Happy fortieth anniversary to Wes Craven's A Nightmare On Elm Street.
Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label horror. Show all posts
Saturday, November 09, 2024
Monday, May 13, 2024
Ever wonder what BioShock's Big Daddy looks like without the helmet? Ehhhh...
I've been a massive fan of the BioShock games (admission: I've never played BioShock Infinite) almost since the beginning of the series. From the first moments of the original BioShock I was swallowed whole by this tale of sub-Atlantic horror. To me the story of the city of Rapture is a fable, a morality play. It is about what mankind is reduced to after consciously and willfully choosing against having a belief in God and the restraining morality He provides. Man without God is a terrible thing, is what I've found in the BioShock games. It's a theme I'm looking forward to seeing touched upon more in future games from the franchise.
But somehow none of the games have shown us what exactly is inside a Big Daddy. We haven't seen what it looks like underneath. All we know is that the poor sap to be converted into a Big Daddy is flayed, chemically treated and them grafted and steam-sealed into the suit. Yucko.
Well, Kate Harrold over at Gaming Bible has a story up in the past few days about what BioShock's Big Daddy looks like sans helmet. This is something that PC Gamer's Andy Kelly first found three years ago but it's brand new to me. The art is attributed to Irrational/Take-Two artist Robb Waters, so it should be considered canon.
Are you ready? There's no going back once you've scrolled down.
You really sure about this?
Last chance to back out.
All right, let it be on your own conscience.
And here it is: a Big Daddy without the helmet...
Just plain disquieting. Pretty nightmarish. I don't know why it has a yellow glow deep within its cranium. Some plasmid-altered remnant of a mind perhaps? Those eyes, that translucent skin... eep. I'll certainly never see those poor creatures the same way again. For all the potential for brutality that the Big Daddies symbolize, they are very pitiable and tragic monsters who were once human.
And now I've just ruined your day. Sorry about that. Maybe.
Saturday, October 31, 2020
Happy Halloween!
Hey gang, there's a new app for mobile devices called ReFace and it is amazing! You shoot a selfie of your face and from there it places your mug practically seamlessly into footage from television or movies or whatever. Thought for Halloween that I'd share this one of me channeling Jack Nicholson from The Shining. All work and no play makes Chris a dull boy, after all...
Sunday, February 16, 2020
Chris finally watches THE THING (2011)
There is a tradition I never fail to keep: whenever I get snowed in and can't go anywhere, I turn down the lights and crank up the sound and watch the 1982 movie The Thing. Maybe that says something about my baseline state of mind.
John Carpenter's now-classic film of horror and paranoia at an Antarctica research base might not be appropriate viewing for when one is tempting real-life cabin fever. But if Die Hard is a Christmas movie, then The Thing is the perfect wintertime follow-up. And it's a darn nearly perfect movie in every other possible way: the story. The casting. The pacing. The practical effects (which still hold their own against any CGI today). The cinematography. That score by Ennio Morricone. And that building-up of tension as the men of Outpost 31 grow increasingly mistrustful of each other...
So yeah, I'm a huge fan of The Thing. And I've read the original novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. As well as watched 1951's The Thing from Another World.
And then there is the 2002 video game The Thing, which followed the events of the John Carpenter film and received both commercial and critical acclaim. Partly because of the innovative "trust" element. I'm going to always have fond memories of playing that game, and unfortunately it seems the physical release is the only one out there. Maybe GOG.com will have it for sale sooner than later. Anyway...
I've seen and read and played just about everything Thing-ish. But one item had been out of my zone of interest: 2011's The Thing. Meant to be a prequel to the 1982 film, the 2011 entry was intended to reveal the story of the Norwegians who first discovered the alien vessel and its malevolent cargo.
Helmed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.and with a cast led by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, The Thing '11 was an idea that I just didn't care about once the initial details started coming out. And it wasn't just the notion of depicting the events of the Norwegian camp: something that was perhaps better left to the imagination (the "less is more" school of thought). When MacReady and Copper begin exploring the burning ruins of the base, and then they come upon the radio operator who had slit his wrists, well... it's just like Copper said: "My God, what the hell happened here??"
"What?", indeed. I first saw 1982's The Thing when I was ten years old, and every time I've watched it since my imagination gets sent reeling in wonder about how it went down among those poor scientists before they unleashed extraterrestrial death upon the most desolate wilderness on the planet. What led up to the final survivors shooting at that dog from a helicopter laden with kerosene and grenades?
Did I really want or need to see that portrayed?
And then there was the casting. It screamed "modern American film gore" with an emphasis on "American". Look, we've had a Thing movie from an American perspective: it was The Thing of 1982. A prequel about the Norwegian camp should have a cast of entirely Norwegians. Having it headlined by an American actress with fellow English speakers: it just didn't seem right.
Then there were the effects. Doubtless it was going to be largely accomplished by some CGI rendering engine pushing pixels. I didn't doubt that the transition from the brilliant work in the 1982 film would be a jarring one.
Maybe it's the weather lately. At this time of winter in this location, it should be at least one major snowstorm already this season. Here in mid-February that's looking less likely. So without a proper occasion upon which to watch 1982's The Thing, I thought that maybe... just maybe... I could give the 2011 film a fighting chance. So that's what I did last night.
What did I think?
The Thing (2011) is a gruesome waste of a premise that had strong potential. There is so much that went wrong with this film. In some ways it is admirably accurate to the 1982 film (the coda where we see the Norwegian helicopter flying off to track down the dog is especially good). But other details are unforgivably ignored (didn't the boffins from Norway already use their explosive charges to blast away the ice from the alien ship?). That's a bigger lingering plot problem than anything from The Rise of Skywalker... and that's sayin' something.
As I'd feared, The Thing 2011 edition tried too much to be a modern "American" horror. Maybe the boys in marketing thought that a pretty young American female among all those Scandinavians would increase the commercial appeal. Instead it distracts from the spirit of the 1982 "original". There would have been nothing wrong with a cast completely comprised of Norwegians, Swedes, and Danish. In fact, I would have preferred it that way. And have the dialogue composed entirely of Norwegian (maybe with English subtitles... or not). As it is the cast of Norwegian characters is woefully under-employed in this movie. A tragedy because they seemed to be taking this project especially to heart. One of the Norwegians is well played by Kristofer Hivju, who went on to portray Tormund Giantsbane in HBO's Game of Thrones. Had I been the one in charge of the project, that's the approach I would have taken.
And it must be said: no modern CGI can outdo Rob Bottin's practical effects work in scaring the hell out of the viewer. Even when the staff of Outpost 31 was looking at the remains of the creature, with it just laying there on the table, not moving at all: that static horror said it all. That kind of slow appreciation of the monstrous isn't there in The Thing 2011. There isn't a single creature in this movie that is as memorable as the Norris-thing. It's all moving too fast and furious. It all looks too shiny. And going back to "if it was me making this movie" I would have tried to replicate the lighting and film grain of the 1982 film. Yeah, film grain is important. It needs to be consistent across a series. It's one of my major complaints about the Star Wars prequel trilogy and it's a major complaint here.
But most of all, I found myself incredibly disappointed with the failure to adequately arouse the kind of paranoia that made John Carpenter's 1982 movie such an enduring classic. The sense of growing mistrust among the Norwegian base staff is so lacking that it seems almost tacked on. There isn't a single scene that comes anywhere close to Blair (Wilford Brimley) going berzerk with that fire axe:
There is so much else that could be said. This is definitely a prequel that became something we never needed. Which I hate to say, because in other hands The Thing (2011) really could have been a very terrific movie. Instead the film ended and I was just very, very disappointed. It's going into the pile of other movies that were made but I'm going to pretend were never produced (Alien 3, anything past the final scene of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and the inevitable sequel to Joker).
And so it is that whatever happened at that Norwegian camp will remain open to speculation. Which is probably just as it should always be. Besides, it's more fun that way.
John Carpenter's now-classic film of horror and paranoia at an Antarctica research base might not be appropriate viewing for when one is tempting real-life cabin fever. But if Die Hard is a Christmas movie, then The Thing is the perfect wintertime follow-up. And it's a darn nearly perfect movie in every other possible way: the story. The casting. The pacing. The practical effects (which still hold their own against any CGI today). The cinematography. That score by Ennio Morricone. And that building-up of tension as the men of Outpost 31 grow increasingly mistrustful of each other...
So yeah, I'm a huge fan of The Thing. And I've read the original novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. As well as watched 1951's The Thing from Another World.
And then there is the 2002 video game The Thing, which followed the events of the John Carpenter film and received both commercial and critical acclaim. Partly because of the innovative "trust" element. I'm going to always have fond memories of playing that game, and unfortunately it seems the physical release is the only one out there. Maybe GOG.com will have it for sale sooner than later. Anyway...
Helmed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.and with a cast led by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, The Thing '11 was an idea that I just didn't care about once the initial details started coming out. And it wasn't just the notion of depicting the events of the Norwegian camp: something that was perhaps better left to the imagination (the "less is more" school of thought). When MacReady and Copper begin exploring the burning ruins of the base, and then they come upon the radio operator who had slit his wrists, well... it's just like Copper said: "My God, what the hell happened here??"
"What?", indeed. I first saw 1982's The Thing when I was ten years old, and every time I've watched it since my imagination gets sent reeling in wonder about how it went down among those poor scientists before they unleashed extraterrestrial death upon the most desolate wilderness on the planet. What led up to the final survivors shooting at that dog from a helicopter laden with kerosene and grenades?
Did I really want or need to see that portrayed?
And then there was the casting. It screamed "modern American film gore" with an emphasis on "American". Look, we've had a Thing movie from an American perspective: it was The Thing of 1982. A prequel about the Norwegian camp should have a cast of entirely Norwegians. Having it headlined by an American actress with fellow English speakers: it just didn't seem right.
Then there were the effects. Doubtless it was going to be largely accomplished by some CGI rendering engine pushing pixels. I didn't doubt that the transition from the brilliant work in the 1982 film would be a jarring one.
Maybe it's the weather lately. At this time of winter in this location, it should be at least one major snowstorm already this season. Here in mid-February that's looking less likely. So without a proper occasion upon which to watch 1982's The Thing, I thought that maybe... just maybe... I could give the 2011 film a fighting chance. So that's what I did last night.
What did I think?
The Thing (2011) is a gruesome waste of a premise that had strong potential. There is so much that went wrong with this film. In some ways it is admirably accurate to the 1982 film (the coda where we see the Norwegian helicopter flying off to track down the dog is especially good). But other details are unforgivably ignored (didn't the boffins from Norway already use their explosive charges to blast away the ice from the alien ship?). That's a bigger lingering plot problem than anything from The Rise of Skywalker... and that's sayin' something.
As I'd feared, The Thing 2011 edition tried too much to be a modern "American" horror. Maybe the boys in marketing thought that a pretty young American female among all those Scandinavians would increase the commercial appeal. Instead it distracts from the spirit of the 1982 "original". There would have been nothing wrong with a cast completely comprised of Norwegians, Swedes, and Danish. In fact, I would have preferred it that way. And have the dialogue composed entirely of Norwegian (maybe with English subtitles... or not). As it is the cast of Norwegian characters is woefully under-employed in this movie. A tragedy because they seemed to be taking this project especially to heart. One of the Norwegians is well played by Kristofer Hivju, who went on to portray Tormund Giantsbane in HBO's Game of Thrones. Had I been the one in charge of the project, that's the approach I would have taken.
And it must be said: no modern CGI can outdo Rob Bottin's practical effects work in scaring the hell out of the viewer. Even when the staff of Outpost 31 was looking at the remains of the creature, with it just laying there on the table, not moving at all: that static horror said it all. That kind of slow appreciation of the monstrous isn't there in The Thing 2011. There isn't a single creature in this movie that is as memorable as the Norris-thing. It's all moving too fast and furious. It all looks too shiny. And going back to "if it was me making this movie" I would have tried to replicate the lighting and film grain of the 1982 film. Yeah, film grain is important. It needs to be consistent across a series. It's one of my major complaints about the Star Wars prequel trilogy and it's a major complaint here.
But most of all, I found myself incredibly disappointed with the failure to adequately arouse the kind of paranoia that made John Carpenter's 1982 movie such an enduring classic. The sense of growing mistrust among the Norwegian base staff is so lacking that it seems almost tacked on. There isn't a single scene that comes anywhere close to Blair (Wilford Brimley) going berzerk with that fire axe:
There is so much else that could be said. This is definitely a prequel that became something we never needed. Which I hate to say, because in other hands The Thing (2011) really could have been a very terrific movie. Instead the film ended and I was just very, very disappointed. It's going into the pile of other movies that were made but I'm going to pretend were never produced (Alien 3, anything past the final scene of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and the inevitable sequel to Joker).
And so it is that whatever happened at that Norwegian camp will remain open to speculation. Which is probably just as it should always be. Besides, it's more fun that way.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Lovecraft the prophet
"That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return."
-- from The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. LovecraftIt was 1928 when Howard Phillips Lovecraft published The Call of Cthulhu: his seminal classic which forever altered the nature of horror fiction.
That passage has stuck with me from the first time that I read this short story in the fall of 1996. And I've thought about it countlessly in the years since. It has been difficult not to see mankind through the vision of those cultists waiting for when the stars are right: when the incomprehensible horror that is Cthulhu will arise at last from the cyclopean city of R'yleh far below the waters of the Pacific and lay waste to the Earth. Until then dead Cthulhu waits, dreaming...
Mankind, "free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside." Men "shouting and killing and revelling in joy."
It has been eighty-five years since Lovecraft wrote those words. And with each passing year it seems as if humanity... or at least the civilized realm of it... is descending further and further into the barbaric, unrestrained frenzy of pleasure and pain that he described in his tale.
Slaying the innocent for sake of money and convenience. Government gone lawless. Men and women descending beneath their nature. Wars without reason or end. Conscience and ethics spurned utterly. Good proclaimed to be evil, and evil to be good.
Perhaps more than we have realized... maybe more than we would like to acknowledge... H.P. Lovecraft had a prescience of far greater clarity than any prophet or futurist of this age.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Was the real ending to John Carpenter's THE THING in plain sight all along?
John Carpenter's 1982 science-fiction horror film The Thing is one of those movies that no matter how many times you watch it over the decades, you can always spot something new that you've haven't caught before. Case in point: I had never noticed that Doc Copper has a nose-ring until almost two years ago. It's the smallish details like that which keep the debate and discussion going about The Thing... and I'll admit that nearly thirty years after I first saw this movie, I still haven't figured out who was where and for how long at Outpost 31.
But I had thought that there was nothing major left to be discovered. Nothing at all. How could there be, in a movie that I've bought no less than three times for my personal library (the latest being the gorgeous Blu-ray that I watch every time I get snowed-in during winter). Heck, it's a movie so near and dear to my heart that I had already put the Blu-ray version on my iPad long before good friend Lee Shelton alerted me to this story about The Thing and its classic ending. Specifically, how John Carpenter possibly answered the last big question about the story and it has been right in front of us the whole time.
If you haven't seen The Thing (shame on you!) and you don't care about spoilers, it's like this: in the final scene, the only survivors of the camp are helicopter pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell) and mechanic Childs (Keith David). With the entire outpost destroyed and the hard biting cold of the Antarctic night bearing down on them, it is only a matter of time before they freeze to death. The film ends with both men starting at each other, wondering if the other is fully human.
Here's the comment that started it all, from one KicksButtson on Reddit.com...
A friend of mine, back when he was an assistant, spent a great deal of time with John Carpenter doing interviews and the like for video games and comic projects. I was discussing my conversation with Larry Turman with this friend and he saidAs soon as I read that I whipped out the iPad and went to The Thing's last scene."You know, I asked John Carpenter about The Thing."
"Oh yeah? What did he say?" I asked.
"He said he never understood where all the confusion came from. The last frame of The Thing is Kurt Russell and Keith David staring each other down, harshly backlit. It's completely, glaringly obvious that Kurt Russell is breathing and Keith David is not."
I looked at my friend for a minute, soaking it in. Straight from the horse's mouth.
"That's a pretty subtle cue to expect the audience to absorb having seen severed heads grow spider legs and run around," I said.
"That's the genius of The Thing," my friend said, and we moved on to other subjects.
And son of a gun... it's true.
MacReady's breath is so visible, so unavoidably obvious, it can't be anything but an in-your-face indicator of something significant.
But there is no breath at all coming out of Childs. He comes out of the darkness, he talks to MacReady, and he's not breathing.
Well played, Mr. Carpenter. Well-played indeed. Looks like I'll have to be watching your movie at least another dozen or so more times, just so I can study where Childs goes and when.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
So last night I finally got to watch the mid-season finale of THE WALKING DEAD...
I didn't dare watch it until I went over to my girlfriend's place, 'cuz I've gotten her hooked onto this show and we've taken to enjoying it together. And since she was out of town when "Pretty Much Dead Already" - the last new episode until February - aired on Sunday night, we both held off on catching it until we could hook up again.
So now that I've finally seen it, let me reiterate what I've said all since last night about The Walking Dead's mid-season finale...
JEEBUS CRIPES CRISPIES WITH MILK!!!!!!
Awright, I'll admit that I am not a routine television viewer but even so: if this episode didn't firmly establish The Walking Dead as THE finest show currently being broadcast, then I can't possibly imagine what could be.
The whole heapin' episode was some of the finest television ever scripted and shot. Again, I have to observe that this show is not so much about a "zombie apocalypse" as it is about the intensely and very real human drama. It's what this show does best and "Pretty Much Dead Already" pegged the needle before breaking it off and sending it spinning wildly. Witnessing the tensions rising among Rick's band of survivors and then the clashing with Hershel, culminating in those last five minutes outside the barn where Hershel and his family have been keeping well over a dozen walkers.
If it had stopped with Shane's screaming and ensuing slaughter of the walkers, it would have been a solid point to leave things until February. But then, that one final walker had to come out of the barn...
That might have been the most disturbing and haunting payoff of a lingering plotline that I've seen in a long time. Maybe ever.
It's gonna be a long three months until February. But if the show resumes then with as much high-caliber storytelling, we are gonna be in for something insanely good.
Oh yeah, I couldn't make it out last night but going back on my DVR in high-def: Hershel's Bible study as he eats lunch is Luke 8, beginning with verse 22. That particular selection is about Jesus calming the storm, His healing of the demon-possessed man at Gerasenes, the healing of the woman who had long suffered a bleeding sore and the raising of the dead girl, Jesus sending out the Twelve Disciples, and the feeding of the five thousand. Don't know if that has any bearing on the story but, well... now y'all know :-)
Monday, November 21, 2011
Quote from yesterday evening
"It's Shake 'n Bake and I helped!"Said aloud by me, at the end of the prologue from last night's The Walking Dead.
Go watch it from your DVR or from iTunes or whatever if you wanna "get" that joke :-P
Sunday, November 13, 2011
THE WALKING DEAD tonight: They grow 'em ripe on Hershel's Farm, don't they?
Y'know, I grew up on a farm. Saw a lot of sicko stuff, like that time the vet came to work on one of Dad's cows. He made an incision in its side and for some reason, Dad had to stick his arm into it, right up to his elbow, to do something with its stomach. One of its stomachs anyway, 'cuz a cow has four, but anyhoo...
NOTHING I saw living and working on that farm however, compared to what the kindly good Christian veterinarian Hershel Green was found keeping in his barn on tonight's The Walking Dead.
"Chupacabra" was one whacked episode, extra-trippy. We got a glimpse of the early days of the zombie apocalypse with that very cool shot of Shane and Lori watching from afar as the United States military opens fire with missiles and napalm on downtown Atlanta. Stuff like that just leaves me hungering for more fluff about those days gone by. Then there is the increasing tension between Rick's band of survivors and Hershel's family.
Andrea, dear Andrea: the Twitter feeds are screaming for your blood tonight. Be darned thankful that you only grazed Daryl, who even before that happened, had already demonstrated that he's the most hard-core bad-ass of the survivors. But what the heck was with that necklace he made?! Shades of Apocalypse Now there...
Then came the worst dinner party ever, Glenn sitting at the card table with the other kiddies before he attempted a midnight tryst in the hayloft at the barn, only to find that Hershel has at least a dozen walkers paddocked-up inside. Ummmmm... yeaaahhhh I know why they are, 'cuz I read some of the graphic novel. But even so, 'twas quite a shock to see that realized on the small screen.
A very, very solid episode, but I'm hoping the search for Sophia gets wrapped up pretty soon 'cuz it's beginning to wear thin.
And please, in the name of all that's good and holy, keep Andrea away from the guns!!
EDIT 10:47 p.m. EST: My girlfriend Kristen thinks that we should refer to that mob of walkers in the barn as "Hershel's Herd" from now on :-P
Sunday, November 06, 2011
THE WALKING DEAD tonight made Chris go freaking bonkers!!!
For the record, that was the MOST intense scene that I have personally witnessed from any television drama. If you saw it then you know what I'm talking about even if I don't say it: the walker down the well at Hershel's farm and how the gang uses Glenn as, ummm... bait.
No kidding: I was screaming HARD and grabbing the sides of my head during that part. Kristen was hollerin' loud too! That was definitely one of the best filmed and edited sequences that I've seen in a very long time.
The Walking Dead has been consistently raising the bar with each passing week and tonight's episode, "Cherokee Rose", upped the ante across the board. Especially watching Shane wrestle with the internalized anguish of the choice he made at the high school in the previous episode. That and the interaction between Rick and Hershel: a character who I am enjoying more and more every time he gets screen time. Sorta reminds me of the "man of science versus man of faith" dynamic that Jack and Locke had on Lost.
And speaking of The Walking Dead, longtime friend and fellow blogger/geek Geoff Gentry directed my attention to the website of Bear McCreary, the composer of The Walking Dead's music. Prior to that he scored Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica series. McCreary maintains a blog on his site in which he discusses his musical work and the process of composing for television, and it's quite a fascinating read! The latest thing he's shared via his site is this very cool video of himself doing an "accordion orchestra" of one of the pieces from Battlestar Galactica. Check it out!
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Meeting Addy Miller AKA the little girl zombie from THE WALKING DEAD
Just over a year ago AMC's hit series The Walking Dead premiered. And in its very first minutes it introduced us to what has since become one of television's most iconic images of horror ever...
The "little girl zombie" that Rick Grimes comes across during his early traipsing across a post-apocalyptic Georgia. A few months ago when the Blu-ray set came out I wrote about how disturbing it was to see that this sweet innocent cherub-turned-flesheater had a mouthful of braces.
Well, this past weekend at Woods of Terror north of Greensboro, we got to meet this young actress! Her name is Addy Miller and in addition to The Walking Dead she's already notched up quite an acting resume already. She'll soon be appearing in Plan 9 (a remake of Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space) and will also be in next year's The Three Stooges biopic.
And here she is with Kristen and me!
Addy autographed a photo for us, writing on it "You're next!"
But I couldn't resist asking her something that had been bugging me since getting the Blu-ray set of Season 1: were those her real braces? Turns out: nope! Addy told us that it was all prosthetics and makeup, that they made molds of her jaws and that was a rotting decaying appliance that we saw instead of her actual teeth. VERY cool!
Addy is a delightful actress and it was very much a pleasure to have the opportunity to meet her. Here's wishing her all the best with her career :-)
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
The most disturbing Super Mario Bros. video you will EVER see
A guy named "petermolyneux2" on YouTube has... well he might have some issues, if his short film "Nintendo: A Sad Story" is any indication. I've watched this three times now, trying to make sense of what exactly I'm looking at. And now I CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD!! No sound sleep for me tonight.
No sound sleep for you either, maybe, if you choose to let enter your gray matter this clip that surely must resemble what the 1993 Super Mario Brothers movie would have been had Neil Gaiman written the script...
Monday, January 10, 2011
I can't believe that I did this...
Premium cable/satellite channel Showtime had a free trial weekend over the past few days.
So I wound up watching, of all things, the movie Twilight and its immediate sequel New Moon.
Ehhhhh... they were okay, I guess. I still don't think that Edward and his kin are real vampires. I mean: they aren't afraid of daytime, they don't sleep in coffins, they aren't repelled by crucifixes or garlic, they don't have actual fangs...
Those aren't vampires. They are, at best, people with severe eating disorders.
(I still think that Anne Rice will always be the master of vampire fiction. Akasha would have incinerated the entire Cullen clan without batting an eyelash... and we all know it! :-)
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
RED HARVEST: Star Wars returns to horror genre with mildly good zombie story
With Red Harvest, Schreiber follows up with a prequel examining the origins of the Blackwing virus: the infectious agent that turned an entire Imperial Star Destroyer into a derelict tomb packed with flesh-hungry zombies that Han Solo and Chewbacca had to blast their way through. However instead of again setting the story within the timeframe of the classic movies, Schreiber takes the readers back to the era of the Old Republic, more than thirty-five hundred years before the time of the Empire.
I thought that Red Harvest is something of a mixed bag, that for the most part works fairly well. But I have to wonder if it might have been more effective at eliciting terror had Schreiber set it (or if he'd been allowed to set it: remember we're talking about Star Wars licensed fiction under the ultimate control of the Lucasfilm bigwigs) during the period of the classic films. The virus, it turns out, was originally created by a Sith Lord named Darth Scabrous (that is either the funniest or the most sicko moniker for a Dark Lord ever), as part of his bid to find a means of living forever. Maybe it's just me, but Scabrous as a character just... didn't have the sense of menace that most Sith Lords have embodied. Although there is one vile act that Darth Scabrous does involving a bounty hunter and his partner (if you've read the book you know what I'm talking about) that is... well, it's pretty harsh. I mean it, it's outright gross to the max! And I can't help but think that somehow it would have been more intense had it been Darth Vader doing that instead to some poor shlub.
Death Troopers worked so well because it involved a setting and characters that most Star Wars fans already understood and appreciated. Red Harvest on the other hand demands that we feel empathy for an entirely new cast and an era of Star Wars lore that for many people, is still an unknown quantity. I'm not saying that you won't get a thrill from Red Harvest (which was originally to be titled Black Orchid until it was decided that sounded too much like a romance novel), just that the "scare factor" in Death Troopers was in most part because it involved elements we'd already invested significant time in coming to know and love. With Red Harvest even die-hard Star Wars fans will have to "work" at arousing the empathy needed to feel something toward the story's good guys.
So yeah, it wasn't quite up to the snuff that Death Troopers is, but I still have to say that I was entertained plenty enough by Red Harvest. It was good to see the concept of midi-chlorians explored further, and Schreiber also demonstrates in Red Harvest that he's not squeamish at all about turning the reader's stomach.
And hey, this novel has Sith ZOMBIES in it! Hard to say "no" to that :-)
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Guillermo del Toro is directing a big-budget adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS!
And... wait for it (like anyone wouldn't be expecting it these days)... it's going to be shot in 3-D!
Mash down here to read more about the news that will send waves of joygasm across legions of geeks throughout the world.
Lovecraft's classic tale of ancient horror in the Antarctic, brought to the screen by the director of Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, with the pioneer of the most groundbreaking 3-D filmmaking of the modern era on board as producer...
I am totally stoked about this. If it's going to be 3-D it might as well be done right and if it's going to be anything at all to do with H.P. Lovecraft well, I can think of nobody better to helm this than Guillermo del Toro.
And let's face it: there are some movies which should be made in 3-D.
And then there are some movies which should not be made in 3-D. And possibly even not made at all...
Truly, Yogi Bear in 3-D is this week's sign that the Apocalypse is upon us.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO is 50 years old today
Fifty years ago today, on June 16th 1960, Alfred Hitchcock's movie Psycho - considered to be one of the greatest and most groundbreaking horror films of all time - was released...
This was on TCM not long ago and I watched it again. Five full decades later and it still holds its own against anything that has come since.
In celebration of this momentous occasion, feel free to indulge yourself in an extra-long shower tonight.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
THE WICKER MAN featuring Jim Henson's Muppets
I would pay to see Muppet Studios make a real project out of this...
Cartoonist Paul O'Connell has created this OUTRAGEOUSLY smart mash-up of animated felt and pagan ritual: a homage to both the Muppets and the classic 1973 horror movie The Wicker Man. I honked out loud with laughter at Kermit playing Sergeant Howie, but it's Gonzo taking Christopher Lee's place as Lord Summerisle that really fixes this spoof into your gray matter.
Click on the above link for more.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Trailer for ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER
You know him as Lincoln the Rail-Splitter, Lincoln the Lawyer, and Lincoln the President of the United States.
Now, bestselling historical author Seth Grahame-Smith has uncovered the true story of Lincoln... the Vampire Slayer.
Behold the trailer for the book!
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter should be in bookstores everywhere about now, and will almost certainly become required reading in history classrooms across the country.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Stephen King working on a sequel to THE SHINING
The planned title for the sequel is Doctor Sleep. And so far as what it would be about, King plans to revisit the story of Danny Torrance, now forty years old "...and living in upstate New York, where he works as the equivalent of an orderly at a hospice for the terminally ill. Danny’s real job is to visit with patients who are just about to pass on to the other side, and to help them make that journey with the aid of his mysterious powers. Danny also has a sideline in betting on the horses, a trick he learned from his buddy Dick Hallorann."
I'm cool with that. And a revisit to the Dark Tower series as well (which King has recently said he's working on too). Just as long as there's no follow-up to The Stand: whatever happens after that story needs to stay in our imagination.
But more tales of Danny Torrance? Sounds intriguing...
Monday, November 23, 2009
GeekTyrant's retrospective of ALIEN
GeekTyrant has posted a fine retrospective of Alien, including some thoughts and observations that had never occurred to me before, as well as lots of trivia that will now doubt come as new information to many people (like how H.R. Giger's designs for the Facehugger were held up by alarmed U.S. Customs agents at the airport, prompting writer Dan O'Bannon to drive on over and explain that they were meant for a horror movie).
