Interesting story

I like this story. I am pretty sure it was based on the Winston Niles Rumfoord character, in the Kurt Vonnegut book "The Sirens of Titan." That would make this story sort of a cousin or sibling of Watchmen, because the Dr. Manhattan character was also based on Winston Niles Rumfoord.

Anyway, this is an interesting story, but it has sort of a complicated style. I think it's worth spending time figuring it out. The basic idea is the a guy who had trained as an astronaut is hired for a time travel experiment, and he does travel in time, but on his way back to his home time something goes very wrong, which ends up resulting in a pretty large nuclear war. Any nuclear war would be "pretty large," of course, but my point is that this war did a hell of a lot of damage, but ultimately did not extinguish humanity altogether. In the story, you get glimpses of people gradually rebuilding, over many centuries, sort of like in A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Anyway, I could say more about it, but here, just read it, and if anybody wants to talk about it, I'm game.
https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781625791542/9781625791542___2.htm

Literary Challenge Results!

Hey guys, I hope you had a wonderful May. This challenge is fun, and I will definitely bring it back next year! The slasher cahllenge is now underway, if you haven't joined, then come on! What are you waiting for. Slashers are awesome, and their are tons out there. But before we get well into the month, here is the results for the liteary challenge.


Snowy_Owl:103
Bambithedeer: 93
Box_a_Hair: 51
Der_Table: 51

Ballz: 36
Tromafreak: 4
ZombieCPA: 3
Markus-san: 1
OnyxHades: 0

I hope everyone had fun.

Coscarelli's Beastmaster

In the days of my dvd obsession, I was always open to blind-buying the Anchor Bay disc of this movie because I enjoyed Don Coscarelli's work after watching Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep, but this title always evaded me. It fell out-of-print, so I was screwed.

Thanks to Amazon Prime, I was able to catch this movie over dozen years after my initial interest, and I figured it would probably underwhelm me at this point in my life. I'm happy to say I was wrong. This movie was a lot of fun.

Back in 1982, Conan the Barbarian was taking all the glory for the swords and sorcery scene. Arnold was buff as fuck, he had his floozies, and he cut people apart with a sword. What more could you ask for? A few months later, Beastmaster came out, and maybe it was overlooked because it wasn't the first. It has a lot of parallels in regards to story and visuals, but it also has one thing that Conan didn't have: a PG rating.

PG, huh? Keep in mind that this was before PG-13 existed, but even so, this movie would be a hard PG-13 by today's standards, likely jumping straight to an R because of at least three sets of titties. Tanya Roberts plays the protagonist's love interest, and the first time we see her, she's bathing topless in a lake where our hero plots to have his animals steal her clothes so she can run around trying to find them, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start with the plot first...


Rip Torn is our antagonist in a role not unlike that of James Earl Jones from Conan, plotting to kill the king's unborn son so the prophecy that this kid will destroy him doesn't come true. The son is magically transferred into a cow so it can be led elsewhere, gutted, and an old hag can kill the kid. A traveler witnesses this and stops her, raising the boy as his own. This kid has an affinity with animals and is able to communicate with them, thus being called the beastmaster. Years later, Rip Torn leads an attack on the now grown beastmaster's village, leaving them all for dead. That's when the beastmaster embarks on a journey to get his revenge.

Along the way, he gathers a party of animals and humans, fights a few monsters along the way, and infiltrates the lair of his nemesis to duke it out with him in what plays out in a fantasy epic nature that's plenty entertaining.


This was quite an ambitious project for Coscarelli after his low budget moody atmosphere piece Phantasm. There's a lot of animal coordination going on, heavy set design, makeup, costumes, stunts, and visual effects. He wanted to make a fantasy epic and he did it. It's got a lot of genre tropes and it works. It also has some good horror vibes too, even at a PG rating.

When it comes to pushing boundaries, this movie gets away with a lot for its rating. It has blood and violence, dead bodies impaled on spikes, boobs, child sacrifices, and even incest. Good job, Coscarelli!

#Review

Literary Challenge 2020

Starts May 1st at midnight and ends June 1st at midnight!

Hey guys, this month the challenge will be a literary challenge. This means that any movie based on a novel, novella, poems and short story will count. Graphic Novels and Comic books will count this year.

The book must be the basis of the movie, and not the other way around. Books spawning from movies, like Star Wars, will not count.

There will be several ways you can earn points
**1 point if the movie is based on a book
1 point if it is a First Time Viewing
1 point if the Title of book is mentioned in the movie.
1 point if the author Cameos in the movie
1 point if the author is a screenwriter for the movie
1 point if the author directs the movie

A bonus point if the author Cameos, Screen writes, and directs the movie**


This challenge will also have trifecta points•:
**Three movies based on books by the same author
Three movies in the same series
Three movies of books you have read**

Movies can only be counted for one trifecta and must be watched three movies in a row.
Double and triple trifectas are in effect but can be completed at a later time. It does not have to be right after the first trifecta
**Single Trifecta: 3 points
Double Trifecta: 6 Points
Triple Trifecta: 9 points.

•Trifectas start over after earning the third one.**

At the end of the challenge:
1 point per movie if you have read the book.
A book may only be counted for one bonus point at the end of the challenge. For example, Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2 will only count as one point, since it is only one book.

Grab your spots guys! And have fun!


https://trashepics.com/post/176/11/

A Stephen King FTV Trifecta Review

Seeing as this guy has so much material, I still haven't seen all of his movies, so I sought out a few titles I haven't seen.


Hearts in Atlantis (2001) - This has quite a few Stephen King tropes in it, which is never a bad thing. It's a period piece primarily set in the late 60s and deals with a lot of childhood stuff in a Connecticut suburb. David Morse plays the modern day character reflecting on this youthful self played by a tiny Anton Yelchin living with his selfish somewhat of a bitch mother. They rent out a room in their house to a gentleman named Ted, played by the hypnotic Anthony Hopkins, who befriends the boy and has a second sight about a lot of things. He tries to keep his presence hidden from certain figures, and you can take a guess as to whether that works out for him.

You don't hear a lot about this movie, but it was pretty good. It's somewhat of an innocent summer children at play story about working for pennies, saving up for bicycles, falling in love, and dealing with bullies. It's not a horror story, which is why it may be overlooked by some, but it's rather good.

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Apt Pupil (1998) - Tragic angsty teen idol Brad Renfro is a high school student in 1984 with a fixation on Nazi history. When he spots an aging ex-Nazi played by Ian McKellen in his city, he finds out where he lives and gets right into blackmailing him for horror stories about his war crimes.

Ian doesn't want to dwell on these things he isn't proud of, but the kid keeps pushing and forcing his hand until the two are regularly hanging out. They both seem to hate each other, but they spend a lot of time together. Too much time, it seems. The kid's grades suffer, forcing him to focus on school instead of old war talk, but he wont have it. He keeps on pestering the old Nazi until shit gets dark, re-awakening his Nazi sentiments and turning the kid into a real asshole.

Yesterday was an ideal time to give this one a watch because it was Ian McKellen's 81st birthday. The movie was directed by Bryan Singer and featured Bruce Davison, which makes it an interesting buildup to all three of them collaborating on the first X-Men movie two years later.

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Dolores Claiborne (1995) - Kathy Bates is mostly known for her character of Annie Wilkes in Misery, but she also did a decent job in this story about an older woman accused of killing the sickly old woman she was taking care of. She isn't arrested for it, but a joyously smug detective keeps her on a short leash while he gathers evidence to convict her as she reflects on the incident, her job as a housemaid, her strained relationship with her daughter (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and her abusive drunken husband.

What I found interesting about this is some blatant parallels to his other story Gerald's Game. Both of these novels were written in 1992 and featured eclipses that coincided with child molestation plots.

Being set in Maine, she makes mention of sending someone to Shawshank, and those little bits are always fun to look out for. Back then, Castle Rock Entertainment was kind of a big deal, but I don't see as much out of them as I used to.


None of these are quite horror, but some of them have a few of the necessary vibes to them. I think my favorite of the bunch was Hearts in Atlantis, with the other two tied.

That BITCH!

This could potentiallybe a pretty funny thread, if it takes off... I watched Bachelor Party (1984) a few days ago, and there's a great little scene where one of Tom Hanks' friends (the basket case drug addict guy who drives them away in the bus at the end) is watching TV, and he sees someone on TV who reminds him of his wife. He says something like "She was so young when we met... that bitch." I always thought that was so unexpected, how he just says it out of nowhere. I bet no one seeing the movie for the first time has ever seen that coming.

So, I am inspired by that great moment in world cinema to ask anyone reading this to please contribute one gif, one Youtube video, or even just a description of a moment in your own life, in which someone gave a memorable utterance of the line "That bitch," or even better, "That BITCH!!!!!!"

Escape Plan 3?

I'm going through Amazon Prime's list and I figured, why not? There's a reason this and the previous film didn't get theatrical releases. They're not that good and they don't have Arnold, but they were probably easy to shit out.

Stallone has a bigger role in this than he did in the last one. For some reason, they decided to give some random dude the spotlight in part 2 and Stallone was reduced to a bit part. Not sure why they thought that was a good idea, but they probably just figured this whole mess would work better as a trilogy.

The story isn't special. Devon Sawa plays the villain, trying to get revenge for his father's disappearance/death from the second movie, and surprisingly, he does a decent job. He kidnaps Stallone's girlfriend and forces his hand into a rescue mission, and once that exposition is out of the way, the rest isn't too bad. The asian guy and Batista each have some good fight scenes, and once Stallone gets pissed off, he does what he does best and isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. He fucks that guy up!

Not much else to say about this one. It's okay at best. Better than the second one at least.

Leviathan = The Thing + The Abyss

That pretty much sums up this movie. Peter Weller leads a team of deep sea miners to collect metals and minerals and they discover a downed Russian ship. After excavating it, they bring aboard an infected bottle of vodka that kills and mutates the crew in a Stan Winston special effects bonanza.

Where it becomes The Thing is in how the infection merges people and transforms them into weird looking monsters, and it's also in an isolated setting where they must avoid infection.

It's funny to note the similarities between this and The Abyss. They both feature underwater teams, they both have good casts, they both feature plotlines where rescue is postponed because of a storm, and they both came out in 1989. George P. Cosmatos directed this one, James Cameron directed The Abyss. James Cameron also wrote the screenplay for George's Rambo II, and they both used Stan Winston for their movies.

So if you like one, you'll probably like the other. The Abyss is ultimately better, but I can't hate on a movie with Peter Weller as the main protagonist. Plus, the women in this one were HOT.

Apparition (2019)

Watching it right now. It's free, on On Demand. Mostly a waste of time, except for some cute girls, and the fact that supposedly they filmed it in an old building that was some kind of reform school where Rory Calhoun was sent sometime back in the late 1930s or early 40s. It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's fritters!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6032704/trivia

Seven Dwarfs! 

Out of all the seven dwarfs who do you think you would be. I would have to say I would be dopey cause I have a lot of blonde moments, and seen out of it a lot! But close second would be happy. Can I be a new dwarf, Happily Dopey!


And bonus points if you can name all the seven dwarfs without looking it up. I sat here for a bit trying to name them. I got six and was at a blank. But I finally figured it out!