Artistic Horror, Getting High With Evil, Big Birds

Found some incredibly stunning horror/sci-fi art by shockingly talented Stefan Koidl. So visually disturbing are his paintings, the elegantly sick cool images could be made into horror movies.

Stefan is a freelance illustrator/concept artist who lives in Hallein, Austria. I looked it up on Google Maps™. It’s kinda far from where I live. But you can visit his website on ArtStation.com by clicking HERE. It’s here you’ll find unique creatures, monsters, demons, robots and apocalyptic visions that usually accompany a Jägermeister binge.

While you sober up, here are a few upcoming horror movies that may or may not have you needing a shot or three of Jägermeister to get through…

DARK LIGHT (2019)
“Following her mother’s death and a painful divorce Annie and her daughter move back to her childhood home. At first, everything seems fine but then tragedy strikes again when on a foggy night Emily goes missing from her bedroom. Annie claims that she saw something come from the darkness and take Emily…a creature. Nobody believes her. But when Emily’s body is not found Annie becomes the prime suspect and is sent to a correctional hospital. Annie must now escape the hospital and return to the house to confront the creature that she believes has stolen her daughter.”

YET ANOTHER generic plot with a generic title. I tried to count how many movies had the word “dark” in it. Got up to one million before I lost track. So, like, figure one million and one.

THE HOARD (2019)
“The Hoard is a comedy/horror mockumentary that chronicles the unraveling of a production team who are attempting to produce the ultimate reality TV show pilot ‘Extremely Haunted Hoarders’.”

Odd plot. How does haunting factor in with the hoarding stuff like old newspapers or snow globes? Maybe they’re being haunted by visions of a clutter-free home.

HEAD COUNT (2019)
“During a weekend getaway to Joshua Tree, a group of teenagers find themselves under mental and physical assault from a supernatural entity that mimics their appearances as it completes an ancient ritual.”

Isn’t Joshua Tree where people go to take acid and open the doors of perception? I bet they’re just really high and are hallucinating the supernatural entity, which may or may not be the ghost of Jim Morrison.

TERROR IN THE SKIES (2019/pending crowd-funding)
“Director Seth Breedlove explores hundreds of years of terrifying reports of encounters with massive winged creatures around the land of Lincoln. From Alton’s man-eating Lincoln legends to recent sightings in Chicago of a creature said to resemble Point Pleasant, West Virginia’s infamous Mothman, Terror in the Skies unlocks a centuries-old mystery.”

Man, I hope a massive winged creature doesn’t crap on my car.

Home For The Holidays with Serial Killers and Robots

Nothin’ like celebrating the impending holiday season with some slashers, serial killers and robots. Oops, I forgot — robots now prefer to be called “cyborgs.” Fine by me. A rose by any other name,

NEVER OPEN THE DOOR (December 6, 2016)
“Three happy couples retreat to a cozy secluded cabin in the woods to enjoy Thanksgiving. A badly wounded stranger appears at the door, and when they let him in, he throws up blood and collapses on the floor. As he dies, he points towards the lovers and croaks his final words: “Never open the door”. The dumbfounded group of friends start to panic as one of their own inexplicably disappears. Doubt rises by the minute and mistrust soaks through the cabin. As strange men surround the cabin, escape becomes paramount. Who will open the door?”

I don’t want to goon you out, but if a wounded stranger shows up on your doorstep at Thanksgiving and throws up on the floor, it’ll likely be me. I’ll leave without a fuss as long as your prepare a to-go box with turkey, mashed potatoes and 16 airline bottles of vodka. (I’ll find my own mixer in the dumpster behind 7-Eleven™ — good pickins!) And would it kill you to throw in a couple of slices of grandma’s pumpkin pie?

I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER (December 9, 2016 / VOD)
“John Wayne Cleaver is dangerous and he knows it. He is 16 and helps his mum and aunt at the family mortuary. John is obsessed with serial killers but really doesn’t want to become one. So for his own sake and the safety of those around him he lives by rigid rules to keep himself “good” and “normal.” When somebody starts murdering people in John’s small Mid-West town, he has to investigate and risk letting his own dark side out in order to stop the killer. But without his rules to keep him in check he might be more dangerous than the monster he is stalking. As the icy winter tightens its grip on the community a deadly supernatural game of cat and mouse ensues.”

John Wayne Cleaver. Now there’s a name you can hang your entrails on. As for living by “rigid rules” to stay “good” and “normal,” I bet ’ol JWC is one just Jagermeister smoothie away from drumming up business for the family business.

DETOUR (January 9, 2017 / VOD)
“Harper, a seemingly naive law student, obsesses over the idea that his shifty stepfather was involved in the devastating car crash that left his mother hospitalized and comatose. He drowns his suspicions in whiskey until he finds himself suddenly engrossed in conversation with volatile grifter Johnny and his stripper companion, Cherry. As daylight breaks and the haziness of promises made becomes clearer, how will Harper handle the repercussions (not to mention the violent duo — on his doorstep)? Employing a split-narrative structure to tell this tale of deception and murder, Detour takes the audience on a thrill ride full of hairpin turns, where it’s never quite clear what or who can be trusted.”

I’m sorry — I didn’t catch anything after “drowning in whiskey.”

GHOST IN THE SHELL (March, 2017)
“The Major (Scarlett Johansson), a special ops, one-of-a-kind human-cyborg hybrid, leads an elite task force known as Section 9. Devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, Section 9 is faced with an enemy whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka Robotic’s advancements in cyber technology.”

The stunningly gorgeous Scarlett Johansson as a one-of-a-king human-cyborg hybrid. That explains a couple the things, the first of which is why she doesn’t return my e-mails. (I’m probably just spam to her.) Regardless, this live action sci-fi thriller is based on the enduringly popular Japanese seinen manga series by Masamune Shirow that got its start back in 1989. Scarlett Johansson got her start in 1984. I could probably make a connection there, but the cyborg part of my humanity is on the blink — again — so just go with it.

Zombie Babysitters, Bigfoot Infections, Backward Clocks

Four more new horror/sci-fi flicks. It’s as if they’re being manufactured by some sort of movie assembling plant or something. Wonder if one of those things really do exist? Maybe someone in Hollywood knows.

CARGO (2018)
“In a desperate bid to outrun a violent pandemic, Andy and Kay have holed up on a houseboat with their one-year-old daughter, Rosie. Their protected river existence is shattered by a violent attack, which sees Kay tragically die and Andy infected. Left with only 48 hours before he transforms into one of the creatures they have fought so long to evade, Andy sets out on a precarious journey to find a new guardian for his child.”

This one’s still in production as of this sentence-spitting. Who knows, by the time it comes out if could go from being YET ANOTHER zombie movie to a rom-com. Interesting premise, though — trying to find a nanny in a zombie wasteland. Just so you know, sitter rates double for this one.

THE FIANCE (out now)
“When a beautiful bride-to-be is bitten by the legendary creature, Bigfoot, she becomes a brutal force of nature hellbent on breaking her engagement — and her fiancé.”

Bitten by Bigfoot? You’d think he’d kick her, what with that famous foot of his and all. So if Bigfoot’s bite can turn you into another Bigfoot, imagine what being chomped by a Crap Monkey would do?

THE AXE MURDERS OF VILLISCA (2017 / VOD / Limited)
“Now used as a tourist destination, the Villisca Axe Murder House has terrified visitors from around the world and is considered one of the most haunted houses in America. Three troubled teens who decide to break in and spend the night at the house, forever changing who they are and what is known about the original murders.”

Again with the troubled teens. Wonder what makes those over-privileged little sh*t heads so angst-y? Maybe I should talk to them and axe them a few questions. You know, get to the bottom of their problems and bury the hatchet.

COUNTER CLOCKWISE (December 13, 2016)
“A scientist, while working on inventing teleportation, instead accidentally invents time travel and zaps himself six months into the future. But that future is a sinister, confusing and violent one as he finds himself being chased by gun-toting hitmen as well as being the prime suspect in the murders of his wife and sister. He attempts to change history and save his loved ones by traveling back in time to uncover the mysteries.”

Sounds like The Fugitive (1993) meets Back To The Future (1985). If I ever get around to inventing time travel, I’d go back and re-drink all the beers I used to baptize my inner neck with. Wouldn’t re-guzzle that first Jagermeister smoothie, though; No amount of time tampering is gonna fix that mess.

Lunar Lunacy

In the dystopian sci-fi Pandorum (2009), The Elysium is a 60,000 passenger space ship/motel that’s 500 million miles from Earth. So much for remembering where you parked the car. Two astronauts awake from hyper-sleep (like regular sleep but with no noisy neighbors waking you) and discover they don’t know who they are or where they are, which accurately describes the morning after a Jager™ bender.

 Slowly their mind yarn begins to re-spool, and off one of ’em goes to find the ship’s nuclear reactor to power up the restrooms and such. What they find is that the indoor neighborhood is overrun by mutated versions of themselves. These creatures are pasty-white, slimy, super-strong, super fast, below-average hygiene, and addicted to survivor flesh. Several of those food types are discovered still keeping out of teeth’s length of the hungy mutants. And if that wasn’t enough, a condition known as Pandorum — a pronounced form of space insanity — is beginning to set in on Lt. Payton, the head astro guy.

The moon clock is ticking as the reactor is beginning its self-destruct phase. So, like, that lights yet another fire under everyone’s asteroids. Thankfully, there’s a grim twist to all of this as you kinda get bored watching people running away from the mutes, who all look like Road Warrior (1981) extras.

Lt. Payton is in the throes of Pandorum. The monsters are closing in. And the air stinks. (In space no one can hear you fart, but they can certainly smell it.) All of this sounds pretty cool, but for some reason it’s just a big “been-there-seen-that” meh.

Nice visuals, but I just wasn’t feeling the love from the mutants. You might be able to figure out the ending, but if not, don’t worry — it’s just a touch of Pandorum. Take two celestial Tylenol™ and call me in the new Millennium.

Haunted Country Music

Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967). Sounds like a reality TV show. It certainly has all the ingredients: country singers, a haunted house, a gorilla, a supermodel, international spies and Merle Haggard. (Not making that up.) Heck, this thing would pair nicely with The Real Housewives of Melbourne and Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood.

Three country singers – one of which is the camera-ready Joi Lansing – are on the way to Nashville, home of white shoe wearing music legends and good ’ol boy alcoholics. (State law – you have to be drunk all the time in Nashville.)

Car trouble forces the trio to spend the night in an abandoned house with no amenities, except for a TV and nourishment (electricity) to power it. These troubadour squatters don’t know it, but in the basement is a ring of spies trying to get their lips around a top-secret formula for rocket fuel (geez, guys – it’s right on the label of a bottle of Jagermeister™), all of which is made even more entertaining with an unruly gorilla hanging around.

However, this “horror” music comedy is distinguished by music interludes done by Joi and Ferlin Husky (great name – the red-headed country/rockabilly/pop legend behind the classic Champagne Ladies And Blue Ribbon Babies/1974), and footage on the tube of a clean Merle Haggard before he met Jack Daniels™ and made and endless stream of immortal duets.

Numerous knuckle-headed comedy segments with horror legends John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr. and Basil Rathbone. But it’s the last 15 minutes that rocks the haunted house with music performances by Merle (iconic icon), Sonny James (20 Number One country hits) and Country Music Hall of Fame’r Ferlin, sportin’ red hair, white shoes and a tight Chicago Boxcar Boston Back hairdoo. (You can get ahead with a style like that.)

P.S. Hillbillys in a Haunted House is the sequel to Las Vegas Hillbillys (1966). Didn’t see that one as I was informed it didn’t have gorillas playing slot machines while Frank, Dean and Sammy drank rocket fuel and embarked on madcap adventures.

Globally-Warmed Bugs

Thank you global warming for wrecking our planet. And after all we’ve done for you. Because of you, that parasitic infested woolly mammoth has defrosted, and one million (give or take) previously frozen prehistoric flesh-eating bugs have hatched and gotten into human orifices. That’s gratitude for you.

Dr. David Kruipen, an “Earth-first” kind of scientist, discovered the room-temperature mammal meat and its germs and, after watching it infect it’s way through his staff out in the field, decided it probably isn’t a good idea to let said disease get back to civilization. Too bad his estranged college-aged daughter doesn’t listen to him and flies out with several grad students to study infestation up close and, for some, really personal.

Once the little buggers get under your skin, red bumps and open sores show up all over your face and stomach, you itch yourself at socially-inconvenient times, you throw up like it was your first quart of Jagermeister™, you sweat on everything, then you die a horribly painful death, thereby hatching even more bugs. (Note: said crawlers look like the Motorhead version of caterpillars.)

The helicopter pilot discovers he caught the bug and in an “oh, crap” scene, has two people dope him up with morphine (standard research equipment), put a tourniquet just above the goal line, and chop off his infected arm with a meat cleaver (also standard equipment). The two things he needed to happen didn’t quite work out, with the knife getting stuck halfway through the former arm and the discount amputation not getting all of the infection. Sucks to be him.

In order to make the world understand the threat, the good ’old doc infects himself and plans on being the only one evacuated. His reasoning being that, yeah, a few hundred thousand may die, but this is a valuable lesson for us all to stop making the atmosphere so toxic with our SUVs and party flatulence. But the doc’s daughter has a different ending in mind — and it’s just what the doctor didn’t order.

The Thaw (2009), though a decent “bug up your butt” movie, could use a little less moralizing and a bit more meat cleaver. And some Raid™.

Parentless Ghosts

In need of a job, Ana is young, pregnant and hired to clean up after a bunch of runny-nose orphans at a huge orphanage where they manufacture orphans. The “school” for abandoned WWII kids is empty for the summer, but the place is a stink hole, so she takes the gig, knowing it’s better than working for Kinkos™ and hoping it’ll get her mind off the fact her former employers raped and beat her.

Two people remain in the cavernous orphanage: an old lady who serves as the school’s cook/doctor (what can’t be healed goes in the pot) and a “disturbed” young gal whose mind is a silverware drawer where none of the silverware matches. A crazy chick practically alone in a spooky old building? Hell, the only thing missing is me, a bottle of Jager™ and a roll of paper towels.

But something’s not right in the building besides Ana’s roommate’s sense of reality. Noises, voices, spectral farting. (OK, that one was really just part of my wish list). Ana was warned about the scary children. Now we’re getting somewhere. Previously brought to the school by the bus load, about 300 war-wounded kids turned up in various stages of bleeding. With only one doctor and a nurse, let’s just say some of ’em didn’t need a doctor bill at the end of the day.

Determined to find out who or what the scary children are, Ana and demento chick go into the big bathroom where there hangs a big mirror, which conceals a big mystery. Ana chucks a flashlight through the glass and damn if there isn’t another room back there. And hey – there’s a service elevator just big enough for her to crawl in. Yeah, that’s what I’d do in a haunted house – squeeze into an elevator that hasn’t been used for years and throw the switch. Why doesn’t Casper just come right out of the wall and push me down the shaft?

The elevator goes screaming down for what seems like three commercial breaks. When it opens, Ana discovers the hospital wing of the orphanage. It’s all painted an eerie white and lit up like a Christmas barbershop. Uh, oh – somebody’s about to go into labor. Good timing…something is down there with her. But what could it be?

House of Voices (aka Saint Ange, 2004) is a pretty darn creepy and atmospheric flick, but the story takes freakin’ forever to get where its going. A couple of nice distractions: Ana’s boobs. While this movie does not end on a happy note, I think I tracked down that cool crazy chick on Facebook™.

No Pants For MosquitoMan

A death row inmate being transferred to the electric chair has a date with a science lab. The boys in the laboratory are looking to try out an anti-virus on a human test subject to combat a new bug-borne illness that’s 100 times more powerful than the West Nile Virus and Jagermeister™ combined. The science gas, turns the criminal into a man-sized mosquito.

Not as dumb as it sounds, Mansquito leaks some of his bug goo onto a supermodel laboratory chick whose boyfriend just happens to be a cop – the same cop that busted the criminal in the first place. Coincidence? I think not.

But as Bug Bug escapes into the city to begin his insectoral transformation, the lab chick, having a “not so fresh feeling” day, is slowly morphing into a bug, too. As a bonus, Mansquito wants to mate with her. (It’s not like there are cocktail lounges full of bug women to hit on.)

First he has to suck the life sauce out of a whole bunch of people (i.e., human vending machines). Mansquito slices heads in half at near perfect 45 degree angles; arms and legs are removed from bodies and strewn decoratively around the hospital hallways; the red stuff flies everywhere as if a Bloody Mary being made in a blender on high without the top on.

Mansquito looks goofy cool, except after gorging himself on all that blood he looks like a giant potato with wings. And the laboratory chick does a great bra ’n panties scene, which I found to be surprisingly integral to the plot. In all, Mansquito (2005/aka MosquitoMan) is as smooth as a bug in a rug with a butt plug.

Devil On Demand

Geez, the Devil is a busy gal. Besides constantly putting really fun ideas in my head, the Ultimate Evil Entity, despite being as fictional as her counterpart, is in big demand these days as a horror movie subject, the latest being Here Comes The Devil (documented in the blog posting before this one) and now with Devil’s Due, a new spooky horror flick due out January 17, 2014, which is 93 days from now. (Man, I love math – it’s so occasionally useful.)

Devil’s Due press release: “After a mysterious, lost night on their honeymoon, a newlywed couple finds themselves dealing with an earlier-than-planned pregnancy. While recording everything for posterity, the husband begins to notice odd behavior in his wife that they initially write off to nerves, but, as the months pass, it becomes evident that the dark changes to her body and mind have a much more sinister origin.”

Dark changes to her mind and body. No doubt she shotguns Jagermeister™.

Devil’s Due should not be confused with the 1973 pornographical movie of the same title. In that one a young girl fleeing an abusive home life arrives in New York City and becomes involved in a satanic cult. She conspires with the cult leader’s two lesbian assistants to take over the coven. Marketing bonus: There’s LOTS of up close naked stuff.

Also, don’t confuse either with erotic romance novels (stories without pictures) sporting the same title as well. As I’ve said before, books are for people who don’t have TVs.