The Final Dead, Evil Clothes, Sex Zombies

Proceed with caution as there be spoilers ahead. For those who are hardcore (or even casual) Walking Dead fans, the final episode of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln, whose father-in-law is hippie flute player Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull) was kind of a swerve.

Impaled by re-bar and barely escaping a herd/horde of walkers, Rick, bleeding out like a stuck pig, keeps passing out and hallucinating. Sounds like a night out at The Tug Tavern. Several past characters return to offer advice and to yell at him to wake up. Then he blows up a bridge over troubled waters, which cause a ton of zombies to cannonball into the raging river below.

Did Rick go ka-BOOM during the explosion? Not according to the last scene, which I won’t reveal. But it’s already in the works Rick will be back in not one but three impending Walking Dead movies, as well as directing a few episodes.

This is good news as I didn’t want Rick to go ka-BOOM. While we ponder the future of The Walking Dead without him, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not make you wanna jump off a bridge…

CAM (November 16, 2018)
“An ambitious cam-girl wakes up one day to discover she’s been replaced on her show with an exact replica of herself. As this copy begins to push the boundaries of Alice’s Internet identity, the control that Alice has over her life, and the men in it, vanishes. While she struggles to regain what she’s lost, she slowly finds herself drawn back to her show and to the mysterious person who has taken her place.”

Okay, that’s gotta feel weird, being replaced by yourself. If that happened to me, I’d tell that guy to get a haircut and wear something else besides KISS T-shirts day in and day out for months at a time.

UGLY SWEATER PARTY (November 23, 2018)
On Christmas Eve at a campsite deep in the woods, an ugly sweater party is in full swing. Best friends Cliff and Jody arrive expecting some mistletoe action from the sexy twins who invited them, but soon realize that they are at a Bible camp. To make matters worse, Cliff is wearing a sweater possessed by the ghost of notorious serial killer Declan Rains. While the evil sweater slowly possesses Cliff, Jody also realizes that the party guests aren’t as innocent as they first seem.

An evil sweater. Welcome to the bottom of the barrel.

ARCTIC (February, 2019)
“A man stranded in the Arctic is finally about to receive his long-awaited rescue. However, after a tragic accident, his opportunity is lost. He must then decide whether to remain in the relative safety of his camp or to embark on a deadly trek through the unknown for potential salvation.”

Unless a polar bear eats his head off and snacks on his entrails as if unheated lasagna.

RABID (2019)
“Rose, a young woman who, after an accident leaves her scarred beyond recognition, undergoes a radical untested stem-cell treatment. While turning Rose into the belle of the ball, the experimental transformation comes at a price.”

A remake of David Cronenberg’s same-named 1977 classic, which was a remake of his 1975 sex zombie movie, Shivers (1975). Check out the plot: “The residents of a suburban high-rise apartment building are being infected by a strain of parasites that turn them into mindless, sex-crazed fiends out to infect others by the slightest sexual contact.” Forget condoms — wear a wet suit.

Junkie Werewolf

In the first sequel to the awesome Ginger Snaps lycanthrope trilogy, Brigitte, the beleaguered younger teen sister of Ginger, has been infected with the blood of her werewolf sister. In order to keep from having to shave her legs every five minutes, she distills an injectable serum from wolfsbane to keep the wolf within at bay. Yep, a junkie werewolf.

Documenting her tracks she makes a cut somewhere on her lower person (slightly below the Fun Zone) to calculate how long it takes to heal — and determines if she’s wolfing up a lot faster than, say, yesterday. She is.

Thinking Brigitte’s a drug addict, the cops dump her off in a halfway hospital full of abuse and substance abuse chicks. The guidance counselor is a reformed addict so she thinks she has Brigitte figured out. She does not. Where most girls are content to get high off pot, pills, cocaine, goofers and glue sticks, Brigitte, the counselor believes, found a way to get high off wolfsbane.

A socially-misfit pre-teen girl named Ghost, whose grandma or mom or aunt is in the burn ward wrapped up like a mummy, wanders the halls, assisting and spying wherever she can. She reads werewolf comic books and suspects Brigitte to be one.

Finding a way to escape the hospital, Brigitte and Ghost go to the little girl’s house out in the woods. A temporary shelter at best because a werewolf is after them. It was after them in the hospital, too, but I forgot to mention it. They set traps for the beast, but during the course of the night Brigitte discovers she and the werewolf outside are not the only monsters running loose.

Things get really (OK, I’ll say it again) hairy when the guidance counselor tracks them down and has an ugly confrontation that does not end in sexy results. Brigitte, unable to control her transformation any longer, starts getting long in the tooth, if you catch my drift. There are lots of cool scenes worth mentioning, but the one that really resonates is a dozen girls self-diddling in a therapy class. I have GOT to enroll in that class next semester.

Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed (2004) never pees on a fire hydrant of predictability, nor will you be able to figure out Ghost’s jaw-dropping secret until the last scene. (No, she’s not a werewolf or a mini Bigfoot). Superb lesbian werewolf entertainment. What’s that — you haven’t heard of a lesbian werewolf movie before? We need to talk…

Soul With Nowhere To Go

In the spook classic Carnivals of Souls (1962), a young woman drives her car off a bridge and dies, but she’s too blonde to realize it.

A male pattern baldness zombie ghoul ghost relentlessly pursues her to welcome her to the club. This goons her out.

It also irritates the woman as all she wants to do is wash her hair and field pick-up lines from the alcoholic swinger living downstairs in the boarding house she’s shacked up in. Her best line: “I’d rather die than go out with you.” 

Funny she should word it that way.

Wife Beating Ghost

After getting out of jail for killing her cop husband (who was also a professional wife beater), Marnie is put on house arrest in the same NY brownstone killing pad with blood still on the walls. Handcuffed to her ankle is one of those electronic tracking devices that beeps like a smoke detector when you light a cigarette or go outside its 100-foot range. This makes it tough to get away from the ghost of her husband who keeps showing up to get his revenge on her for her getting revenge on him.

The visitations are standard ghost stuff with little innovation. (Note to dead guy: why rattle the silverware when you can use your powers to stick ’em into things like walls and people?) Shanks, her ex-husband’s cop partner, has it out for Marnie. One step outside the beep zone and she’s back in jail for 10 more years. So he sits in his car outside her house and stares. Good use of taxpayer money.

When he checks in on Marnie and discovers her face bruised, he uses years of detective work to conclude someone else killed her husband to death and she can’t say who without herself getting killed, also to death. Shanks thinks it’s the handsome sexy grocery delivery guy with a criminal record. Yeah, not so much.

While handsome sexy grocery delivery guy with a criminal record is having sexual relations with the house arrest hottie, the ghost husband shows up, looking like a paint smear than an actual ghost. Seeing his wife doing it with someone not him makes him head-butt the kid in the face over and over, the boy’s blood splattering to show the outline of Mr. Invisible. I felt that was kinda neat.

By the time Shanks does show up (and has a body drop on him from the ceiling, which I felt was momentarily humorous, he discovers Marnie was telling him the truth about her ghost ex.

100 Feet’s (2008) story? Kinda interesting. The ghost action? Meh. The handsome sexy grocery delivery guy face-smashing? Nice. The ending? Feh. And I whole-heartedly stand by that.