X-Files Anniversary, Demonic Kids Games, Zombie Baby-Making

Talk about finding the Holy Grail of sci-fi TV series — 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment™ is issuing all 11 seasons/218 episodes of The X-Files on DVD/Blu-ray box set on October 15, 2018 to commemorate the pop culture phenomenon’s 25th anniversary. Now you can binge watch (take the week off from work) all those elusive flying saucers, aliens, monsters, demonic stuff, and subsequent government conspiracies. That’s the good news. The bad news is its only available (for now) in England. Blimey!

Yeah, there’s been X-Files box sets before, the last one released a few years ago and only went to Season 10. At $148.00 for the Blu-ray collection and $119.00 for the DVD set, it was still a bargain at twice the price. The only drag is that the new box set contains 59 discs; Trying to find a particular episode in a sea of shows seems unduly laborious (sorry — word of the day calendar).

So while you click on over to Amazon.co.uk to buy it ($117.00 in U.S. converted dollars), here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not be worthy of a Fox Muldar/Dana Scully investigation…

LIGHT AS A FEATHER (October 12, 2018/Hulu)
“An innocent game of ‘Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board’ goes wrong when the five teen girls who played start dying off in the exact way that was predicted, forcing the survivors to figure out why they’re being targeted — and whether the evil force hunting them down is one of their own.”

Light as a feather, stiff as a board. Sounds more like a wishful health condition than a game. If it’s pure evil they’re looking for, those girls should start playing Twister™, the Exorcist edition.

WELCOME TO MERCY (November 2, 2018)
“A young woman struggles against the unholy forces that possess her in this terrifying occult thriller. After being stricken with stigmata, single mother Madaline is sent to a remote convent where nothing is what it seems and her friend August is seemingly the only person she can trust. Together, they must confront the demons inside Madaline before she becomes the Antichrist.”

Wikipedia™ defines stigmata as a term used in Christian Mysticism to describe the manifestations of bodily wounds, scars and pain in locations corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ, such as the hands, wrists, and feet. My bartender defines it as falling into sharp sticker bushes while wobbling home unholy drunk.

MAIL ORDER MONSTER (November 6, 2018)
“12-year-old Sam Pepper lost her mother in a car accident and her reclusive, quirky nature makes her an easy target for bullying. Realizing she’d had enough, Sam orders the parts to build a ‘Monster’ from a comic book ad, and is finally able to get back at the bully. Life becomes gets more complicated when Sam discovers her father Roy proposes to his girlfriend Sydney, Pepper relies on her monster to keep her from getting a new mom.”

Comic book back page ads in my day only sold stuff like X-Ray glasses (didn’t work), live Seamonkeys (didn’t float), Kryptonite “rocks” (regular rocks painted green) and Space Shoes for $1.98 (still wearing ‘em).

ZOO (2018/2019)
“Karen and John have lost the spark of married life the day they were notified that they were unable to conceive. Now they almost live like the walking dead, imprisoned by everyday life and on the verge of divorce. When the world is hit by a pandemic that really turns people into zombies, the couple have to lock themselves in their apartment, waiting for rescue. While the world outside is falling apart, they are forced to find their way back to each other and reclaim their lost love.”

Stuck indoors while zombies are taking over outside and nothing to do but practice making babies? This doesn’t sound like a dark horror comedy but rather…THE BEST MOVIE IN THE WORLD!

Mexican Octopus Man

I’ve been looking for years and finally found the Rent-A-Center™ Holy Grail of rubber suited monster movies: Octaman (1971). I’m gonna go ahead and give it four stars because hey, when you have a creature called Octaman, there’s simply no way it could suck. I found the movie poster as well. Looks like someone tinkled on it.

There’s a lot of anti-healthy radiation in the waters around a Mexican fishing town causing those little detectors to make crazy clicking sounds. Think tap dancing crickets on Red Bull™. A science field trip, or “expedition”, heads south to find out what’s causing all that noise. (Crickets, probably.)

What they find besides roadside margaritas is a small mutant octopus that can hang out on the beach as well as in it. Well hey, this needs to be studied. But that costs money. Where to get it? From a wallet fat circus owner who wants to financially exploit wet wiggler at his carnival. No wonder he owns a circus – that’s a really cool idea.

Before you can say “10th Wonder of the World” the head science dude returns to camp to discover his entire crew of lab interns has been slaughtered into petri dish chunklets and that the cash creature is missing. I have so many theories about what may have happened, my head stings.

Following a lead given by a young gossip-y villager, they find the octopus in a local lake, now grown to over seven feet tall with, as the poster says, amazing strength and a lust for killing. Sounds like me if I was soaked in radiation water and had nothing to eat but cricket tacos.

Octaman is eventually cornered in a ring of fire and, after a blanket-clenching stand-off, looks as though his killing lust days are over. Not so fast, land walker – Octaman lives to wiggle his arms menacingly in your general direction another day, and goes abut re-killing people. What happens next? Let’s just say there are guns involved, followed by a calamari feast of community-feeding proportions.

Of all the world’s travesties, I’ll never understand why there wasn’t a sequel.