Artful Sharks, Southern Fried Zombies, Rioting Girls

Been marveling (again) over the non-official sales art for the upcoming big budget giant shark movie, Meg. Designed by artist David Graham, it’s so cool, the movie studio should just buy it from him and use that to sell the movie. (Not fake news: I posted this very same art in August of 2017 — and I endorse that statement.)

While David’s done several work-ups for Meg (in theaters August 10, 2018), the one featured here looks like it was inspired by another artist’s “movie” art. No party foul — when it comes to giant sharks, we’re all aquatic allies.

Speaking of vintage Jaws movie art (official or not), here’s one you may not have seen on dry/sorta wet land…

While you avoid getting in the water come August, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not take a big bite out of your life…

ATTACK OF THE SOUTHERN FRIED ZOMBIES (March 13, 2018)
“Lonnie, a crop duster pilot, must lead a mismatched group of survivors to escape the deadly zombie horde after an experimental chemical, intended to control the invasive kudzu vine, transforms the citizens of Charleston, MS into zombies.”

Did this come out in February of 2017? That’s what IMDB.com is saying. And yet the trailer on YouTube™ and the date on the movie poster itself is claiming March 13, 2018 as its release date. I’m so confused.

HE’S OUT THERE (2018)
“On vacation at a remote lake house, a mother and her two young daughters must fight for survival after falling into a terrifying and bizarre nightmare conceived by a psychopath.”

YET ANOTHER psychopath conceiving nightmares for non-psychopaths. Not sure which orchestra I fall into.

RIOT GIRLS (2018)
“Set in a world where adults have mysteriously died and resources are scarce, Riot Girls tells the story of a teenage girl who is called to action when her brother is captured by rivals and set to be executed. Joined by the girl who has always loved her, and the boy who wants to love her, the threesome tear through the crumbling suburbs on a violent road marked by sexual discovery, betrayal and brutal justice.”

Cool, but isn’t sexual discovery, betrayal and brutal justice pretty much the same thing anymore?

DARKNESS VISIBLE (2018)
“Londoner Ronnie embarks on a journey to India when his mother, Suleka, goes missing and mysteriously ends up in a Kolkata hospital. Before Ronnie can unravel the mystery of what brought his mother back to her homeland, Suleka dies in an apparent cult killing. Further deaths point to a series of past murders that stopped 28 years ago when Suleka left India with her infant son. Until now. As the darkness within Ronnie grows and the murders reach their peak, all roads lead to the feared witch of Kolkata’s insane asylum.”

I’ve been to Kolkata’s insane asylum. They must’ve changed the sign, as it now reads: The Tug Tavern. I did buy one of Kolkata’s T-shirts, though. Their branding looks a heckuva lot like Motorhead’s logo.

The Goblin and the Girl

17-about-to-turn-18 Tina has more to worry about than being therapy and pill treated for psychosis, parental alienation, imagining being smooshed by a speeding car, and an imaginary, small lumpy creature with sightless eyes that makes sounds like a bird with a reverse beak. Through all this she goes to parties to where they play nothing but EDM (Electronic Dance Music). I’m surprised they haven’t thrown her into the loony bin by now as that “music” will rot your brain, the irony being you don’t need a brain to be into EDM.

Tina’s condition gets worse, her friends thinks she’s a loon, the misshapen creature is raiding the fridge (he better leave the beer ALONE) and her parents are about to commit her to an insane asylum. All the while she walks around in short shorts so short almost the entire movie, I’ve seen people wear bigger smiles.

Tina’s into a handicapped DJ (an oxymoron) with fuscia hair who plans on deejaying her 18th birthday party. Earlier, she had a meltdown when, FINALLY, her parents “see” the creature in her bedroom (she earlier befriended the little lump) and beat the leftovers out of it with a curtain rod. The cops show up and Lumpy is taken to a hospital and put on a respirator. Whatever happens to Lumpy, happens to Tina. Good thing that doesn’t work in reverse as I don’t think I could stomach a gray goblin in hot pants.

Tina skanks it up good for her party, sneaks out of the house in tight spandex, weird facial makeup, ratted hair, stiletto heels, and somehow tracks down Lumpy at the hospital and kidnaps him, all under the watchful eyes of the hospital staff. (They did yell “Hey!” at her; so they fulfilled their script obligation.)

Arriving at the party with Lumpy, her friends all now see Tina wasn’t lying about seeing things. She rightfully smirks. Then her mom and dad show up and it’s the curtain rod treatment again. Somehow Tina escapes with the Lumpster and they drive off in her dad’s car. At this point two things happen (besides a few flashbacks): one is that Tina is in the back seat. Guess where Lumpy is?

The Nightmare (aka, Der Nachtmahr/2015) is a German movie with subtitles, and yet, during a school class with a teacher of all things, everybody starts talking in better English than I’ve ever managed. The movie was/is planned as a trilogy, so don’t try to figure it all out — just like EDM.

Blood, Leather and Mom

Still marveling over technology’s ability to stop a horror movie long enough for you to go to the bathroom, and then resume when you’re done. (Did you wash your hands?) Wonder if they make digital catheters, you know, to eliminate the middle man?

Anyway, here’s some plausible pause-ables…

BLOODY BITS (available now)
“Black Fawn Distribution, in association with essential Canadian horror film festival Blood In The Snow (BITS), has released the brand new short horror film compilation entitled Bloody BITS – Shorts Compilation. The collection highlights seven of the film festival’s best short horror films and, in support of the DVD’s new release, which is currently available for order exclusively through blackfawndistribution.com.”

I like horror shorts. Not the ones I’m wearing, but the “wham, bam, thank you ma’am” mini movies that cater to my ADD. Normally, I’d just knock that condition into submission with six or eleven beers. But short horror movies achieve the same results, though not nearly as fun.

LEATHERFACE (available now/UK)
“Four wannabe actors take part in a horrifying reality show in which a serial killer stalks them in a remote cabin and their reactions are filmed for TV. The survivor of the week is promised $1 million and the starring role in their very own horror film. The only problem is the role of the killer is being played by a maniacal murderer who has been let out of an insane asylum to continue his reign of terror.”

This one’s a lawsuit-in-a-can. There’s already an official Texas Chainsaw Massacre spin-off called Leatherface (as deftly reported here back in October 2016) pending a 2017 release. This RIP-OFF Leatherface has been released in the UK and has nothing to do with the TCM franchise, even though the guy on the front looks deceptively similar, as does his choice of power tools. International wars were started over far less.

THE BELKO EXPERIMENT (March 17, 2017/VOD)
“The American Belko company in South America is mysteriously sealed off at the beginning of a work day and its employees are ordered to kill each other or be killed themselves. This starts an escalation of violence, where we discover the true nature of each and every Belko employee.”

Corporate employees killing each other. So much for an HR department. Wondering though — if you get killed, does that take away from your accrued vacation time?

KILLING GROUND (2017)
“Ian and Samantha arrive at an isolated campsite to find an SUV and a tent — no sign of the occupants. As night falls and the campers fail to return, Ian and Sam grow increasingly uneasy. The discovery of a distressed child wandering in the woods unleashes a terrifying chain of events that will test them to breaking point.”

Time to invoke the legally-binding “finder’s keepers” claim here and score yourself some new wheels and a portable roof over your head. Don’t be a douche — do the right thing and leave a thank-you note.

BORDERLINE (2017)
“Maria and Silvia have lost their mother and they have decided to put her to rest in the nearby forest. One of the sisters becomes unhinged by the loss. Her mental instability leads to tragedy as the other sibling and others do their best to survive this dark encounter.”

Bigfoot’s not gonna cotton to you burying your garbage on his property. This also makes me wonder why the sisters are dumping no-longer-mom in the woods and side-stepping a formal funeral with all the bling? Maybe they were adopted.

Unborn To Be Wild

Strangled by his twin sister’s belly button extension cord while in a womb without a view, Jumby was stillborn — something he’s still very pissed off about.

His sister made it out alive and grows up to be a supermodel-worthy college hottie who walks around in Victoria’s Secret™ panties (page nine of the summer catalog/3 for $30). This is a plot device that never gets old.

 Lately, though, she’s been having real-time nightmares of a back-from-the-dead Zombie Jumby. Dumb name — he should be thankful he wasn’t born. (Note: Though dead on arrival, Zombie Jumby is portrayed to be about 8-years-old. How does that work?)

The neighbor kid she baby-sits keeps showing up and doing the spooky trance thing, declaring Jumby wants to be born right the screaming heck now. Then she finds out she was a twin and that her mother committed suicide in an insane asylum over Jumby’s less-than-spectacular debut. Throw in a ridiculously reaching back story involving a family curse, Nazis and a demon wanting revenge, and you have one fright-less turd of a “horror thriller.”

 

The chills and spook moments in The Unborn (2009) are so stock as to have been downloaded off the Internet. The Jewish (!) exorcism is so clumsy, I could’ve done a better job — and even given them a discount as business has been slow lately.

P.S. Do your utmost best to not confuse this The Unborn with 1991’s The Unborn, a heartwarming family horror flick about a couple who can’t have children (lucky them), but chose to go the in-vitro fertilization route facilitated by an insane doctor, which yields them a science-gone-wrong kid. Unlucky them.

Dr. Feelgood

The Richard Miller University got an upgrade: the insane asylum ward, shut down for years, has been renovated and re-opened as a dorm for freshman arriving at college. (I’m sorry – did I just yawn?)

It was in this asylum Dr. Burke performed experimental lobotomies on his teenage patients. Then his patients ran out of patience, wrapped him in barb-wire and subsequently made him the exact opposite of healthy. Not sure how, but Burke is back to continue his work. (Oops – another yawn.)

Playing out almost exactly like Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), each student dies according to his or her dark past. For the muscle-bound jock, it’s being fat. For a cold hottie it’s being beaten by her boyfriend. (For me it’d be swimming in a lake of Budweiser™ – without fashionable swim trunks.) Burke, cracking jokes (but not as good as Freddy Krueger) transports his victims into the scene of their fear.

 With Asylum (2008) you seen it all before, you’ve heard it all before. Burke looks like a Rent-A-Center™ version of a Hellraiser (1987) Cenobite with the bondage leather and barb-wire shirt, but he has neither the wit nor style to carry it off. Once impaled by his own lobotomy picks, black stuff leaks out and all the souls he’s collected over the years float away like hot-air victims. I have GOT to stop yawning as it’s so rude.

Haunted House On A Haunted Hill

Sarah, the sister of a magazine editor chick, was the only living survivor from the blood jamboree at the Vanacutt Mansion in House on Haunted Hill (1999), which was a remake of the far superior 1959 version. Sarah kept a diary, detailing her experiences with undead demonic forces. (Wonder what she said about me in it?) Then she dies. At first it’s thought she committed suicide, but as it turns out, nope.

An art collector seeks the ridiculously evil Baphomet statue inside the abandoned mansion/insane asylum where unnecessary medical procedures were performed on patients without their written consent.

So a gang of thugs shoots the sister in the hair and steals her journal, which holds clues as to the statue’s whereabouts. Meanwhile, an archaeological college professor and the dead girl’s sister and boyfriend go to the mansion to recover the same exact statue. How’s that for a coincidence?

But the criminals have guns, so they have the upper hand and… Not so fast – the ghosts have sealed up the mansion and wanna play “1-2-3 Your Limbs Belong To Me” with their uninvited guests. Mind you, this is a totally dumbass stretch to get people back into the mansion. But I’m usually open-minded when it comes to vengeful ghosts tearing off body parts. Think in terms of Gumby being made of meatloaf with LOTS of ketchup, or “catsup”.

The ghost of Dr. Vanacutt keeps showing up, as do his angry patients. The idea, though, is to avoid them while hunting for Baphomet. It’s discovered that if the statue is taken outside of the building, flowers will thus grow, the sun will shine and puppies will no longer get run over by 18-wheel trucks.

Bonus: ALL the chicks in this movie are spookily gorgeous. But because of the less-than-substantial plot and ghosts that weren’t as freaky/mean as in the first movie, Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007) only reaches a simmer in an evil saucepan on afterlife’s stove. OK, I don’t know what that means, but felt it was a cool metaphor nonetheless.

Haunted 18 Million Times

Sometimes you just have to audibly gasp at the blatant plagiarism of a few/some/a lot of horror movie filmmakers. Take Sanatorium, available December 23, 2014 on DVD (who even buys those anymore?) and other formats reverse-engineered from UFOs. The plot involves a team of TV ghost hunters who spend the night in an abandoned and haunted sanatorium with the hope of capturing paranormal activity. Instead, as the press release warns, “they unleash a horrifying force of evil hell-bent on their destruction.”

Sound familiar? It should as the paranormal investigators/haunted so-and-so formula has been used 18 million times before. Which makes it even more laughable to see Sanatorium being marketed as an “After Dark Original” – there’s nothing original about it.

While I don’t have room to list all 18 million, here area dozen embarrassingly similar movies with actual plot descriptions from IMDB.com so you know I didn’t make up this stuff:

Grave Encounters / 2011
For their ghost hunting reality show, a production crew lock themselves inside an abandoned mental hospital that’s supposedly haunted – and it might prove to be all too true.

Grave Encounters II / 2012
A film student who is obsessed with the movie Grave Encounters sets out with his friends to visit the abandoned psychiatric hospital depicted in the original film.

Greystone Park / 2012
In October 2009, the filmmakers went into an abandoned psychiatric hospital to explore the “haunted” institution, famous for its radical treatment of patients with mental illness. Once inside the filmmakers quickly discovered that they were not alone.

Hollows Grove / 2014
A young filmmaker is shooting a behind-the-scenes documentary about his friends and their ghost hunting reality show. They set out to film Hollows Grove, an old abandoned and haunted orphanage. What they thought would be a routine investigation is turning in to a nightmare from which they can’t escape.

7 Nights of Darkness / 2011
In 2008 six reality television show contestants spent seven nights in an abandoned and haunted asylum. The prize for staying all seven nights was a share of one million dollars that was to be split amongst any contestants who didn’t leave. No prize money was ever awarded.

Paranormal Incident / 2011
Six college students armed with cameras and recording equipment venture into the infamous Odenbrook Sanitarium to prove the existence of the paranormal. Days later, when five of the six friends turn up missing, the lone survivor must go through the recovered footage in order to clear his name and find out what happened to his friends.

Episode 50 / 2011
A group of TV paranormal investigators are sent to explain a supposedly haunted insane asylum. The crew gets more than they bargained for when they actually make contact with a spirit of tremendous power and must band together to stop it before it destroys them all.

House of Bones / 2010
TV ghost hunters that enter a reportedly haunted house that may prove to be the death of them.

Reel Evil / 2012
Two filmmakers are hired to shoot a ‘behind-the-scenes’ documentary for a major studio production. But their dream job quickly turns into a nightmare when they explore a legendary haunted hospital. Trapped inside, the crew is tormented by the evil, unspeakable fear.

Haunted / 2013
A TV crew films a paranormal investigation to obtain evidence that proves we are not alone. Something evil awaits them.

El Sanatorio / 2010
A group of friends decide to make a documentary about the ghosts that are supposed to be haunting The Sanatorium in Costa Rica.

The Crying Dead / 2011
In 2008 a cast and crew set out to shoot a pilot for a paranormal reality show. During the first night in a haunted psychiatric hospital vague apparitions became violent hauntings. This is a diary of the final tortured moments of real people in an unthinkable situation.

Hook vs. Hooker

Scream Bloody Murder (aka, Claw of Terror/1973) is about Matthew, a disturbed young farm boy who lost his hand in wheat/life crushing machine. (He used said machine to kill his dad, so payback). Both events contributed further to Matthew’s inability to cope with anything with more than five functioning fingers.

The kid, now a teenager with a hook for nose pickers, is being let out of the insane asylum. He comes home in time to find out mom just married a guy who has legal feeling-up privileges. Matthew, sexually repressed and carrying around a mother complex, hacks them up with a life/wood cutting axe. Needless to say, I think someone needs to be sent to their room.

Running away doesn’t keep horrific visions of rotted mom from clouding his judgment. Matthew eventually meets a red-headed hooker and is projects his mother on her. That she lets other guys touch her private parts for cash doesn’t make Matthew happy, and chops up the hooker’s repeat business.

Matthew keeps her tied up, hoping that’ll convince her to like him. (All he had to do was pay her, geez.) It may have unintentional, but the best scene happens when the hooker, with hands and feet tied, tries calling the phone operator for help, using only her tongue to dial. Funny, yet oddly erotic.

Matthew is a nice psycho, even if he doesn’t like bare boobies and all the female accessories. Then again, with a hook for a hand, it’s not like he can appreciate a hooker’s warm touch, or even that of an inflatable doll. Better to become ambidextrous and get a grip on reality.