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.

Werewolf Posing

Wolf Moon (aka, Dark Moon Rising/2009) is another Twilight (2008) cash-in, this time using a hunky drifter who is really a werewolf instead of a pasty face pin-up vampire. Amy, the small town’s hottest chick, falls for the guy.

Not surprising given that everyone else around the out-of-the-way desert town is a greasy douche bag. No, this guy is sensitive, has muscles (which he used to save her from being sexually assaulted by an aforementioned DB), and drives a smokin’ hot car.

That he’s a man wolf means he gets a little crazy every 30 days, as well. But he craves human flesh instead of ice cream or gummi bears. Meanwhile, the locals are in an uproar as their livestock and some of their tax-paying citizens are being torn apart. And you know what happens when townsfolk get riled up — just ask Dr. Frankenstein.

When Dan does the wolf-up thing, he jumps around and howls at the moon and pretty much looks like a lycandork. But Dan’s wolf dad, an ex-cop whose been chasing him, and the local MILF sheriff and agitated townies are about to come face-to-hair.

There’s more lovey-dovey scenes than gut-ripping. There’s a lot of swearing and Viagra™ jokes instead of gut-ripping. There’s more werewolf posing than gut-ripping. A werewolf flick should always have more gut-ripping than smoochy scenes. 

Creepy Reboot, Ghost Advice, $100 Dementia

So a rebooting of 1982’s Creepshow series is coming to the paid subscription horror movie channel, Shudder™ in 2019. Because Hollywood rarely tries to come up with original horror movie ideas anymore, we can expect still more of horror’s legacy being tapped to keep the money faucets flowing.

As reboots generally suck bag (how many times do we have to keep re-painting the Mona Lisa?), Creepshow, thankfully, is being executive-produced by The Walking Dead’s Greg Nicotero, whose KNB EFX Group will design the show’s monster and makeup effects. That does not suck or blow.

A multi-episode series, for those not old enough to know where Creepshow came from, it was an homage to the horror comics of the ‘50s and later adapted to movie form. Horror patriarch Stephen King wrote several installments (and starred in one), and Night of the Living Dead’s George A. Romero directed. In keeping with the spirit of the original, each episode will tell original stories and directed by a different filmmaker. One kitchen, lots of cooks.

So while we wait to see the inside of our TV screens splattered with digital blood, guts and probably black stuff, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not suck bag…

CLARA’S GHOST (December 6, 2018)
“Set over the course of a single evening in the Reynolds family home in suburban Connecticut, Clara Reynolds who, fed up with constant ribbing from her self-absorbed showbiz family, finds solace in and guidance from the supernatural force she believes is haunting her.”

That’s pretty funny — getting life coaching advice from a ghost. That’s like getting swimming lessons from Jaws or electrical wiring instructions from Dr. Frankenstein or trick-or-treating strategies from Michael Myers or… I could do this all day.

DEMENTIA PART II (2018)
Mercer — an ex-convict who has become a small-jobs repairman — ends up in a house with a frightening old woman with dementia. The nightmare escalates as the woman shoves $100 bills in Mercer’s pocket, stringing him along for the revolting ride.”

Revolting ride or not, if someone stuffs $100 bills in my pocket, I’d happily get in the nondescript van that’s no doubt loaded with candy.

THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY (February 15, 2019)
“This live-action series follows the estranged members of a dysfunctional family of superheroes (The Umbrella Academy) — Luther, Diego, Allison, Vanya, Klaus and Number Five — as they work together to solve their father Reginald Hardgraves’ mysterious death, while coming apart at the seams due to their divergent personalities and abilities.”

This one’s adapted from a graphic novel series. The graphic novel evolved from comic books. And comic books were the smart tablets of their day. They were solar-powered so you never had to worry about where to plug ‘em in.

HELLBOY (April 12, 2019)
“Hellboy and his ragtag team of paranormal researchers squaring off against a medieval sorceress who seeks to destroy humankind.”

Already tagged this, but hey…new poster! That’s gotta count for something. Hopefully, it’ll be successful enough to have spin-offs, like HellMom or HellDude.

Demon Clowns, Amphibious Monsters, Hippie Bongs

Looking into Lotto™ strategies to become financially self-sustained so I can watch horror/sci-fi movies as my “day job” without ever having to put pants on to make a living. Any tips, lucky numbers or insider info would be much appreciated.

Here’s four upcoming new ones headed my/your way. Pants not required.

EVIL BONG: 666 (April 20, 2017)
“When a brutal blood sacrifice opens a portal to Hell, Eebee and The Gingerdead Man are returned to Earth. But his trip to Hell has driven Gingerdead even more insane, and unless someone can stop his murderous cookie-cuttin’ rampage he’s gonna ruin Eebee’s plans for world domination. In a last-minute fit of inspiration Eebee channels her inner Dr. Frankenstein and creates The Gingerweed Man! A tiny, cobbled together monster made from the greatest strains of weed on earth, this little killer is ready to get high with a little help from his friends!”

Not a fan of stoner horror because the only way to enjoy it is to be stoned. I prefer a nice carafe of Budweiser™ or a snifter of paint thinner hooch to augment my horror movie experiences. P.S. Don’t do drugs.

CLOWNTERGEIST (2017)
“Emma, a college student with a crippling fear of clowns, must come face to face with her worst fear when an evil spirit in the body of a clown is summoned, terrorizing the town she calls home. One by one Emma and her friends receive a balloon with the exact time and date of when it will appear to kill them written on it. After receiving her balloon, Emma realizes that she has two days left to live, and must fight against the clock to find a way to survive.”

Makes sense that a demon-possessed clown would use balloons to get his point across. Personally, I’d go with one of those cool, honking squeezy horns. That tends to get people’s attention, especially in restrooms. And they just sound so funny.

COLD SKIN (2017)
“On the edge of the Antarctic Circle a ship approaches a desolate island far from all shipping lanes. On board is a young man, on his way to assume the post of weather observer, to live in solitude at the end of the earth. But on shore he finds no trace of the man whom he has been sent to replace, just a deranged castaway who has witnessed a horror he refuses to name. The young man will soon realize that with each night comes an army of humanoid killer amphibians.”

This one sounds cool. But it does beg the question of why humanoid killer amphibians would seek out a meager food source at the ends of the Earth when we have so many all-you-can-eat beach buffets around here. Just ask any shark — surfers are basically crunchy seals.

DEMON HOLE (2017)
“A fracking crew drills on sacred Native American land unleashing an ancient demon. Six teens have to serve community service in the remote forest where the demon is lurking. They find themselves trapped in a realm of illusions with plenty of marijuana, an abandoned cabin, dark caves, endless woods, and temptation. There are only two ways out of these woods — succumb to the demon or die.”

Note to ancient demon: Please don’t let those fracking teens out of the woods. And if you need more, we’ll ship ‘em to you, no charge. Just like having an Amazon Prime™ account.

Big Apple Automaton

The semi cult sci-fi classic The Colossus of New York (1958) borrows liberally from Frankenstein (1931) and the real-life horror story of the theft of Einstein’s brain in 1955.

Dr. Frankenstein (Victor, to those who tailgated with him) sewed together parts of corpses, goosed it alive by the stuff that comes out of lamp sockets, and brought the now-living product to market.

Albert (or “Al”) Einstein, the Nobel prize-winning physicist who gave me/you/the world the theory of relativity E = mc2 (I use that all the time – so useful), had some nut bag pathologist (Thomas Harvey) steal his brain in hopes of scientifically chopping it up to discover any anomalies that could explain the smartest guy in the world’s scientific acumen. Harvey kept Al’s brain in a cider box stashed under a beer cooler. (There’s probably a joke in there somewhere.)

Watch how I flawlessly tie this together with the movie. On the eve of a big party to accept the International Peace Prize (the menu featured those fancy cocktail wieners on platters), 34 year-old Jeremy Spensser gets flattened by a truck. Boom, boom – out go the lights. He left behind a young son and a rather fetching wife.

Jeremy’s Dad and brother – both scientists – feel Jeremy’s lying down on the job and decide to extract his brain and transplant it into probably one of the best dressed robots ever created in a downstairs lab. Told’ja I could tie it all together.

Widow Spensser and her son move into her father and brother-in-law’s giant mansion, unaware her husband’s thinker is powering a 9-foot robot in the basement. Not only can Jeremy-Bot speak (with cool sparking electrical noises), he has ESP, can hypnotize you with the flashing bulbs he calls eyeballs, and can deep fry you with electric beams, which make you pretty much dead and looking for a spare robot to live in.

Things get messy when the robot discovers his brother has had swollen intentions on his former wife, even trying to get her to go to Hawaii with him. She should’ve gone; that’s a pretty impressive/all-inclusive first date.

The p.o.’d robot swims (!) to an condemned part of the Manhattan shipping waterfront, confronts his bro, and zap-zaps him into deadness. There goes another unfulfilled vacation bathing suit.

Wanting to kill the world, Colossus (title only) calls for the scientific community to meet at the U.N. and when they get there, proceeds to microwave every non-robot in sight. Almost all of the people just stand there, so it’s they’re fault for not trying to run away with their pants down while screaming.

Bullets do nothing because hey – ROBOT! Fortunately, Spensser’s son – who is against all this zapping – gets through to robo-dad. In a moment of clarity, he has his kid pull the kill-switch lever located on the side of his former rib cage. Then everybody just walks away like that sort of thing happens in New York all the time. Maybe it does. How the heck should I know? I believe everything I see on the TV.

Pretty lame ending. Then again, so it was for Frankenstein’s monster and the Einster.

Mexican Frankenstein

Somebody is kidnapping pairs of young hot women and attempting to surgically swap their brains. Seems kinda redundant. Nevertheless, that variety of behavior is illegal.

Only one man could pull off such a medical maneuver: Dr. Frankenstein. Okay, not the real Dr. Frankenstein, but his grandson, Irwin. (You didn’t know Frankenstein had progeny? I’m visibly shocked.) Irwin is 113 years old, but due to his innovative experiments with blood beta blockers, he’s managed to turn back the clock and looks about 40-ish and has suspect hygiene.

He offers the same de-oldening serum to several other brain surgeons in return for their help in transplanting the brain of El Santo – Mexico’s greatest pro wrestler/superhero – into the body of Golem, a 7-foot tall black guy with 3% body fat and muscles that would give Popeye bicep envy.

In order to lure Santo into his web of medical deceit, Frankenstein has to kidnap Santo’s latest trim, the lovely Alicia. Time to spring into action with his trusted ally, the Blue Demon. These two guys kick so much ass, you’ll actually feel bruised from watching this punching jamboree. And the clothes they wear — Blue Demon sports a double-wide necktie so colorful, rainbows by comparison look like dog crap smeared in an arc across the sky. And Santo’s beige blazer and turtleneck ensemble never gets ruffled when taking on six bad guys at once. Splendid!

In a genius move, Irwin Frankenstein turns Golem into Mortis, an unspeaking wrestling giant with a lucha mask and puts him in the ring with Santo. The strategy being that if Santo gets killed during the match, it’s legal. But the Blue Demon has Santo’s back and corners Frankenstein’s crony into revealing the evil doctor’s plans. (He does this by applying a devastating Indian rug burn — flippin’ ouch!)

Once again the ring announcer calls the action, expertly pointing out that Mortis just hit Santo in the tracheae and that it’s a forbidden move. Good call as the referee, obscured by forearm smashes, was not witness to the harshness.

We know how this all ends. Matters not. Santo y Blue Demon contra el Doctor Frankenstein (1974) is a great action-packed pro wrestling/superhero/evil scientist story with girls in mini skirts, brain-transplanted zombies and Blue Demon’s electrifying sense of fashion.

Frank ’n Wolf

Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943) was a box office masterstroke, pitting two of the world’s greatest monsters in a no-disqualifications battle royale. Although considered a horror classic, look under the marquee and you’ll see it wasn’t as epic as the title promised.

Yeah, everyone thought Larry Talbot, the beleaguered werewolf, died at the end of The Wolf Man (1941). Even the grave robbers looking to pilfer the tomb of Talbot thought so. That is until they popped the top and allowed the light of the full moon to revive Larry’s corpse, enabling him to go on a throat-ripping spree.

He’s put in hospital by ranting and raving he’s responsible for the community throat-ripping while in wolf form. Oh, Larry – you so crazy! Gooned out to the point of having to go through all those hairy experiences again, Larry breaks out and seeks Maleva, the old gypsy woman whose wolf-y son bit Talbot’s tummy and passed along the curse. She tells him there is no cure, but might know someone who does. So off they go by horse and buggy from London to Germany. That’s around 700 miles. Long time to be sitting next to a ticking time bomb.

Arriving in Germany, Larry and Maleva ask around town about Dr. Frankenstein, who just happens to have a working knowledge of life and death. More so with death as he died. This makes Larry super bummed. He then gets the idea to root around the semi destroyed Castle Frankenstein (Sorry – spoiler. It was ka-BOOMED back in 1931) for the dead doc’s diary to see if there’s a way to end his immortality.

It’s here he stumbles across Frankenstein’s monster encased in ice. Pretty cold and snowy in them there parts, even though the lowlands are quite weather agreeable. Not the lowland residents, though. Doesn’t take much to get them in the mood for a little pitchforkin’.

Larry and Frank break the ice and become allies of sorts. The monster tries to show him where the diary is, but to no avail. Heading into town, Larry fakes a land purchase so he can meet the super hot Baroness Elsa Frankenstein and perhaps get clues to the diary’s whereabouts. About this time Larry’s London doc, who had been trailing him, shows up. Then the monster wanders into town, getting everybody super freaked. They all barely escape the pitchfork and head to the castle.

NOW we get to the juice. The diary is located, the doctor reassembles the machinery and figures out how to reverse the polarity of electricity on the wired patients and… Dang, he just can’t do it as he suddenly gets a God Complex and wants to make the monster even stronger. As it happens when you mix electricity with monsters on a full moon night, you have problems.

Larry furs up and the two abominations go at it. And here’s where slight disappointment sets in. The monumental battle only lasts 60 seconds, with Franklin throwing the Wolf Man around like a stuffed animal. But I’ll give this to Larry; the boy is quick and agile. While they lock up, one of the villagers lights a pile of dynamite at the foot of the damn the castle is built in front of, thereby releasing the damn’s contents and destroying the rest of the castle and the monsters with it. I think the handsome doc and hot Baroness made it out safely and probably hooked up. I’m fine with that.

FYI: This is not the original Frankenstein’s monster. Dracula played the mute creature this time around. Cool, but not as cool as the original.

Horror Appetizers

In the mood for generic horror? Hey, who among us isn’t? That’s kind of a snarky set-up as there’s rarely anything new in horror, from title to plot. But heck, I’d rather watch a cookie-cutter horror movie than a chick flick anyday. And documentaries that aren’t about UFOs or Bigfoot? Not gonna waste my time, man.

So, here’s a few more to distract you from watching educational and or com/rom films…

Dark Summer (2015)
“While home alone under house arrest, a teenager undergoes a terrifying brush with the supernatural in this stylish, hair-rising horror film.”

I bet the terrifying brush with the supernatural is her having to grow up and find a job.

It Follows (2015)
“For 19-year-old Jay the fall should be about school, boys, and weekends at the lake. Yet, after a seemingly innocent sexual encounter, she suddenly finds herself plagued by nightmarish visions; she can’t shake the sensation that someone, or something, is following her. As the threat closes in, Jay and her friends must somehow escape the horrors that are only a few steps behind.”

They had me at innocent sexual encounter, although close encounters of the sex kind are rarely innocent. At least that’s what Christian websites tell you. Yet another reason to have sex.

Army of Frankensteins (2015)
“After a failed attempt to propose to his girlfriend, Alan Jones is beaten to within an inch of his life by a street gang and taken to a mysterious lab where Dr. Tanner Finski and his kid genius assistant perform horrible experiments on him hoping to re-animate a Frankenstein. The experiments lead to a hole being ripped in space and time, manifesting an army of Frankensteins from hundreds of parallel universes and sending them all back to the 19th century, directly into the heart of a bloody battle between the North and South.”

OK, this one sounds pretty cool. Really wish they’d quit using “Frankenstein” to indicate monsters. It should be “Frankenstein’s Monsters” as Dr. Frankenstein was the crazy S.O.B. who built the creature from scratch.

P.S. Try your hardest not to confuse Army of Frankensteins with the similarly titled Frankenstein’s Army, a Hellrasier-ish (1987) and surreal sci-fi flick that came out in 2013 and features some of the coolest monsters this side of Silent Hill (2006).