Finding UFOs, Imagined Ghosts, Whiskey Cake

Found this old UFO Detector ad and it got me thinking — my old one is on its last legs and I need a new UFO Detector with more buttons and shinier lights. That means it’ll work better.

So did my old UFO Detector — purchased on eBay™ for $800 actually work? Yes and no. Yes, in that it kept detecting things I was cooking (unidentified frying objects). No, in that I was unable to get a refund.

Speaking of getting your money back for bogus products, here are a few upcoming horror movies that may or may not detect anything but how much disposable income you have in your wallet and how few operating brain cells you have left in your head…

THE BASEMENT (October 7, 2017/ Shriekfest Film Festival)
“An L.A. serial killer known as The Gemini, tortures and ultimately murders his victims in the dungeon-like basement of his San Fernando Valley home. Gemini has already claimed seven victims, all of whom he has horrifyingly maimed and decapitated with a blowtorch, but Craig Owen, the famed musician who Gemini has chosen for his eighth victim, and Craig’s beautiful wife Kelly prove every bit the killers equal in the art of psychological warfare, giving rise to one of the more diabolical plot twists in recent memory.”

Maimed and decapitated with a blowtorch. Along with peanut butter and olive loaf sandwiches, several words you probably wish to never hear again. But apparently there are enough torture porn freaks out there (looking in your direction every one of you) to make this a mouth-curling viewing experience.

1922 (October 29, 2017/Netflix™)
“1922 is based on Stephen King’s 131-page story telling of a man’s confession of his wife’s murder. The tale is told from the perspective of Wilfred James, the story’s unreliable narrator who admits to killing his wife, Arlette, with his son in Nebraska. But after he buries her body, he finds himself terrorized by rats and, as his life begins to unravel, becomes convinced his wife is haunting him.”

Horror author icon Stephen King continues his hot streak with this offering of old time-y ghosts, real or imagined. The rats are real, though. They make up most of the population of Nebraska from what the Internet tells me. I want to believe.

HALLOWEEN PUSSY TRAP KILL! KILL! (October 27, 2017)
“On Halloween an all girl rock-n-roll band called Kill Pussy Kill ventures out to play their biggest show to date. However, before hitting the road they manage to unwittingly upset a man. Unfortunately, this man turns out to be an evil genius dead set on revenge and manages to lure the girls into his Hell House. When they wake up from being gassed, they find themselves trapped inside an inescapable room filled with a vicious variety of devices that can kill them as well as a variety of weapons that can be used on each other. The rules are simple: advance through all three rooms and you are allowed to go free. The catch is, in order to make it to the next room, someone must die! With a ticking clock, and the mastermind watching, the question becomes — are you willing to kill to stay alive?”

A nice homage to Russ Meyers’ Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). That one has voluptuous, sadistic go-go dancers causing all sorts of misc. heckaroo. Halloween Pussy Trap Kill! Kill! sounds like a segment from any one of the Saw movies. I prefer go-go dancers with a penchant for low-cut fashion-ware and purse cutlery.

IMPOSSIBLE HORROR (2018)
“Every night a scream rings out in the same neighborhood. Two insomniac strangers, Lily the filmmaker and Hannah the game designer, head out together into the darkness to find the cause. Is it a psychotic killer claiming a new victim? A murderous ghost out for revenge? A flesh-eating monster? All of the above with extra chainsaws? Before they know it, Lily and Hannah have gone from being scream hunters to scream prey, and an evil force wants them dead.  If they can both survive the night, they may just find the answers they’re looking for, but the price will have to be paid in sanity and blood.”

Sounds like another typical night at TGI Fridays™. And yes, “evil force” is on their menu under desserts: Tennessee Whiskey Cake (Toffee cake, candied pecans, vanilla ice cream. Butterscotch Jack Daniel’s® Whiskey sauce.) The price is whatever the going rate for a soul is these days.

Kitchen Sink Horror

Looking for new horror movies with fresh, exciting and original ideas? Not gonna find ‘em here. But hey, it’s either this or romantic comedies (i.e., “rom coms”). Now that I think about it, rom coms can be pretty dang horrifying as well. Time to take my foot out of my mouth YET AGAIN.

Anyway…

MONSTER POOL: CHAPTER TWO (Available now / unrated / uncensored)
“One Movie. Ten Tales of Terror. Dive deep into murky and bloody waters with Vampires, Ghosts, Demons, Death, Succubi, Mind Control, The Monster Under Your Bed, Cults, Zombies and Serial Killers!”

What, no kitchen sink? Those things can be shockingly frightful, especially when they’re full of unwashed dishes. (I did ’em last time, so now it’s your turn.)

IT WATCHES (December 6, 2016 / VOD & February 21, 2017 / DVD)
“Andre takes a house sitting job at a creepy home nestled in the hills above Los Angeles. As night comes the house reveals its insidious nature as he begins hearing ominous sounds and experiencing strange occurrences throughout the house that lead him to believe he is not alone, and that someone, or something is in the house with him.”

I’m betting it’s a ghost. Or a rat. Or a rat ghost. The takeaway here is that a haunted house is no big deal when it’s someone else’s mortgage payment.

THE NOONDAY WITCH (aka, Polednice / available now / Czech Republic / USA / 2017)
“Eliška and her eight years old daughter Anetka move into a remote house to begin their new life with the ‘father away on business,’ as the mother claims. However, when the daughter discovers the truth and realizes her own mother lied to her all along, their relationship begins to wither. At that time, the mythical creature of The Noonday Witch begins to materialize. It is coming closer and closer and the question is poised: is the danger real or is it all in the mother’s crumbling head?”

Crumbling head. Great description. It describes me on so many levels. As for the Noonday Witch, I know nothing about her and why she’s up at the crack of noon causing all sorts of sleeping-in-late shennanigans. Maybe it’s because wiccans always work the night shift.

LAKE BODOM (aka, Bodom / available now / Finland, 2017 / USA)
“Every camper’s worst nightmare came true at Lake Bodom in 1960 when four teenagers were stabbed to death while sleeping in their tent. As the years passed and the case grew cold, the unsolved mystery turned into an urban legend, a creepy campfire story passed from generation to generation. Now, a group of teenagers arrives at the same campsite, hoping to solve the murder by reconstructing it minute by minute. As night falls, turns out not all of them are there to play. Tonight it’s girls against boys. Let the killing games begin.”

Stock Horror Plot # 8. New slasher movie, same recipe. I’ll still watch it, even though they give away the plot. Theorized spoiler: If it’s not each other, I bet the killer is that Toronto Maple Leafs hockey fan from Friday the 13th Part III (1982).

THE VOID (2017)
“In the middle of a routine patrol, officer Daniel Carter happens upon a blood-soaked figure limping down a deserted stretch of road. He rushes the young man to a nearby rural hospital staffed by a skeleton crew, only to discover that patients and personnel are transforming into something inhuman. As the horror intensifies, Carter leads the other survivors on a hellish voyage into the subterranean depths of the hospital in a desperate bid to end the nightmare before it’s too late.”

A skeleton crew working at a hospital. I don’t know why that cracks me up. The plot recalls 2008’s Norwegian horror movie Dark Floors, wherein heavy metal demons pursue a father and daughter trapped in a haunted hospital. I don’t think heavy metal demons are in The Void, though. Probably zombies. Or skeletons. Or zombie skeletons. Working the night shift.

Ratting on Rats

In the easily enunciated Ratten 2 — Sie kommen wieder! (2006), genetically-altered rodents overtake a small town, first introducing themselves by dropping in on a hot fraulein taking a hot bath and showing das boobies. The rats, pouring out of an air vent over the bath tub, eat most of the girl, leaving nothing worth dating in their wake. Thanks for nothing, rats.

The vermin, liberated (or “befreit” – German for “be free” I think) by a minimum-wage lab assistant, have been genetically re-designed to die once their body temperature hits zero. (Um, aren’t we all like that?) This is where global warming is really gonna come back to bite us in the environment, as the rats are multiplying faster than math rabbits, and swarm through everyone’s nooks and crannies.

The plan is to lure them into an underground sewer so they can be frozen with cannisters of freeze-y stuff. Plans like this rarely go right, and one guy has to wade through one hundred thousand rodents to reconnect the wire that’s needed to ka-BOOM the place. That he doesn’t get bitten once was a real letdown. In fact, the muscle mice don’t really do anything cool.

Rats – I thought this was gonna be a good movie about rats.

When A Man Loves A Vermin

A cult of man-hating, half-naked (or half-dressed) chicks go around slaughtering guys who are stinky and who treat women like unsanitary napkins.

After being captured by said warriorettes, Bram Stroker, uh, Stoker, is imprisoned and soon to be ritualistically executed – by hungry rats controlled by the Queen of Vermin (Adrienne Barbeau). Because her boobs are so big, she controls the pestilent furballs with ease.

Bram convinces the queen that he could ride along with them and document their escapades, and possibly get it made into a library book. Off they go, raiding convenience stores (or, “whore houses” as they were called back in the 1800s), saving young women from being debauched.

One of the cult grrls falls for Bram and does it with him on the dungeon floor. This makes one of the other cult grrls mad, and all tampon hell breaks loose.

The appropriately titled Burial of the Rats (1995) is loaded with rats, blood, gore, swords, boobs, bare bottoms, and loin-tingling excitement. (Fun fact: I auditioned for the role of Bram Stoker but didn’t get it. Rats.)

Melting Faces and Exploding Limbs

After being successfully Kickstarter’d, Lab Rats (2015), the British eco-horror film short’s trailer, is popping up like, um, rats all over the Internet. As promised via their crowd-funding pitch, Lab Rats is filled with “melting faces and exploding limbs.”

A relief to see melting faces that aren’t associated with binge drinking.

Anyway, here’s what the lab cooked up: “Kat and her eco-warrior friends embark on a mission to expose the international bio-chemistry company, Ring-Amnion, as liars after a tip-off that they ran an animal testing lab – despite their public profile claiming otherwise.”

“The gang – and Kat’s 20,000 blog followers – are eager to find out what Ring-Amnion have been hiding as they break into an old building, but they aren’t prepared for what they find inside…”

Crossing fingers here – I hope they find melted faces inside. Wanna see a teaser for yourself? Click HERE.

I know what you’re thinking – there were Lab Rats before this, 2012 to be exact. Lab Rats – currently on its fourth season – is a Disney™ produced “sci-fi” show featuring a group of family TV-sanitized teens who have bionic super powers. Think Fantastic Four on high doses of Clearasil™.

Sex Monster and Barnyard Horror

A couple of upcoming new ones that look old. But they’re not. They’re new. For reals.

First up is It Follows, due out March 13, 2015, probably before lunch, but definitely after breakfast. It involves a young girl who is plagued by nightmarish visions after an “innocent sexual encounter” in the back seat of a car.

OK, no sexual encounters are innocent. That’s what organized religion tries to drill into our horn dog brains. Secondly, who hasn’t had nightmarish visions after hooking up? Think Lair of the White Worm (1988) and go from there.

ANYWAY…after said hook up, 19-year-old Jay (chick with a dude’s name) can’t shake the sensation that someone – or something – is following her. As the threat closes in, Jay and her friends must somehow escape the horrors that are only a few steps behind.

I bet it’s organized religion.

An old school treatment for The Barn arrives October 1, 2015 in the form of some of those cool illustrated ’80s style horror movie posters. And the plot feels right out of that era as well. Behold…

“It’s Halloween 1989. Best friends Sam and Josh are trying to enjoy what’s left of their final Devil’s Night before graduating high school. But trouble arises when the two pals and a group of friends take a detour on their way to a rock concert, finding an old abandoned barn and awakening the evil inside.

Now it’s up to Sam and Josh to find a way to protect their friends and defeat the creatures that lurk within “The Barn.”

One can barely imagine the horrible creatures in a barn: pigs, horses, cows, rats, bugs, snakes, spiders, poisonous squirrels, stink beetles, electric eels…

Could this be the Old MacDonald version of Night of the Demons (1988)? I will ponder that over a nice breakfast of barn eggs, barn sausage and horse apples. OK, probably not that last one.

Human Rat Zombies

A virus in Manhattan is turning people into rat zombies. There, I said it. People are being attacked in the subway and sustaining rodent bites that get infected and make them look all mutated and killing-esque.

In an apartment building slated for demolition, a few remaining tenants (old people, single moms past their prime, a gay guy with good sense of color coordinating, a retired boxer who wears briefs) listen to the growing reports that the virus is spreading. Soon non-infected people are getting their gut particles eaten upon.

The police have cordoned off Manhattan and thoughtfully advising everyone to stay indoors. Like that’s gonna do any good – that’s where all the air is. Soon the human rat zombies are getting in the walls and chewing their way towards people cheese.

An amazingly cool take on Night of the Living Dead (1968) as well as being the precursor for [REC] (2007), Mulberry Street (2006) is a taught, contemporized story with uptown rat zombies and people locking themselves in the run-down building to fight off the hordes of skin-chewers.

Amazingly, none of this is corny or goofy; The horror is as gritty as the underpants of the New Yorkers trying to stay alive (best of luck to you), and an ending that’s anything but upbeat. Mulberry Street makes you wanna gnaw on some wiring, it’s that good.