhile, young Ágata, who awoke from a coma at the end of the original, is now possessed by an evil spirit.”

This one came out in Mexico on October 31, 2016, or so they say. I was not able to get into Mexico to verify. I kept being deported. The title is in reference to a road with the KM part being either kilometer or “kill-o-meter.” Kinda wondering how they work in the “possessed by and evil spirit” angle. It could be a simple, solveable case of eating a bad burrito.

CAPPS CROSSING (available now)
“10 years ago David left his girlfriend Tracy all alone in the forest after she broke up with him. Tracy never made it back to camp alive. Every year David returns to pay his respects at Capps Crossing, the site of her death. After years of built up pain, anger and guilt he loses his mind and takes it out on a group of campers that chose Capps Crossing for their weekend getaway. There’s just one rule at Capps Crossing…never be alone.”

This one might get weak plot of the year award. And by the way, Tracy’s not dead — she’s breaking up with some other dude at Dumpsville, just down the road apiece.

DEAD AGAIN IN TOMBSTONE (available now)
“Guerrero (Danny Trejo) returns from the dead to protect a stolen relic from falling into the hands of a gang of soldiers, which will ultimately cause Hell upon earth.”

The great Danny Trejo doing his best Jonah Hex in this country western horror cheapie. And Jonah Hex (2010) was just a cowboy version of The Crow (1994). But instead of a crow bringing you back across the veil of death, it was a donkey, or “sand kangaroo.”

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.

Mecha-Eyeball

The Eyeborgs in Eyeborgs (2009) are the equivalent of intersection traffic cams, but with robotic legs that allow them to find trouble, record it, and send it back to Big Brother. Problem is, the crimes they’re filming aren’t really happening at all. (Classic Republican maneuver.)

There are ice chest-sized Eyeborgs and kitchen stove-sized Eyeborgs — and they’re all linked together to bring crime to its knees illegal. This is known as the Freedom of Observation Act (dumb), with the Eyeborgs built and maintained by ODIN (Optical Defense Intelligence Network). Guess who pays for this stuff? (Not me; I’m broke.)

A conspirator tries to kill the President’s punk rock nephew and to tell the world that the Eyeborgs are really a part of a bigger political (Republican) agenda. A police detective eventually uncovers the truth (the stinky hippie emo conspiracy guy was right all along), and sets out to correct this incorrectness.

The Eyeborgs are kinda cool, but the plot, at times, slows things down to a robotic crawl. Fortunately, a big gun battle between human and robot brings things to a nice, shiny finish. And the President? You’ll have to decide if he was real or just a digital media puppet. Art imitates life.

3-Headed Shark Attack

In the beginning here was Jaws (1975), a shark with but one head to bite you in half.

Then came 2-Headed Shark Attack in 2012. It was fake-y looking and appeared to be more of a stuffed animal than a twice-fold apex predator. It bit vacationing college students in half.

Now comes 3-Headed Shark Attack (July 11, 2015) with three times the appetite, looking to bite a bigger share of the ratings. The plot is your basic “line ’em up and chomp ”em down” scenario: “The world’s greatest killing machine is three times as deadly when a mutated shark threatens a cruise ship. As the shark eats its way from one end of the ship to the next, the passengers fight the deadly predator using anything they can find.”

Ugh. I could be in a shark’s belly for a week, crapped out onto a polluted beach, my gushy remains pecked at by seagulls, and still come up with a better plot than that. But hey, if a three-headed shark, which admittedly looks kinda cool, isn’t enough to sink yer boat, the “movie” also stars genre king Danny Trejo and pro-wrestling legend Mr. Monday Night – Rob Van Dam.

Wonder how 3-Headed Shark Attack would stand up against Japan’s Double-Headed Jaws (2012)? (Note: I think Double-Headed Jaws is the Japanese release of 2-Headed Shark Attack. Crappy movie, but way better title.)

Even though a shark with any amount of heads could bite me in half, I’m really starting to feel sorry for what pop culture/Hollywood/you are doing to them.

Volcano Zombies

On the surface, the upcoming Volcano Zombies (2014) sounds like a reasonable excuse for me to lay on the couch in a perpendicular manner for 90 minutes or so.

Then I started over thinking it.

Before I goon out, here’s the plot: “A sheriff must help an estranged family evacuate before a volcano erupts, at the same time fighting off a horde of lava-filled zombies brought to life by the cursed mountain.”

Too many questions…

• Why was the family estranged?

• What does “estranged” mean?

• Why does a sheriff have to help out? Why can’t a motorcycle cop or a detective?

• Why was everyone living so close to a live volcano as to be needing evacuating?

• Why is volcano cursed?

• Who cursed it? Does he/she/it have a vendetta against all things pyroclastic flow?

As for the lava-filled zombies, I’m OK with that. I already parked my brain at the door when I read that part, so all good here.