Star Warfare, Multiverse Monsters, Funeral Fun

If you’re partial to UFOs, Frankenstein, Samurai and vaudeville phantoms, then you need to visit ThirteenthFloor.us and immerse yourselfie in the fantastical art of Billy Ludwig, an ingenious artist dealing in mixed media, which is the artistic version of mixed martial arts. Kinda. 

Ludwig’s take on flying saucers and pop culture icons is kitschy fun. But where his talent goes next level is by juxtaposing vintage images of WWII and Star Wars: At-At Walkers, X-Wings and TIE Fighters engaging with Spitfires, battleships, bazookas, ground troops and more. As if that wasn’t cool enough, these art pieces are in black and white (one, even, being vintage colorized), lending a tangible sense of realism to make you believe this is how the war REALLY went down. Did for me, anyway.

The art is printed on high quality 12 pt. gloss card stock and sell for an average of $15. You couldn’t buy a glass of refreshing Yatooni Boska at the Mos Eisley Cantina on Tatooine with twice those New Republic credits. There’s also books and shirts emblazoned with Ludwig’s innovative designs.

So whether you wave your flag for the US Armed Forces and the Rebel Alliance or side with the Republican-led Empire, here are a few out now/upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not be as tasty as a cup of the Cantina’s house special: Blue Milk, which, of course, comes from female banthas. Try not to think about it…

WAKING KARMA / Out now (VOD)

“When high school senior Karma’s estranged cult leader father traps her and her mother in a remote forest compound, she must survive a series of psychological trials meant to prepare her for a strange and deadly reincarnation ritual.”

And if she gets older, Karma will look back on her high school days as the best time of her life.

2025 ARMAGEDDON / December 23, 2022 (VOD)

“A militant alien race launches an attack on Earth using gigantic creatures and geological disasters all based on those found on The Asylum’s Movie Channel signal, which reached their planet.”

Finally — the film studio known for bold-face plagiarism of successful genre movies, have finally gone all in — they’re ripping off themselves. 

SCREAMS FROM THE SWAMP / December 27, 2022 (VOD)

“When Angela’s husband and son die in hospital after a car crash, she takes it upon herself to seek justice against the doctor who operated on the pair. Desperation and obsession lead Angela into a paranoid state, dissociating her from reality. She follows the doctor day after day: behind the anonymous facade, the man hides a parallel life of depravity and murders committed together with his colleagues. Discovering these new horrors, Angela turns to dark otherworldly forces to find the strength to eliminate the killers. This decision leads her into a spiral of violence and hallucinations, where pleasure and fear intermingle but ultimately there is a high price to pay.”

Desperation, paranoia, disassociation with reality, hallucinations… You just met a Tug Tavern regular.

PLAY DEAD / Release pending 2023 (Theaters/VOD)

“Criminology student Chloe fakes her own death to break into a morgue in order to retrieve a piece of evidence that ties her younger brother to a crime gone wrong. Once inside she quickly learns that the fearsome coroner uses the morgue as a front for a sick and twisted business. As a frightening game of cat and mouse ensues, Isabel discovers that the scariest thing about the morgue is not the dead, but the living.”

And just what sick and twisted business would the coroner use the morgue for? A cannibal pop-up? Embalming stand? Necrophiliac kissing booth? Regardless of these guaranteed money-making ideas, you gotta appreciate his entrepreneurial spirit. 

Embalming: The New Taxidermy

Miyako is a coroner. She gets to look at all the inner goo within our bodies once we quit making outer goo. One day she gets a male teenage corpse with a needle sticking out of its neck. My guess is he died of natural causes. But, as the body is prepared for embalming, someone sneaks in after hours and takes the corpse’s head right out of its shoulder holder.

The search for the misplaced face leads Miyako and detective Kurume into the lucrative underground shopping mall known as the organ trade industry. Legs, arms, torsos, eyeballs, wieners…they won’t be undersold! (I’m waiting for the President’s Day 1/2 off butt cheek sale.)

It’s here they find Dr Fuji, an ostracized surgeon who runs his limb extraction practice out of the back of a semi-truck. Fuji knows where the head is, but it’s linked to a convoluted plot that distracts from the real reason to watch this movie: to witness graphic autopsies done on the living. Is that asking too much?

Miyako, though, has bigger problems. A nearby priest tells her what she does to dead bodies is evil and that she’s really gonna get it, the argument being that preserving the dead body is a crime against the laws of nature. (The Japanese believe in cremation, not embalming. I’m split down the middle. Heh.)

Fuji, as it turns out, did the embalming on Miyako’s mom when she kicked the Buddha, so that ties in somehow. While Em: Embalming (1999) invokes a solid “meh,” it’s the gloriously gory body parts that reward one’s rental yen. Not quite as visceral as Saw III (2006) in the head-opening department, if you can put up with all the plot distractions, you’ll be rewarded with some juicy meatiness. I know that sounds icky, but I couldn’t think of anything else.