Killer Cakes, Reflecting Evil, Pregnant Horror

Okay, so this is pretty cool — Christine McConnell, artist/photographer/baker, is getting her own Netflix™ TV cooking show series called The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell, premiering October 12, 2018. If you don’t know her work, she’s famous (250,000 followers on Instagram™) for her horror-themed baked yummables.

From the press release: “Wickedly talented baker and artist, Christine McConnell welcomes you into her terrifyingly delicious home to create delectable confections and hauntingly disturbing decor with the help of her colorful collection of creatures.”

Awesome. Makes you wonder, though, if her Alien Facehugger cake bursts out of your stomach after you eat it. I’ve had Hostess Twinkies™ do that. While you chew on the visual, here are a few now available/upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not be as tasty as artificially-flavored snack treat…

PUPPET MASTER: BLITZKRIEG MASSACRE (available now)
“This stomach-churning adventure starts off with Puppet Master: Blitzkrieg Massacre, in which The Gore Collector culls the sickest moments from the 11-film deep Puppet Master series, mashing them together with macabre music and brand new moments of body-breaking mayhem: In an unknown dystopian future, a drifter with an unusually high-tolerance for pain is held captive in a horrific hospital by The Circle of Psycho Surgeons, a clandestine crew of M.D.’s (that’s medical deviants) who are experimenting with human suffering. Suddenly, our shackled hero hears the call of The Gore Collector, a sadistic curator of carnage who is well past his prime and now seeks an heir to take over his evil operation. Escaping from the lurid lab, the drifter enters the underground lair of The Gore Collector — there the perverse programmer pops in a vile videotape and begins the process of trying to warp the man’s mind with some of the goriest and most gruesome moments from Full Moon’s iconic film franchises.”

Yeesh, talk about recycling. So this basically a greatest hits package and a way to further milk a horror franchise that, like the victims in these movies, should’ve died a long time ago.

LOOK AWAY (October 12, 2018)
A lonely 18-year-old high schooler opens up to her reflection because of the lack of support she has from family and her peers. She switches place with her supportive, but evil, twin that she discovers in the mirror’s reflection, but the newfound freedom unleashes suppressed feelings.

My mirror twin is a real asshat. Nice hair, though.

BLESSED ARE THE CHILDREN (October 23, 2018)
Traci Patterson, an adrift 20-something who’s still reeling from the death of her father and her breakup with an abusive fiancé, discovers that she’s pregnant. With the help of her friends, Erin and Mandy, Traci decides to terminate her pregnancy, but quickly after leaving the clinic, she begins seeing and hearing things — shapes in the corner of her eye, strange noises in the middle of the night, and ghoulish figures stalking her every move. Is it guilt or are Traci and her friends in grave danger?”

So the douchebag abusive fiancé knocked up Traci and then bailed? I think the ghoulish figures are stalking the wrong person.

THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS (November 13, 2018)
“On the night of November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. took a high-powered rifle and murdered his entire family as they slept. At his trial, DeFeo claimed that “voices” in the house commanded him to kill. Thirteen months later, the Lutz family bought the house and stayed only 28 days before fleeing in terror. Their nightmarish ordeal shocked the world in The Amityville Horror. The Lutzes may have escaped from Amityville with their lives…but the DeFeos weren’t so lucky. This is their story.”

There are three certainties in life: taxes, death and YET ANOTHER Amityville Horror spin-off. And yet I’ll probably watch it. Voices are telling me to.

Catch And Release Monsters, FBI vs. UFOs, Arabic Ghouls

If you ever catch the highly-marketable Loch Ness Monster, just know that its protected by the Scottish Natural Heritage, which demands you throw the beast back in the lake, lest ye be severely punished, probably with a stick or something.

If you think this is not serious, guess again. The following comes from recent BBC news report; “Scottish officials have a plan ready if the Loch Ness Monster is ever caught. Officials drew up a set of guidelines on how to protect the new species — including releasing it back into its watery home.”

“The ‘partly serious, partly fun’ code of practice was written in 2001 by Scottish Natural Heritage, which is funded by the Scottish government. SNH said it will “dust off” the plan and put it into action should the fabled beast be discovered, reports the BBC.”

“It says officials should take a DNA sample from the monster so scientists can study the creature. Then it should be released back into the Loch with measures put in place to make sure it is not disturbed — as it would be an extremely rare species needing conservation.”

Before you head to the corner bait shop (no, not a sushi restaurant) to get a bigger fishing pole, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not need to be thrown in a lake…

ALONG CAME THE DEVIL (August 10, 2018)
“A troubled teen Ashley is sent to live with her estranged Aunt Tanya. While in her old hometown she has visions of her deceased mom, driving her to try to contact the spirit world putting her soul into grave danger.”

GHOUL (August 24, 2018/Netflix™)
“Based on Arabic folklore, Ghoul is a chilling series about a prisoner who arrives at a remote military interrogation center and turns the tables on his interrogators, exposing their most shameful secrets.”

Sound familiar? It should — it comes directly from the Stephen King TV mini series, Storm of the Century (1999). That one had a lot of weather in it.

UFO (September 4, 2018/DVD)
“Derek is a brilliant college student and haunted by a childhood UFO sighting. He believes that mysterious sightings reported at multiple airports across the United States are UFOs. With the help of his girlfriend, Natalie and his advanced mathematics professor, Dr. Hendricks, Derek races to unravel the mystery with FBI special agent Franklin Ahls on his heels.”

You don’t need to be a brilliant college student to know that UFOs are real. Every high school drop out knows that.

HELL FEST (September 28, 2018)
“On Halloween night, three young women and their respective boyfriends head to Hell Fest — a ghoulish traveling carnival that features a labyrinth of rides, games and mazes. They soon face a bloody night of terror when a masked serial killer turns the horror theme park into his own personal playground.”

Liked this better when it was called The Funhouse (1981). Looks like someone’s been double-dipping into idea bowl (aka, Hollywood toilet) again.

Bavarian Vampire

In the based-on-a-true-story Bloodlust: The Vampire of Nuremberg (1977), a family-beaten, deaf and dumb guy who witnessed his sister being molested by Father Knows Best (or “Pastor Bedtime”), grows up to discover he has a penchant for watching women have sex with each other and sucking the embalmed gunk out of the throats of dead chicks (not in this order). Fortunately, for him, the local mortuary is overstocked with corpses of attractive young gals.

Calling himself “Mosquito” (cute), he cuts open their boobs, slices off their heads with a pocketknife (!), pops out their eyes, and does near text-book tom-ghoulery in his quest for bloody goodness. He eventually goes after the living and takes out a horny couple trying to bust a move (how rude).

The pacing is slow, the nudity plentiful, the gore explicit. In an homage to Bloodsucking Freaks (1976), try and stomach (if you can) the graphic scenes of a two-pronged straw being used to sip delicious Neck Slurpees™. You’ll never drink blood again.

Dinosaurs From Space

After some intergalactic police aliens — who look like turd-shaped dinosaurs — zapped a criminal who fugitive’d his probe hole to Earth, they forgot to retrieve a proprietary energy necklace and laser blast cannon (one powers the other).

A direction-less teen named Billie, who always seems to have THE LAW breathing down his neck, finds the ray gun and figures out how to use it to get back at those who wronged him, like those local bullies and that !@#$% mailbox, whose just been asking for it.

Every time Billie uses the weapon, though, he changes into a green-faced ghoul with stoned eyes and short yellow fangs that could act as teeth should he desire some beef jerky or some other chewy treat. Speaking of, back in outer space, the aliens are being chewed out by their boss for leaving the gun behind. This is done in an upper atmosphere language I have yet to master.

Billie, having some fun, blasts stuff like it wasn’t against the law, even blowing up a billboard advertising the Star Wars (1977) movie. Priceless. But the fun can’t last forever; The aliens re-arrive, and in a moment of pure irony, blast Billie with a ray gun of their own. The light blue and pink beams may not look very harmful, but they ARE. May Billie rest in pieces.

Laserblast (1978) is classic cheeseball sci-fi that wants to be serious, but falls short by a few light years. A suggestion would be to try a more manly colored ray beam next time.

The Family Ghouls

Watching 1974’s The House of Seven Corpses (featuring eight graves) is comparable to a sitting down to a Thanksgiving dinner with family and relatives: lots of arguing, some bloodletting, and a big turkey at the center of it all.

So this horror movie film director is making a movie about the infamous Beal Mansion and the family who were the sacrifice party victims of occult mis-doings. Points for setting the mood.

But the sticky part comes when the director wants the reluctant cast to re-enact said rituals/incantations from best-selling Tibetan Book of the Dead (available on Amazon.com – no kidding), which ends up resurrecting one of the family ghouls who shows up to coach the actors on how to die with more realism. Talk about your killer cameos – heh. [Note: This might be where The Evil Dead (1981) got the idea to do the SAME THING.]

The zombie has his work cut out – there are 14 main characters, all of whom barely get along. Not helping that the director is constantly yelling and brow-beating his actors into emoting. (He’s actually more of a dick than a filmmaker.) But it’s the ghoul that squeezes the performance out of the dwindling actors/actorettes/everyone else.

Best part: a school/graveyard fight between the director and a cameraman at the end – lens dude gets flipped into a freshly dug grave and through the magic of cinema, rises up as an icky dirt zombie. He crawls out and pursues his choke-worthy adversary so slow as to let turtles whiz by.

The House of Seven Corpses has a great title. Not much more than that, unfortunately, even though a ton of horror movies after ripped it off. Kinda like people who dress like you. (Sometimes I hate being a fashion icon.)

A Taste For Cannibalism

I never really understood cannibals. Unless you’re a zombie, I don’t see the point in eating human flesh, what with a McDonald’s every twenty-feet from where you’re standing. Must be a religious thing.

Which brings me to the point; There’s a new horror movie called Ghoul (releasing June 23, 2015), about a real-life cannibal/murderer/criminal Andrei Chikatilo, the Soviet Union’s most violent serial killer. This f’d-in-the-head nut bag committed sexual assault, murder and mutilation of 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990 in Russia and the surrounding counties and was finally caught and executed in 1994. I’m sure everybody wants to relive those memories with this movie.

In order to make Ghoul more palatable (sorry), the filmmakers have put a supernatural spin on things: “Three Americans travel to the Ukraine to film a documentary about the cannibalism epidemic that swept through the country during the famine of 1932. After being lured deep into the Ukraine forest for an interview with one of the last known survivors, they quickly find themselves trapped in a supernatural hunting ground.”

To prove there’s still a taste (sorry) for movie themes as this, Ghoul opened #1 in the Czech Republic and went on to become the highest grossing horror movie in Czech history, followed up by a limited U.S. theatrical release in March. Clearly, moviegoers ate (sorry) up the movie and the filmmakers are feasting (sorry) on profits.

All this talk about eating is making me hungry. Time to head to McDonald’s. I wonder if McRibs™ are made from real human ribs? Maybe in the Ukraine.

P.S. Ghoul should not be confused with The Ghouls, an upcoming (December 18, 2015) Chinese action/adventure/fantasy/thriller movie based on the novel Ghost Blow Out The Light, which I have not read as its written in some sort of foreign language, possible Russian.

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.