Universal Dork

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  • Movie Review: ‘Beyond The Gates’ and its Sinister VHS Board Game…

    ‘Beyond The Gates‘ is the first feature film from Jackson Stewart, an indie horror movie I’ve been super excited about for a long time. Last night I dropped the seven bones on Google Play to check it out. What originally really excited me about this movie was it’s central focus on a sinister VHS board game from the 1980’s called…you guessed it “Beyond The Gates”. These creepy VHS games were pretty popular back when I was a kid, so of course I automatically dug the nostalgia factor that this one had to offer from the start. I also was quite happy to see Graham Skipper (The Mind’s Eye, Almost Human) as one of the leads and also horror icon Barbara Crampton (From Beyond, Re-animator, We Are Still Here) as the creepy host of the VHS board game. 

    This one has a lot going for it from the get go and it’s quite an intriguing little mystery. Long story short, two brothers come to find that their alcoholic father has gone missing leaving behind his business, an old video store that he started back in 1992. Ah yes, the local video store, what great memories I have of those. Well as the brothers meet up to box up video tapes, close shop and reminisce about their childhood they discover the old VHS board game in the office.

    Visually this is about as cool as things get in 'Beyond The Gates'

    Things get stranger when they realize the VHS tape from the game was the last thing their father had watched before he disappeared. This begins a series of bizarre events as the brothers and one of their girlfriends decide to give the game a try. I don’t want to give away any clues of the story, it’s a pretty engaging movie and a great dramatic story of two brothers finding peace with each other and their past. There’s a lot in this movie that I can relate to personally and that honestly is the strongest aspect of ‘Beyond The Gates’. It’s got a lot of heart.

    I did like this movie, however it could have been one of the best horror movies of 2016 if perhaps it had a bit more of an imagination with the horror side of things and hey maybe a bigger budget? The horror aspect of this one kinda let me down. There were a couple of cool scenes that seemed like they were warming us up for a knock out finale. Sadly that knock out never really arrived, in fact the finale seemed like something that we might have expected to see around the half way mark. The movie had a 3 million dollar budget and personally I think they could have stretched it a bit and really given us a more surreal adventurous final act. I’ve seen movies with smaller budgets go a lot further than this. To me it seemed like a good movie that maybe ran out of money near the end of filming. The potential for some truly crazy stylized 80’s horror was definitely there but it lacked the imagination to give fright fans a truly memorable experience.

    Overall I liked this movie more as drama and if I’d have known ahead of time that that’s more of what this was I’d be a little less critical of the horror aspect of things. That being said I still give it a thumbs up for a sweet yet creepy story that knows how to pull at your heartstrings. Check it out! 

  • Yoga Hosers: Should Kevin Smith Just Give Up?!

    I’ve never been a gigantic fan of  Kevin Smith, but I’ll admit I did like his two Clerks movies (yeah both of them). I’ll also admit I was totally surprised that he made an excellent thriller, Red State. Yep those were all good movies, but as a whole I’m really not a big fan of much else he’s done. With that being said, after he made Red State I was fully convinced he just might have found his niche by way of horror movies and was pretty excited to check out ‘Tusk’. That movie, in my opinion, was truly a painful watch. It just plain sucked in every way. It was a wasted attempt at making what could have been a unique horror movie.

    Tusk was a complete 180 from ‘Red State’ that had me a bit confused about what I thought was his new found talent dabbling in the horror genre. Well things got even worse last night when I decided to give his latest movie “Yoga Hosers” a shot on Netflix. It’s streaming there if you’re looking to waste your time & lose a few brain cells while you’re at it. ‘Yoga Hosers’ is the second installment of his “True North” horror trilogy and was meant to be an homage to movies like Critters & Gremlins. The end result is far from coming anywhere close to the magic of those movies. I can honestly say Yoga Hosers is easily one of the worst movies I’ve seen in quite some time. It’s so bad I had to stop it 3/4 of the way through. I just couldn’t take how much it sucked (and I LOVE bad movies) but there’s just nothing worse than a totally bad comedy. It’s not ammusing watching jokes fail over and over and over.

    Smith seems to think he’s totally dialed in to the pre-teen / millennial comedy too but during the experience you see a cast of characters who’re just extensions of his dated sense of humor. His daughter, along with Johnny Depp and his daughter star in this wretched horror comedy that get’s more irritating with every passing minute. We’re given a horde of flat repetitive Canadian “humor”, bad cg, idiotic senseless plot and some incredibly stupid “monsters” for the main characters to face off against. Through all of this you can picture Kevin Smith behind the scenes secretly thinking he’s somehow created the next cult horror comedy classic. Far from it. This is some of the worst attempts at comedy I’ve seen in ages and it led me to the question: should Kevin Smith call it a day?

    My first thought was a solid yes but after thinking about his last two movies and just how much they sucked it got me thinking the exact opposite. I mean Red State was a really good movie and seeing that Kevin Smith does indeed have one more film left in this trilogy called “Moose Jaws” I’m actually thinking that he could really change direction here and give us something truly memorable. I only say this because Smith has gotten a LOT of shit from critics and fans on how fucking bad Yoga Hosers turned out to be. It seems a bit of a long shot since most of the cast from Yoga Hosers will be again returning for the next movie. ‘Moose Jaws’ is said to be an homage to Jaws but with a giant pissed off moose. I say let’s give it one more try Kevin, shift the tone of Moose Jaws and give us something intense and scary. Hold off on the humor and make these terrible characters from the last two movies iconic. I’ll give you one more try Mr. Smith but after this trilogy it just might be time to call it a day. For good….

            

  • Ho-Ho-Holiday Horror Movies You May Have Missed!

    It’s December 2016 is a time for some serious holiday celebration! Sure I’ll be watching a ton of the usual classics like Santa Claus: The Movie, Elf, Rudolph, Gremlins etc etc. However I’m going to be busting out the Christmas horror movies again this of course and hopefully here I’ll be able to give you a few ideas of some movies to check out if you’re feeling like mixing it up a bit this year. We all know about the classics like Black Christmas, Silent Night Deadly Night, last years instant classic Krampus. Well here’s a few you may have never heard of but you should definitely seek out this season!

    3615 code Pere Noel / AKA ‘Deadly Games’ (1989)

    A true lost & forgotten gem of a movie. If you search the net for Christmas Horror movies, you for some crazy reason won’t find this one on any of the lists. However this french film, which I first saw last year, is easily one of the best Christmas horror movies of all time. It’s a rare one and finding a version of it with subtitles can be pretty difficult, I got a copy off of Ioffer.com.

    Searching this one out is totally worth it though as it plays out like the ultimate 80’s Amblin style “Home Alone” hybrid of a film. It screams of the 1980’s and features a super cool kid obsessed with action movies who lives in a gigantic castle style mansion. During a snow storm on Christmas eve, he finds himself home alone with his grandfather where the house becomes under siege by a crazed maniac who is convinced he’s Santa Claus & is hell bent on punishing all those who’ve been naughty. This one deserves a proper release and then it rightly deserves to be a new addition on ALL Christmas horror lists.

     

    The Christmas Tale (2005) (more…)

  • Comic Cover of the Week: Rob Liefeld Gets it Right – Part 2!

    So yesterday I did a post on Rob Liefeld, this time celebrating the times when he actually did a cool piece of artwork. I had a some people who challenged it and STILL claimed Rob’s work was filled with flaws. Well here’s “round 2” a more recent cover of Rob’s – a variant cover for Deadpool #13. I’m right now thinking this is cover is actually pretty good. In fact I almost didn’t believe he actually created it! I’ll admit yesterday’s Liefeld cover being one of his more solid pieces really wasn’t that incredibly impressive. So to all those out there that STILL think Rob can’t rise to the occasion and do some decent doodling what do you think of this?!

     

    deadpoolliefeldhit

  • Comic Cover of the Week: Rob Liefeld Gets It Right – Part 1!

    Rob Liefeld has gotten a TON of shit over the years for his highly critiqued artwork filled with bad perspective, highly exaggerated body parts, weird looking feet ect. etc. etc. Yeah we all have seen the criticisms of the guy, who at one point was basically a “rockstar” comic book artist in the 1990’s. I’ve never been a fan of his artwork, in fact a lot of his 90’s stuff (and many other artists from that era) has always made me cringe. Putting all of that aside, the guy had and still does have a ton of people who are big fans of his style. The dude is legendary whether you like it or not, so that leads me to do a little digging and give Liefeld some credit when he does some good work. All of his artwork isn’t all bad right? Well I’m going to use my ‘Comic Book Cover of the Week’ posts to showcase some of, in my opinion, Liefeld’s “hits”.  Here’s a cover by him that I always thought was actually pretty good. I especially like the way Liefeld drew Sabretooth, nice and evil looking in New Mutants #91. Liefeld doesn’t do anything too outrageous here (there may be a missing chin), I think on this one he actually did a pretty decent job. He keeps everyone’s feet nice and hidden as well….What do you think?

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  • Movie Review: ‘Night of Something Strange’ – Horror Potty Humor at it’s Worst!

    I’ve been looking forward to checking out the new horror comedy “Night of Something Strange” for quite some time and finally this week I decided to check it out via rental on Google Play. From what I’d heard about it and seen in the trailer, it looked liked a super fun homage to splatter flicks of the 1980’s with an unhealthy dose of comedy splashed in for a good time. I’m all about a good indie horror comedy, in fact the horror comedy is easily one of my favorite genres. However ‘Night of Something Strange’ just really didn’t do it for me. I give them a serious ‘A’ for effort but when you’re making a movie like this it’s extremely important to nail down the comedy aspect of the horror first. That can be a hard task & precisely where this movie really falls flat, at least for me.

    This one is all about grossing you out in every middle school way you can imagine. That’s perhaps who this movie’s comedy might truly appeal to. For me though gross out poop, pee and sex humor gets old real quick. NOSS is jam packed with potty humor and as the movie plays on it continuously tries to top last the poop, pee-pee, gross out sex scenario with something more “outrageous”. It simply tries way too hard to get a reaction, kinda like if Seth Rogan wrote the script for this when he was thirteen years old but with “gross out” dick jokes and zombie rape scenarios sprinkled throughout. Yeah the movie has a lot of undead raping & it’s not really the kind of stuff that’s offensive, since clearly it’s incredibly unrealistic looking and it’s actors aren’t exactly out to win an academy award with their performances. So none of it will stick with you for days or scar you as the scenes aren’t even the least bit convincing. That’s a good thing, because I’m not a fan of the rape-y horror movie. It’s all just too damn stupid, and though I do like me some ridiculousness this one tries way too hard.

    This flick is essentially an 80’s horny teen throwback movie with even more horny undead creatures roaming around the grounds of a spooky motel. There’s a few scenes that are actually pretty well done and the practical effects here are at times actually pretty impressive. It also looks pretty nice too, it just suffers from a ton of stale comedy. I don’t know, maybe when I was twelve years old this would have been funny? However it’s just trying way too hard to gross us out with farts, poop, dirty tampons, boners & nasty sex humor around each & every corner. It’s also maybe about 20 minites too long. I haven’t got much else to say about this one, (I really like the poster art at least) but if you dig this kind of mega excessive potty humor then hey, this movie delivers the goods and then some!!

  • Superheroic Thanksgiving!

    We never really think that things like Thanksgiving and Comic books go together, but hey comic book characters have gotta take some time off to spend some time breaking bread together right? Well here’s a few cool images of some of the icons spending turkey day together-check it out!

     

     

     

     

  • Revisiting: Demon Knight, Dead Calm, Chatting With Billy Zane & V-Force!

    I recently decided to watch some classic Billy Zane movies, why you ask? Well a little while ago he filmed a scene for a new movie in my store Hollywood Babylon in Portland, Oregon. Yeah, I was pretty damn excited to arrive at the shop to find out that he was there fully ready to get into character. I actually really like a handful of his movies a lot, but I’d admit it’d been too long since I watched any classic Zane….

    First on my list was ‘The Phantom’, which came out twenty years ago. I’ve always thought this was a great comic book movie and dusting off my dvd reinforced just that. Yeah the movie is admittedly totally cheezy but it’s like a superhero version of Indiana Jones: pure pulp, cool sets, great practical effects and a ton of classic action. It apparently didn’t do well at the box office so we never got a sequel, but here Zane shines as a good guy for once. Normally he plays a villain, and always a damn good one so it’s nice here to see him playing the classic comic book icon The Phantom in all of his glory. The movie doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it just delivers a perfect saturday matinee popcorn movie. Give it a watch again, it’s aged quite well. (more…)

  • Child’s Play 7: Chucky Goes Back To His Roots?!

    There’s been some rumbling lately from director Don Mancini about the next installment of the Child’s Play/Chucky horror franchise and it’s sounding like it might go old school and get personal. From some photos shared recently it’s looking like the Child’s Play 7 is touting the tagline ‘Chucky is finally coming home’ in a recent tweet. What many are speculating is that Chucky will be squaring off against his old nemesis, an all grown up Andy Barclay. In the recent tweet he tagged Fiona Dourif, Brad Dourif, Summer H. Howell & Alex Vincent with a picture of Mancini with an old house in the background along with the tagline. 

    In the post credits scene of Curse of Chucky we saw Andy Barclay get a mysterious package sent to his house, of course inside was good ol’ Chuck!! What we then saw was Andy ready with a shotgun firing a shot at Chucky when the screen suddenly goes black. So what the hell happened? I’m guessing this next movie will give us the gory details. What I’m hoping for is that the two to finally settle the score on screen in an epic battle that ties all of the movies together. Child’s Play full circle.

    There’s even a rumor we might see Chucky’s son Glenn/Glenda back in action. But given the tone of the last movie perhaps he’ll either end up being an ally of Barclay or a more well rounded, psychotic menace. We’ll see, but count me in as the last movie was hands down one of the best of the series. I loved the horror aspect being front and center along with a much more seriously scary tone.

    Could part seven be the series finale? If so I hope it delivers the goods because Andy & Chucky need some resolution in their lives!

  • Justice League Dark: More Forgettable R-Rated Animation from DC?

       So it seems that DC is really giving the whole R-Rated comic book cartoon thing a shot these days and after seeing how The Killing Joke turned out I’m really pretty skeptical. The Killing Joke movie should have been amazing, it really didn’t need to be a full feature film either. It could have worked as 45 minute short flick. It really tried way to hard to flesh out Barbara Gordon with a flimsy story that had little to do with the plot of the comic and an unnecessary “racy” sex scene with Batman (to give it that edge it thought it needed for some reason). Pair that with some pretty flat animation and what you’ve got is a totally forgettable cartoon adaptation to steer clear of.

      Well now we’ve got another attempt from DC to get gritty with the animated Justice League Dark. Normally I’d be super pumped on the idea but after that Killing Joke cartoon I’m wondering if the R-rated cartoon is something DC really is really excelling at? There’ve been some attempts from Marvel to make more adult friendly adaptations over the years that were honestly pretty forgettable as well, so I’m not just faulting DC.

      An animated Justice League Dark film should by all means be something to be truly excited about. I think the people behind these animated features should be putting some serious time behind the artwork and the detail of it all. They should be producing animation with quality and perhaps even adding more frames for a much more impressive outcome. It seems though the animation isn’t much better than a standard Saturday morning cartoon. The quality should shine in 2016, these animated comic movies should be easily on par with the classics. Think of Akira, Fire & Ice or The Secret of Nimh, these were animated movies that were unforgettable. There’s no reason why Marvel or DC can’t be creating true animated superhero classics. From this new trailer I’d say it looks like we might be in for another mediocre slice of R-rated animation. What do you think?