Smack-Talking Computers, Possessed Ubers, The Curse of Seagulls

Remember HAL 9000 (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic), the sentient super computer with a human personality, in the groundbreaking sci-fi movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey (which ironically was done in 1968)? Now CASE (Cognitive Architecture for Space Exploration) is making a new HAL — which spells doom for all us astronauts (I’m almost done with my online courses, so yeah, I’m an astronaut, b*tches!)

2001: A Space Odyssey, as you likely know, was infamously produced and directed by fake moon landing movie maker, Stanley Kubrick from an Arthur C. Clark short story, Sentinel of Eternity (1951). In 2001, HAL, the computer not only talks, but talks back, overrides human commands and secretly has a directive to investigate a radio signal sent from that mysterious, featureless Monolith. (The Who — lunar British rock band — symbolically peed on it for the cover of their rhythmic beats album, Who’s Next/1971. Disrespectful, but very rock). The crew of Discovery One should’ve waited to see what happened to the staff of the deep space Nostromo in Alien (1979). Ash (Hyperdyne Systems 120-A/2 android), their super computer in the clever guise of a stink human, pulled the exact same sh*t and look what happened there.

Pretty much everybody (except me) owns their own personal HAL, though they call it Alexa/Siri/Google. My dire warning to you is to not trust any of those convenient smart home devices and make sure you don’t involuntarily get locked out of your house/deep space vessel.

While you contemplate machines taking over the world, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not digitally sever your oxygen hose…

BEYOND WHITE SPACE (December 14, 2018)
“The captain of a deep-space vessel makes a daring decision to go after a rare and nearly extinct species. His obsession soon jeopardizes the mutinous crew when the gigantic and deadly creature attacks the ship.”

Sounds like Moby Dick in space. The trailer is pretty cool — there’s a mega big gigantic huge Godzilla-esque monster floating around, looking for spaceship flavored snacks. The deep-space vessel may as well put a Fritos™ logo on the side of their ship.

SUPERGRID (December 18, 2018)
“Two estranged brothers travel the notorious ‘Grid’ in their quest to collect and deliver a mysterious cargo. En route they must contend with road pirates, rebel gangs, and each other.”

The plot of traveling across the danger-enhanced apocalyptic wastelands steal from dozens of other same-plot movies/TV shows, but also the morning work commute. 

THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE (January 8, 2019)
“In a dilapidated cyberpunk city plagued by crime and corruption, an unscrupulous District Attorney is savagely murdered and tossed out of a building onto his brand new car. Mysteriously, the District Attorney and his car come back to life as a single being with a thirst for vengeance. The eerie driver-less car embarks on a vicious rampage exacting revenge on the criminals who murdered him.”

They’re calling this a “stylized sequel” to the 1977 movie called, The Car, wherein a possessed vehicle runs people down and parks on their faces. The lead character was James Brolin, who later went on to The Amityville Horror infamy. He seems nice.

CURSE OF THE BLIND DEAD (2019)
“In the Thirteen century, a group of Satan worshipers, the Knight Templars, is captured during a ritual and brutally murdered by the locals. Just before the execution, the Knights swear to return from their graves to haunt the village and the nearby forest. Centuries later, in a post-apocalyptic future, a man and his daughter try to survive against both the Undead Knights and a sect commanded by a mad preacher.”

Sound familiar? It should — it’s a continuation of the early Seventies Italian-filmed Blind Dead series (Tombs of the Blind Dead/1971, The Return of the Blind Dead/1973, The Ghost Galleon/1974, Night of the Seagulls/1975). Blind dead Templar Knights out for revenge are certainly scary. But man, don’t get in a dust up with seagulls — those things always know when you wash your car and will unleash their coordinated crap attacks on your just-cleaned hood and door handle. (How do they manage such accuracy? Geez.)

Rock ‘n Roll Aliens, Giant Bullies, Wiccan Babysitters

Keith Richards, iconic rock guitarist and co-founder of The Rolling Stones, recently interviewed on 98.5 WNCX FM Radio in Cleveland, OH, that not only does he believe in aliens, he claims there’s an actual extraterrestrial landing strip on his expansive property in England. Given how much drugs and alcohol the famous wasted musician has infamously consumed over the last 100 years ago (you got that one, right?), surprised he hasn’t also seen Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Chupacabra and/or Mothman lurking about his front yard as well. (Then again, he might think they’re just roadies.)

I believe him. Rock and roll wouldn’t lie. So maybe Keith should rewrite some of his songs to support his claim: “Beam Me Up”, “Let’s Spend The Night Together on Uranus”, “Blue Turns To Greys”, “You Can’t Always Get Abducted When You Want”, and “It’s Only Probing (But I Like It)”. I’m thinkin’ platinum sales, here.

While we wait for the Stones’ intergalactic tour, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not give you satisfaction…

I KILL GIANTS (2018)
“A teenage girl chooses to escape the realities of school and a drab family life by retreating into her magical world of titans and giants. With the help of her new friend Sophia and her school therapist, Barbara, will learn to battle her giants and face her fears — tackling the bullies at school, her sister, and her difficult home life.”

I liked it better when it was Harry Potter. Still, giant monsters and difficult home life. I can relate.

HEREDITARY (2018)
“When Ellen, the matriarch of the Graham family, passes away, her daughter’s family begins to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry. The more they discover, the more they find themselves trying to outrun the sinister fate they seem to have inherited.”

Big talk about this on the movie/dive bar circuit. I bet Helen’s shameful ancestry has something to do with an unpaid bar tab. Note to matriarchs: dine ‘n dash = NOT COOL.

NIGHTMARE CINEMA (2018)
“The anthology centers on a series of down-on-their-luck individuals who enter the decrepit and spine-chilling Rialto Theater, only to have their deepest and darkest fears brought to life on the silver screen by The Projectionist — a mysterious, ghostly figure who holds the nightmarish futures of all who attend his screenings. By the time our patrons realize the truth, escape is no longer an option.”

Sounds nifty, though for a great “people trapped in a movie theatre while evil beings eat your face and/or popcorn”, try the Italian gore snack bar, Demons (1985). You’ll forget all about your AMC Stubs™ reward points.

THE NIGHT SITTER (2018)
“A scheming con artist poses as innocent babysitter ‘Amber’ to steal from Ted Hooper, a wealthy occult enthusiast with a reclusive son named Kevin. Her crew arrives to clean out the house just as Kevin stumbles upon one of his father’s most prized artifacts and unwittingly summons a trio of witches known as The Three Mothers. As the playful, sadistic witches start picking people off, Amber and Kevin form an unlikely bond and try to survive the night together.”

That would be fun to have witches as babysitters. If you spill a jar of dried frog tongues, there’s plenty of brooms around to sweep ’em up. Wonder if they know any “take out the garbage” spells and/or enchantments? That would so awesome.

Alien Superman

Our first glimpse of Supersonic Man, a decidedly stylish superhero, is in his Speedo™. (Is it a swim suit? Underwear? Men’s bathhouse recreational attire?) SSM is rousted out of a science induced death sleep by his space boss to put some pants on and go to the planet Earth (you may have heard of the place) and save them from that butt hook mad scientist, Dr. Gulik, who wants to take over the world. He smokes, so clearly he’s evil.

Supersonic Man’s lunar name is Kronos (on Earth he just goes by Paul/Supersonic) and is an alien or “extraterrestrial.” Because he’s handsome and exhibits advanced grooming techniques, he’s the RIGHT CHOICE to go after Gulik (pronounced “goo lick”) and his tricked out robot. SS’s crime fighting clothes (once he finally put ‘em on) is a red ensemble with blue cape and matching boots and cowl. Think Superman in reverse, though SS Man’s uniform matches more closely those worn in the 1967 Italian adventure, The Three Fantastic Supermen. But clothes don’t make the man; Kronos has a job to do, colorful pants or not.

Dr. Gulik has a gang that wears the same clothes. His robot is bedazzled with all sorts of dials, knobs, wires and blinking lights. Clearly this thing is a formidable foe. So the first thing Supersonic does is take to the skies, flying around New York with a stern look on his face. Clearly, his expression indicates he does not approve of crime or power mad scientists.

Gulik instructs his henchmen (referred to as drunken bums) to kidnap a renowned science professor AND his supermodel daughter. This upsets Supersonic’s tummy. He rescues her in and here’s where his other super powers come into play — he switches back to being a “Clark Kent” and talks her into going out to dinner. She does. Score!

The rest is predictable if you know anything at all about superhero movies. One thing that sets Supersonic apart, though — he steals booze. Yep, while on a home cooked dinner date with Patricia (the professor’s hot daughter), he “forgets” the champagne and goes out to his vehicular to get it.

It’s here he changes into Supersonic, flies into town, goes into an Italian restaurant kitchen and grabs a couple of bottles of the good stuff — and just walks out without paying for it! The scene of him flying back to Patty’s pad with the champagne in his gloved hands is the stuff of legend. More so when he gives a bottle of beer to a drunken bum and keeps the bubbly for himself. He truly is indeed a superhero.

There’s a really funny twist at the end involving a drunken bum and the UFO sent to retrieve Supersonic after his mission is completed. It’s a nice cherry on top of a tasty superhero sundae.

Final note: The starring role of Supersonic Man (1979) was played by two guys — Kronos (the guy in the costume) and Paul, the ladies’ man with an impeccably maintained mustache. You think he was gonna shave that thing off to fight crime? You must be out of your mind.

Vampire Face Cream

I, Vampiri (1956), also known as Lust of the Vampire and The Devil’s Commandment, is a patience-testing Italian vampire movie based on the Elizabeth Bathory legend, which has Giselle du Granda, a vampire chick who needs the blood of young chicks to bathe away her oldness in. She goes to all this trouble when a nice moisturizer would add miles to her mug. (I recommend a purse-friendly jug of Kiehl’s™ Ultra-Facial Cream, which sells for a reasonable $27.50 at Nordstrom™.)

No scares or suspense, a lot of yapping and a lot of stock footage. Then there’s the usual stuff of missing bloodless young chicks and E-Bath trying to stay one step ahead of the local inspector (or “detective”).

I’ll say this about her pad, though —  the skeleton bat gargoyle decor makes for excellent ambiance and really enhance the Zillow™ estimated value of her castle real estate. You might need to upgrade the curtain-esque spider webs, though. I’m thinkin’ something along the lines of a nice mummy wrap chiffon.

Wanna know how many sub-titles you need to navigate before you see Giselle turn into parchment paper? Un sacco. (Sounds cooler if you say it with an Italian accent.)

Vampires, Lobsters and Dinosaurs

The Italian made Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970) might possibly be the all time WTF horror/sci-fi movies ever made. You can start with its numerous re-titlings, from 7 per L’Infinito Contro I Missili Spaziali (translation: 7 For The Infinite Space Against Missiles), to Space Mission to the Lost Planet, Vampire Men of the Lost Planet and The Flesh Creatures. I honestly can’t decide which one I like best.

Then there are the movie’s “everything but the kitchen sink” elements: vampires, cavemen, dinosaurs, UFOs, space rockets, lobster people, flying bat people, snake men, missiles, spears, lasers, bow and arrows, hatchets, supermodel cave girls and the highly-convincing (ahem) Spectrum radiation that keeps turning the “atmosphere” from orange to green. Yep, you guessed it – Horror of the Blood Monsters is actually a Grateful Dead hippie drug party.

The movie begins with gangs of vampires attacking citizens at night, sucking their blood or “sangue” from throats as if artificially-flavored cherry milkshakes. Then the movie abruptly shifts to outer space and a mission to a distant galaxy to discover the source of the vampire plague being a pain in the neck to us Earthers.

A shiny spinning UFO mothership dispatches a smaller less shiny UFO landing party to the mysterious planet below. And it’s here they find an ongoing war between vampire cavemen with candy cigarette sized/shaped fangs violently beating and stabbing a non-vampire tribe.

Everyone wears animal skins for performance boxer briefs (or “britches”) except for a super hot cave chick sporting an off-the-rack open shoulder ensemble with matching panties or “smoothing hi-cut briefs.” Meanwhile, up in space, rocket ships and the UFOs are shooting armed missiles at each other. I don’t know why.

Watched this one without sub-titles (free on YouTube™) and was unable to learn the entire Italian language during its 80 minute running time. Figured it couldn’t be that hard. But as supremely dumb as this movie is (the cavemen fight scenes were spliced in, taken from the 1965 Filipino movie, Tagani and other monster stock footage was also wedged in there), you can’t help but entertained by the lobster people with pain-inflicting pinchers and the mini bat people that live in caves and fly right at your face when you spelunk their caves.

Repeating scenes of the spaceships exploding and then reversing the footage to re-use again and again kinda wears you out. So does waiting for the hot cave chick to remove her top because it’s so hot on that irradiated planet. And was the mission to find out the source of the blood plague (brought to Earth by the Tubaton, vampire men from a distant galaxy) a success? For our sake I’d like to think yes. But man, I just don’t know.

Blowing Up The Sky

The sky exploded. You may have heard about it on the Internet. I went outside to check. Sure enough, ka-BOOM! Then I went checked later and it was back. I liked the sky better when it exploded. The movie about it, kinda.

That’s the selling sizzle of the 1958 Italian-French made sci-fi crap classic, The Day The Sky Exploded (aka, La morte viene dallo spazio), Italy’s first science fiction movie. And what caused the sky to explode? An atomic rocket, or as we say in Italian, “razzo atomico.”

It all started when an manned mission to the moon went askew and the astronaut driving the rocket disengages the broken atomic booster and hightails it back to Earth. The booster, though, goes on to crash and explode into an asteroid belt. (Note: Those are the things that hold up asteroid pants.) The resulting ka-BOOM sends asteroid chunks – now ganged together in a giant ball-shaped cluster, straight at where you’re sitting.

As the meatier meteors get closer to where you’re sitting, it triggers wind storms, earthquakes, tidal waves and sharknados (heh). The moon is smeared when part of the rock group slams into it. Unfortunately, there’s still enough left over to smear us as well.

The best part happens when, against the ticking clock, every armed super power on Earth teams up to shoot missiles at the cluster simultaneously. The final scene with hundreds of razzo atomicos heading into space to smack those punk ass pebbles, is one of the movie’s coolest visuals. Unfortunately, the rest of it isn’t as groovy, plodding along with pseudo-science dialogue and arguing about whose to blame. (It was me all along, b*tches!)

But don’t take my sound advice – watch The Day The Sky Exploded for free – it’s on YouTube™, right in front of where you’re sitting.

The Last Shark

A great white shark is making a menu out of the residents out of a the coastal town hosting vacationing summer crowds arriving in droves to pee in the ocean.

Sound familiar? Sure it does; you’re gonna say Jaws (1975). Good for you – have a cookie. But before you choke on it, consider this – that’s actually the plot of The Last Shark (aka, L’ultimo squalo and Great White, an Italian Jaws note-for-note knock-off made in 1981. So close was the movie’s premise, the filmmakers were rightfully sued for plagiarism and got the carbon copy banned from being released.

But thanks to the Internet and illegally booted copies, The Last Shark is available for your chewing pleasure. And what a pleasure it is, seeing just how bad the Italians could screw up a movie about a people-eating shark.

Port Harbor’s local windsurfers are this week’s buffet and something or other has to be done about it. Enter Author Peter Benton (clearly fashioned after Jaws author Peter Benchley) and professional shark hunter Ron Hammer (awesome name) to smack some dorsal fin. Not so fast, fellas – the headline hungry governor William Wells rejects the idea that a shark with an equal hunger is theorized to chow its way through the upcoming windsurfing regatta. To cancel said festive event would be to swallow his gubernatorial campaign whole. Another classic Republican maneuver.

The shark, lured by steaks and spare ribs (not making that up), takes the bait and goes in for seconds, which is spectacularly served up on a raft full of ocean-going screamers about to pollute the water. There’s dynamite, human entrées, face-punching, helicopters, and best of all, the last shark vertically popping up and kinda hanging there as if standing on Flipper’s shoulders.

You owe it to yourself to watch The Last Shark, if anything to remind oneself why Jaws is the first and last word in swimmer sushi.