Death By Boredom

And I thought Final Destination 3 (2006) with “death by tanning bed” was 

bad. The fourth — and hardly final The Final Destination (2009) — dispenses with the plot altogether, and just goes for the “set ’em up/knock ’em down” kill scenes, in which Death, only temporarily deprived, gets what it came for. They did this one in 3D. So what?

Nick O’Bannon, his girlfriend and another Guess Jeans™ couple are white-trashin’ it at a race car track. Foreseeing a horrific accident that ends up with a good portion the grandstand viewing audience getting either cut in half or turned into human Jell-O™ by ricochetting car parts/tires, Nick barely gets his friends, as well as a few others, out of exploding harm’s way.

As with all the FD movies, they were supposed to die. Now Death hunts them down and sets up elaborate traps that end in all accounts being paid in full. The mousetrap scenes are so evenly paced you could set your watch to ’em. Even then, they’re just not that innovative. One guy gets his butt/innards sucked out through a swimming pool drain. Really? That’s all you got?

Another one finds a girl trapped in a car wash about to get her face sheared off by those big roll-y things. Big time flinch — she gets out…and later dies by impalement. Hang on a sec — gotta yawn.

Another guy gets plowed into by an ambulance (plagiarizing the bus scene in Final Destination/2000). Another is dragged down the street by a runaway tow truck and catches on fire, burning alive. Man, this yawning is contagious.

But the biggest rip-off of all comes at the end when a semi plows into a coffee shop and smashes into the last three remaining survivors. It’s right here they cut to a computer-animated x-ray “cartoon” of the bodies getting mangled, broken and busted. They even showed an x-ray of the truck!

Stick with Final Destination and Final Destination 2/2003, and leave the rest for Death to clean up.

Metal For Your Face, Empowered Horror Women, Cursed Movie Stars

If you’re a fan of heavy metal (again, why wouldn’t you be?), you’ll load your britches over a gaggle of new Iron Maiden “Eddie” Halloween masks by Trick or Treat Studios (.com). Eddie, as everyone in the universe knows (even aliens), is the ghoulish mascot for Iron Maiden, gracing the cover of all their albums, sometimes as a zombie slasher, undead WWII pilot, an Egyptian mummy and even a living dead cyborg. If I was a cyborg, I’d want to look like Eddie. Then we could hang out all day and do cool cyborg stuff.

So now Trick or Treat Studios is set to release four new Iron Maiden full head masks, including “Aces High” Eddie, Powerslave, Somewhere in Time Eddie, Final Frontier Eddie, and Number of the Beast Eddie. What, no Groundhog’s Day Eddie? Prices for this sublime face-wear ranges from $49.99 — $59.00. A mere pittance to look like one of heavy metal’s most famous icons.

A little history: the rotting, skeletal visage of Eddie was done by artist Derek Riggs, was based on an original design by art student who just happened to be BBFs with Dave “Lights” Beasley, who, back in the early band days, was in charge of lighting, pyrotechnics and other hearing-damaging effects for Iron Maiden’s live show.

The new masks will be available August/September of this year, which I was just told is 2018. Geez, it was 1980 just a few days ago. So while we wait for our molded plastic makeover, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies to bang your rubber-encased head to…

DEAD LIST (May 1, 2018/VOD)
“Calvin is competing with five other actors — Zander, Scott, Kush, Jason and Bob — for a major movie role. Stopping at nothing to win the role of a lifetime, he uses a demonic book to curse his fellow actors, with each actor being killed off in their own separate unique and terrifying chapter.”

Sounds like one of those Final Destination (2000) things, but with demon flavorings added. The only demonic book I know is the TV Guide™. That flippin’ thing is evil and will suck your soul right out of your eyeballs on a nightly basis for hours at a time.

MARY SHELLEY (May 25, 2018)
“Passionate and rebellious teenager Mary Wollstonecraft finds a kindred spirit in poet Percy Shelley. Their whirlwind love affair scandalizes polite society, as the young couple gorge on literature and a bohemian life. When tragedy strikes and the couple lose their baby daughter, Mary strikes back, finding the courage and bravery to transform her pain into the world’s first science fiction novel, Frankenstein— all by the age of 18.”

Mary Shelley, back in the 1800s, was the woman who created Frankenstein, but she’s not the only one. Have you met my mom?

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (June 22, 2018)
“Young and disenchanted Sam meets a mysterious and beautiful woman who’s swimming in his building’s pool one night. When she suddenly vanishes the next morning, Sam embarks on a surreal quest across Los Angeles to decode the secret behind her disappearance, leading him into the murkiest depths of mystery, scandal and conspiracy.”

I’m thinkin’ the girl in the pool is a ghost mermaid on the swim from the Law. As for the surreal quest across Los Angeles, just driving a few blocks in Hollywood definitely qualifies.

DON’T LEAVE HOME (2018/2019)
“An American artist’s obsession with a disturbing urban legend leads her to an investigation of the story’s origins at the crumbling estate of a reclusive painter in Ireland.”

I can only guess that the urban legend is a sober Irishman. Heh.

Death Denied – But Not For Long

The filmmakers lost sight of what made their first two Death-comes-calling Final Destination movies so kick ass and turned this franchise into an assembly line of “yeah, what ev” deaths.

In Final Destination 3 (2006) there’s no story to speak of and the killings just aren’t that cool. (Example: Two topless teen chicks roast to well done in a sun-tanning bed. When does that not happen on a daily basis?) Attempting to piece together clues as to how and why Death is coming for them, a guy and his girl go through the motions to try and stop the chain of events that will inevitably lead to their expiration dates.

 Two sorta cool things: The DVD comes with a feature that allows you to “choose their fate,” meaning you have the power to save their lives. I kept choosing “die,” so I don’t know what happens when you hit the “don’t die” button.

The alternate ending is much better than anything the movie has to offer and echoes the original FD, but with a train instead of a plane. While I might have gone with a submarine loaded with Mentos™ and Cherry Coke™ heading for a busy intersection with malfunctioning stop lights, I’m down with the choo choo.

Death Is Calling – Will You Answer?

Boarding a plane on a school field trip to Paris (what, no chocolate factory?), a student gets a premonition that flying isn’t the safest mode of transportation, with the aircraft blowing up and killing them all. I proclaim this scene to be freakin’ amazing.

Gooning out, he and a handful of students get tossed off the plane, only to watch it double explode moments after take-off. If that was me I’d kiss the ground so hard as to give it a hickey.

Not long afterward, the surviving students start dying in seemingly accidental ways. This is because Death, cheated out of grim reaping their lives, is coming to reconcile the balance sheet.

Even though it is a DIRECT borrow from a 1961 Twilight Zone episode titled Twenty-Two, Final Destination (2000) thankfully isn’t one of those mindless “kill teens” horror movies. OK, it kinda is, but not as STUPID as 99% of the genre. You know everyone’s gonna get it, but you don’t know how, which is where FD rocks.

As with the Saw movies, FD’s mouse trap deaths are pure art – and intentionally misleading, which adds more savoriness to the end result. If I explain ’em here, then they won’t have the same impact when you watch it. Speaking of impact, one chick gets a bus sandwich served up old style. OK, no more. You’re simply going to watch this one to see for your own bus-faced self.