Batman vs. Dracula vs. James Bond, Robo-Cities, Bigfoot Returns

Batman Fights Dracula. Been looking for this movie for a million years. Here’s all I’ve been able to turn up: “Batman Fights Dracula is a 1967 color Philippines film directed by Leody M. Diaz. The cast includes Jing Abalos in the duel roles of Batman and Bruce Wayne, and Dante Rivero as Dracula, the Dark Prince himself.”

If anyone knows where I can watch this for free (okay, I’ll pony up some fun coupons, but let’s not get crazy here), let me know so I can take this one off my leaking bucking list.

Also looking for James Batman, a 1966 Filipino Batman/James Bond spoof. Besides the teaming of Batman with James Bond (and Rubin, the Boy Wonder), the premise tells us this: “An evil organization called the CLAW has threatened nuclear annihilation on the rest of the world unless all countries submit to its rule within five days. Presenting a united front, an alliance of countries tap James Bond and Batman (and Rubin/Robin) to stop the threat. However, both Bond and Batman play brinkmanship with each other, and as the hour to doomsday winds down, are eventually forced to work together. Little do the protagonists know that the real enemy is closer than they think.”

While you go out and do the research for me, here’s a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies to help take my mind off the likelihood that neither Batman or James Bond will be of any help. Then again, maybe Rubin can…

BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE (October 5, 2018)
“Seven strangers, each with a secret to bury, meet at Lake Tahoe’s El Royale, a rundown hotel with a dark past. Over the course of one fateful night, everyone will have a last shot at redemption…before everything goes to hell.”

Sounds a lot like Identity (2003), wherein 10 people who don’t know each other are stuck at a desolate Nevada motel during a gnarly rain storm. Doesn’t take long before they realize they’re being mysteriously being killed off, one at a time. I didn’t know it rained in Nevada. Learning something new every day.

MORTAL ENGINES (December 14, 2018)
“Mortal Engines is set in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world where entire cities have been mounted on wheels and motorized, and prey on one another.”

Cities on wheels fighting other cities on wheels? In your face, Transformers! For people who know how to read without moving their lips (unfortunately, I’m not a one-percenter), Mortal Engines is based on the novel of the same name by Philip Reeve. Good for him. And good for us the trailer showcases stunning visuals that makes viewers re-shape their mouth lips into a “wow” shape.

BIG LEGEND (2018)
“An ex-soldier ventures into the Pacific Northwest to uncover the truth behind his fiancée’s disappearance and finds more than bargained for after teaming up with a local hunter. 

Word around the trailer park is that Big Legend stars Adrienne Barbeau (72), former girlfriend of Swamp Thing and Lance Henriksen (78), whose locked feet with Bigfoot several times before in Sasquatch (aka, The Untold/2002) and Devil on the Mountain (aka, Sasquatch Mountain/2006). Let’s get ready to rumble!

EXORCISM AT 60,000 FEET (2018)
“On the last flight of a transatlantic passenger airliner, a demon is discovered on board.”

This is supposed to be a horror comedy, which makes sense as exorcisms are both LOL and VOL. (Vomit out loud.)Which brings me to the question: How the heck do demons get airplane tickets? You have to show ID and since demons are sometimes made of a bunch of other demons (“Legion, for we are many…”), hellspawners no doubt use counterfeit identification. And that’s totally illegal, which is probably why they’re in Purgatory in the first place. (Man, when I go off the tracks, I seem to just hit the gas.)

Descent Into Double Hell

The Descent: Part 2 (2009), picks up where The Descent (2005) left off, with Sarah Carter, the lone survivor of the women-only subterranean shopping trip/cannibal fest, is in the hospital, unable to recall the horrific events that left her friends eaten alive by sightless cave creatures.

Meanwhile, a police search party, led by professional underground explorers with cool flashlights and glow sticks, is under way. The sheriff, though, finds out the blood Sarah was covered with didn’t leak out of any of her primary orifices, but rather one of the friends whose bodies they can’t seem to find. Because she was only banged up by the Crawlers, Sarah is deemed cave-worthy, and is forced BY LAW to return to the vast Appalachian underground cave system to look for survivors. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

A creaky elevator in an abandoned mine shaft takes the sheriff and his female cop, three pro-cave climbers and Sarah into the pits of Purgatory. It’s not long before they find the rat-chewed body of one of the women. This freaks out Sarah and her memory comes rushing back. Time to get the hell outta Hell. She takes off, leaving the others to fend for themselves. And all the while that eerie clicking noise made by the Crawlers is getting closer.

The creature attacks are well-staged, with those blind, hairless, naked and hungry flesh-eaters (i.e., Goth fans) coming out of nowhere. The trick is to not make any noise as the beasts track by sound. Hard to do that when your neck croissant is bitten and your blood spraying like a shower nozzle. A gun shot triggers a cave-in, and all are separated. For the Crawlers this is good news as their meals are better when served ala carte.

What makes Descent 2 decent (heh) is the added twists. It could’ve been a cookie-cutter slaughterfest and you’d be suitably gleeful. But they took it to the next level with “you didn’t see it coming” swerves. Suffice to say, there are killer (ahem) gory/goon-out moments, and one particularly nasty scene, which finds Sarah and the lady cop in a pool of fetid water. Turns out it wasn’t a pool after all, but an outhouse. Or would that be an in-house since it’s essentially indoors? I must ponder that over a bowl of black lumpy oatmeal.

One more clever twist sets up the escape sequence, which leaves the cave wide open for another sequel. Watch The Descent: Part 2 — it’ll scare the hole outta you. 

Fake UFOs, Horror Teens, Evil Wishing Well

Recently pulled up Real UFO Crash Footage (Mooney Vision) on Amazon Prime™. Several things you need to know before stepping in the same pile of I.V.C. (Identified Viewing Crap) I did…

• ALL the footage is of blurry and/or shaky camera stylings.

• Lots of the material has digital UFOs flying above around or into fiery explosions that happened by way of the wrong button being pushed, high-speed left turn into a right turn cloud, or something involving gasoline and matches.

• Most footage contains mega-explosions from stock news broadcasts.

• There’s footage of falling meteors, which are nothing more than God’s marbles.

• Some footage is from the SyFy Channel™ from over a decade ago.

• While it’s true these UFOs are just that (because of the blurriness, you can’t identify what it is that’s flying/not flying), the bait on the hook here is the flying saucer on the cover.

And while you’re fuming over having bitten the hook, here are a few upcoming horror movies that may or may not be blatantly misleading…

THE OPEN HOUSE (January 19, 2018/Netflix)
“A mother and her teenage son move into a new house and are harassed by threatening forces.”

Threatening forces could be anything — landlords, neighbors, Mothman, me…  Just need an address. (Disclaimer: I don’t really threaten anyone. However, I will make your lawn die just by standing on it.)

THE DEVIL’S WELL (January 23, 2018)
“Karla Marks mysteriously vanishes while conducting a paranormal investigation with her husband into the Devil’s Well, an underground location reported to be a gateway straight into Hell, and the site of ongoing strange phenomenon. A year after her disappearance, a group of investigators go back to uncover the truth about Karla, and are faced with evil forces greater than they ever imagined.”

A well is the gateway to Hell? And here all this time I thought the portal to Purgatory was 7-Eleven™. That, or the bathroom door to the men’s room at the Maha (a bar I hang out in, and usually have a priest administer a blessing every time beer needs to be exorcised from thy bladder).

TRUTH OR DARE (April 27, 2018)
“A harmless game of ‘Truth or Dare’ among friends turns deadly when someone — or something — begins to punish those who tell a lie — or refuse the dare.”

Sounds like more dumb teen horror. Can’t wait to not watch it.

NIGHTFLYERS (SyFy Channel™/2018/2019)
“Eight maverick scientists and a powerful telepath embark on an expedition to the edge of our solar system in the hopes of contacting alien life. They travel aboard The Nightflyer — a ship with a small tightknit crew and a reclusive captain. But when terrifying and violent events begin to take place they start to question each other, and surviving the journey proves harder than anyone thought.”

This looks to be a TV series, which is good, because it gives me YET ANOTHER excuse to not get off the couch. Nightflyers is based on George R.R. Martin’s 1980 supernatural novella (short book) of the same name and was actually made into a movie back in 1987. I may or may not have seen it. Hey, I have hair to comb and lawns to mow. I take that stuff seriously.

Fear of Zombies, Ghosts, Haunted Houses and Refrigerators

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I think I saw the Babadook again in the bathroom at the Maha (a local bar I hang out in). Given that the men’s room is basically a portal to Hell, I’m pretty sure if it wasn’t the Babadook, it’s probably some sort of Pee Demon from the Seven Layers of Urine Splattered Purgatory.

While I complain to the management, here are some upcoming horror and/or sci-fi to help loosen your bladder…

FEAR OF THE WALKING DEAD SEASON 3 (June 3, 2017)
“The families will be brought together in the vibrant and violent ecotone of the U.S.-Mexico border. International lines done away with following the world’s end, the characters must attempt to rebuild not only society, but family as well.”

Abandoned this one right after season one. Was unable to get into the extremely obnoxious characters and situations. That sounds like an oxymoron given the bars I frequent. That, and bar zombies are far more scarier than the ones in FWD. So, will I pick it up again and give it another chance, or will I keep making pithy, low brow comments on it? I think we all know the answer here.

BLOOD DRIVE (June 14, 2017)
“Los Angeles in the near future: where water is as scarce as oil and climate change keeps the temperature at a cool 115 degrees in the shade. It’s a place where crime is so rampant that only the worst violence is punished and where Arthur Bailey — the city’s last good cop — runs afoul of the dirtiest and meanest underground car rally in the world, Blood Drive. The master of ceremonies is a vaudevillian nightmare, the drivers are homicidal deviants, and the cars run on human blood.”

Cars that run on blood has been done before with 2007’s Blood Car. The rest of this plot snacks liberally on 1975’s Death Race 2000 and GTA. So why should anyone watch Blood Drive? I’m thinkin’ for driving tips.

HUSH (2017/2018)
“Siblings Jackson and Angela run a profitable ghost-busting racket, swindling the bereaved with fake detection equipment and Angela’s paranormal ‘visions’. Hired by Mrs. Green to investigate a haunted old foster home, the team uncover its terrifying past: young girls brutally slaughtered, mouths stitched shut, silenced by a sadistic killer. And Angela’s on the edge — sleepless, strung out and losing her mind, no longer certain what’s actually real and convinced she hears the girls crying out to her from the darkness. But supernatural terrors are the least of their problems when they discover the very real evil lurking in the isolated house.”

Paranormal ghostbusters are fake? All of a sudden I’m feeling very stupid for the $1,000 I paid out to a ghost specialist to exorcise my refrigerator that keeps making noises in the night. Sure, it could be a failing cooling unit, but why take chances? Now that I think about it, I could have easily bought a new fridge and had enough change left over to buy some frozen hot dogs (or “ballpark franks”) for future eating purposes.

THE PREY (2017/2018)
“A platoon of U.S. Soldiers in the middle east become trapped in a cave and as they desperately try to find a way out they are hunted down by a deadly creature.”

Ooh, I hope the creature isn’t one of those nasty sand beavers. I hear those things are nasty.

THE HAUNTING ON LONG ISLAND: THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS (2018)
“On the night of November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. took a high-powered rifle and murdered his entire family as they slept. At his trial, DeFeo claimed that “voices” in the house commanded him to kill. Thirteen months later, the Lutz family bought the house and stayed only 28 days before fleeing in terror. Their nightmarish ordeal shocked the world in The Amityville Horror. The Lutzes may have escaped from Amityville with their lives…but the DeFeo’s weren’t so lucky. This is their story.”

Unreal. YET ANOTHER Amityville movie. That makes seven in the last year alone and 20 altogether. Don’t believe me? Click HERE. People, It’s just a tragic real story milked to the bone by Hollywood. I, on the other hand, have a better haunted plot ready to go, written with plenty of angles for sequels. It begins with a possessed refrigerator…

Leprosy Zombies, Ghosts Students, Fake Moon

Watching YET ANOTHER “the moon landing was faked” documentary. This is a British version. British people are too polite to lie. As for where I stand on this unending conspiracy, I do not believe our astronauts landed on the moon. I believe NASA built an artificial moon a few blocks from my apartment. That’s where they shot the footage and thereby faked the entire thing.

Only problem is, they didn’t get rid of the man-made moon and it’s just sitting there, all moldy and looking like an abandoned World’s Fair attraction. That, and it’s pull on our tides is screwing with my bath water. Stupid fake moon.

And here’s some upcoming horror and sci-fi that may or may not need to go in and/or out with the tide…

THE MAGNIFICENT DEAD (available now)
“In the 1870s in the small Texas town of Rosewood, local rancher Jared Hamilton and his men have declared war on the town, using fear and death to prevent a new railroad line from coming through. Guided by a priest, Father Julian the desperate town leaders decide to hire a group of six gunmen to help clean up the town. These gunmen are legendary, as they are afflicted with Leprosy and fight with reckless abandon and ruthlessness, for they have nothing to lose as they are already dead.”

Back in those days, lepers is what sick people were called instead of zombies/walking dead/undead/straddling the life/death fence’rs. The town leaders should’ve called on the Old West’s Jonah Hex because he’s a lot less “germ-y.” (Antibiotics weren’t invented until 1929 and then commercialized in the ’40s. I have no idea why I know that.)

INHERITANCE (June 2, 2017/Limited)
“Ryan Bowman has just inherited a $2.5 million beach house on the central California coast from his biological father, a man he’s never known and thought long dead. Arriving in the charming town with his pregnant fiancé, Ryan’s curiosity about his father soon leads him into an introspective investigation. As a looming family presence tightens its grip on him, Ryan pushes away his adoptive family and expectant fiancé. When he finally discovers the horrifying truth about his birth parents, he might be too late to stop himself from repeating a similar pattern.”

Who cares? A $2.5 million dollar beach house?!? Geez, quit yer b*tchin’ and TAKE THE MONEY. Some people don’t know when to just shut up and make their way towards the cake.

THE SCHOOL (2017/2018)
“Amy, an attractive, successful surgeon, struggles to cope with her emergency room duties and those of a young mother looking after her hospitalized son who has fallen into a coma. After being reprimanded by her boss, Dr. Wang, for obsessively believing her son will wake up, she becomes trapped in a coma/purgatory of her own – The School – where children from her past emerge to taunt and test her to her core, putting in doubt whether Amy will be able to save her son and leave The School.”

Her boss is Dr. Wang? Wonder if he’s a urologist?

POSSUM (2017/2018)
“A disgraced children’s puppeteer returns to his childhood home and is forced to confront his wicked stepfather and the secrets that have tortured him his entire life.”

You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you end up as a disgraced puppeteer. That’s right in there with being self-employed and hating the guy you’re working for.

Hey, You Hellhounds – Get Off My Lawn

Kleitos loves Demetria, so he marries her. This makes Theron so jealous mad, he poisons her wedding wine and she dies. Everyone could’ve called it a day right there, but Kleitos learns from a local witch with an overbite that Demetria’s soul is hung up in Purgatory, awaiting to be wed by Hades himself. Well, dang.

Kleitos, doing the man-up thing, leads his finest warriors (including that butt-sausage Theron) to the volcano that acts as the doorway to Hell. (There’s no address, but the name on the mailbox tells ’em they’re in the right place.) Sipping some witch elixir, they’re able to pass through the flames, which would normally turn marshmallows into black goo.

Once inside they have to circumnavigate the endless maze in search of Demetria. (Note: They brought her body along and left it outside in the hopes that when her soul gets close to it, it’ll jump back inside. Better hurry — they don’t call it lividity for nothing.)

Inside the maze are a couple of devil dogs, or “hellhounds.” They look like regular hounds, only these pups feast on human flesh. Avoiding stepping in anything (if you catch my drift) the sword boys manage to find Demetria, but lose a couple of expendable warriors to snapping dog jaws (off screen) who had no lines. Wouldn’t be right to have the lead guy or girl scarfed up just yet.

Knowing he’s about to be outed, Theron ambushes Kleitos and leaves him to the dogs. Then he goes outside and says stuff like, “He fought valiantly.” Imagine the look on Theron’s face when Kleitos escapes and stumbles out of the cave. Well, dang. Theron cops to the crime and does battle with Kleitos, only to die after eating a sword sandwich.

Theron wakes up in (wait for it) Hell, only to find Hades is pulling his large intestines out with a crankshaft. A deal is made: Theron will be allowed to walk among the living and must return Hades’ bashful bride if he wants his internal organs left un-yanked. And he gets to take the dogs with him.

The trail is easy to follow, as Demetria’s soul keeps wanting to float out of her weakened body and head for a shopping mall. The witch says she must drink the blood of Hades mixed with some sort of magic invisible spring water in order to put the cork back on her soul. Fine, but how the heck is one supposed to find a magic invisible spring? By feeling the ground for a wet spot?

They gotta snap to it as the hounds of Hell are right on their heels. Since Hellhounds (2009) is first and foremost a love story (with a few internal organs tossed in for flavor) you know how it’s gonna end.

Most everyone gets eaten alive (off screen) by the dogs, and Theron goes back to the screamy place to face his punishment. And Kleitos goes back to power smooching Demetria. And Hades goes back to doing what he does best, which is pulling torso taffy. And yet despite that, it all pretty much stinks.

Hey, Godzilla – Go To Hell

Over the decades Godzilla has bumped uglies with every foe’ker possible (with the exception of the Jesus). On March 1, 2016, G-Man is facing off with the world’s biggest collection of wrongness, with the release of the graphic novel mini-series, Godzilla In Hell (IDW Publishing).

The concept is open mouth drool-worthy, what with – as the press release tells me/us/you — “Godzilla meeting his greatest adversary of all time: the impossible tortures of Hell!” Here’s how this particular slice of genius sets up…

“In each issue of Godzilla In Hell special mini-series will see Godzilla enter a new level of the Underworld to do battle with the impossible by a variety of today’s best writers and artists.”

It’s safe to say that his new monster enemies won’t be of the rubber-suited variety, seeing as Hell’s temperature gauge is set at a comfy 183 Fahrenheit, two degrees higher than the point rubber melts. (It’s also a safe bet he won’t be going up against Plastic Man, either.)

Seems to me I heard tell of Godzilla in Hell back in the early settler days of July, 2015. A few clicks here and there brought me to IDWpublishing.com, where they have the 32-page comic ($3.99) posted as being “out of stock.” To further the madness, WikiZilla™ has this to say about that: “Godzilla In Hell #5 is the last issue of Godzilla In Hell. It was released on November 18th, 2015.”

The press release says March 1st, 2016, but everybody else says “been there done that.” So is the new one a compilation released under one cover? Are they re-issuing the issues? Are they gonna pick up where #5 left off? Are the previous publications a fig newton of my imagination? I’m all f’d up about it. Either way, someone on the internet is a liar.

But hey, any day with Godzilla in it is a good day. Unless you live in downtown Japan.

Heaven and Hell Street Fight

God sends his bestest warriors to Purgatory, a sort of lobby between Heaven and Hell, to purge the place of the Fallen, Hell’s bestest warriors, who’ve taken over operations. (Say what you will about those a-holes, but they do good work.) Purgatory, filled with souls that need rescuing, looks a lot like L.A., but in perpetual darkness, grittier, grimier, slimier, and crimier. But less smog.

All out of Arc Angels, God (whom you don’t get to see, probably because He’s invisible in real life), sends Gabriel to finish the job the previous six AA’s failed to do. They also failed to come back. Each side has seven angels, because the deal is there’s supposed to be balance. It’s hardly equal – Hell is beating the hell out of Heaven.

Gabriel arrives via a swirly tunnel that looks cool if you were drunk and sliding through it. If you’re sober, you’ll probably end up puking. All over puking, not just a cheek full.

Gabe finds all the angels, all of whom are drunks, druggies, hookers and soup kitchen assistant managers. Guess the Good Book wasn’t good enough. Gabe has to re-recruit the angels so they can gang up on Sammael, the head of the Fallen and the one who caused all the nice angels to de-wing.

A few heavenly moments, some interesting positioning (Asmodeus, Sammael’s crazy evil head of security, racks up a lot of points for killing everything), and low-rent special effects. (OK, I get that bright lights means God’s working His magic skills. But every time?)

All this blah-blah leads up to the final confrontation between Gabriel and Sammael. If you know your Bible’s back pages (where the really good stuff goes down), you’ll have already figured out who Sammael is. And no, he isn’t red and doesn’t make fire shoot out of your b-hole.

Slick and stylish, Gabriel (2007) could’ve used a better title, like God Hates Me, I Just Know It. There also needed to be fewer characters with confusing religious names. (Amitiel, Amitiel, Molloch, Remiel…sounds like God’s Mouseketeers.)

Still, Gabriel is a noble effort, though they went through a helluva lot of trouble just to have a fist-fight on a roof top ending.

Schemin’ Demon

Heartbroken, Justin pines for his girlfriend who was taken to the Seventh Layer of Hell by demons. That always happens when you get a new gal, and some guy who’s hotter comes along and chops your beef.

So Justin, using an evil book given to him by his beloved April (the one now curling her hair in Purgatory), draws a pentagram, lights few candles, sits in the magic circle, and calls upon the demon Lo to come before him to assist his passage waaaaaaay down south.

Lo arrives as a wicked cool creature crawling out of the darkness on his stomach. He has no hair, but has hair on him. The back of his is missing, with rocks protruding where brains might normally be on display. He has black stuff all around his mouth, as though he just ate most, if not all, of an evil cream pie. His other sweet tooth is for human flesh. Delighting in the fact that Justin is a newbie demon invoker, Lo refers to him as “Dinner.” That’s pretty funny.

Lo tricks Justin into drinking a cocktail that will allow the human body to be taken into Hell. It’s really a slow-acting poison served with a green olive and poured over ice. Justin doesn’t care – he just wants to see his girlfriend. (Yeesh, talk about whipped.) What happens next is surreal, unexpected and downright smarty brilliant.

You haven’t seen anything like Lo (2010). Don’t go in expecting traditional horror, but savor the way horror is presented in this uniquely creative tale of how love is nothing but Hell. Cool – I just sounded like an actual critic. Look at me, I’m a “film” reviewer.

Friday the 13th: A Hellish Experience

In this ninth installment of the Friday the 13th franchise that’s harder to kill than its human Cuisinart™hero, Jason Voorhees is caught by the FBI, killed in an explosion, his body parts taken to the city morgue.

The coroner, for whatever icky fetish reason, eats Jason’s still-beating(!) heart and becomes possessed by the killing spirit. Nothing left to do except count the bodies.

The hell part comes when Jason is stabbed in the chest and the soul of everyone he’s ever wiped off the planet comes out, like steam from a winter turd. You’re almost thankful when demon hands bust through the ground to give Jason directions to Purgatory.

Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993) was supposed to be the last Friday the 13th sequel. It was not, despite the movie’s misleading title. If we quit watching ’em, they’ll quit making ’em. It’s not rocket science.