Star Warfare, Multiverse Monsters, Funeral Fun

If you’re partial to UFOs, Frankenstein, Samurai and vaudeville phantoms, then you need to visit ThirteenthFloor.us and immerse yourselfie in the fantastical art of Billy Ludwig, an ingenious artist dealing in mixed media, which is the artistic version of mixed martial arts. Kinda. 

Ludwig’s take on flying saucers and pop culture icons is kitschy fun. But where his talent goes next level is by juxtaposing vintage images of WWII and Star Wars: At-At Walkers, X-Wings and TIE Fighters engaging with Spitfires, battleships, bazookas, ground troops and more. As if that wasn’t cool enough, these art pieces are in black and white (one, even, being vintage colorized), lending a tangible sense of realism to make you believe this is how the war REALLY went down. Did for me, anyway.

The art is printed on high quality 12 pt. gloss card stock and sell for an average of $15. You couldn’t buy a glass of refreshing Yatooni Boska at the Mos Eisley Cantina on Tatooine with twice those New Republic credits. There’s also books and shirts emblazoned with Ludwig’s innovative designs.

So whether you wave your flag for the US Armed Forces and the Rebel Alliance or side with the Republican-led Empire, here are a few out now/upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not be as tasty as a cup of the Cantina’s house special: Blue Milk, which, of course, comes from female banthas. Try not to think about it…

WAKING KARMA / Out now (VOD)

“When high school senior Karma’s estranged cult leader father traps her and her mother in a remote forest compound, she must survive a series of psychological trials meant to prepare her for a strange and deadly reincarnation ritual.”

And if she gets older, Karma will look back on her high school days as the best time of her life.

2025 ARMAGEDDON / December 23, 2022 (VOD)

“A militant alien race launches an attack on Earth using gigantic creatures and geological disasters all based on those found on The Asylum’s Movie Channel signal, which reached their planet.”

Finally — the film studio known for bold-face plagiarism of successful genre movies, have finally gone all in — they’re ripping off themselves. 

SCREAMS FROM THE SWAMP / December 27, 2022 (VOD)

“When Angela’s husband and son die in hospital after a car crash, she takes it upon herself to seek justice against the doctor who operated on the pair. Desperation and obsession lead Angela into a paranoid state, dissociating her from reality. She follows the doctor day after day: behind the anonymous facade, the man hides a parallel life of depravity and murders committed together with his colleagues. Discovering these new horrors, Angela turns to dark otherworldly forces to find the strength to eliminate the killers. This decision leads her into a spiral of violence and hallucinations, where pleasure and fear intermingle but ultimately there is a high price to pay.”

Desperation, paranoia, disassociation with reality, hallucinations… You just met a Tug Tavern regular.

PLAY DEAD / Release pending 2023 (Theaters/VOD)

“Criminology student Chloe fakes her own death to break into a morgue in order to retrieve a piece of evidence that ties her younger brother to a crime gone wrong. Once inside she quickly learns that the fearsome coroner uses the morgue as a front for a sick and twisted business. As a frightening game of cat and mouse ensues, Isabel discovers that the scariest thing about the morgue is not the dead, but the living.”

And just what sick and twisted business would the coroner use the morgue for? A cannibal pop-up? Embalming stand? Necrophiliac kissing booth? Regardless of these guaranteed money-making ideas, you gotta appreciate his entrepreneurial spirit. 

A Truly Crappy Horror Movie

Pusit is having a bad day — and it’s about to get worse. A musical instrument salesman in Thailand, Pusit’s top client was nabbed by a ladder-climber co-worker and was fired. Then his car was repossessed. Then his mom calls and needs to borrow money he doesn’t have. And there’s a fly that keeps buzzing around his face. Then he gets an unusual cell phone call telling him that if he can kill the fly with that rolled up newspaper at his feet, 10,000 baht (Thailand dollars) will be put in his bank account. Smacko!

The phone rings again showing his bank account has been credited. Then the caller issues another challenge: eat the dead fly and more money will be put in his account. Yummy. His phone rings again with more money verified. (That never happens to me.)

Then the game begins. The mysterious caller issues a challenge: complete 13 “games” and 100 million baht ($318,347,000.00 in U.S. funds — I checked) will be his.

The tasks start out simple, like making at least three children cry. But it’s the restaurant “game” that’s really tough to watch. Pusit is instructed to walk into a four-star eatery where he is seated and brought a covered dish. The caller says he must eat what’s under the dish in order to go to the next level. The lid comes off and it’s a big plate of something that belongs in a toilet, with gravy and a broccoli floret and slice of tomato. You may not want to watch this scene as he takes his first bite — and finishes the job, even licking the plate. I had to stop the movie right there and go brush my teeth with Clorox™. 

The subsequent challenges get a little more tough, each with consequences. Most of this stuff is funny, but the movie takes a slow harsh turn involving a wire clothesline, a Samurai sword, a little dog and a poop lollipop (sorry, made that last one up).

The tension gets to the point where you’re really rooting for Pusit as he’s trying like hell to play the game right. But now the cops are after him, as is his co-worker chick friend who discovers what “the game” is and sets out to stop it before any more harmless crap gets eaten.

The ending  of 13: Game of Death (2006) is not what you’d expect or predict, and when you think about it, is the only way to tie things up. An intense flick, for sure; You aren’t gonna see many this bizarre or tasty (kidding). Just have your toothbrush standing by.

Gigantic Giant Giants

Daisoto is a 40-year-old introverted, divorced Japanese bachelor living in a pig-pen of a house, sitting in the park and eating the same meal every day. (Yeesh — that hits a little too close to the bone.)

Daisoto, turns out, is the last of a long line of giant monster killers. When a new Costco™-sized foe threatens Japan, the Department of Defense calls Daisoto and off he goes to a nearby power plant to get electrodes hooked up to his nipples and one million volts applied thusly.

This causes him to grow into a giant with several-story tall Eraserhead/Kid ‘N Play hair wearing a pair of stunningly purple Samurai diapers and the occasional advertising sticker on his chest. His only weapon: a telephone pole-sized steel club. He needs it — the colossal creatures that arrive out of nowhere to rearrange the city’s landscape are adversarial — and some of the most freakishly unique monsters ever seen in any country with tall knock-downable buildings.

There’s the Strangling Monster, a nearly indescribable ogre with expanding cables for arms, which it uses to throw around buildings and back flips them. It also has a comb-over. Then there’s the Stink Monster, a female creature that emits the smell of 10,000 feces. It also acts as a perfume-like attractant to other monsters. The beast Daisoto doesn’t want to face, though, is The Red One, a mega-tough child-devil creature that could end the career of Big Man Japan, thereby leaving the city unprotected and chest advertisers un-advertised.

Played as deadpan humor and as a tongue-in-cheek take on Japanese giant monster movies, you gotta see these things as there’s nothing you can compare ’em to. Except YOURSELF. I kid. Oh, and the reason his neighbors hate him so much? When in giant form Daisoto causes more destruction than he stops, uses up way too much electricity, is horrendously loud, and is not the sharpest chopstick in the drawer.

Watch Big Man Japan (2009) and put it in the “WTF?” category. In the next few minutes, once you’re done hooking battery cables to your chest parts. P.S. Don’t really do that.

Evil In Real-Time

We humans aren’t the only ones affected by pollution. After years of taking drugs, smoking drugs, eating drugs and overloading on McDonald’s Happy Meals™, our blood is so contaminated, even vampires won’t drink it. And when they do, they vomit all over the place. How rude.

Over the years this poor diet has led to vampire mutations, with some being able to walk around in day light as if a werewolf, others having their fanged mouths in the palm of their hands. (You DO NOT wanna give these vampires a high-five.)

So off four of vampires go, traveling from the blood-bereft Nevada desert to the gushing Hollywood Hills, looking for something to drink. Yep, you’ll find countless decorative ponds of untainted blood in L.A.

Hot on their trail is a whiskey-swilling old priest who carries a Samurai sword and guns. If you can’t figure out why the priest has been so hardcore about chasing down a particular vampire couple, you should stick your head in a garbage can.

Yeah, the movie title (Live Evil/2008) is dumb and the action is both hokey and Z-grade. But there’s lots of gooshing gore and naked nudity. Sounds like a typical day in Hollywood.

Stoned Demon God

The Japanese term Daimajin translates to good ’ol English as Great Demon God. (I wonder what my term translates to in Japanese? Probably Great Beer God. I like that. Thank you, Japan.)

Daimajin is also the title of the 1966 horror fantasy movie about a gigantic stone statue that comes to life and squashes people. There is nothing about that sentence I don’t like.

It’s bad enough the downtrodden villagers in ancient Japan are enduring a series of tremors (or “mini quakes”); on the flip side you have their leader Lord Hanabasa in constant arguments with the super mean and cruel Samanosuke. The quakes are attributed to the spirit of the Daimajin trapped in a nearby mountain and is trying to bust a move. The meanness of Samanosuke is attributed to him just being a dick.

Samanosuke uses the villagers superstitions against them and to overthrow (i.e., kill) Lord Hanabasa, thus ruling with an iron fist (i.e., sword). His reign is highlighted with torture, stabbings, eye gougings, and assorted punchings, leading to a slave labor workforce.

Shinobu, the village’s local priestess, has had enough of this crap and, after a long story involving other story-padding characters, warns about the Daimajin coming to smash evil.

Samanosuke chortles at the stone Samurai and sends his posse to go beat the revered stone statue into bite-sized chunks. When the army starts pounding a huge railroad spike into Daimajin’s forehead, the statue comes alive and breaks free of his dirt cage. It’s clobberin’ time.

Stomping its way towards the village, Daimajin’s face changes into that of a pissed of Shogun with a facial expression that looks like the railroad spike was pounded into Daimajin’s glory hole. It’s as if the demon god was sold at a Pottery Barn™ managed by Slayer.

Doing what only a 25 meter tall ticked off stone creature can do, Daimajin, who only makes its appearance an hour (!) into the movie, stomps, crushes, squishes and squashes Samanosuke’s bully squad into egg rolls.

But wait, Daimajin is unable to distinguish evil from reverse evil, and begins swinging his wrecking balls all over the village, wiping out years of shabby architecture. It’s only when a chick cries at Daimajin’s dirty feet that it’s spirit is released and goes zooming off as a UFO-esque orb, leaving it’s husk to crumble all over the place. Guess who has to clean up that mess?

There were two more sequels: Return of Daimajin (1966) and Daimajin Strikes Again (1966). Yes, all three were released in the same year. I think they just reused the original Daimajin monster. Way to milk that sacrificial cow.

Return of the Giant Monsters

Man, I wish people would pick a lane and drive in it. Case in point: Gamera vs. Gyaos, a raucous 1967 Japanese sci-fi monster mash, has Gamera’s fruit fly foe as being named “Gyaos” and “Gaos” on different marketing materials. Aieeee! And to make matters more convoluted, the U.S. version is titled Return of the Giant Monsters, all of which causes me sleepless nights. I don’t have a clue as to why it bothers me so much, it just does.

Anyway, Gamera Vs. Gyaos is more for kids than someone who may or may not drink a LOT of beer, and has just about everything a fan of giant Japanese monsters could ever want.

Mt. Fuji has erupted again, this time awakening Gyaos, a “special needs” prehistoric vampire reptile bird that eats humans and emits a supersonic frequency that can slice through other giant monsters like a hot knife through tofu. (Excellent run-on sentence!)

This causes hell on Earth for a super freeway project slated to plow through a nearby village of people (village people, heh) who can’t decide if it’s cool to give up their ancestor’s land so everyone can get to the store faster, or sell out and become as rich as Samurais (their words, not mine).

Enter Gamera (giant turtle that flies ‘n farts flames, in case it slipped your mind), even though no one in the movie knows how to correctly pronounce his name. Rescuing a little kid instead of dispensing some super-sized ass smack, Gamera leaks first blood via Gyaos’ lethal frequency. Turns out Gyaos has two throats, which acts like a tuning fork. (Good thing it’s not a female Gyaos – then it would never shut up. OK, that was uncalled for, ladies. I respect your boobs ’n stuff.)

Gamera retreats back to the ocean to heal after his arm is almost cut off by the animated-but-deadly frequency. This forces the humans to take matters into their own hands. And what an ingenious plan they have. Using hundreds of gallons of synthetic human blood, they lure Gyaos to the top of that building that has a spinning roof. While he drinks it, they turn on the spin-y building roof and make Gyaos all dizzy so he can’t fly back to his cave before being burned by the sun when it rises in three f’n minutes.

The scene of Gyaos going around and around like a 33 1/3rpm record album being played on 45rpm is one of giant monster movie’s greatest moments. If that was me on that “turntable,” I’d mega puke big time.

The other scenes of G&G locking it up (Gamera even bites several toes off Gyaos, but they grow back) are the stuff drug dreams are made of. But don’t do drugs as they’re not cool for you. Stick to canned beer or prescription glue and see how giant monsters used to settle their differences back in the ’60s.