A Decade of Drinkin’

Wednesday, June 9, 2010, 5:44 pm.

10 years ago to this day I started Drinkin’ & Drive-in, and began a decade long crawl through the gold-filled mud and muck of horror and sci-fi movies that’ve been my obsession since the Dawn of Mankind. And I say that without hyperbole. More or less.

The first blog written/posted was about one of my all-time fav monsters: Gamera, a Godzilla-sized turtle that could shoot flames out of his mouth AND ass. (I can do one or the other, but not both.) Outside of that, I really didn’t have a vision or goal with this blog, other than to blather on about horror movie stuff filled with mouth-twisting typos, 3rd grade grammatical errors and taking extreme liberties with the English language. (I tried Spanish but only managed to learn one word: “cerveza.” I picked the one word that has served me well.)

I’ve really enjoyed e-barfing in public. It’s almost as fun as farting in church. On that note, I’d like to thank long-time readers of Drinkin’ & Drive-in and some awesomely funny comments you’ve left me. (“May the devil guide my poop…” — that still cracks me up, Jon from NC.)

10 years is/was a good run. But now it’s time to say adiós amoebas. I’m off to pursue other life goals, like chasing parked cars, sponge diving in community swimming pools and collecting air. Future hobbies that will never generate any income includes putting out three e-books (already written), possibly another issue ManSplat magazine (been doing that longer than this blog, despite a 10 year absence), learning how to play the kazoo (man, those things are hard to tune), and generally doing loud stuff.

So now I leave you with a final post — feel free to finish this sentence…

“The past, the present, and the future walk into a bar…”

Going Ape Over Kong, Girls With Crabs, Tattooed Ghosts

Mezcotoyz.com is globally known for making incredibly cool action figures, using characters from Halloween, The Evil Dead and The Exorcist, to Friday The 13th, Dawn of the Dead, It and mucho more. Their latest masterpiece is an 18” tall Kong from Skull Island with, get this — THREE interchangeable heads. This covers a wide range of mood swings.

Pre-orderable now, the ridiculously neato Kong figure ships between November 2019 – January 2020. While the $250.00 asking price is a bit steep, think of how cool Kong would look standing atop a festive fruit arrangement on your dining room table.

Before I head out to buy a dining room table, here are a few now available/upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not be as visually pleasing as a festive fruit arrangement…

CRABGIRL (available now/Amazon Prime™)
“A young virgin guy does not manage to have sex with his beloved long-term girlfriend on his 23rd birthday. By putting an ultimatum on their relationship, he acknowledges the incredible truth beyond her rejection.”

Not really a movies (though it should be), this 19-minute film short came out in the Ukraine 2018. Unless the Internet is lying to me. You’d think this is a cautionary tale and a metaphor for STDs, but the crabgirl has an actual beach crab living in her love grotto. Apparently, since she was a kid. Her boyfriend thinks she’s just making excuses to not have sex with him. What follows next is amusingly predictable. But stick around for the twist ending. It will make you LOL.

JOHNNY GHOST (available now)
“Millicent, a professional musician and lecturer, decides to remove her tattoo, only to begin experiencing ghosts from her past.”

Pffft — I’ve removed lots of tattoos and have yet to see one ghost. I don’t care if they are rub-on tats; they still count.

FREAKS (August 23, 2019)
“A disturbed father locks his 7-year-old daughter in a house, warning her of grave dangers outside. But the mysterious Mr. Snowcone convinces the girl to escape and join him on a profound quest for family, freedom, and revenge.”

If some guy named Mr. Snowcone asked me to go come along, I would follow him to the ends of the Earth.

REBORN (2019)
“A stillborn baby girl is abducted by a morgue attendant and brought back to life by electrokinetic power. On her sixteenth birthday, she escapes captivity and sets out to find her birth mother, leaving a trail of destruction behind her.”

Um, would her name happen to be Carrie, by any chance?

Photographic Jaws, Mixtape Monsters, Gator Aid

No question the poster for Jaws (1975) is one of the most iconic pieces of movie art of all time. Illustrated by Roger Kastel, the art has been turned into everything from book covers and board games, to countless parodies and baby blankets. And thanks to British filmmaker/cage diver Euan Rannachan, we now get to see the Jaws poster come to life, featuring his uncanny photo of a real shark swimming Jaws-style towards some soon-to-be happy meal.

As first reported by the Daily Mail, Euan took the one-in-a-million pic off the coast of Mexico. Here’s what he had to say about that: “The shark in my image is a female and her name is Squirrel. We’d been with her for a while. We have these people on the boat called shark wranglers and they throw these two-foot chunks of tuna to get the shark close to the surface,” Rannachan told the site, explaining how he got the perfect photograph of the seventeen-foot shark. A guy named Crazy Luis stood up on the boat to bring the shark to us as we sat on the surface in the shark cage.”

Crazy Luis seems like someone you’d want to fiesta with. And while we spitball alternative names for a shark other than Squirrel (?!?), here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not be improved by adding two-foot chunks of tuna to ’em…

STARFISH (May 28, 2019)
When a mysterious signal from an unknown dimension summons the end of days, it appears as if only Aubrey is left on earth. Trapped in the apartment of her recently deceased best friend, the only clue she has is a single cassette left behind after her friend’s death, labeled: “THIS MIXTAPE WILL SAVE THE WORLD.” Thrust into a mystery orchestrated by her friend and stricken with grief, Aubrey begins to piece the clues together, uncovering a series of tapes all with pieces of the mystery signal. Along the way, progress is impeded when monstrous creatures begin to overrun the world and enclose in on her. Aubrey is forced to fight off the encroaching creatures and move beyond her own crippling grief in order to find the remaining tapes. But will completing The Signal save the world?”

Wonder if the mixtape has R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of The World” on it? That’d be pretty funny if it did. So Aubrey is the last gal standing, facing off against giant monsters. As apocalyptic scenarios go, that’s not too shabby, even if it does “borrow” from The Last Man On Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971) and I Am Legend (2007). Lesser so with The Last Woman on Earth (1960), which had two dudes fighting over her and all the shoe stores in the world open 24 hours a day.

HALLOWED GROUND (June 11, 2019)
“A married couple, trying to rebuild their relationship after an affair, travels to a secluded cabin and stumbles into a blood feud between the Native American owners of the property and the neighboring clan, who obsessively guard their land and punish those who trespass on it in terrifying ways.”

About time Native Americans gave the business end of the tomahawk to those Republicans. I bet one of the terrifying ways to punish them would be to put ‘em in a teepee to reflect on their shameful behavior. Probably wouldn’t be able to make sit in a corner because, hey, teepees are round, man. I totally looked it up.

CRAWL (July 12, 2019)
“When a massive hurricane hits her Florida hometown, Haley ignores evacuation orders to search for her missing father. Finding him gravely injured in the crawl space of their family home, the two become trapped by quickly encroaching floodwaters. As time runs out to escape the strengthening storm, Haley and her father discover that the rising water level is the least of their fears.”

Even though it takes the premise of Bait 3D (2012), it’s no spoiler that crocodiles and/or alligators end up in flooded houses and/or condos. The trailer for this one is insane cool, with many hungry reptiles showing up for this buffet, which has a lot of screaming deals. Heh.

DEATHCEMBER (2019)
“Coming soon, the holiday horror anthology Deathcember will open 24 doors to Hell for ‘the ultimate advent horror anthology movie.’ The anthology will feature 24 shorts by 24 directors from around the globe, each one taking a look at the dark side of the festive season. In “A Christmas Miracle,” a grieving mother who suffered a stillbirth is spending Christmas alone, when she is visited by an apparition that promises to bring her child back to life — but at what cost?”

Cool — hope they do a poster for all the segments; I need new wallpaper. Deathcember is even more cool than you think — the film crew was/is made up of almost entirely women. Women can be just as scary as men. Just ask any divorced dude.

Bloody Vampires, Bloody Puppets, Bloody Expensive Guitars

With Game of Thrones dominating the non-political headlines, the series final season has people tripping all over themselves to cash in before its relegated to binge-watching re-runs. [Disclaimer: I tried to get into GoT and only made it through the first five episodes. There were so many characters/story lines that clashed with my attention deficit disorder, I’d have needed an abacus to keep track.]

Fender Custom Shop™ is releasing three GoT themed guitars. Even if you don’t play the git-fiddle, these things would make you look awesome just carrying ‘em around, like to the store or while commuting to work on a flying dragon. Here’s the deets:

“As opulent as its namesake — the ambitious house with designs on the Iron Throne — the Sigil Collection Game of Thrones House Lannister Jaguar is an homage to that avaricious clan. This bespoke guitar was painstakingly crafted by Principal Master Builder, Ron Thorn, who called on his extensive experience with materials to work 24k gold leaf into the elegant, sweeping form of the Jaguar. Crafted to order, this guitar could only have come from Westeros — and the Dream Factory, the Fender Custom Shop.”

“Avaricious” is an interesting term to use in a press release. It means “having or showing an extreme greed for wealth or material gain.” Well, heck — it’s like they’re inside my head! Unfortunately, my lack of wealth will keep me from buying one of these guitars, which range in price from $25,000 to $35,000.

If you need something to watch after Game of Thrones concludes, here are a few upcoming horror movies that may or may not have been made for $25,000 to $35,000 smackos…

BLOOD FROM STONE (2019)
“A woman trying to escape the vampire’s grip, and struggles to cope with the vampire curse in a society where old ways refuse to die.”

Why fight it? I’d love to be a vampire. I kinda am already as I suck on long necks. Heh.

THE ROOM (2019)
“Kate and Matt are a young couple in their thirties in search of a more authentic and healthy life. They leave the city to move into an old house in the middle of nowhere. Soon they discover a secret hidden room that has the extraordinary power to materialize anything they wish for. Their new life becomes a true fairytale. They spend days and nights indulging their every desire of material possession, swimming in money and champagne. Yet beneath this apparent state of bliss, something darker lurks: some wishes can have dire consequences. That room could very well turn their dream into a nightmare when it gives them what they’ve been waiting forever and that nature was denying them.”

I liked it better when it was called The Monkey’s Paw.

BLOOD RISE: SUBSPECIES V (February 14, 2020)
Spanning 500 years in the life of the vampire Radu Vladislas, this long-anticipated prequel to the Subspecies series chronicles Radu’s descent from a noble warrior for the Church to a depraved creature of the night. Stolen by crusaders on the night of his birth, he has no knowledge of his bloodline: his mother a demon; father a vampire. Trained and exploited by a brotherhood of mystic monks to slay all enemies of the Church, fate brings him back one night to the castle of his father, armed with the monster-slaying Sword of Laertes, to destroy the vampire Vladislas and reclaim a holy relic: the Bloodstone. The events of that night turn Radu from a noble man into a vampire with no master, setting him on a centuries-long quest for sustenance, for companionship, for the treacherous one who stole him from the sun, and for the Bloodstone he hopes will bring him peace.

Even as uneven as the Subspecies movies (four flicks, 1991 — 1998) have been, it’s nice to see Radu back in action and licking the Bloodstone like it was a bleeding ice cream cone. After all these years, though, he’s looking a bit long in the tooth. Ahem.

BLADE: THE IRON CROSS (February 14, 2020)
“Charles Band’s Puppet Master series continues as an unspeakable evil from Blade’s past emerges in the form of a murderous Nazi scientist named Dr. Hauser. As Hauser’s heinous crimes are discovered, the psychic war journalist, Elisa Ivanov, awakens Blade, and together the bloody journey of revenge begins. It’s Herr Hauser’s reanimated undead army versus a possessed doll and a beautiful vengeance-seeking clairvoyant.”

This will be the 15th (!) installment in the Puppet Master film series, which began in 1989. That’s one helluva puppet show. For a really fun killer puppet movie, try Trilogy of Terror (1975), featuring the legendary (and toothy) Zuni fetish doll. That thing caused me to bespoil my trousers back in the day. The cleverly named sequel, Trilogy of Terror II, was released in 1996. I chose to not watch it as getting stains out of britches is not as easy as Oxi Clean™ Refreshing Lavender & Lily Liquid Laundry Detergent claims it is.

Horror Household, Elevator Sharks, Funny Zombies

The Addams Family started out as syndicated cartoon (1938), then a massively popular TV series (1964), an animated cartoon (1973), a TV film (1977), a second animated series (1992 — 1993), two big screen films (1991/1993), a touring theatre play (2017), a video game series, academic books, and soundtracks based around its Grammy-nominated theme song. Now the eccentrically macabre family gets yet another reboot as The Addams Family, a big-budget animated movie coming out October 18, 2019. To this date, my family has done none of the above.

Here’s the plot: “The family they faces off against a crafty reality TV host while also preparing for their extended family to arrive for a major celebration.”

Lots of celebrity vocal cords are lending their verbal skillz to this one: “Charlize Theron will voice Morticia Addams and Oscar Isaac is voicing Gomez Addams, with Chloë Grace Moretz as Wednesday Addams. The cast also includes Finn Wolfhard as Pugsley Addams, Nick Kroll as Uncle Fester, Bette Midler as Grandmama, Allison Janney as Margaux Needler, and Elsie Fisher as Parker Needler, the daughter of Margaux.

Chloë Grace Moretz, who voices Wednesday Addams, has in her vast acting resume, played a doomed kid in a haunted house (The Amityville Horror/2005), a vampire (Let Me In/2010), a werewolf (Dark Shadows/2012), a telekinetic prom queen (Carrie/2013), a mini superhero (Kick-Ass/2010, Kick-Ass 2/2013), and a freedom fighter defending Earth from aliens (The 5th Wave/2016). I hereby nominate her for an Academy Award for being awesome. 

Here’s a few upcoming horror movies that may or may not be as awesome as Chloë Grace Moretz…

THE SILENCE (April 10, 2019/Netflix™)
“When the world is under attack from terrifying creatures who hunt their human prey by sound, 16-year old Ally Andrews, who lost her hearing at 13, and her family seek refuge in a remote haven. But they discover a sinister cult who are eager to exploit Ally’s heightened senses.”

Wasn’t the idea of creatures hunting people animals by sound the premise of A Quiet Place (2018)? I can hear a lawsuit in the distance.  

THE DEAD DON’T DIE (June 14, 2019)
“The Dead Don’t Die is an upcoming American zombie horror comedy film, written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. It stars Adam Driver, Bill Murray, Selena Gomez, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Austin Butler, Tilda Swinton, Tom Waits, and Caleb Landry Jones.”

No plot just yet, but you could probably figure it out. It’s also being billed as “the greatest zombie cast ever disassembled.” That’s pretty dang funny.

47 METERS DOWN: UNCAGED (August 16, 2019)
“Four teens diving in a ruined underwater city quickly find themselves in a watery hell as their adventure turns to horror when they learn they are not alone in the submerged caves. As they swim deeper into the claustrophobic labyrinth of caves they enter the territory of the deadliest shark species in the ocean.”

The above art is actually a screen grab of an elevator in Vegas, which is a clever new way to advertise a movie. (There’s also a hilarious Child’s Play elevator as well.) I bet the elevator only goes down. 47 meters, is what I’m thinkin’.

ANNABELLE COMES HOME (June 28, 2019)
“Determined to keep Annabelle from wreaking more havoc, demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren bring the possessed doll to the locked artifacts room in their home, placing her ‘safely’ behind sacred glass and enlisting a priest’s holy blessing. But an unholy night of horror awaits as Annabelle awakens the evil spirits in the room, who all set their sights on a new target — the Warrens’ ten-year-old daughter, Judy, and her friends.”

Think we just found Chucky a new girlfriend.

Killer Homework

In the teen rubber-stamped horror knock-off Tamara (2005), wallflower teen chick is picked on by her socially attractive schoolmates and in a prank gone wrong, end up killing her. They dispose of the body and swear secrecy.

The dead girl shows up to school the next day looking like a porno supermodel and dishes out after-school revenge on those responsible for scorning and killing her and copying her homework.

I know I’ve seen this “back from the grave for revenge purposes” plot before but where? Oh, I know — EVERYWHERE. 

Swapping DNA In The Shower

In Species IV: The Awakening (2007), Miranda is a supermodel quality college teacher whose alien DNA is getting restless. This means the human part of her will die and the pointy-haired alien part will come out and transform her into an H.R. Giger painting.

Her “uncle,” a scientist, is to blame. Miranda was a lab EZ-Bake Oven™ that he used to marinade her human goo with a concoction of extraterrestrial DNA strands. It worked. But she doesn’t know it yet.

A trip to the hospital to find out why she’s been blacking out results in the death of the entire staff via a long, stabby tongue that shoots out of her mouth. Time for that trip to Mexico, for three reasons. One, to escape the law. Two, to meet up with his old science partner to see if he can help stop the transformation. And three, good exchange rate on the dollar.

Forbes McGuire, no longer a practicing U.S. lab guy, has been plying his new trade: clones of dead pets and relatives. He mixes just enough alien DNA with the DNA of whatever he wants to clone, and bingo, insta-copies! He even made himself an overnight slumber party pal with Azura, a mega-hot alien gal.

Miranda, though, is dying and while a DNA stem cell swap with a Mexican hooker appeared promising, it only made matters complicado.

Miranda, driven to date, mate and annihilate, occasionally drops top and sticks her tongue in potential date’s ears. Problem is, it comes out the other ear.

All this happy stuff leads to a showdown between both alien chicks. This is done in the dark, which is incredibly annoying. Build to the big scene and then turn off the lights. Smooth move, Ex-Lax™. Uncle F*ck Up has to make things right and blows the place to confetti. He should’ve done that at the beginning of the flick, because the sex is G-rated, the boobs not nearly plentiful enough (although Miranda is a perfect 10 on any planet), and the premise about as believable as my last lie detector test.

Scary Clothes, Murderous Hotels, Grassy Horror

Awesome new swag from CavityColors.com, featuring nine shirts/tank tops/baseball shirts based on the Hall of Fame horror movie, Carrie (1976). Prices range from $27.00 to $37.00, so there’s no excuse to not raid your retirement fund.

What? You say you haven’t seen Carrie or read the Stephen King book on which it was adapted? First, may shame fall upon thee. Secondly, here’s the plot AGAIN: “Withdrawn and sensitive teen Carrie White faces taunting from classmates at school and abuse from her fanatically pious mother at home. When strange occurrences start happening around Carrie, she begins to suspect that she has supernatural powers. Invited to the prom by the empathetic Tommy Ross, Carrie tries to let her guard down, but things eventually take a dark and violent turn.”

A vast understatement. The prom scene is one of the most iconic in horror film history, using split screen and split spleen technology. And it also has one of the coolest “fill your pants” endings you’ll ever fill your pants to.

Before you go to your own prom, here are a few now available/upcoming horror movies that may or may not be worth changing your pants over…

NIGHT SHIFT (available now)
“Amy is a young woman hired to work the night shift at a hotel made notorious by a gruesome legend — that 10 years ago, the hotel was the site of a brutal mass murder. As her shift goes into the late hours of the evening, Amy realizes that not only is the story true, but that the killer remains on the grounds, and still has a taste for blood. Trapped in the hotel, with a vicious murderer on her trail, Amy must find a way to escape and save the hotel’s guests in this terrifying thriller.”

If you’re looking for other mediocre hotel horror movies, try 2013’s India-made Horror Story, based on Stephen King’s 1408 (2008). Or you could just re-watch The Shining (1980), the mother of all haunted hotel horror movies and pee your pants AGAIN.

YOU MIGHT BE THE KILLER (available now)
“As Sam flees from a masked killer at camp, it slowly dawns on him that HE might be the killer. With the help of his film buff friend Chuck, Sam navigates through horror movie tropes to try and make it out of this plot alive.”

This one came out in September of 2018, but someone blinked and it went uncared about. It’s a horror comedy, but for a better take on this theme, shell out a few fun coupons for the far superior The Final Girls (2015). Here’s its plot: “Max, recently orphaned, goes to see a screening of a B-horror movie that her mother made 20 years earlier. When Max and her friends find themselves in the world of the film itself, they must apply their knowledge of horror tropes to survive.”

IN THE TALL GRASS (2019)
“A sister and brother who pull off to the side of the road after hearing a young boy crying for help from beyond the tall grass. Within minutes they are disoriented, in deeper than seems possible, and they’ve lost one another. The boy’s cries are more and more desperate. What follows is a terrifying…”

Sounds like a job for…The Lawnmower Man (1992). Heh.

Vampire Licker

In the extremely low-budget Vampire Junction (2001), a hand-held camera “horror” movie about female vampires, the plastic fangs are the only thing that cost any money because it certainly wasn’t spent on plot, lighting or dialogue.

Two lesbian vampires shave and lick each other. The camera zooms in on their not-so private parts and leaves it there and assumes that’s supposed to be an integral part of the story. OK, it kinda is, but that’s just because female not-so private parts are somehow…mesmerizing.

Lina Romay shows up as an overweight old lady with a Marine-regulation haircut who takes her clothes off. (There’s the “horror” part.) No pun intended, but Lina’s getting long in the plastic tooth. What happened to the superbod she displayed in all its untrimmed glory in Lust For Frankenstein (1998)? Maybe Krispy Kreme™ just opened down the street from her house.

One chick vampire has pimples on her butt. Her partner wears goofy make-up that looks like it was applied with a paintball gun. They both look like Winger groupies. And all of this was shot in a hotel room. Yeah, that creates real vampire atmosphere.

There’s some sort of plot, but most of it revolves around the two vampire lesbos getting it on with Lina. I never thought I’d say this, but watching the utterly pointless Vampire Junction has really turned me off to naked girl-on-girl vampire horror. This week, anyway.

Home Alone Horror

Them is a 2006 French movie, or “film” about a young couple being terrorized by hoodie’d figures while in their sprawling, multi-level country home. That the chick is a school teacher and her boyfriend who appears to make his living just by being handsome, seems highly improbable that these two could afford a one bedroom apartment let alone a veritable mansion surrounded by upscale foliage.

First there are the prank calls. Then goofy noises. Then their power goes out. Then you have 60 minutes of them being chased from room to room by a group of 15 year-old boys.

The boyfriend gets his butt stabbed, which admittedly looked painful. But all this movie is about, is the couple trying to get away from the young boys who murdered a mom and daughter in a stalled vehicle the night before. At least I think they were murdered. You never actually see any murderousness being done. Same with the pursued couple.

Them was trumpeted as “gripping, suspense-filled terror.” It is not. What you will grip, though, is the DVD remote’s fast-forward button. Them’s arguable redeeming quality is that this kind of home invasion horror reignited the genre and gave us a string or “pile” of ‘em, the better ones being The Strangers (2008), The Collector (2009) and You’re Next (2011). The best one? Try When A Stranger Calls, made back in 1979. I think my mom was in that one.