Starro's Revenge

Grabbers
2012

Some Irish people are forced to drink to stay alive in this Tremors-meets-the-sea farce. SO many snarky comments, my mind can't handle it...

So some space creatures crash into the sea near Ireland and commence mating. What, were they on their honeymoon or something? Anyway, the female - which is about 1/4 the size of the male - is captured and her mate begins searching for her. Only he doesn't exactly understand that she'd been captured (versus playing hard to get). He starts showing up at all the places where her pheromones are and making offerings to her (out of the locals). The male is HUGE:

The middle looks like a huge anus. Tentacles and questionable orifices? This could be Japanese.

It turns out that the creatures (who exsanguinate their victims)  are susceptible to high blood-alcohol levels, Pity they ended up near the Emerald Isle. It doesn't end well.

I guess I could say more but I have a lot of movies to blog about in a short time so...add it to your list for next year. It was funny.

Best Line (that I understood):
"As flattering as it is to have a beautiful drunk slurring her feelings for me, this isn't the time."

You Can Interface with the Motherboard

Death Machine
1994

I can sum this up as Hardware interpreted by a indigent version of Universal Solider in Robocop's armor. And I can tell you it sucked.

So some lady CEO leaks info about her company's dirty misdeeds and pulls rank at a board meeting. Not the smartest move when you work for a weapon's manufacture that microchips all its execs...and has a chief designer that's an anti-social crazed lunatic...named Jack Dante (played by Brad Dourif channeling Trent Reznor). I'll bet someone thought it would be really cool to name their nutjob character Dante...because, you know, that's NEVER been done before...or better.

"So does this mean we can't interface?"

Anyway, Dante gets pissed at his boss (who he also wants to boink) and unleashes Warbeast. Remember the mousers built by Baxter Stockman in TMNT? Well Warbeast is basically a giant mouser with arms.

Frankly, the mousers were more frightening.

In the middle of all this, some high corporate eco-terrorists - that looked like they stepped out of Tank Girl or Johnny Mnemonic - raid the place and take hostages. Once everyone is assembled you can tell who the survivors will be right away. Soon they are all on the run from the mouser-beast, which apparently hunts on pheromones. Someone gets the bright idea to trip the fire alram with a big explosion, and seal all the blast doors...so of course later they have difficulty getting out.

I almost want to watch Hardware again just so I can scrub the images of this from my mind. Also, Dylan McDermott...mmm.

You'll Get My VCR When You Pry It From My Cold Dead Hands 2: Sequel Reckoning

V/H/S/ 2

...aka GoPros gone Wild!!

     That's the thing about 'found footage' movies: Crappy camera, lots of innuendo, and more questions than answer at the end. That's typically why I find them annoying and avoid at all costs. When I chose the first V/H/S last year, I cursed myself when I realized what it was. However, I made a commitment, so I stuck it out and watched it. Strangely, it satisfied me just enough to pique some interest in the sequel, and that's why I picked it...and thankfully, I was happy with what I saw.

     4 stories, with a 5^th acting as bumpers. It's the same formula from the first film, but I think the real differences showed in the 'startle' factor. And normally, I hate those film. I startle easy, but that's not the same thing as scaring me. None of the film was actually scary, BUT---at some point in every story, I had goosebumps with a smile on my face. The goosebumps don't happen to me very often, and hardly ever because of a horror movie. It could have just been the mood I was in, but for some reason this movie clicked with me and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

     It takes too much to examine every story, so I'm just going to give a small glimpse of what you'll see:

      Eye gouging, exploding cult leaders, alien abduction, zombie feasting (POV, of course), a demon spawn finds his 'papa', and a very coordinated mass suicide. Wanna see the 'papa' thing? Thought you'd never ask

Yup, that's his son. He has his dads....tendency to drool.

Thursday: Major Tom to OMG WTF IS THAT?!?!?!!?

"Your mother ate my dog!!!"

"Well, not ALL of it!"

Dead Alive, aka Braindead

     When part of your back story is about a rat/monkey hybrid whose whole existence is due to hot, dirty rat-on-monkey action, you've got to wonder what's in New Zealands water.

     Poor Lionel has an overbearing mother from hell that tries to control every aspect of his life. When a nice local girl is convinced through a tartott reading that Lionel is her dreamboat, they go for a date and immediately hit it off. Sadly, his mother isn't content with Lionel's happiness, and begins spying on them while at a zoo. While sneaking around the monkey cages, she's bitten by the rat/monkey thing mentioned earlier and it infects her with some funky virus that turns her into a flesh eating zombie. From there on, it's some sick and twisted hijinks when several other people are inadvertently zombified and poor Lionel becomes a corpse-master, keeping them all in the basement. I gather he's never heard of a wood chipper. Through all of this, his dirtball uncle shows up and blackmails him out of his 'deceased' mother's house and throws a huge party where everyone is having a ball...till the zombies get loose. Then things get nasty...

"Great day for a mow!"

...and I mean NASTY! This was actually gorier than any of the messed up Japanese films I spent all of last week watching. There was more decapitation, more blood showers, more wince-worthy scenes than anything I've ever encountered in all the years I've watched films. It was oozy, bloody, chunky, messy, drippy, and above all else, FUCKED UP!!! Until you've seen a man swallowed whole by his giant zombie mothers womb and then follow that up with a bloody menstrual expulsion from said womb....or being chased around an attic by a set of sentient and fully intact intestines, you've never seen gore.

"Yep, looks like we're done here. Spot of tea?"

    And the best part? It's not really low budget. The actors were great, the F/X was tops considering this is from the non-CGI era, and the direction was spot on. And why wouldn't it be? It was partially writen and directed by Peter Jackson. Yeah, that guy made some messed up movies before any of the Lord of the Ring films were even a screen play. One thing I suggest is if you seek out this movie, make sure it's the 97 minute feature, and not the heavily censored and sanitized 85 minute version. If you watch that one, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about.

Tuesday: That's really deep, man....

How To Suck In Space Travel And Everything Else....

Galaxy of Terror

     Oddly enough, I think this is my first Roger Corman production for the year. But it is my second Alien rip-off of the season, so let's get this clunky turd out of the way

    Some sort of mystery beast has decimated an entire crew and a rescue ship is dispatched. Honestly, the take-off, faster than light travel, and landing were all super dramatic and tense. You'd think they'd have this down by now, but nope, they suck at it. But that's not even half of this crews problem. Right from the start, things go to shit and people start dropping off like flies. Each one is killed by a manifestation of their each individual fears....wait, it wasn't Alien that got ripped off here, it was Forbidden Planet! Anyhoo, one particularly disturbing death was when the hawtest member of the crew is raped by a slimy worm-beast. Right before she dies, she has a major O and almost dies with a smile on her face. But mostly not. She was, after all, raped by a gigantic phallic metaphor.

Excuse me sir, are one of those things your wiener, or are they ALL wieners?

     When the other members of the crew find her corpse, she's naked and covered in slime. They torch her body where it sat immediately...without bothering to check for a pulse! Idiots. Starting to root for the the monster right about now. As the crew is burned beyond recognition, choked to the point of cranial explosion, and dismembered by glass shards, I realize that the bad acting isn't the actors fault as much as it's the directors. The talent pool isn't bad: Ray Walston, Robert Englund, and super creep Zalman King round out the cast of rather irrelevant people.

    This was another of those VHS rental dreams picks and the movie poster was infinitely better than the actual movie. It's considered a cult film but I don't see it. As I've said before, cult films are repeatedly viewed and this isn't a film that you'd watch more than once. And I did. Now I'll never have to again (willingly)

Monday: The greatest movie title contradiction in terms

I'm Baaack...with reasons to stay away from the beach.

Humanoids from the Deep
1980


First, sorry. Clearly the time-stamping just wasn't doable. Staying on top of my grad school stuff (and my FT job and two home businesses) is brutal, but I'm neglecting this commitment that I made to you. It seems like every year I'm gung-ho to do this...until it actually starts.

Anywho...

Shaggy monster title for a film about fish creatures? Makes sense.

I can literally sum this entire movie up in one sentence:

Prehistoric fish munch on some bad salmon and mutate into C.H.U.D.s from the deep who like to eat dogs and rape nubile young White women living in a coastal town with no Blacks and one Indian.

Seriously, that's like the WHOLE movie. These creatures were totally laughable but the thought of being pawed by one was actually gross. Apparently the fish have learned a few positions, too, and are really into an after-sex seaweed wrap. I've never been happier to be a Black woman from the city.

Gestation: complete.

This movie contains the second "birth" of this season, mimicking Alien but just not as horrifying. Yawn. This was made in the 80s, so there were plenty of natural breasts and at least one trimmed bush shot. And of course, the fish were naked, but who knows what you were seeing with that.

You can't hug with nuclear arms...but you CAN wake up long dormant prehistoric reptiles!

     Sequels. Both the bane and blessing of film making. They offer us a chance to reacquaint ourselves with a character or story that we really enjoyed. However, rarely are they about furthering a storyline or deeper character development. Most times they're about money and they'll do anything they can to get you to plunk down some hard earned cash. A hastily slapped together project that probably doesn't offer much to forward the character and usually the budget is halved so it looks cheap and half-assed. Yet, when you're granted a sequel, it's as though you've graduated to a legacy rather than a one hit wonder. You're now a franchise and if you give just enough fan-service, you'll continue down that road for a very long time. And on November 3^rd, it will be the 60^th anniversary of one character that the entire world knows and loves regardless if they're willing to admit it. For over half a century, this guy has shown up in every one of those six decades AS A HEADLINER! No cameos for this guy. Over his entire career, he's given us mixed signals as to his true nature. Sometimes he's a villain, sometimes he's the hero. One thing is for sure, his presence in a film is ALWAYS known. And who is our mystery man?

Godzilla Raids Again

     Big Daddy Atomic Lizard is the last film in our Japanese film week. And you had to see that coming. What's more Nippon than Godzilla? And tonight I'm celebrating his 60th anniversary with his first sequel.  This was the go-ahead film that, to date, has has spawned about 28 films over 60 years. This is also the first film where he fought another giant monster, Anguirus. That's right. It wasn't Rodan, it wasn't Mothra, Mechazilla, King Ghidorah, or any of the countless other foes of  'Zilla. It was Angy, the spikey pre-historic love child of a turtle, lizard, and cactus.

I'm not breaking down the film much more than this: They're first appearance in this film is when they're in mid-fight. Nothing much more is known as to why they hate each other sooo much.  Simply put, this movie is about that fight, or rather how it spills over into Osaka. In later films, they're allies. So with many of 'Zillas foes, there is apparently enough shared respect that they'll drop the petty drama and help in a fight for the planet. And sometimes, visuals work best to tell the story...

This is Godzilla

This is Anguirus.

...and this is Godzilla and Anguirus fighting

And that concludes a full week of horror films from Japan. Most of them insanely over the top and ultra violent. I realize that I have a limited knowledge of their culture, but nothing explains the sheer madness in these films. It's not even otaku fan service. It's just bizarre.

Next up, our final week of films for 2014.

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