Monster Face, Skin Snacks, Braless Bloodshed

Have you ever wanted to look like Godzilla but found that plastic surgery and/or being exposed to radiation is just to darn too costly? Super7™ has your back (and face) with their slick, fully-licensed Godzilla mask, priced at an easily-borrowed $20. Having a Godzilla mug not enough? Super7™ also has Hedorah and Mechagodzilla masks as well. Get all three for $60 to switch up your game — then go out on the town and knock a few buildings over.

From their website: “Be the King of the Monsters, the Smog Monster Hedorah, or the mechanical wonder Mechagodzilla for Halloween or every day of the year with the officially licensed Super7 x Toho retro masks! Made of high quality plastic with an elastic headband and with retro packaging.”

While you look for a shirt and trousers to go with your new and improved features, here are a few out now/upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not be improved with radiation… 

CHUYEN MA GAN NHÀ (Vietnamese Horror Story) / Out now (Screambox™)

“This horror anthology film presents three tales inspired by the country’s urban legends and folklore: an actress seeking everlasting beauty; a magician who makes a deal with evil; and a psychic seeking the remains of a deceased girl.”

This Vietnamese movie came out earlier this year and was a huge hit. It’s now available in the States. Wish I knew it was gonna be released here before I flew all the way to Southeast Asia to catch the matinee. (I loaded up on Cu-do Candy, Bim Bim and some Mut at the snack bar — only cost me 37,1625 dong.) 

THE SAWYER MASSACRE / Out now (YouTube™)

“On June 30th, 1965, Jimmy’s friends bring him to the Texas countryside to escape city life after a terrible tragedy. In need of supplies for their cabin, they ascend to a nearby gas station where they are directed to find their supplies at an isolated farmhouse but this property is not as it seems. They soon find themselves hunted by a human flesh-eating psychopath with an arsenal of violent tools at his disposal. If any live through the nightmare, they’ll wish they hadn’t.”

This Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) prequel answers the question of how much flesh can a flesh-eating psychopath eat. Irregardless of the saturated fat, probably a lot. And hey, you could make deli-sawed butt sandwiches out of the leftovers.

THE BOOGEYMAN /January 2023 (Hulu™)

“A sixteen-year-old and her younger sister, still reeling from the death of their mother, are targeted by a supernatural boogeyman after their father, a psychologist, has an encounter with a desperate patient in their house.”

This movie is based on the 1973 Stephen King short story, which later showed up in his best-selling Night Shift collection in 1978. Didn’t read it — I never learned to read until 1981. Late bloomer.

MURDERCISE / Release pending June 2023 (VOD)

“Phoebe is an obsessed fitness nerd who gets her big break on a sleazy workout video. After being ridiculed by her co-stars, Phoebe befriends a mafia princess wild child, who teaches her how to murder her way to the top.”

Warning — this movie features exercising girls not wearing bras. Be careful not to hurt yourself watching it.

Hee Haw Horror

In Hillbilly Monster (2003), the country creature looks like he came out of the nosebleed section at a South Carolina Tractor Pull & Swap Meet. (Try the deep fried cheese in the “food” court — surprisingly…fragrant.)

Made to do embarrassing stuff for a living at a traveling carnival, ’Billy escapes and ends up being counseled by a psychologist who helps him re-adapt to life outside the Big Top. Tough one — it’s gonna be hard to walk away from show business.

Made by the geniuses who did Grandparents from Outer Space (2003), so yeah, another one for the hand-held camera compost pile.

Water-Proof UFOs

A gigantic UFO is discovered in the middle of the ocean. Actually, under the middle of the ocean. It’s determined that the spaceship, which is the size of downtown Manhattan, has been there for 288 years, give or take a work week. A team of specialists has been called in to see what up. Transported via a mini-sub several miles beneath the surface, the military has already built an aqua habitat, so that they may study and blog about the UFO.

All the scientists put on high-pressure swim-suits and find their way into the spacecraft. That’s weird—there are recycling bins and uneaten packs of Smokehouse Almonds™ laying around. They find the ship’s log and, upon playing it back, discover the craft experienced an “unknown event,” which looks like they got sucked into a Black Hole. (Holes don’t come in any other color except black.) Exploring further, they find a gigantic gold sphere, the surface of which undulates and looks like rich man’s bath water. It doesn’t do anything except float. All that trouble and expense to find it, and the darn thing just sits there. Stupid aliens. Or are they?

A binary message transmitted from the UFO is translated and they’re being greeted by an alien named…Jerry. I can believe a giant UFO has been at the bottom of the ocean for nearly 300 years, but an alien named Jerry? That’s just weird. Even more weird undersea weirdness happens: one million poisonous and extra-large jellyfish sting one of the habitat divers into swollen pudding. Then a football field-sized squid attacks the habitat and breaches the hull’s integrity. Then the place catches on fire and roasts the face off the astrophysicist. Then the Navy captain is severed in half. Then more messages from Jerry. And he’s not happy.

To go any further would cause YOU mental grief as I’d have to wreck it all by telling you the spaceship is not alien, but rather a vehicle from our future and… Crap, sorry. Sphere (1998) gets really intense, and while you have to pay the heck attention, clues are all over the place to explain the monster squids, toxic jellyfish, and trillions of fish eggs that look like and are the size of sea potatoes.

There’s a tedious subplot involving the psychologist and the marine biologist, who had an affair (another clue). But since they don’t show any sea boobies, it’s just something you’ll have to put up with. The movie will hold your interest, though. And after you’re done, go stick your head in a sphere…it’s fun!

Ghosts Seeking Therapy

Of all the horror genres begging for my attention/fun coupons, the ghost category has always been a fav. Not sure why. Sure, I dig giant monsters, werewolves and nature gone wild flicks. But ghosts – friendly or anti-friendly – just seem to put frills in my chills.

So my innards are always happy when a new ghost movie comes down the paranormal pipe, the latest  being Backtrack, featuring of – get this – ghosts of dead people! I’m gasping as we speak.

Here’s what we’re being told about Backtrack: “Psychologist Peter Bowers’ life is thrown into turmoil when he discovers that his patients are the ghosts of people who all died in an accident twenty years ago. Afraid of losing his mind, Peter returns to his home town where he uncovers a terrifying truth which only he can put right.”

I could help him if he wants. I have years of dealing with spirits. Heck, I had an entire bottle of spirits last night. So yeah, you could say I’m an expert of some sort.

Backtrack is described as a “spine-chilling supernatural thriller in the vein of The Sixth Sense and What Lies Beneath.” No specific release date yet, but the movie’s website is saying sometime in 2015.  It’s mid-September as of this digital posting, so they better get to ghostin’.

Note of some noteworthiness: This Backtrack should not be confused with 2014’s Backtrack (aka, Backtrack: Nazi Regression). A psychological thriller, Backtrack: Nazi Regression features Nazis. Didn’t see that coming.

Also, avoid getting wires crossed with 1969’s Backtrack. That one features cowboys. Ghosts are way more scarier than cowboys. Unless it’s a ghost cowboy coming back from the dead to make you stain your saddle.

Extraterrestrials vs. Over-Priced Psychiatry

If you live in Nome, Alaska and turn up missing, chances are you got drunk and lost in the woods and eaten by a bear. Or you were abducted by extraterrestrials. I’m split down the middle on this one, mostly due to the alleged true events The Fourth Kind (2009) proposes.

Reportedly using actual archival video interview footage of psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler, whose distraught patients are being visited nightly by an owl (not a real one, but probably evil all the same), we’re led to conclude aliens are probing for something more than oil deep within their personal tundra.

And the recollection of which is so horrifying, they suppress it, thereby causing paranoid schizophrenia. This results in messed up sheets, vomiting towards the floor, and levitating from one’s bed. Might as well throw suicide into the mix as well.

Dr. Tyler has a bunch of patients experiencing the same nightmare. The local sheriff wants Tyler to stop stirring up the bees in people’s heads, as it’s making them freak out even more. But Tyler has her own bees to deal with – a short while back her husband was murdered in the bed next to her, the trauma of which left her young daughter blind and her son full of rage unexpressed rage. (He’ll be OK once someone buys him a toy, something in the $30 price range.)

A clue as to WTF in the form of a tape played back after she fell asleep reveals that while she was screaming her freakin’ head off, another voice – using ancient Sumarian – spoke and did “things” to her body. I’m overflowing with theories.

Up front they tell you they’re portraying a reenactment, mixing footage together split-screen style (pioneered by the 1973 sorta horror movie, Wicked, Wicked.)This is kind of cool and gives the movie a nice creepy “real” feel, but the story unravels to the point where you’re not sure if it really was aliens doing the dirty work, or just a smokescreen for bigger issues, like bears eating drunks lost in the woods. Like I said, split down the middle.