Living With The Dead, Wolf Stripper, Door-to-Door Bigfoot

The Walking Dead, the smash hit rom-com TV series about a worldwide zombie apocalypse, premiered on Halloween night in 2010 with six episodes. Eleven seasons later, the ratings juggernaut series concluded November 20, 2022 with a comprehensive 24 installments. All told, 177 episodes that turned flesh-eating into a national pastime.

Since that time The Walking Dead Universe spun off into the character-dense but solid Fear of the Walking Dead, which managed to keep us chewing from 2015 to 2023 with 113 episodes. In the uneaten leftovers of FTWD came the ill-conceived/ill-fated The Walking Dead: World Beyond, 2020 to 2021 and 20 episodes, none of which were memorable OR watchable. Then there was Tales of the Walking Dead, the six-episode related-in-zombie-only anthology series, which concluded with a quiet thud September of 2022.

For fans of The Walking Dead, which includes me and whoever’s pants I’m wearing, it’s a good time to live as The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live series, reunite the once thought-dead Rick Grimes and Michonne (“a weapon with a weapon”), returning for an unlikely but compelling relationship arc for the end of the world. And this happens on February 25, 2024 when AMC™/AMC+™ with the title being a quote from Rick Grimes’ daughter Judith, who utters her father’s famous last line at the end of TWD’s run, “We get to start over. We’re the ones who live.” Personally, I would’ve mentioned at the top of my apocalyptic lungs, “Let’s get naked and paaaarty!”

Other Walking Dead spin-offs included Daryl Dixon, featuring the unkillable Daryl, whose last name I believe is Dixon. He ends up in France, where the zombies wear no pants. And there’s The Walking Dead: Dead City, which teams up Maggie and Negan (a LOT of brutally violent emotional baggage between them) to search for her kidnapped son in the stink remains of New York City. Then there’s the upcoming Book of Carol, featuring Carol (aka, Queen of the Apocalypse) that’s within Daryl Dixon’s second season.

So while we reload our snack-depleted cupboards post Superbowl and fill ‘em with meat snacks to rip apart with our mouths of all things while watching The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not be memorable OR watchable… 

PREY FOR THE BRIDE / February 16, 2024 (Tubi™)

“A group of bridesmaids travel to Napa for a bachelorette party and find themselves in great danger as a man wearing a wolf mask seeks revenge for the death of his friend.”

As this is a bachelorette party, I think the guy wearing the wolf mask is probably a hired male stripper. Hope he waxed his bikini zone.

WHEN A STRANGER KNOCKS (Release pending February 2024 (VOD)

“Fulfilling their father’s final wish, Sky, her husband, and brother return to their remote childhood cabin. Reminiscing their past and navigating through intense memories they soon find out that there is something menacing lurking in the dark.”

Couldn’t be Bigfoot as Bigfoot doesn’t usually knock. But I’ll give this to him — he always wipes his feet before smashing down remote childhood cabin doors.

THE WOODS ARE REAL / March 12, 2024 (VOD)

“Joba and Quincy are a privileged, fiercely progressive Brooklyn couple – they buy the right things, donate to the proper foundations, and march for every just cause. But when their friend, Caleb, returns from a country pilgrimage challenging their bleeding liberal hearts, Quincy is initially skeptical. But when Joba insists they take up an invitation to the same off-grid spot, they are met by a kitschy cabin in the woods peppered with analog devices of a simpler age: a rotary phone, religious iconography, an Edison machine. And when a curiously labeled record plays a menacing message, Joba and Quincy rapidly learn that their bank accounts have been drained, their digital records erased, and their family businesses are collapsing. They try to flee, only to grow more enveloped by the woods.”

They found a record that plays menacing music? So THAT’S where I left it. And the record? Motörhead’s No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith. Duh.

THE BEAST / April 5, 2024 (Select Theaters)

“The year is 2044: artificial intelligence controls all facets of a stoic society as humans routinely ‘erase’ their feelings. Hoping to eliminate pain caused by their past-life romances, Gabrielle continually falls in love with different incarnations of Louis. Set first in Belle Époque-era Paris, Louis is a British man who woos her away from a cold husband, then in early 21st Century Los Angeles, he is a disturbed American bent on delivering violent ‘retribution.’ Will the process allow Gabrielle to fully connect with Louis in the present, or are the two doomed to repeat their previous fates?”

Humans regularly ‘erase’ their feelings during Happy Hour. Also before and after Happy Hour, or as I like to call it, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

Summer Sharks, Shape-Shifters, Soul-Suckers

A few more key art pieces for the upcoming (August 10, 2018) gigantic shark movie, The Meg. I guess all my hopes and dreams of being depicted alongside (but not inside) the Megalodon as frameable art have been swallowed up whole.

Only other thing new I’ve been able to find out about this pee-shivering-with-excitement film is that the Meg is 75-feet long. By comparison, a school bus full of tweens is only 45-feet long. Guess which one can stay underwater longer?

While I continue to countdown the days for The Meg to chew up the big screen with big screams, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not be as horrifying as riding in a bus full of tweens…

LIFECHANGER (2018)
“A murderous shape-shifter is on a blood-soaked mission to make things right with the woman he loves.”

You’d think being a shape-shifter would open up endless opportunities for “love”, so I guess this guy is a romantic wuss under all that murderousness.

HERETIKS (2018/2019)
“In the early 17th Century, innocent young Persephone is falsely accused and put on trial for her life. Her fate seems sealed except for the timely intervention of the mysterious Reverend Mother offering her not just sanctuary, but hope. For the Reverend Mother is the self-appointed leader of a small religious retreat, a secluded Priory, where her fellow Sisters devote their lives to the Lord and seek atonement for their pasts. But upon arrival, Persephone is plagued with terrifying visions and soon realizes that it’s not salvation that awaits but a battle for her very soul itself.”

Heretiks aren’t the only things that float like a log. (You got the double reference, yes?)

TERRIFIED (aka, Aterradoes/2018/2019)
“When strange events occur in a neighborhood in Buenos Aires, a doctor specializing in the paranormal, her colleague, and an ex-police officer decide to investigate further.”

Buenos Aires liberally translates as “fair winds” or “good airs”. That means the occurring “strange events” must be the opposite of that. Logically, it assumes somebody’s passing some sort of evil wind/air. Definitely they should investigate — can’t have this kind of behavior stinkin’ up the capital of Argentina.

GLASS (January 19, 2019)
Following the conclusion of Split, Glass finds Dunn pursuing Crumb’s superhuman figure of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters, while the shadowy presence of Price emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men.”

Didn’t see Split, so I have no idea what they’re talking about. I’m the same with politics, religion and romantic comedies.

Sharks Can Be So Cruel

Just because you have the proper noun Jaws in your movie title doesn’t make it part of the Jaws (1975) family. Nor does reusing dialogue, plot and swiping footage from the Jaws series (as well as Great White/1981 and Deep Blood/1989) qualify as an actual movie. More like cut ‘n paste plagiarism. The only thing cool about Cruel Jaws (1995/aka, Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws and The Beast), which is guilty by a jury of its peers of the above crimes against humanity, is its title. Everything else is just regurgitated bait.

A territorial 35-foot great white shark, thought to be the by-product of military fussing, is attacking and eating the flavorful folks in Hampton Bay, an affordable (at the time) small Florida coastal town. There’s an upcoming Regatta (a sporting event consisting of a series of boat or yacht races) party, and the marauding shark could chomp into their profits. The local sheriff and a teen shark expert (“Sharks swim, eat and make baby sharks…”, a line directly lifted from Jaws) go on the hunt for the “readily available on a moment’s notice” monster. The plan is to kill it. There’s the cruel part.

To bring an emotional element into the mix, they feature a little girl in a wheel chair. “Daddy — give that shark a punch in the nose for me…” That is SO cute. Then there’s a rich kid on a yacht with his friends, armed with guns and gasoline. May the yacht rest in peace. Elsewhere, one of the main characters looks exactly like pro wrestling legend Hulk Hogan, so a fair guess would be he’d use a folding metal chair to take down the mouthy monster in a no-holds barred shark cage match. You could have a zebra fish as the referee. Heh.

All that and the best scene comes when the shark, taking the bait (raw rump roast) dangling from a helicopter, ends up eating the civil aircraft and its occupants — as dessert. Sharks need roughage in their diet.

Cruel J seems to mark his territory around a sunken military ship, presumably where he was born and set free upon the boat’s demise. So this is where the squeaky clean teens and Hulk Hogan go to plant dynamite. (Sure hope the ref isn’t watching.) The ship, though, is loaded with valuables that local criminals try to retrieve. CJ cares not for thieves.

As painfully bad as Cruel Jaws is, you should probably watch it (on YouTube™ for free) and turn it into a drinking game. Do a shot every time you see a stolen scene/dialogue from Jaws; You’ll be passed out cold long before the part where a barking seal interrupts a crooked local amusement park owner’s hot-air balloon speech and knocks him into the dolphin tank. (They don’t show it, but the dolphins likely tore the guy in half and feasted on his land guts. I’m pretty sure of it.)

Closet Ghosts

A California suburb isn’t usually the best place to situate a ghost story, but it works crazy effectively in Poltergeist (1982).

A middle class family with bratty kids live in a sprawling community. Out of all the houses practically overlapping each other, theirs is the only one built on top of a relocated graveyard that substitutes as a portal to Hell. Cool – no commuting!

Kick ass ghostly events (i.w., the steak/face thing), culminating in their five year-old daughter being sucked into the ghost dimension, goes on for a while before Steve and Diane Freeling (mom and dad) call in parapsychologists to help them find her. They can communicate with little Carol Anne through the TV, which is kinda like a smart phone for your eyes.

The dead, led by an entity determined to be The Beast, don’t wanna give up Carol Anne as she soothes their pain or something. The Freelings, led by Tangina, a psychic medium, have to go into Hell (via a closet – trust me, it works) and get their daughter back to make the little polter-scamp clean up her room.

Poltergiest is called one of the Top 20 scariest movies of all time. I would not debate that over cold refreshing alcoholic beverages as there are non-stop paranormal events pumping you up to the grand finale, which is so over the top as to be entertaining.

I wish my closet was a portal to Hell. As it is, just my front door is.