Glazed Gorilla, Bearly Evil, Ghost Criminals

In King Kong vs. Godzilla, the 1962 kaiju classic dust up, there was the hilariously memorable and infamous scene where Kong gets drunk as a mecha-skunk and passes out, his bar tab covered by jungle natives. This is so he can be taken passively to Japan for promotional purposes and ends up in a smackdown with Godzilla, who is a total teetotaler. (The outcome depended on whether you live in the US or Japan.) Now you can get a Drunk Kong action (or would that be non-action) figure and get your jungle boogie on.

From TemptingToysandCollectibles.com website: “Rotokaiju drunk King Kong 1962 30cm Vinyl figure fully built and painted (made in 2020). This limited version was completely built and painted by the manufacturer and has the ‘drunk’ Kong face and three Suma Juice jars.” Drunk Kong stands 12” inches tall — or 12” long when he’s laying in the gutter, stinking of Suma Juice highballs. That’s the fun news. The opposite of that is Drunk Kong costs $1,999.00. (Conversely, a six-pack of Suma Juice is only $1.00._ Spend your money here.

The way they transport Drunk Kong off Faro Island was genius, strapping him to hot air balloons and gently escorting the drunky monkey off the premises. FYI: If you plan on chugging down a few jars of Suma Juice (called Soma Juice on the box and Farolacton Juice on Kong’s island), be sure and have a designated balloon handler to get you home — don’t drink and float.

So while we head to the Faro Island’s corner liquor store to stock up on Farolacton Juice and become a party animal, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not make your head swell up like a balloon…

ADALYNN / March 28, 2023 (VOD)

“A mother is fighting postpartum depression and slipping over the edge. It becomes hard to distinguish where depression ends and her nightmares turn real as she and her newborn are haunted by a stalker unlike any other.”

Probably a demonic nanny/babysitter. I had one. She let me get away with murder.

NIGHT OF THE KILLER BEARS / April 18, 2023 (VOD)

“After not seeing each other for a long time, five teenage friends living in Bangkok go on a vacation together, staying at a quiet resort isolated from the city. Things take a dark turn when it’s revealed each of them have hidden secrets, and unbeknown to the group, there is someone observing them. When one of them ends up brutally murdered, paranoia and distrust surrounds the group, motivating each remaining member to accuse each other of being the murderer or considering the possibility that the real murderer is the unseen presence observing them, and that they all are in danger.”

Bears are the new sharks in horror movies recently, what with the moderate successes of Cocaine Bear (2023), Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023). But for really scare bears, that chemical pollution-mutated one in The Prophecy (1979) and the alien-mutated one in Annihilation (2018) are both pretty…grizzly.

LEGEND OF THE WHITE DRAGON / Release pending 2023 (VOD)

“Erik Reed, The White Dragon, has returned home to Virtuo City three years later after being defeated in a colossal battle against the ancient overlord, Ashtagor. The crystal he used to become the White Dragon was broken in two as a result of the epic battle, both pieces were subsequently lost. Being blamed for the destruction and collateral lives lost, his identity was outed after the battle thus making him a fugitive from the law. We now follow Erik on his journey as he teams up with treasure hunters from the past who help him reclaim his power as the White Dragon. Once reunited with his powers, he and his team are now ready to battle a new threat, Dragon Prime, who seeks revenge against the White Dragon and try and defeat Dragon Prime in order to get one step closer to clearing his name and being able to protect his family from an ancient evil that still lurks in the darkness — Ashtagor.”

A lot going on here. Then again, the trailer explodes with spaceships, punching violence, future bikinis, ancient overlords with dumb names, revenge glares and costumes that look more at home in a 1980s video game. So yeah, I’ll watch the movie.

DEADLAND / Release pending 2023 (VOD)

“A U.S. Border Patrol Agent tries to apprehend the ghost of his father, a grave decision that will haunt him forever.”

Related or not, ghost criminals are the worst because it’s near to impossible to keep ’em in jail, what with being able to walk through walls ’n stuff.

UFOs Exposed, Town of Ghosts, Artistic Wolf Man

A recent headline on the LiveScience.com website: “Flying Saucers to Mind Control: 24 Declassified Military & CIA Secrets.” Talk about click bait — I haven’t been that hooked since I came across “Supermodels of the Serengeti Want To Meet You.” (Warning: they require a credit card number. Internet love doesn’t come cheap.)

Included in the dossier-busting article by Elizabeth Peterson and Denise Chow are previously-guarded government secrets, including Project 1794 (initiated in the 1950s, a team of engineers were tasked with building a flying saucer-type aircraft capable of traveling at supersonic speeds at high altitudes), Project MK-Ultra (a secret and illegal human research program examining the effects of hypnosis, biological agents and drugs, such as LSD and barbiturates, on human subjects), Project Grudge (a short-lived program launched in 1949 to study unidentified flying objects), and Acoustic Kitty (in 1967 the CIA spent millions of dollars in an attempt to train domesticated cats to spy on the Soviet Union.) Your tax dollars hard at work.

While there’s even more UFO and espionage stuff, my fav is The Kidnapping of the Lunik, where in the 1960s, there was CIA-led mission to “borrow” a Soviet lunar satellite for just one night. One evening, undercover CIA agents convinced the truck driver, who transported the satellite from city to city, to get some rest at a nearby hotel and leave the satellite in their care, the documents revealed. They then “borrowed” the Soviet orbiter — taking it apart and photographing its components — before putting it back on the truck. Gotta give the CIA serious props — that sounded like an epic beer-fueled college frat prank. 

So while you click on over to LiveScience.com to read about more UFOs and undercover house pets, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies/TV series that may or may not be as cool as the CIA basketball squad stealing the Soviet’s team mascot… 

THE MANDALORIAN SEASON 3 / March 1, 2023 (Disney+™)

“The journeys of the Mandalorian through the Star Wars galaxy continue. Once a lone bounty hunter, Din Djarin has reunited with Grogu. Meanwhile, the New Republic struggles to lead the galaxy away from its dark history. The Mandalorian will cross paths with old allies and make new enemies as he and Grogu continue their journey together.”

I’ve watched all the Star Wars series spin-offs and The Mandalorian is arguably the best, thanks to the jaw-dropping cinematic monster creatures (Mud Horn), awesome spaceships (Gozanti-class Assault Carrier) and glowing flashlights (sold under the brand name of “Light Sabers” at Kalevala Home Depot™). For my Imperial credits, Andor and The Book of Boba-Fett are also right up there in Star Wars’ exotic Universe, of which I would like to live or vacation every Mandalore’s full moon of Concordia. (No sunblock needed, but you will need Tookas repellent.)

GHOST TOWN / March 7, 2023 (VOD)

“The story is set in 1877 Arizona, where a drifter takes a job as a barman. After a series of bizarre and horrifying deaths, he finds himself the target of suspicion. Desperate to escape the noose, he is soon at the center of a supernatural mystery that plagues this town.”

No noose is good noose — heh. FYI: I applied for that job as a drifter/barman. My resume must gotten lost in the pony express as I never heard back. Too bad — I have vast experience being both.

STALKER / March 24, 2023 (VOD)

“Rose Hepburn, a young horror actress, returns to her empty hotel. Forced to use the old freight elevator, it jolts to a halt on the 12th floor, leaving her trapped with an unusual stranger. Left with no phone signal as a storm approaches, tensions escalate and suspicions rise when Rose discovers the identity of the mysterious man is Daniel Reed, a camera operator who is seemingly obsessed with her.”

This one stars professional wrestling icon, Bret “The Hitman” Hart. This automatically puts Stalker in the running for an Academy Award™.

BLACKOUT / Release pending 2023 (VOD)

“A fine arts painter is convinced he’s a werewolf wreaking havoc on a small American town every full moon.”

Well, heck — when else is he gonna do it?

Urban UFOs, Brain Quakes, Serial Killing Seafood

Recently read an interesting article by columnist Cheryl Costa on the Syracuse New Times website listing the Top 25 cities for UFO sightings across the U.S., from 2001— 2015. Phoenix, AZ tops the carts with 929 sightings and Kansas City comes in last at an embarrassing (to the Chamber of Commerce, anyway) 294 reported glimpses of unidentified flying objects. The irony here is that Syracuse doesn’t even make the list. That’s just shameful.

On a happier note, Seattle, home of ME, sits smugly on the list at #3, with 616 sightings. It would’ve been around 700, but the UFO hotline got tired of me calling in every blinking light in the sky. So what if I live by two airports (Boeing Field/Sea-Tac Airport)? Maybe they were planes…or maybe they were extraterrestrial spaceships looking to goof with my brain pan. Still a valid call on my part.

Other UFO hotspot cities include Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles and Manhattan. So if you live in one of those places, keep watching the skies. If you don’t, then don’t. Not up for craning your neck skyward for hours on end? Lower your head to TV level and watch for these upcoming horror/sci-fi movies, which, for the most part, are identifiable…

MINDBLOWN (available now/VOD)
“A team of telekinetics — code-named Project Mindblown — has been secretly assembled in a high-tech facility. Their minds have the power to shake the Earth — or bring rain to drought-starved areas. They’ve been told their abilities will be used to do good for humanity. But when evidence suggests that the group has been tricked into causing destruction in U.S. cities, one team member goes rogue, racing against time to uncover a deadly conspiracy.”

Man, it’d be so cool to have the power to make things shake and quake. For instance, you could walk into a glass and ceramics novelty gift shop, fart really loud, and then make the whole room shake an off-balanced washer and/or dryer. Then say something like, “Wow, I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that fourth burrito…” Hilarity, I tell you.

TOTEM (October 31, 2017/VOD)
“A teen must resort to extreme measures to protect her family from a supernatural entity.”

Kind of an oxymoron — aren’t teens already supernatural entities? So what extreme measures is this teen gonna resort to? Making body-shaming taunts and posting embarrassing photos of the entity on social media? Or maybe she’ll trick it into smearing itself with glitter lipstick so it’ll look totally uncool at the school dance.

THE ENVELOPE (November 30, 2017/Russia)
“A strange envelope is delivered to an architect bureau by mistake. Igor, a driver, gets the task to bring it to the right address. From that moment his life becomes a string of paranormal events. The cursed letter invades Igor’s life and leads him to a mysterious addressee.”

They’re still naming horror movie characters “Igor”? That’s like giving Tom Cruise the name “Jack” in all his movies. As for the strange envelope, it’s probably a rent increase notice. (Last one I got was covered in frowny-face stickers.)

THE CRESCENT (2017/2018)
“A mother and her toddler son struggle to find spiritual healing after an unexpected death in the family. All the while, a mysterious force from the sea threatens to tear their souls apart.”

I bet you anything the mysterious force from the sea is a clam. Those things are loaded with terror. When you crack one open, it either looks like an alien face-hugger or a freshly blown nose. Or both.

Real Bigfeet, Ghost Relatives, Homeless Aliens

Finally — inarguable photographic proof of Bigfoot’s existence. This recent, highly convincing picture of Bigfoot relieving himself next to a pond should silence all those blow-hard debunkers. What else do you need — a urine sample?

This astonishing pic, credited to David Raygoza, was taken at Avocado Lake in Northern California, where Bigfoot is factually known to hang out. This story was reported to Fox 26 by Jeffrey Gonzalez, a self-described paranormal expert, who said he heard about the sighting from a local farmer who also claimed he saw the cool cryptid and five others running on his ranch near said lake.

“One of them, which was extremely tall, had a pig over its shoulder,” Gonzalez said. “And the five scattered and the one with the pig was running so fast it didn’t see an irrigation pipe and it tripped, with the pig flying over.”

Aha — there you go! Most people said they wouldn’t believe in Bigfoot until pigs fly. I rest my case.

While we pack up and head for Avocado Lake to share some farm fresh bacon with Bigfoot, here are a few just released/upcoming horror and sci-fi films passed down through unverified second-hand sources…

ANTIHUMAN (available now/VOD)
“A young woman returns to the secluded, abandoned psychological research facility where her deceased mother once worked. Accompanied by three friends, she discovers that the ghosts of the past have found their way to the present when the hospital’s legacy of experimentation and madness tears away all known bounds of time, memory and space.”

I don’t have any ghosts from my past. A few werewolves, a science mistake or two, but no ghosts. Which is weird because I have a history of experimentation and madness. It’s practically my corporate slogan.

AFTER THE LETHARGY (2017/Stiges Film Festival)
“Reporter Sara travels to the hot spot where one of the most extraordinary contacts with extraterrestrials in history supposedly took place. A forest ranger and a sinister villager, accompany the girl, helping her to overcome the dangers that nature entails. Despite good intentions, they will soon be attacked by a creature that lives in the depths of the forest, being forced to take refuge in an old abandoned military barracks.”

There’s so many of those pesky extraterrestrials on Earth now, they’re living in our abandoned military barracks and under our bridges by the freeway in tents that look like Gore-Tex™ spaceships.

HAUNTED (November 24, 2017/Norway)
“When Catherine’s father passes away, she has to travel to the abandoned family estate to facilitate the sale. Catherine wants to get it done quickly to avoid digging too deep in her family’s mysterious past. However, the house makes a strong impression on Catherine, but why does she remember so little? The locals tell stories of mysterious disappearances and possible murders. Confronted with the past, old wounds are torn up and Catherine becomes immersed in what she has been protected from, but may also have chosen to forget?”

Unless you had killer heavy metal vomit parties there all the time in the past, of course you’d want to forget. Then again, you probably wouldn’t be able to remember anything if those parties were any good.

THE MIDNIGHT MAN (2017/2018)
“Alex and her two friends commence a game summoning the fearsome Midnight Man. Using their worst fears against them, and not above a bit of manipulation when it’s called for, The Midnight Man plays to win in a game that Alex — and others before her — definitely started at their own risk.”

There are so many movies (and books) called Midnight Man, I actually went out at midnight expecting to see the streets teeming with MMs bumping into each other. Instead, I just saw drunks coming out of bars. So I guess that kinda counts. So THIS Midnight Man seems to recall so many horror movie plots, the streets are teeming with them. And those plots were written by writers who were clearly drunk.

Earth Must be Stopped

Remember The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951/2008)? Well, this time it stopped altogether. No loitering for this planet, just a complete and utter dead halt.

I could end my overview of The Day The Earth Stopped (2008) right here, but there may be one or two of you who never listen when I tell them movies that are quick knock-offs of other — and better — flicks, suck the big [insert your choice of disparaging proper noun here].

A battalion of spaceships pull up to Earth and park their giant destructo robots in areas all over the world. Six hundred and sixty-six of ’em to be exact, though you only get to see one.

Two aliens — a naked young man with zits on his face, and a nude 30-something woman with heavy eye shadow and thick lip gloss (from the “Hot Uranus Nights” weekend collection) — are captured by the Army and interrogated.

Turns out Earth has been pissing off all the other planets, and it’s time to kiss our arrogant fannies goodbye. That is, unless we can show them a reason for sparing our lives…by sundown. Unfortunately, the giant robots start blasting, wrecking an innocent Ferris wheel and shooting the top off the Eiffel Tower. France probably deserved it.

The lesson learned? Don’t watch cheap knock-off “sci-fi” movies like this anymore. But like touching a hot stove burner, I’ll probably do it again.

Vampires, Lobsters and Dinosaurs

The Italian made Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970) might possibly be the all time WTF horror/sci-fi movies ever made. You can start with its numerous re-titlings, from 7 per L’Infinito Contro I Missili Spaziali (translation: 7 For The Infinite Space Against Missiles), to Space Mission to the Lost Planet, Vampire Men of the Lost Planet and The Flesh Creatures. I honestly can’t decide which one I like best.

Then there are the movie’s “everything but the kitchen sink” elements: vampires, cavemen, dinosaurs, UFOs, space rockets, lobster people, flying bat people, snake men, missiles, spears, lasers, bow and arrows, hatchets, supermodel cave girls and the highly-convincing (ahem) Spectrum radiation that keeps turning the “atmosphere” from orange to green. Yep, you guessed it – Horror of the Blood Monsters is actually a Grateful Dead hippie drug party.

The movie begins with gangs of vampires attacking citizens at night, sucking their blood or “sangue” from throats as if artificially-flavored cherry milkshakes. Then the movie abruptly shifts to outer space and a mission to a distant galaxy to discover the source of the vampire plague being a pain in the neck to us Earthers.

A shiny spinning UFO mothership dispatches a smaller less shiny UFO landing party to the mysterious planet below. And it’s here they find an ongoing war between vampire cavemen with candy cigarette sized/shaped fangs violently beating and stabbing a non-vampire tribe.

Everyone wears animal skins for performance boxer briefs (or “britches”) except for a super hot cave chick sporting an off-the-rack open shoulder ensemble with matching panties or “smoothing hi-cut briefs.” Meanwhile, up in space, rocket ships and the UFOs are shooting armed missiles at each other. I don’t know why.

Watched this one without sub-titles (free on YouTube™) and was unable to learn the entire Italian language during its 80 minute running time. Figured it couldn’t be that hard. But as supremely dumb as this movie is (the cavemen fight scenes were spliced in, taken from the 1965 Filipino movie, Tagani and other monster stock footage was also wedged in there), you can’t help but entertained by the lobster people with pain-inflicting pinchers and the mini bat people that live in caves and fly right at your face when you spelunk their caves.

Repeating scenes of the spaceships exploding and then reversing the footage to re-use again and again kinda wears you out. So does waiting for the hot cave chick to remove her top because it’s so hot on that irradiated planet. And was the mission to find out the source of the blood plague (brought to Earth by the Tubaton, vampire men from a distant galaxy) a success? For our sake I’d like to think yes. But man, I just don’t know.

Glam Space Robots

The Italian-made War of the Robots (aka, La Guerra del Robots/1978) looks like a junior high school production of Battlestar Galactica and employs some of the worst sub-budget special effects this side of the singing toilet paper holder in my bathroom that plays “Wipeout” every time I need a PMT (“Personal Moment Tissue.”)

Hum-bots (looks like humans, made of robot) on the dying planet of Atheron are causing headaches for everyone, especially after they kidnap a space commander’s girlfriend and a genetic scientist. (The Hum-Bots, it should be noted, all have Prince Valiant hair styles and wear shiny silver suits licensed from ABBA. Not sure why robots need hair – it’d rust when you shampoo it.)

The chase leads the space troopers to Atheron and a battle with ray guns ensues. The rescuers, however,  find the girlfriend and professor have been named the planet’s Emperor and Empress and are now doing evil stuff. (That didn’t take long for them to renounce their goody-goody Earth ways.)

But wait – a sweet long con is being played. The girlfriend fakes being evil (or is she faking being good?) and they all take off in plastic spaceships. An army of UFOs goes after or “pursues” them. Thanks the stars somebody had a copy machine – one spaceship turns into 43 at the push of a button. And when spaceships are blasted, they explode silently in a burst of light, leaving no debris. The future is so clean.

War of the Robots is a painful sci-fi experience. There were only seven blonde robots, but since they all look identical they were re-used throughout the movie. (I watched the same guy get killed 17 times.) The UFOs look like they were modeled after Space Invaders ™. The space helmets look like old radio tube transistors. And those glittery clothes – Liberace must be rolling around Uranus.