Tagged: stephen king

Stephen King Presents: William Hurt vs Pissed Off Toy Soldiers!

I just checked out a crazy fun episode of the 2006 Stephen King series ‘Nightmares and Dreamscapes”.The very first episode “Battleground” is a blast, LITERALLY!  It seems this series went under the radar of most horror fans, probably because the rest of the episodes are pretty mediocre  adaptations of some of Stephen King’s short stories of the same name. 

Battleground starring William Hurt though is quite the exception to say the least. Directed by Brian Henson (son of Jim Henson) it of course features some pretty SPECIAL fx work. The premise of the story makes perfect sense to for Henson to be at the helm here and this almost demented “Small Soldiers” style story is a sweet little bloody brawl that’s enthralling to watch unfold.

William Hurt (R.I.P. who doesn’t speak a word in the entire episode) plays a cunning hitman who’s hired to take out the brainy CEO of a prominent toy corporation. It seems like a slam, dunk easy job and he heads home to his lavish high rise apartment after doing the dirty little deed. However it doesn’t take long for strange things to begin happening when he receives a mysterious package delivered to him. 

Come to find out it’s filled with a shit load of toy soldiers as well as toy army tanks, planes, helicopters and jeeps. He doesn’t think much of it until he is viciously attacked as the toys aggressively come to life with one goal: to destroy this giant assassin!

What transpires is a pretty intense and bloody battle between a full grown assassin and a vicious toy battalion in Hurt’s fancy highrise and it’s one helluva spectacle. It even harkens back to such classics as the Trilogy of Terror’s Zuni fetish warrior doll and the classic King horror anthology, Cat’s Eye! 

 Brian Henson also does sn excellent job here directing, creating truly tense thrills and some really inventive special effects using very minimal CGI and mostly real human beings to create some truly stunning action sequences with the toys. There’s a great little special effects featurette on the DVD that shows how he brought this gruesome little minature war to life.

Hurt also does a really great job as the silent assassin, who relies on all of his expertise to try and survive the encounter. You really get a sense that he has finally met his match, wasting no time trying to figure out why or how this is happening and just simply focuses on how to exterminate the enemy. I highly recommend checking this wildly unique little episode down as it certainly packs a wallop!  Thankfully someone has posted it right on YouTube:

 

 

 

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Anthrax’s ‘Among The Living’ Coming to a Comic Shop Near You!!

Anthrax’s 1987’s thrash metal epic ‘Among the Living’ was always one of my favorite albums of the genre! I used to listen to it all the time back then and it was the soundtrack to many skateboarding sessions I’d have with my friends. I even had the Among the Living t-shirt with Judge Dredd on it, who they had written a song about on the album. So now Anthrax & Z2 comics have developed a rad new way to explore the album with an original anthology graphic novel comic book! Come July 6th, each song on the album has been given it’s own unique story from an impressive creative team, with a new NOTMAN design by Greg Nicetero of Walking Dead fame!
The album is infectiously catchy, with choruses that stick in your head for years and iconic metal riffs galore, It’s an album of anthems and most uniquely known for it’s songs bases heavily in pop culture of the time. So I’m stoked to take a journey with this when it comes out and give the album a spin while I jump into these new stories.

With big names like Brian Posehn, Corey Taylor & Rob Zombie involved it’s certain to be worth a walk down metal memory lane. The album which a fan favorite, definitely deserves a new audience and I’m ready to mosh like it’s 1987 one more time!

VHS Verdict: 1995’s ‘Children of the Corn 3: Urban Harvest’….is Awesome?!

I’ve been burning through a stack of late 80’s/90’s VHS tapes lately I scored and while there’ve been a lot of stinkers in the lot there’ve been a few I’ve been quite pleasantly surprised about! I found the first five of the ‘Children of the Corn’ movies and I’d never actually watched any of the sequels so I thought what the fuck? Well the second movie was pretty much a total bore and I’d figured they’d likely just get more dull with each installment. Boy was I wrong!

Yep! ‘Children of the Corn Part 3: Urban Harvest’ is now one of my favorite sequel horror flicks! This movie’s a ton of seriously fun horror schlock. It’s premise is awesome too, we’ve got a couple weird-ass ‘Children of the Corn’ who get adopted and move from the bloody cornfields of Nebraska to the urban streets of Chicago. Their new parents are a couple of yuppies who’re stoked to have two new amish kids of their own. But little do they know one of them has some weird ass supernatural abilities and a one track mind for planting a new crop of corn right there in the city. Things quickly get awesome as their sent off on their ‘first day’ of class at a diverse inner city school and have to fend for themselves as everyone makes fun of their weird clothes and equally odd mannerisms.

Well the new setting seems to be a good one for one of the ‘Corn kids’, soon the older of the two is dressing like he’s the coolest new dude on the block and quickly discovering he’s got a fav new interest that quickly replaces corn: girls!! This new style doesn’t sit well with the younger ‘corn obsessed’ brother and soon he goes on a mission to find a vacant lot to plant some new evil corn, hell his yuppie stepdad even tries to get in on the corn action too. He find’s his stepson’s new utterly incredibly delicious crop of corn flourishing in some shitty soil in a vacant lot between two crumbling warehouses and immediately sees dollar signs! Yeah, he eagerly talks to his new kid about selling out his new breed of corn to a big corporation so it can be eaten all over the world. Naturally the evil kid’s elated and then moves on to convince the local gang bangers and school bullies to start listening to his crazy corn sermons! Soon their all hooked on his schtick and it’s up to his older, newly hipper, formerly amish brother to put and end to his evil plan.

This one never lags, it’s pretty much non stop fun and is chock full of stupid dialogue and some seriously awesome old school horror. I was totally surprised to at how bad ass the special effects are here too, come to find out Screaming Mad George (Predator/The Abyss/Curse II: The Bite) is responsible for the onscreen awesomeness. There’s a bunch of super unique kills, living killer corn, evil scarecrows, corn zombies & even an awesome giant monster at the end!! I was certain being it was ’95 we’d likely have some shitty ass CGI in the mix but instead we get George’s incredible practical fx work. Even the giant monster is a blend of animatronics and stop motion animation and the movie never stops charming the pants off of an old school horror hound. I love these surprisingly well done sequels that are many times completely overlooked by most. The ‘Urban Harvest’ is super action packed, fun filled horror flick, the kind most these days continuously try and replicate. I like how this one appears to be totally trying to play it’s ridiculous plot totally straight, It’s a true gem that’s been lost in the corn field for far too long!! Check this shit out!!

5 Upcoming Movies You Gotta Be Pumped For!!

Dammit! This was a weak ass summer for movies wasn’t it? Well at least “IT” is now in theaters!! Well I’ve been thinking about some cool movies that look like they’ll be redemption for a rather underwhelming summer of Hollywood Sludge! Here’s five new upcoming movies to be excited about!

 

5. Dave Made a Maze (Out Now)

Here’s a truly unique looking movie about a dude named Dave who decides to build a maze in his living room out of cardboard as an art project. The maze ends up having magical properties to it and soon Dave ends up totally lost within. Good thing his friends come to the rescue only to find an insane world inside filled with pitfalls, magic & monsters all made out of cardboard!! Looks like damn good time…  

 

4. Insidious: The Last Key (January 5th, 2018) 

Insidious is one of my favorite modern horror franchises, I dig all three previous movies and Lin Shaye’s character has become the centerpiece for them. I especailly love her in the role of master ‘astral projector’ Elise as she’s off again on another ‘out of body journey’ into the mysterious dimension called ‘the further’ to battle another evil spirit. I’ve been waiting for this one for a while! 

 

3. Early Man (January 26th, 2018)

I’m stoked for this new one from ‘Wallace and Gromit’ creator Nick Park! His movies pretty much always hit a surefire home run and this one looks to be on the same path. It looks like some crazy cave men will doing battle against the lords of the bronze age as they fight to save their city from an evil lord. Always a fan of the incredible stop motion adventures of Park and crew this one is sure to continue the the laugh & charms of his previous movies-sign me up!

 

2. Cult of Chucky (Oct. 3rd, 2017)

October just can’t come quick enough! That last ‘Chucky’ flick proved Don Mancini has still totally got the chops and then some. Fuck the whole Child’s Play remake idea, Mancini is showing all these classic horror franchises being remade lately that you can continue an original story and give the fans EXACTLY what they want! Picking up where ‘Curse of Chucky’ left off this one boasts the return of Andy Barclay (the little kid from the first two movies), played by original actor Alex Vincent who’s looking to end Chucky’s evil reign once and for all! Bring it on!!

 

 

1. The Terror of Hallow’s Eve (2017)

Here’s a cool spooky looking horror movie that looks like it’s workin’ with all the right ingredients. This follows a special fx obsessed teenager who’s brutally beaten up by bullies at his high school and makes a wish to get revenge upon them all while carving some sort of freaky magic pumpkin. It releases some sort of evil genie who gladly promises to do it for him! Set back in the 80’s I’ve heard this movie is a ton of fun filled with cool practical fx and a boatload o’ monsters!

Stranger Things: Season 2?!

Well it looks as if Netflix has done it again with the totally awesome new ‘Stranger Things’ series! I’ve gotta say thus far being on episode six it’s easily one of my favorite shows ever. I’m hoping these last three episodes will totally deliver the goods. A lot of new movies have tried to replicate the classic 80’s adventure, movies like Super 8 & even the X-men: Apocalypse. None of these movies have really been able to fully channel the vibes of what it was like to be a kid back then but then comes along this series and they NAIL it. It’s thus far the perfect blend of movies like E.T., Firestarter, Poltergeist & The Goonies all wrapped up neatly in a box. Everything down to the wardrobe, the music and the sheer adventure captures that old Amblin/Speilberg vibe perfectly. It’s not a carbon copy tho they’re also bringing the scares in a big way.

Also awesome is to have Winona Ryder back front and center, she of course is a big 80’s crush of mine (duh right?) AND Matthew Modine too, so that definitely adds to the 80’s authenticity of the show. I’m curious what Netflix’s plan is for the series? Is it a one off or are they looking at more seasons? I guess I need to finish it and see where it’s left off. Here’s what The series creators and directors The Duffer Brothers had to say at this time about a possible second season:

“We wanted to do a couple things with this [first] season. We didn’t want to do The Killing thing. We wanted it to resolve that main thing of Will going missing in the first season. So in that sense, it is like an eight-hour movie. Now, we don’t answer all the questions by the end of the season — there are definitely some dangling threads. The hope is that it feels satisfying but that we left room and that if people respond to it we can go back into this world. But if we do get to go back, it’s not a second season as much as a sequel.” 

A sequel season sounds great to me, perhaps they could find a few other 80’s icons to flesh it out? Hmmm..Molly Ringwald or Ralph Macchio anyone?! The possibilities are pretty amazing if you think about it. Continue reading →

Stranger Things: Take Me Back to the Good Ol’ Creepy Days of the 80’s!

I’m quite excited about this cool new Netflix original series coming out July 15th! ‘Stranger Things’ has all of the vibes of those amazing Amblin style adventures that I grew up with as a kid. Judging from the trailer we’re getting a bit of an E.T., Poltergeist, Close Encounters and even a bit of a Goonies feel to this series.

The kind of movies where the heroes were kids in danger, the adults just wouldn’t believe a word they’d say, kids would cruise around unsupervised on BMX bikes trying to solve crazy mysteries. There’s something special about those movies that many directors over the recent years have tried to capture in movies like JJ Abram’s ‘Super 8’, Krampus and recently ‘The Midnight Special’. Add one of my biggest 80’s crushes, Winona Ryder to the mix and it so far looks like a surefire hit.

I just heard about this today as it kinda just came out of nowhere it seems but it’s one series I’ll be checking out the day it drops see the trailer for yourself and lets cross our fingers that this one captures the mystery of those old Stephen  King classics!

 

The Night Watchmen vs The Ghostbusters!

I just saw this cool little trailer for the a new horror comedy called The Night Watchmen which seems like a helluva great gruesome time. Despite the fact that there’s a new trailer for The Ghostbusters reboot that just dropped recently to me a smaller flick like The Night Watchmen thus far captures the vibe of a  Ghostbusters movie than this latest reboot.

I know that  there’s a lot of negative press out there already about The Ghostbusters and though I really want to be excited something about it feels incredibly forced.

It’s not the fact that the cast are all women either as many seem to like to claim is causing all the negative hype . Perhaps it’d made more sense to have at least a couple of the  original Ghostbusters pass the torch. It would have been cool to have Dan Akroyd & Ernie Hudson be a part of the movie as the last two Ghostbusters standing who need to hire some new recruits once the supernatural start to stir in the city again.

Instead we get another bland  reboot that thus far doesn’t look like it’s got much of a personality of it’s own. It also feels more like a sequel to the recent Goosebumps movie in it’s way of bad CGI effects that in 2016 somehow still don’t improve on the original movies. Anyway check out this new Night Watchmen trailer as a horde of vampires led by an undead clown attack the after hours employees of a boring ol’ office building..

 

 

Cat Crazy: The Top 10 Feline Flicks of ALL time!!

It seems we have so many movies we can bring to mind that involve dogs as their stars, yet I’ve noticed when it comes to feline focused flicks there seems to be a bit of a shortage! Well I’m here today to give you a list of 10 of the best cat-riffic movies of time! The cat’s just don’t seem to get enough respect in the movie industry, I’m betting that is because it seems much more of damn hassle to get a cat do exactly what you want on screen, but cat lover’s rejoice- here’s some must see movies that you and your cat can get cozy with and have hours of serious bonding!!

1. Cat’s Eye (1985)

This one was a favorite of mine as a kid in the1980’s and it still holds up to this day! A great little three part horror anthology with the cat at the center of all the action. Especially in the the awesome third act of the movie where you get to see the feline do serious battle with a maniacal little troll!! My cat totally digs this one-it’s his favorite movie hands down!

2.  Uninvited (1988)

Wow now this movie just plain RULES it! Total cheezy cat horror that’s bound to get any movie party in the mood to rage! This one features a cute little cat that’s got a demonic rat like creature living inside him that comes out to kill people when ever the cat get stressed out! The special effects in this one are awesome in the worst way possible! This freakazoid cat jumps onto a yacht with a bunch of dingbat college kids and some annoying criminals and has a jolly good time ripping them to shreds! A true feline classic!

3. The Cat From Outer Space (1978)

This one is a crowd pleaser for cats and humans alike! This one features a crashed spacecraft with an alien cat as it’s pilot. The cat’s got some weird ass name and he can communicate with humans. Of course the authorities are after the cat so they can do stupid experiments on it. But a man named Frank is there luckily to help this feline escape earth, kinda like E.T. with a cat! 

4. Strays (1991)

Another domestic house cat horror flick, which my cat seems to always totally dig! This one features a family who adopt some strays but end up with a whole horde of vicious cats terrorizing their household! This one isn’t really going to scare anyone but it might make you think twice before letting the cute lil’ stray into your home for a bowl of milk!!

5. Felidae (1994)

This is a cool animated German feline flick that’s sure to get your cat’s heart a pumpin’! We have some great animation as well as a cool mystery that a cat decides to solve! This one might not be best for the little kids as it revolves around a string of cat murders in a neighborhood, but it’s a good one for any cat who’s looking for a little suspense between their naps! 

6. The Black Cat (1934)

This one doesn’t have nearly enough cat action in it, but most cats will appreciate the fact that there’s a creepy black cat that causes a helluva lot of fear to some travelers who seek medical attention after an accident on the road in Hungary. The cat takes the back seat a bit in this one but at it’s core is the center of dread throughout the movie! Also cats seem to just dig the movie’s name a lot.  

7. Aristocats (1970)

This is a classic cartoon for people of all ages and cats alike! This one involves some cats who inherit a mega fortune from their owner and a butler who’s pissed off about it! I guess I can kinda understand the butler’s frustration here, I mean what the hell are cats going to do with a bunch of money and material shit anyway?! Well the butler decides to kidnap the cats and from there a whole ball of kitty mayhem ensues!

8. Homeward Bound (1993)

Another Disney movie that this time features a real life cast of animals. It’s got a cat teaming up with a couple dogs who find crazy adventure as they head off to find their real owners! This movie had some controversy around it because of all of the dangerous scenes the animals filmed. But as far as I know none of the animals were harmed in the filming, just real stressed out! This one I recommend talking about with your cat before viewing it to see if perhaps it’s going to get upset about the controversial side of this one, but also be sure to mention it’s got Michael J. Fox voicing one of the characters and Sally Field as the cat. I mean that’s some serious star power right?   

9. Sleep Walkers (1992)

This is a pretty rad Stephen King horror film about some weird ass people who can transform into “Were-cats” and choice of dinner is human virgins! Dang! Well it just so happens that their weakness is the domestic house cat who can see through their disguise and whose bites and claws can literally destroy them! My cat loves the final attack scene with the horde of house cats and the flaming explosion!! My cat totally loves Clovis the cat and has modeled much of his behavior after him!

10. A Cat In Paris (2010)

This one is a great animated foreign feature for the distinguished cat in the family! A great little adventure that features a cat who aides his owner in burglaries around Paris. Soon though the adventure really gets cookin’ when the cat himself has to help a little girl escape from the clutches of some evil gangsters! This one has it all mystery, action, class and cat courage galore!

and one more that deserves an honorable mention…

11. That Darn Cat (1965)

This one’s full of fun as a frisky cat aides a woman who’s been kidnapped find her freedom! The cat here leads the FBI on the ride of their life! If your cat likes vintage 1960’s fashion that’s a plus here too! 

‘Stitches’ Gives Freddy Krueger a Run for His Money!

I finally checked out Stitches which I’ve been waiting some time to see as it finally arrived on Netflix watch instantly. If you’re a fan of old horror icons like Freddy Krueger or Leprechaun then this movie will NOT disappoint! This cool little Irish horror comedy has got a pretty awesome little plot, based on a bit of a cliche. Clown goes to kids party, mean kids ridicule clown, clown dies by way of something one of the kids does.

Well though that seemed a little like previously trodded horror plot, the movie goes deeper into the evil clown mythos. It turns out that in this movie clowns get together in creepy dungeon like places and practice supernatural rituals. Which is one of the reason “Stitches” the clown comes back toget his revenge on this group of kids that are nowa bunch of jerk-off teenagers!

The vibe of the flick kinda gave me that Freddy feel, as Stitches is a full on wise cracker and comes up with the most inventive ways to get his revenge on with these kids. You’ll see him use a bunch of supernatural clown gadgets and you’ll see some pretty impressive special fx here as well. The movie is also pretty damn funny, picture if the kids in American Pie were hunted by a crazed undead clown at one of their wild ass parties-that’s pretty much how this one plays out. I was pretty surprised at how much I enjoyed this one. It’s got a nice simple premise and it’s a perfect party flick, beer, weed and cocktails are a must for viewing! Check it on Watch Instantly on Netflix! I’m hoping for a sequel!

 

Revisting Maximum Overdrive: Stephen King’s one time stint!

Over the holidays I picked up one of those double feature dvds at yes you guessed it…..Walmart. Though it doen’t make me a proud man to shop there there’s really not much of a choice when you’re in northern Florida visiting with your family over Christmas! Anyway it was a good deal, what can I say, two movies for five bucks! One of them being Maximum Overdrive and other Raw Deal starring Arnold Schwarzennger both 80’s classics nonetheless. So how could I turn that combo down for a measely five bones?

Though I am a big fan of old Arnold flicks what really sold me was Maximum Overdrive! Continue reading →