Anyone Watch Rick & Morty?

The newest episode was the shit. So many great scenes.

Rick and Morty's Alien Covenant trailer!



I fuckin' love this show.

The Last Supper

no, not the mid nineties black comedy with Cam Diaz n Ron Perlman, but the short prequel to Covenant directed by Ridley's son Luke Scott. Since the new Alien film opened here yesterday thought i may as well post it, even though anyone with any intrest in the franchise has probably already seen it. But for those who haven't, can Danny Mac go 5mins without a dick joke? let's find out...

"Bitches leave" actress, from Robocop (1987)

Check this out, one of the "bitches" from that scene has been responding to comments, on a clip of that scene on YouTube. Look at the responses to the comments, down below the video. Her name is Diane Robin. Her most recent response that I can find is from just two months ago, so, maybe she would still respond, if one of us posted something.

Never Say Die: The History Of Buio Omega



There are quite a lot of names synonymous with old school Italian Horror and Exploitation. Fulci, Bava, Deodato, to name a few. Depending on your taste, and how ghoulish you might be, you probably favor one over all others. I appreciate many movies from all who contributed to this era. But I've got to admit, I've always been on the D'Amato bandwagon. One of his films in particular made an impression on me at an early age. At around 13 I rented a movie most know as Beyond The Darkness. However, the Blockbuster copy was titled Buried Alive. A version of the film which I've always heard was R-rated, having certain things cut out. Not so. just a different tile, as it would turn out. Originally titled Buio Omega. Regardless of your taste in Italian cinema, and regardless of what title you saw this film under, I like to think we're all in agreement that this is one sick movie. And to this day, the only movie to make me queasy.

Like many of these twisted (and sometimes ridiculous) epics, Beyond The Darkness also relies on the success of American films for inspiration. Nothing wrong with that, really. I've never heard anyone say they didn't like one of these because it was too similar to some other movie they liked. This one, however, is an obvious one. Not too terribly similar to Psycho, but pretty similar. There's no hiding from it. Nobody dresses up like mother. Nobody in this movie is THAt insane. Just insane enough to do some really bad things to some random people for no reason other than to deal with the grief from the loss a loved one, and the stress of having their corpse around 24/7. I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.

We don't know Frank very well. Nor do we ever get to. Frank is a rich guy who inherited his estate from his parents, years ago. Seemingly, a happy, healthy young man with plenty of happiness and stability in his future. Or at least he should be. His fiancée, Anna, is deathly ill, and near the end. We get the idea this is due to Voodoo brought on by the maid, who we later learn is in love with Frank, and with the idea of being mistress of the house. In what was a rather sad moment, Anna passes right as Frank is about to stick it to her one last time. Not to imply that trying it again is completely out of the question just because she's dead.

Seemingly only grief-stricken, we later get the idea Frank's sanity has shattered along with this heart. Late one night, after Anna is buried, Frank takes his van down to the graveyard, and digs up the love of his life, and takes her back home where she belongs. But not without complications. On the way, Frank gets a flat tire, only to have a portly, potheaded hitchhiker forced upon him. Frank puts almost no effort into kicking her out of the van, which makes little sense, considering what he has in the back. Pothead chick passes out in the van, and I guess Frank didn't want to disturb her, because he just literally went about his business once he got home, and simply left her in there to sleep it off. And by "business", I mean taking Anna's corpse into his taxidermy room and ripping out all of her innards and stuffing her. Plucking out her eyes and replacing them with glass ones. The whole nine yards. Overwhelmed by it all, Frank gets a little carried away and takes a big bite out of her heart. By far the most disturbing scene in the movie. Frank has lost it, and figures that if he can't have the life with Anna that he wanted, he can at least preserve her shell, and just gaze at it, and obsess over what could have been for the rest of his life. But what about the pothead chick?

Pothead chick wakes up from her pot-coma and wanders on in there as this whole thing is wrapping up, and gets killed for it, of course. But not before getting her fingernails randomly ripped out. Ok. So, things just got a little more complicated. This is where the maid comes in handy. Iris is more than willing to help out her Frank, and quickly chops up pothead chick's surprisingly not so bad looking naked corpse and throws it, piece by piece, into a bathtub of acid. Problem solved. And just to show Frank what a good sport she is, she doesn't give him a hard time over the corpse. Although, she's probably smart enough to not try his patience at this point. At least anything concerning Anna. However, there's this one scene. Strangely, the scene that made me the most queasy during my original viewing. I'm still not sure what this crazy bitch was shoveling in her mouth, but it was beyond nasty. Frank vomits, and Iris seems amused as she asks if the heat is getting to him. I don't think it was until that very minute.

Besides what was already mentioned, there was really one other scene involving extreme gore and cruelty. This one, being almost equally effective. Frank meets a young woman while jogging, who just happened to sprain her ankle. Frank takes her back to his pad, seemingly with the intention of getting some ass, but Frank intends on living dangerously, today, as he tries sticking it to the young woman in the bed, right beside his girlfriend's corpse. Even going so far as to lift up the sheet, so he can get a peek at her, which I'm assuming was meant to get him in the mood. Of course, Frank is caught, and the freaked out chick gets a chunk of her throat bitten out before she can make too big of a ruckus. As usual, Iris is ready and willing to help out, quickly shoving the body in the incinerator. A body that they then notice isn't even dead yet. Watching it burn with indifference, falling further into insanity. Not so much Iris. I think her deal is that she's just a horrible person. She convinces Frank to marry her in exchange for staying off his case about Anna's corpse. This agreement, however, doesn't last, which is when things get nasty, and where it all inevitably falls apart.

So, yeah. Not exactly a Psycho ripoff, but it's there. Frank doesn't have Norman's heart or his ability to make us sympathize, much like the story in this movie doesn't have a fraction of Psycho's depth. The only thing, in my opinion, stopping Beyond The Darkness from being the masterpiece it could have ended up being. But quality be damned. This one is all about the shock value. But it was more than the disturbing gore and Iris' lack of table manners that bothered the 13 year old me. It was the whole tone of the movie. The complete and utter darkness of the story, and the hopelessness of it all, tied together nicely by a menacing/haunting score by the now legendary Goblin.

A really bleak one, here. It just made me plain uncomfortable at the time. There's not a lot to the story, and the disturbing content is few and far between, but Beyond The Darkness, if nothing else, is genuinely effective. I just wish I had seen more equally effective Horrors in my more vulnerable years. But as I continue my thankless quest to be shocked by the horror genre, all the August Undergrounds and Slaughtered Vomit Dolls in the world can't compete with my warm and fuzzy memories of this sleazy Italian shocker. 7/10



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Review: I Zombie: The Chronicles of Pain (1998)


It seems that zombie movies are dime a dozen and offer little in the way of originality and imagination so it is always refreshing to see a zombie flick that attempts to bring new ideas into the exhausted sub-genre. Today, I am going to talk about a film that I seen three years ago and still haunts me to this day. I was bored and weary and I decided to watch, what I thought was your typical low-budget flawed zombie flick - how wrong I was. It is anything but your typical zombie flick - it is atypical.

The narrative is about this young PHD student Mark, who seemed to have everything going for him: a wonderful girlfriend, friends and a promising career. That all comes to a tragic end when one day, Mark, is out on a field trip in the wilderness when he finds a sickly young woman who appears to have some degenerative disease. He decides to help the young woman when she bites him - he runs off and collapses on the way home. He wakes to not understand what has happend to him. He suddenly has this uncontrollable urge to eat human flesh. He realizes that he is not the same so he rents an apartment and shuts himself away from the outside world including his girlfriend who he misses greatly. He begins to lose his biological functions and starts to decay. He comes to the conclusion that his hunger for human flesh won't stop, even tho he tries to fight the overwhelming urge, at first, he succumbs to it. It has taken over his life and makes it impossible to interact with people - he becomes withdrawn and lonely, while he recalls his old life that he so longs for.

It's a highly original take on the zombie genre, it focuses more on the world through the eyes of a zombie. It is likely the most realistic zombie movie you will ever see. Effectively, an existential horror that provides a thought-provoking and sad depiction into the mind of a man destined to a sad, lonely and horrific existence. At just 79 minutes, it seems to run for two hours, but it is never boring. I guess, after watching it you will feel depressed, but ultimately thankful for being healthy and alive. At just 630 votes - it is terribly unappreciated, that is a shame. My vote is 9

1978: Best year for horror films?

So 1978 is my answer every time someone asks what is the best single year in horror. I don't think it is even close really. Not only does it have 2 juggernauts one of which is my favorite horror film of all time it has several excellent to solid films as well.

Dawn of the Dead
Halloween
Grapes of Death
Martin
Long Weekend
Piranha
I Spit on Your Grave
Toolbox Murders
Alucarda
Magic
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Blue Sunshine
Patrick
The Fury
Mountain of the Cannibal God
Redeemer
Jaws 2
Damien: Omen II
Jennifer
Killer's Moon
Someone's Watching Me!
Eyes of Laura Mars

What is your favorite and if you could list the films from that year you like?

Movies with multiple names

This is usually a thing when between countries, be it for language reasons or just because they thought their title would sound cooler, I guess.


Dawn of the Dead is Zombi, because Zombi 2 needed to start somewhere, right?

Army of Darkness should have been called The Medieval Dead, but I do believe it's known as Captain Supermarket somewhere...

Blood Shack has The Chooper

Phantasm was known as The Never Dead somewhere?

Halloween III was The Last Halloween in the Phillipines?



What else can you think of?

Marty Palmer, from 976-EVIL

I was just thinking, one of the reasons that 976-EVIL doesn't quite work is that on some level, watching it, you sort of have to expect that Marty Palmer will turn out to be the main character. He's the investigator from Modern Miracles magazine, who shows up to investigate the rain of fish, but ends up investigating the evil Mark Dark and his company that runs 976-EVIL, along with some other scam 976 numbers.

On some level, watching the movie, I think it is easy to get a little torn and confused about whose story it is, Hoax's or Marty's, or even Spike's. Hoax is a very sympathetic character, and we find ourselves on his side sometimes... as he does really yucky things to the bullies at his school, for example. But, if you think about it, Marty Palmer easily could have been the main character. He's basically an occult investigator. If the movie had focused more on him, maybe it would have been more successful? Maybe not.. the main reason most people watch the movie at all is to see Stephen Geoffreys, so, that's a factor. But, if you think about it, the Marty Palmer character probably had the most potential out of anyone in this movie. They could have built a whole film series around his investigations... or at least a TV show.

Oh well. Shouldacouldawoulda.

Mama's Boy: The History Of Hitch Hike To Hell



Hitchhiking is just one of those things that was once common in America, but is now as dead as the Drive-In. It once seemed like a perfectly reasonable way of getting from point A to point B, but nowadays, hitchhiking is more something one might only attempt in the case of an emergency. An understandable change. It was only a matter of time, anyway. As the population grew, naturally, the number of killers and rapists would grow with it. Today, I'd like to talk about a movie that might make one reconsider hitching a ride from a stranger, even in an emergency situation. An underseen little gem from the 70's, resurrected on DVD some years ago by Something Weird Video. A rapey nerd who misses sis. A smothering mother who is oblivious to her son's damage. A cop played by THE Russell Johnson. This is Hitch Hike To Hell!

Howard has issues. He's a nice guy. He genuinely likes people, and loves his mother dearly, in a completely normal way. He works at a laundromat, he always goes right home to mama right afterwards, he does what he's told, and always stays out of trouble. At least in his mind, he does. I mean, technically, he does since he's never been caught, but sometimes, Howard kills people. Mostly females, and only teens who have the gall to try and run away from home, which breaks their mama's hearts. Howard has sort of subconsciously appointed himself defender of all heartbroken mamas.

Some years ago, Howard had a sister who got sick of mama. Sister moved away forever, mama resents her, therefore Howard resents her. I can imagine there's been many tears from mama over the years, witnessed by Howard, making him sad. A sadness which was repressed and drowned in Root Beer for far too long. A sadness which is turning into a rage which can only be dealt with by rape and murder. Yes. Howard has issues.

Howard genuniely thinks everything is cool. When he's not blacked out, he is quite pleasant and always minds his own business. He delivers washed clothes for a living, but has been getting a lot of heat from the boss as of late, because his work is slipping. He's taking longer to get to where he's going, he's even starting to get lost. Which is weird, becasue he's lived in this town his whole life. Howard is clearly distracted. He's taking more and more time to sit and wait for hitchhikers. In his oblivious mind, he probably thinks it's just to have someone to talk to, but once they get to talking, and their agenda is revealed, Howard blacks out, goes into a blind rage, whips his dick out and punishes for mama. Then, he whips out a wire coat hanger and strangles them to death. In his free time at home, we notice that he's starting to crack. Howard is becoming plagued by glimmers of guilt, sending him into even more blackouts and fits of hysteria. Meanwhile, the Professor and his partner put their heads together to figure out the identity of the rapey psycho and put an end to this runaway killing spree.

Howard may consider all these runaways to be ungrateful little cunts. And in some cases, he may be correct. But one has to wonder what a lousy ass town this must be to have so many young people wanting out so bad. Even when warned of what's been going on, nobody will budge. Even the thought of losing their lives isn't enough to keep them around. All I can say is that Howard's sister really should have stayed in touch.

A cozy little B-movie, with a deliciously dated 70's feel to it. A good example of a low-budget going a long way. Hitch Hike To Hell is up there as one of the best all around films in the Something Weird Video catalogue. It's no polished blockbuster, but if you like these types of films, it should be difficult to come up with a negative word for it. Robert Gribbin did a great job carrying this movie as the naive, friendless mama's boy, adding just enough comic relief. And Russell Johnson's presence added a certain legitamacy and class. No complaints, really. However, I do feel like we could have used a little more insight into the mother and son's past, showcasing exactly how bad mama could get, and how damaging her smothering ways may have been. Or maybe a scene showing an example of whatever shit she put the daughter through that drove her away. Maybe Howard's portrayal of a sympathetic character would have been more noticeable and effective. That's about it. Certainly nothing that makes it any less enjoyable. So, turn off your brain, have a Root Beer, work on your hobbie, and enjoy! 7/10



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