Monstrous Munitions, Bloody Bingo, Casino Carnage

Small Nuclear Warhead Decor. Four words that shouldn’t go together, and yet do. Makes more sense when you see what small Nuclear Warhead decor actually is. Leave it up to Itvalore.com, a direct-to-consumer online retailer, to come up with something to finally take down those obnoxious/ubiquitous garden gnomes, who took down those tacky pink flamingo yard decorations. What goes around, comes around, b*tches!.

Itvalore.com sales-pitches ’em thusly: “This will be the best horror style addition. Make the hair stand on end for anyone who dares to step into this territory. Multiple colors and styles to choose from, it’s a perfect gift for your friends who loves skull and weaponry. Every item in our shop is handmade, hand-painted and unique.”

The resin Skull Bombs (four different styles) measure 7.8” x 2.75” x 2.75”, roughly the same size of the personal comfort device on your girlfriend’s night stand. Or would that be…one night stand? For you, maybe. Heh. They cost $23.15 each, marked down from $78.68. Talk about an explosive deal! Get ‘em here.

So while we pull up those annoying Lady’s Slipper Orchids and Middlemist Reds to make room for these trespasser-scaring shells (rig ‘em to make detonating grenade sounds when anybody steps on your lawn), here are a few out-now/upcoming horror movies that may or may not require you to get bombed after watching ’em…

CARNIFEX / Out now (Tubi™)

“An aspiring documentarian and two conservationists who venture into the Outback to record the animals displaced by bush fires where they discover a terrifying new species — and quickly become the ones being tracked.”

Carnifex is also the name of  a cool deathcore band from San Diego County, CA. They should be doing the soundtrack.

DEATH’S ROULETTE / May 5, 2023 (Paramount+™)

“Seven strangers wake up in a mansion in the middle of nowhere discover they are part of a twisted game. They will have 60 minutes to choose one person to die; otherwise, all of them will be murdered. As the clock ticks down, the most lurid secrets will come to light, and they’ll discover they are all connected by a dark past. As each character begins to justify their life over everybody else’s to save themselves, we sink deeper into a world of intrigue and mistrust and get to know them in an intimate and vulnerable way.”

I liked this better when it was called Nine Dead (2009).

JOHNNY & CLYDE / May 5, 2023 (VOD)

“Johnny and Clyde are two serial killers who are madly in love and on an endless crime spree. Alana is the confident and cunning owner of a prosperous casino that generates tens of millions of dollars each year. Johnny and Clyde decide to assemble a ragtag group of criminals and misfits to steal from Alana’s casino and pull off the heist of the century. Unfortunately for Johnny and Clyde’s crew, Alana has a deadly weapon at her disposal — the hellish slasher spirit known as Bakwas.”

Bakwas — sounds too much like “backwash” to be that frightening. However, backwash — when it comes to sharing a refreshing 16 oz. can of, say, Budweiser™, is horrifying. You’d still drink it because hey, it’s a waste to waste wasted beer.

TELL ME A CREEPY STORY / May 9, 2023 (VOD)

“A beekeeper killing his wife and burying her in the garden. A young boy trying to satisfy his increasingly inhumane appetite. A serial killer couple and a woman terrified she’s being stalked, all make this a truly terrifying horror anthology.”

Beekeeper killing his wife. Too bad; she used to be his…honey.

Galloping Ghosts, Another Apocalypse, Leggy Mermaids

Wanna play rare and classic horror/sci-fi-themed pinball? Then you’re gonna have to gallop to the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, IL. Depending where you live if not in Brookfield, the cost of getting there will be a LOT of quarters.

The famed arcade now has said super rare pinball machines, ready to suck up your pocket change like a hobo Roomba™: Twilight Zone, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Addams Family, Godzilla (the sucky 1998 monster, not the non-sucky 1954 version), Tales From The Crypt, Creature From The Black Lagoon, Aliens, and the super-rare one-of-a-kind prototype of Predator, with red skulls on elongated skeletal spines mounted on each side of the machine. If you lose, your skull plus spine gets ripped out and hung on the trophy wall. (It’d be cool if that were true.)

$15 — $20 gets you unlimited play on all the machines all day. I would’ve paid at least $20.01. So while you inner weep with anguish that you’re not within tilting distance of the Galloping Ghost Arcade, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi TV series and movies that may or may not give you unlimited viewing for $20, give or take a few quarters…

THE PASSAGE (January 14, 2019/Fox™)
“Based on author Justin Cronin’s trilogy of the same name, The Passage is a character-driven action drama that focuses on Project Noah, a secret medical facility where scientists experiment with a dangerous virus that could lead to the cure for all disease — but it also could potentially wipe out the human race. When a young girl is chosen to be a test subject, a federal agent is tasked with bringing her in, but he becomes her surrogate father, determined to protect her at any cost — even as Project Noah’s work threatens to unleash an unimaginable apocalypse.”

This one’s a TV series and sounds apocalyptical-y edgier than we’re used to getting from the Fox Network. The irony here being that most of Fox’s programming qualifies as apocalyptical-y craptacular, Gotham, The Exorcist and Lucifer notwithstanding. (Hell’s Kitchen? Is that stupid thing still on the air?)

10 (January 18, 2019/Netflix)
“Sam, a teenage girl, is one of the last people on a post-cataclysmic Earth. With the final shuttle scheduled to leave the planet, she must decide whether to journey to the launch point and join the rest of humanity, or remain on Earth, a castaway in the only home she has ever known.”

This looks to be based on an episode of Futurama (“A Farewell To Arms”/2012). Don’t screw with a guy who knows his cartoons.

THE GOLEM (February 5, 2019)
“During an outbreak of a deadly plague, a young woman, Hanna, must save her tight-knit Jewish community from invaders. Turning to Jewish mysticism, she conjures a dangerous entity to protect her and her people. However, the powerful creature she summons may be far more evil than anything she could have ever imagined.”

Wrote about the original Golem before — several times. It was done in 1915 and was a German silent film, blah, blah, blah. And yes, there have been remakes with the EXACT SAME PLOT.

THE ISLE (February, 2019/Limited theater release)
“Set in 1846 on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland, where three survivors from a mysterious sinking of their merchant ship find themselves stranded on a small misty isle. The isle’s four sole secretive residents, an old harbor man, a farmer, his niece and a young mad woman, are anything but welcoming and reluctant to aid the sailors back to the mainland. The promise of a boat never materializes leading one of the sailors to question why people had abandoned the island. Through his investigation he discovers that every year around the same date a tragedy at sea would occur and young men from the island would perish. When his two shipmates meet with fatal accidents, the myth of a ghostly siren haunting the island leads him to try and uncover the truth.”

Sounds like mermaids with legs. (Come to think of it, nice visual.) This also seems to echo the plot of the new movie, The Vanishing (2019). I haven’t seen that one yet, but I don’t think it has mermaids with legs. Too bad; I might’ve watched it twice by now. 

No Zip Code For This Ghost Town

A gang of cowboy (and cow lady) thugs shoot up an old west town, killing everyone, even though a local priest is brought in to save them. This would be acceptable behavior for outlaws in the 1800s, except these particular ruffians made a deal with the Devil for immortality. Why, I have no idea.

Jump ahead to yesterday where a college school bus trip accidentally ends up in that same town where the souls of the ghosts are zooming around. Yes, zooming. Armed with a never ending supply of ghost bullets, the cowspooks kill off each teacher and student as if roll-calling attendance.

One kid who has a thing for numbers, determines that there are seven Ankhs (which look like upside-down hangman nooses) strategically anchored around the town, forming a pentagram. (You’d only need four to form a telegram. Heh.) One of the Ankhs was removed, which gives the ghosts the keys to the city.

There’s a Texas burial (put in the ground alive) and a beheading (the new go-to dismemberment), and two horny students impaled to the barn door (a bucket of cold water would’ve had almost the same effect).

But the only thing worse than the characters is the dialogue, premise, dialogue, special effects, dialogue, corny digital blood, and dialogue. When the ghosts appear and disappear, their faces morph into skulls for one second. It won’t take you that long to make Ghost Town (2009) disappear from your TV screen.