Kaijus, Bigfoot and Future Cephalopods

 

The butt-numbing cold and saturating winter rain of 2017 in Seattle has been conducive to staying indoors and watching horror movies. You could couch out to other types of movies, but horror/sci-fi seems to vibe with the doom and gloom outside. While there are no sharknadoes or lavalantulas shooting out of our local volcanoes (we have several), just the thought of going outside and getting my hair messed up by the wind and/or rain goons me out. Call me indoor face. I’ll come out of my burrow when the sun arrives, which is usually around July.

Here’s some upcoming bad weather movies to watch indoors…

COLOSSAL (April, 2017)
“A woman moves back home after losing her job and being dumped by her boyfriend. Her life takes a sudden turn when a giant kaiju-like creature appears in South Korea and she begins to suspect she may be connected to it.”

The trailer makes this one look like a comedy. Giant monsters are not funny, dang it. Unless its the Giant Claw, who looks like a puppet made by someone on drugs. The hook for Colossal is that whatever the main chick (Anne Hathaway) does, the monster mimics it. Let’s hope she doesn’t start doing kegels.

ATTACK OF THE CYBER OCTOPUSES (Kickstarter/in-progress)
“Neo-Berlin, 2079. A dark, rain-soaked city held by mega corporations where the only enjoyment in life is connecting to cyberspace and taking ‘Binary Trip,’ a cyber drug that fries your neurons but promises a feeling better than a hundred orgasms at once. In this setting, a team of crack cyberspace detectives are investigating a new menace: an army of cyber octopuses that are terrorizing the city.”

This one’s trying to crowd-fund its way into your hearts and homes as of this posting. Checking under the couch cushions for spare bitcoins. I’d donate real money, but I live in Seattle, which is built around the super wet Elliott Bay, which is teeming with our own octopuses. They’re quite friendly. Just be careful when petting them; They might act all buddy-buddy and squishy, but while they’re hugging you, one of their spare arms always goes for the wallet.

LAUNDRY MAN (Available now/Amazon Prime/VOD)
“Laundry Man is the story about a clumsy serial killer. It is partly based on the crimes committed by American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and those committed by the Belgian-Hungarian pastor, Andras Pandy.”

Watched the trailer — more splatter on the platter. The main chick appears to not be wearing a bra. As such, you’ll need permission from your parent(s) or legal guardian(s) to watch this. Wonder where they got the idea for their ad art? Seems vaguely familiar…

PRIMAL RAGE: THE LEGEND OF OH-MAH (post-production/2017)
“A newly reunited young couple’s drive through the Pacific Northwest turns into a nightmare as they are forced to face nature, unsavory locals, and a monstrous creature known to the Native Americans as Oh-Mah.”

I live in the Pacific Northwest. How dare you call we locals unsavory? We’re loaded with savor. As for the monstrous creature Oh-Mah, never heard of him/her/it. Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Wood Ape/Harry Henderson, of course. But this other pretender to the throne should do what we tell tourists to do — buy our locally made goods and then get the truck outta here. A little rough? Nope. For us it’s quite savory.

Medium-Rare Bear

A city doctor and his pregnant wife go to the ultra-busy woods of Maine to tend to all the sick Native American kids covered in pine cones and sores that won’t heal. Mercury poisoning, it’s discovered, is behind the face herpes.

The doctor discovers the saw mill has been polluting the local waterways with Mercury-based chemicals used to make logs all nice and shiny. Fish swim in that water. The fish mutate. The local Native Americans eat the fish. The Native Americans mutate.

Evidence to this outlandish claim lies in a horribly disfigured baby bear cub, found almost drowned to death. Unfortunately, it’s a long way back to camp and horribly disfigured mama bear is looking for her crusty kid. But she’s been busy, killing sleeping bag campers as though they were foreign tourists. Ripped, shredded, half-eaten, mangled, chewed, regurgitated… It was if they were human snack cakes at the last Drinkin’ & Drive-in Bake Sale.

Plenty of great moments, but the best comes when the monster bear chases them across a lake and goes into the drink in an iconic horror movie sequence. Thinking that gosh-darned thing drowned, they don’t see the bubbles heading towards shore. The bear walks all the way under the lake without scuba gear or anything resembling a snorkel!

No matter what they throw at mom, it still keeps coming. She looks like a reverse bear with melted skin and gut stuff on the outside where fur should be. Prophecy (1979) is loaded with gnarly nature-gone-awry action that sets you up for a sequel (pregnant mom has been eating the tainted fish).

 They never made another movie, though. Too bad; I felt Underwater Bear deserved to be been fleshed out a bit more. Oh, hey — I just got my own joke. Sweet!