Don’t Drain The Swamp

Really digging the promo hype around the Swamp Thing TV series re-boot, premiering May 31, 2019 on the streaming DC Universe™. Hardcore fans will no doubt recall a Swamp Thing TV series that ran on the USA Channel™ from 1990 to 1993. It was mildly interesting, bordering on “meh.”

But the new version teasers are hinting at Swamp Thing being a lot more like his comic book counterpart, meaning way more aggro, revenge-y and…really icky. And speaking of the comic books (debuting in 1972), nice job of the new Swamp Thing key art paying homage to issue #28 from 1984.

In case you didn’t read my January, 2019 bloggedy blog about the new Swamp Thing, here’s a refresher: “Abby Arcane, an employee at Atlanta’s Center for Disease Control, investigates what seems to be a deadly swamp-born virus in a small town in Louisiana but soon discovers that the swamp holds mystical and terrifying secrets.”

Besides the swamp being a sewer-away-from-sewer for Swamp Thing, you can bet that’s where all the Louisiana toilet sweepings end up. And you wonder why Swamp Thing is so p*ssed off all the time.

A Mountain of Monsters

The first problem with Under The Mountain (2009), a dark fantasy horror flick based on a popular 1979 New Zealand book, and an eight-part TV mini-series, is its bland title. The “tween targeted” movie has tentacled shape-shifters known as Wilberforces, who masquerade as funeral home directors by day, and teenager/planet vanquishing creatures by night. It also has the Gargantua (giant underground bug), slime tunnels, a benevolent alien who can make stuff catch on fire, and volcanoes. So why not call it Theo & The Volcano Lickers or Worm Creatures From Uranus? You wanna sell this thing, yes? Geez.

Two Auckland teen twins, a brother and sister, share a telepathic link. I don’t know why, they just do. Rachel and Theo go to live with their uncle and aunt on the scenic and uncomfortably named Lake Pupuke after mom was wormed to death. There’s a decrepit old house on the lake shore inhabited with Wilberforce creatures, who look sorta human during work hours and slug entities resembling Swamp Thing dipped in 30-weight in the evenings.

The Wilberforces are aliens who want to destroy the world and have the means to do so with the Gargantua that lives under one of the town’s seven(!) volcanoes. He’s also the size of Godzilla’s waterbed. They can’t accomplish their “planets to destroy” things to do list until they get rid of the telepathic twits, uh, twins. For they hold within their red hair the power to stop the Wilberforces in their slug trails.

Enter Mr. Jones, an alien who looks like a human, but is not. He’s been following the Wilberforces around the universe, recruiting twins with the power of “twinness” (their word, not mine). This ability, enhanced by smooth rocks that they’re supposed to chuck into the mouth of the volcano, will cause everything to fire up, thereby frying the Wilberforces like steaks on the barbie. Mr. Jones, a fireraiser, tells them to think more like Frodo and less like dumbasses.

He can teleport them around town, but his flame is growing weaker and he’s dying. Am I the only one who thinks drinking charcoal starter fluid might help here? The Wilberforces can smell the twins and chase them all the way to the lake’s main island. I’d tell you the name of it, but it’s too hard to spell. (It’s like those people in New Zealand have a different word for everything.)

The showdown between the Wilberforces and the teens is as limp as a case of Brewer’s Droop. These monsters can make their arms and hands grow into wiggling slugs, so why not have some fun with it? And while we’re chatting, the Gargantua never gets out of its underground parking garage. Why even have one if you’re not gonna let it loose on humanity?

Kids might like this “horror adventure.” I didn’t, mostly because no one ate anyone’s face off, no buildings were crushed under flailing tentacles, and there wasn’t a single swear word to be heard. If the Wilberforces were after me, you can bet your arse I’d invoke every four-letter cuss in the dictionary, both as exclamations and taunts.

Sweet Tooth Sci-Fi, Early-Period Zombies, Marsh Monster

If you’re a fan of Stranger Things (and who on this planet isn’t?), Itsugar.com just made available a whole bowl of Stranger Things themed candy, from My Little Pollywog gummy to Barb Missing Milk Carton (full of chocolate malt balls) to the Upside Down Chocolate Bar — half premium milk chocolate and half gray-speckled white chocolate. Pack your bags — you’re about to go to Yum Town.

Before you go indulging your taste for all things stranger and sweet, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi streaming series, which may or may not give you cavities…

STRANGER THINGS 3 (July 4, 2019/Netflix™)
Titles for the new episodes include: “Suzie, Do You Copy?, “The Mall Rats,” “The Case of the Missing Lifeguard,” “The Sauna Test,” “The Source,” “The Birthday,” “The Bite” and “The Battle of Starcourt.”

That’s all they’re giving us for now. Fine by me — the Stranger Things series is so addictively bingeful, it should be classified as some sort of visual drug, like porno. Except instead of Jennifer Lawrence’s Photoshopped naked/nude body wrapped around mine, you get the Demogorgon, which may or may not know who Jennifer Lawrence is. Or me.

KINGDOM (January 26, 2019/Netflix™)
In a kingdom defeated by corruption and famine, a mysterious plague spreads to turn the infected into monsters. The crown prince, framed for treason and desperate to save his people, sets out on a journey to unveil what evil lurks in the dark.

Looking forward to this South Korean period piece zombie apocalypse chewfest. And hey, it’s gonna be a series, which means more couch time for this professional squatter.

THE PUNISHER (2019/Netflix™)
“After exacting revenge on those responsible for the death of his wife and children, Frank Castle uncovers a conspiracy that runs far deeper than New York’s criminal underworld. Now known throughout the city as The Punisher, he must discover the truth about injustices that affect more than his family alone.”

If you saw Season One of Netflix’s The Punisher, it certainly lived up to its name — each show contained some of the most face-pinchingly brutal fight scenes this side of Daredevil ever filmed for enjoyment purposes. And Jon Bernthal, who played the loose cannon Shane on The Walking Dead, is the perfect choice to deliver the business end of his pummel-happy fists. I am so happy right now.

SWAMP THING (2019/DC Universe)
“Abby Arcane, an employee at Atlanta’s Center for Disease Control, investigates what seems to be a deadly swamp-born virus in a small town in Louisiana but soon discovers that the swamp holds mystical and terrifying secrets.”

A new series set to stream on DC Universe. As much as Swamp Thing is cool, it remains to be seen if he’s $7.99 a month cool.

More Gore, The Merrier

The lurid Smash Cut (2009) is a clever — and at times — dead-on homage to splatter filmmaker Herschell Gordon Lewis, the guy behind such cultural treasures as Blood Feast (1963), Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964), and The Gore-Gore Girls (1972). In fact, Smash Cut applies the framework of The Gore-Gore Girls, working in a sexy female journalist who teams up with a prissy nancy boy detective who has never failed at solving a case. Even the eye-gouging scene is back, though it sure looks like they just spliced footage from The Gore-Gore Girls into this one.

Able Whitman is a 70 year-old horror movie auteur whose latest movie, Terror Toy, is mercilessly ripped to shreds by critics and fans alike. He seeks solace in the bikini of his stripper girlfriend (who looks like she could be his granddaughter), and later crashes his car, killing her in non-reversible death. He puts her body in his trunk and goes back to work, only to get an inspiration: use real blood and real body parts in his film!

So Gigi Spot (really?) has a role in the movie, and all she has to do is lay there and rot. She doesn’t have any lines, though. Maybe in the sequel. April Carson, a TV news reporter, is in search of her missing sister (Gigi, duh) and enlists the help of Isaac Beaumonde, the aforementioned narcissistic private detective. He looks for clues and suspects Whitman, but can’t prove it. Yet.

April auditions for a scream queen job with Whitman and, in a moment of pure eewww, has her doing a scene from Hamlet with her sister’s head. (It was pretty rotted and not at all recognizable.) She gets the job and Whitman proceeds to round up more body parts and blood for his greatest cinematic achievement. As April and Issac close in, bladders start to splatter, reaching its rewarding nail gun climax.

A grindhouse movie about a grindhouse movie, Smash Cut is often cornball, but entertaining in how they managed to emulate the look and feel of z-grade horror movies of the ’60s. Real-life adult film star Sasha Grey has all the emotional range of an inflatable love doll, but she does look good in a tight, blood-splattered nurse uniform.

David Hess (playing Whitman) is in top form, maniacally cutting off limbs and poking eyes out with an exacto knife. You may remember him from such films as The Last House on the Left (1972) and Swamp Thing (1982). No nudity, but there is buckets of gore and a cameo by Herschell Gordon Lewis himself. Even though it sounds like an oxymoron, stick around for the blooper reel.

Batman vs. Dracula vs. James Bond, Robo-Cities, Bigfoot Returns

Batman Fights Dracula. Been looking for this movie for a million years. Here’s all I’ve been able to turn up: “Batman Fights Dracula is a 1967 color Philippines film directed by Leody M. Diaz. The cast includes Jing Abalos in the duel roles of Batman and Bruce Wayne, and Dante Rivero as Dracula, the Dark Prince himself.”

If anyone knows where I can watch this for free (okay, I’ll pony up some fun coupons, but let’s not get crazy here), let me know so I can take this one off my leaking bucking list.

Also looking for James Batman, a 1966 Filipino Batman/James Bond spoof. Besides the teaming of Batman with James Bond (and Rubin, the Boy Wonder), the premise tells us this: “An evil organization called the CLAW has threatened nuclear annihilation on the rest of the world unless all countries submit to its rule within five days. Presenting a united front, an alliance of countries tap James Bond and Batman (and Rubin/Robin) to stop the threat. However, both Bond and Batman play brinkmanship with each other, and as the hour to doomsday winds down, are eventually forced to work together. Little do the protagonists know that the real enemy is closer than they think.”

While you go out and do the research for me, here’s a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies to help take my mind off the likelihood that neither Batman or James Bond will be of any help. Then again, maybe Rubin can…

BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE (October 5, 2018)
“Seven strangers, each with a secret to bury, meet at Lake Tahoe’s El Royale, a rundown hotel with a dark past. Over the course of one fateful night, everyone will have a last shot at redemption…before everything goes to hell.”

Sounds a lot like Identity (2003), wherein 10 people who don’t know each other are stuck at a desolate Nevada motel during a gnarly rain storm. Doesn’t take long before they realize they’re being mysteriously being killed off, one at a time. I didn’t know it rained in Nevada. Learning something new every day.

MORTAL ENGINES (December 14, 2018)
“Mortal Engines is set in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world where entire cities have been mounted on wheels and motorized, and prey on one another.”

Cities on wheels fighting other cities on wheels? In your face, Transformers! For people who know how to read without moving their lips (unfortunately, I’m not a one-percenter), Mortal Engines is based on the novel of the same name by Philip Reeve. Good for him. And good for us the trailer showcases stunning visuals that makes viewers re-shape their mouth lips into a “wow” shape.

BIG LEGEND (2018)
“An ex-soldier ventures into the Pacific Northwest to uncover the truth behind his fiancée’s disappearance and finds more than bargained for after teaming up with a local hunter. 

Word around the trailer park is that Big Legend stars Adrienne Barbeau (72), former girlfriend of Swamp Thing and Lance Henriksen (78), whose locked feet with Bigfoot several times before in Sasquatch (aka, The Untold/2002) and Devil on the Mountain (aka, Sasquatch Mountain/2006). Let’s get ready to rumble!

EXORCISM AT 60,000 FEET (2018)
“On the last flight of a transatlantic passenger airliner, a demon is discovered on board.”

This is supposed to be a horror comedy, which makes sense as exorcisms are both LOL and VOL. (Vomit out loud.)Which brings me to the question: How the heck do demons get airplane tickets? You have to show ID and since demons are sometimes made of a bunch of other demons (“Legion, for we are many…”), hellspawners no doubt use counterfeit identification. And that’s totally illegal, which is probably why they’re in Purgatory in the first place. (Man, when I go off the tracks, I seem to just hit the gas.)

Planet of the Plants

A biological organism, which feeds off light and energy (low carbs), gets loose and exponentially grows like jock itch run amok. Since the military doesn’t have enough Tinactin™ to stop it, they decide to nuke the entire town this thing is growing under, through and above.

At it’s worst the vine-like tentacles look like they were drawn by a right-handed person, but with that person’s left hand. At its best the organism burrows under your skin and grows up through your eyeballs and gives new meaning to the phrase, “die your roots.”

It’s revealed a guy named Frank had a dad who created the organism as a Cold War military weapon, and it got out of the fridge. Frank’s DNA is the only thing that can kill it, meaning he has to bleed all over the thing, which is now the size of 13 Costco™ outlets.

The plant looks a heckuva lot like something Swamp Thing might e-mail a wink to on Match.com™. The premise kinda works (clearly a nod to The Blob/1958), but the below-grade special effects bury Organizm (aka, Living Hell/2008) in the garden. That, and how practical is it to keep cutting yourself open to water the damn thing? Not thinking ahead here, people.