July 8, 2013

Under the Bed: New Old School Monster Mayhem!

I’ve been out doing a ton of cool summer stuff lately and decided to take a break from the blogging for a couple weeks, kind of summer break. It’s tough to find cool shit to write about everyday that’s not just regurgitating stories from Ain’t it Cool or Bleeding Cool and sometimes I feel like adding even more hype to huge Hollywood blockbusters is an uninteresting, uninspired waste of time. I mean what’s Hollywood done for me lately?! So I was waiting until something cool that’s a little more under the radar got me pumped to do a blog again. Well it came in the form of bad ass little flick called “Under the Bed”!

This cool little monster movie is brought to you by director Steven C. Miller who brought us Automaton Transfusion, The excellent Aggression Scale and more recently the Silent Night, Deadly Night remake. I honestly have been looking forward to Under the Bed for a while now and thankfully it delivered the goods. The movie is described as a ‘suburban nightmare’ which rings true, however I see it as a more Dante-esque style “kids in danger” monster movie. It’s basically a tale of two brothers who go to battle with a vicious creature who lives under their bed.

Older brother Neil, comes back to live with his father, his new wife and his younger brother Paulie. After a two year leave of absence trying to deal with the death of his mother and his previous battle with the monster he returns to his small hometown where everyone thinks he’s bat shit crazy and his father is on the verge of a mental breakdown himself. He soon learns that his younger brother Paulie has also been terrorized by the same evil force for the last two years.

The movie takes it’s time to get to the real action, but the movie doesn’t lose steam at any point. It’s well shot, well acted and pretty dang creepy. Once the boys decide to make their stand the movie changes direction drastically and the films third and final act suddenly delivers a heavy dose of unexpected gore-which was a welcome surprise! The monster also looks great and the film is pretty much devoid of CG which gives it a much more organic old school feel which I personally love.

Once the creature appears the film jumps into hyper drive, without giving away too much it seems to have hatched from films like Poltergeist, The Gate & Insidious while still bringing something fresh and new to the suburban horror genre. I will definitely be looking for this on dvd when it’s released and I’m quite sure it will be one of my fave horror films of 2013. Right now you can see it VOD, so if you’re tired of the usual overblown, glittery, hype stuff summer blockbusters maybe it’s time to get back to the basics with a good old fashioned creature feature….

June 23, 2013

Lame-O Comic Book Cover of the Week: Marvel’s Kool-Aid Man?!

Who didn’t love Kool-Aid back in 1980’s? It was all the rage! However that didn’t mean that us kids wanted a god damn Kool-Aid Man comic book! Well Marvel seemed to think other wise and gave the big ol’ walking punch bowl his own book. Kool-Aid man was pretty awesome when he’d bust down a brick wall and yell out “Oh Yeah!!” but was that any reason to think he’d be able to become part of the Marvel universe? I mean imagine Captain America teamin’ up with Kool-Aid man? He was actually given three issues to shine by Marvel and then moved on to Archie comics with four more muthafuckin’ issues!

And his Archie comics era:

And of course the live action version!!!

June 20, 2013

Terminator 5: Will ‘The Rock’ Be Terminating Arnold?!

Rumors are running wild about the plot of the green lit Terminator 5 and I’m kinda liking what I’m hearing. Recently Arnold stated he’d be back for Terminator 5 starring as a T-800 and most of the response (including my own) I heard from fans was that perhaps he was a little too old to be donning the shades again. But perhaps he’s really not starring as the legendary cyborg after all, but as it was originally thought as the man whose likeness was used fr the T-800. I always thought it was the perfect way to have him back into the franchise without getting too dang cheesy.

Now the rumor is something even more different than anyone originally imagined as reported today at Ain’t it Cool. The word one the web currently is that Dwayne Johnson could be cast as the first Terminator ever / or maybe a cybernetically modified human assassin sent back this time to the 1940’s. Here’s what they heard from some uncertain sources:

“Incredibly, Schwarzenegger may not play the role of a machine in the next film, but a potentially heroic human figure in or close to the Connor family. One theory is that Schwarzenegger’s remarkable ability to protect the Connor family in the 1940s or 1950s with antiquated weaponry by today’s standards ultimately inspired the machines to develop a terminator in his likeness that was eventually sent to 1984 when Sarah Connor was first targeted for termination.”

This contradicts Arnold’s recent comments about being “The Terminator” again. To me though i am kinda liking the sound of this storyline, it wouldn’t be a rehash of any of the previous films entirely. It would tell the story of the first time they tried the time travel thing (that you’d think they’d just give up after the first few flicks) but it wouldn’t rely on getting the whole old gang back together and most of all it might actually make the rest of the movies make more sense in the way it all may have chronologically went down?

As long as we don’t have Arnold making more cracks about “being old” anymore because that shit’s getting OLD and hopefully they bring back the spirit of the first film, more of a horror sci-fi story that keeps the plot smaller & more simple. Though I like this rumor thus far, I call bullshit, I think Arnie is gonna try and play the old part again and if so I think it’s a lost cause….what do you think?

June 18, 2013

VIRUS: The Most Underrated SCI-FI Monster Movie of the 1990’s!

I had to throw some props out there today for a rad flick that seems to get no love from anyone, “Virus” is a totally bad ass B-movie from 1999 and everyone needs to get down with it already! Chances are you’ve never seen this movie, but I recently watched it again the other night and it’s like ten times more awesome than I originally remembered it to be! The movie was actually hoping to be a big Hollywood hit, but it suffered at the box office and got totally panned by the critics. Apparently we were watching two different movies?!

Virus might be Jamie Lee Curtis’ best movie ever, however she claims it’s her worst and that she’s actually really embarrassed about appearing in it at all. I say totally WRONG Jamie! This is John Bruno’s only feature length movie he’s directed, otherwise he’s only done a handful of Star Trek: Voyager episodes and a Terminator 2 short film with James Cameron that was used at the T2: 3-D attraction at Universal Studios. Yeah I saw this one in person and it was a helluva good time!

To me though VIRUS which is based on a Dark Horse comic of the same title is jam packed with stupid awesome action and a ton of cool ass robotic monsters! I was seriously surprised to find out after watching it that it was actually not made in the late 80’s as the special effects are largely practical and the small amounts of CGI are done pretty damn flawlessly. It goes to prove once again that practical and CG used together can have some magnificent results!

The story is pretty simple and borrows heavily from Alien, attempting at making Curtis the new Ripley. If you’re looking for substance you’re not going to find it here but if you’re looking for some gory gun blazing fun on a mysterious abandoned ship in the middle of the ocean then you’re in for a treat. Also this flick’s got a Baldwin brother and Donald Sutherland lending some of their least inspired acting chops. But actually I don’t know, does William Baldwin have any acting chops to begin with?!

Bottom line here, this movie is rad. I could watch movies like this one all damn day long. It’s a ton of fun and once it gets going you’ll wonder why the hell it’s missing a cult following. So I’m gonna start the cult here today and hopefully make Jamie Lee Curtis eat her words on this one….

June 18, 2013

This Is The End: The Best Potty Humor Flick of All Time?

I saw “This Is The End” this weekend and I’m gonna have to say it’s the best Potty / Dick humor movie ever made. Yeah, This is the End delivers a mass amount of dick jokes and pee pee humor galore, so much that by the end of the movie you wonder perhaps if Rogen & Goldberg wrote the movie when they were thirteen year olds. I can’t deny that this film will entertain the pants off you and probably have you laughing out loud but I ‘ve gotta say this brand of humor can get a little grating in an otherwise fine, gory and action packed flick. Maybe I’m just getting old but seeing a huge dick on everything for me loses it’s comedic power pretty quickly. It was different in a film like Superbad. That aside I’m happy to say the movie was a damn good time.

Surprisingly this one actually does have a bit more to offer than a hundred dick & pee pee jokes. In fact this one does almost play out more like a Shaun of the Dead / horror comedy than I was expecting. It’s pretty much got it all, the usual (and in my opinion tired) stoner comedy, some cool monsters (with huge dicks of course), some gory special fx and a who’s who of “Apatowian” cast members to see meet their demise. One of the best moments being Michael Cera’s fate as the actor plays himself as quite possibly the most irritating human on the planet, snorting tons of coke, grabbing girls butts, getting blow jobs from random girls while continuously whining like a baby. One thing is for sure Cera hasn’t aged well. But it’s clear all involved were pumped to be poking fun at themselves. That’s where the movie does work as we get to see this ensemble get down and dirty. We get to see how a bunch of rich, privileged actors deal with an apocalypse or rapture in this case when they’re some of the last people on earth who for some reason haven’t been “saved”.

These guys clearly had blast with this one and perhaps that’s why in the end the movie despite all the dick, cum and pee pee humor and an a full on overload of product placement worked despite it’s terrible ending sequence. However this leads me to believe that this rivalry of the apocalyptic comedies is going to be easily won by Edgar Wright’s “The World’s End”. Hopefully he steers clear of the excessive dick jokes becuz Hollywood ain’t got room for any more big cocks this summer on the silver screen!

June 13, 2013

He’s Back: Arnold Will Be The Terminator Again & I Smell Disaster….

It seems it’s confirmed Arnold will be appearing again soon as everyone’s favorite cyborg. It’s now been confirmed that he will be reprising the role as the killer/hero robot in the upcoming fifth film slated to begin filming in January. Sounds great on paper but I’m not so sure this one is gonna go over well onscreen. Arnold has aged significantly, even in Terminator 3 he was starting, in my opinion, to look a bit to aged to play the legendary role.

I originally thought he might be playing the creator of the T-800 in the next installment, which would make perfect sense but somehow it seems Hollywood just couldn’t resist trying to get him back in his original role. So what are they going to do about his, um, well..ahem changed face and physique? CGI over him? Not Cool. Just play the role the way he is now as an aged Terminator? Not believable. Heavy make up? Unlikely. A beat up Terminator with a ton of battle scars? Best option.

I can’t say I’m too excited about this announcement. I think there are roles that just don’t work for aging actors and this one here is a prime example. A Terminator is not supposed to age. We all saw how terrible Terminator Salvation was and how that CG Arnold stuck out like a sore thumb. So what do you think will be the solution to the old Arnold back in his classic role as a man machine that doesn’t age? Are you pumped for this next chapter?

June 9, 2013

Comic Book Cover of the Week: The Punisher Teamed Up With ARCHIE?!!

What the hell is up with this here? The Punisher met Archie way back in 1994? Yeah it’s true, this one shot 48 page epic featured The Punisher hunting down a drug dealer named “Red” whose hiding in Riverdale! Frank Castle goes undercover at Archie’s school as a Gym class teacher and mistakes Archie for the similarly looking villain. What a feat of comic book genius! Hunt this one down folks because this was long before Archie met KISS or came out in support of gay marriage! I don’t care what people say Archie was always a cutting edge dude! I’d rather see the Punisher team up with Archie rather than Eminem any damn day….

June 9, 2013

Wolf Cop Takes a Serious Bite Out of Crime!

Damn, I was such a big fan of the original Teen Wolf that I just had to post this trailer for the upcoming Wolf Cop movie! This one looks right up my alley as we got a full on Werewolf cop running rampant around town fighting crime! This little Canadian flick, directed by Lowell Dean is shaping up to an awesome old school style 80’s horror comedy.

I’m a sucker for a fun werewolf flick and can’t wait for this one to drop! I’m happy to see people out there with original horror movies in the works rather than another tired remake. I may have to check out Eerie 13 as well, Lowell Dean’s first movie…

June 6, 2013

Cops, Robbers & Flesh Eating Witches!

I’m a big fan of Alex de la Iglesia’s movies anyone who’s seen “Day of the Beast” or “The Last Circus” clearly knows that his movies always have something incredibly different to offer to whatever genre he’s directing. His new flick “Witching and Bitching” or otherwise known as “Las brujas de Zugarramurdi” ups the mayhem ten fold as this latest trailer will leave you breathless and perhaps a bit bewildered. There’s no subtitles on any of the trailers so far so check out this quick synopsis they offered as it will help in making sense of exactly what is going on in the trailer.

“Hugo Silva and Mario Casas play two hapless thieves, whose plan to rob a jewellery store unravels quickly when they have to bring one of their sons along, the ex-wife borrows the getaway car, they end up headed to France for Euro-Disney World instead of the planned Morocco, and they run into a coven of flesh eating witches in the Basque country.”

Due in theaters internationally in Septemeber, I can’t wait for this one to be released here in the USA check this shit out…

June 5, 2013

Awesome Hero Initiative / Walking Dead #100 Cover by Local Chris Herndon!

Had to take a second to give a shout out to Portland Oregon’s own Chris Herndon today as I just saw for the first time some artwork he did for The Hero Initiative 100 Project for The Walking Dead. The Hero Initiative is a charity dedicated to helping comic creators in medical and financial need, has drawn great acclaim for its “100 Projects” in recent years, in which 100 artists draw an original cover on a special anniversary issue. His artwork was for the shocking but otherwise rather dull milestone issue of The Walking Dead #100. Though I had my gripes about the issue itself it sure did generate some great zombie art!

Herndon is a rad up and coming artist who had his work cut out for him on this piece as he was artist and co-creator on the indie series ‘Living With Zombies’. He currently works on Terra Tempo, a dinosaur themed graphic novel series, so his cover idea for Walking Dead #100 was a perfect blend of both his past & present comic book works. Check it below and like his Facebook page before this guy hits the big time!