Thursday, December 25, 2014

Movie Review: "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas"

Merry Christmas, you horrors of the night! Want to know what I thought about Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas...? (I put off writing about it for a bit; I thought I might draw a cartoon about it. But nah.)

Yes, Virginia: The Gil-Monster saw the lowest rated film on iMDB ever- AND HE SAW IT IN THE THEATER;* BOW DOWN BEFORE ME, JOR-EL!! Hearing that this beast was playing at the local Regal outlet, I saw it as a personal challenge! So my wife and I went on a cold Monday matinee to inhabit the theater with one other person sitting back and center- to make sure no one was going to set fire to the screen, I suppose.

The movie- and I use that term pan-galactically loosely as it's barely over an hour, even with credits and outtakes- opens with Kirk Cameron sitting at an easy chair. Sporting a gruesome beard that could only accompany a GPS-enabled ankle bracelet, Kirk espouses the joys of both Christmas and hot cocoa to an empty theater (save for me, my wife, and an old guy sitting back and center to make sure no one was going to set fire to the screen, I suppose). Exotic locations, like his real-life sister's living room and the interior of a SUV parked in a driveway, are where we are transported through the magic of film.

We spend a glut of the running time in the latter as it's where Christian, Kirk's fake brother-in-law, sulks because he, like a lot of people, gets sad at Christmas because that damn tree in his living room and that fat shitheel in the red suit steals Jesus' thunder- unlike a lot of people. In a moment that deserves to be in every horror film, Kirk climbs into the passenger seat and plays Six Degrees Of Jesus Of Nazareth with everything Christmas-y. For example, Christmas tree lots are just like the Garden Of Eden because of all the trees in them- only with a lot less warmth, nudity and animals. Instead of doing the logical thing- which is gunning the engine, driving headlong into a tree, and casting this former fucking conservative child-star homophobe FUCK out his windshield- Christian agrees with every one of Kirk's batshit bonkers allegories. Returning inside, he slides headfirst into the presents and a dance party ensues. There you go.

As short as this film is, it's also astonishingly PADDED. The camerawork is atrocious, with long slow-motion pans of Christian and his "wife" filling out the denouement, and a rock where the baby Jesus was born is dissolved to twice in the same scene.  And the message... ugh. The message of this film is that so long as you can tie whatever you're doing to the Bible, it's all right. Be as materialistic as you like, says Kirk- really- because Christmas Day was the day that Jesus took material form. Uh-huh? UH-HUH...? There are even more slow pans on the turkey and the feast and Kirk's sister's fine china to emphasize this. And even the outtakes suck.

Irony: one of Christian's beefs with Christmas is the money squandered on expensive one-off gifts, instead of food and clothing for the needy. Never once does he complain about the million or so spent nurturing Kirk Cameron's insanity with a selfish ego vehicle. There's a reason Rotten Tomatoes is tearing him a new one... 0/5 notions that a worm's-eye-view of the presents beneath the tree resembles the skyline of the future city of Jerusalem.
 
...Speaking of worms, here's the first-born Seaver child busting one to "Angels We Have Heard On High", hip-hop style. Note Kirk's "O" face what with the floor being the most physical contact his crotch has received in years.


*The Merritt family would like it known that the money that would have gone towards theater admission to Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas was instead donated to the starving children of the city of Panem; i..e., given to the first week gross of Mockingjay, Part 1. We felt Kirk Cameron could never be so gauche as to actually charge people to hear his message, given its importance.   

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Perky & Slick 2014-12-8: "The Force Awakens" Trailer


This week, something concerning a trailer to a movie or some shit; I can't keep track. Support this comic for as little as $1/month on their Patreon page!


Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Perky & Slick 2014-11-24: "Car Insurance"


Uploading Perky & Slick today because of the holiday! Happy Thanksgiving you guys! And please pledge and/or share this!

Monday, November 24, 2014

Matadors and gorynychs

New Perky & Slick is up at its usual place. You know how it works? You can either wait until Thursd- Wednesday in this case, due to Turkey Day- or you can read it now by becoming a patron on Patreon! As little as $1 a month will go a long, wonderful way, so please support this comic in whatever way you feel comfortable whether by pledging or sharing!


Greetings, Rochester Mini Maker Faire attendees! Welcome to the Chenille Macabre blog! I'm still in awe over how huge that show was, as my assistant will tell you. Did you manage to get a good look at the Gorynych I contributed to the raffle? I think it's pronounced "GORE-ee-NYKE", and I should have printed that on the publicity card I provided so as not to embarrass the announcer.

But apparently she had trouble saying "Chenille Macabre", so what can you do.

So this week marks the beginning of Holidays at The Hungerford, when from 10am-3pm each Saturday- starting on Small Business Saturday and ending prior to Christmas Day- the Blue Toucan Studio will be open to the public. I'll be there for a majority of them- and dammit, let's see if we can't get some AMPUTHEATRE going at a few of them too, huh? Geez, I miss that game... Come on down; follow the link in the sidebar!


So: follow Chenille Macabre on Facebook, and join the AMPUTHEATRE Facebook group so you'll know when a game is happening! That's it for now; enjoy the rest of the site!

Monday, November 17, 2014

The Deadliest Prey

New Perky & Slick is up at a place where you can read Perky & Slick. It's open to the public Thursday, but pledging gives you cool things like creator commentary and PDF's of each comic. Plus, I stay on the internet longer. Which is what this week's strip entails... give, won't you?


So I saw Deadly Prey. I gotta say: outside of slasher movies- where you got a mask, a few garden tools, ten friends, a camcorder, and had at- the "Rambo"-inspired military actioner could prove a close second when it came to DIY-home video movie making. You chat up your one friend at the gym with the rack and the looks, and sweet-talk him with the notion that his character is "haunted" so he doesn't have to say much or inflect anything, then you chat up your friends at the army surplus store to provide the uniforms and props, take all your bar buddies to the woods, and begin filming. Wahoo. Okay, there are a few helicopters and tanks in this. Anyway...

The dishonorably discharged and diabolically deviant Colonel Hogan is feeling the screws tighten on his private mercenary enterprise from evil suit Troy Donahue, of all people. The many setbacks facing Hogan are 1) his arsenal's grenades and tank shells boast concussive force barely equivalent to that of a dung ball rolled by its beetle into the side of Fort Knox, 2) his mercs are astronomically and explosively incompetent- inasmuch as a chunky, well-into-70 Cameron Mitchell can effortlessly sneak onto their compound and stealth-murder several of them whilst wearing a bright yellow shirt (this is based on truth), 3) Hogan's self-defeating habit of thinning his own troops' numbers whenever they open the newer carton of milk before finishing the old, and of course 4) Hogan's method of training said mercs- in which they kidnap random doughy guys from the suburbs, loose them unarmed in the California forests, and hunt them down- and Prologue Random Doughy Guy actually does take one of them down!! With a ROCK!!!

The final stream of urine in Hogan's cereal sprays when his men unknowingly abduct Danton, a blonde mullet in filthy white cut-offs whom Hogan personally trained. So awesome a soldier that he eschews such trivialities as rifle sights, defensive cover, calling 911, and looting the rifles from his kills, Danton stays in the woods to bamboozle and kill Hogan's men over the course of 90 minutes with all manner of impaling twigs and Styrofoam boulders. In a tasteful touch, women are shot point-blank in the face. A rape scene also briefly unfuns the proceedings, but the scenes where Hogan's squads obviously march ten feet beneath the dead tree Danton "hides" in are fucking comedy gold.

5/5 earthworms eaten by beefy mullety guys on screen for SURVIVAL. But don't take my word for it. Here's the thrilling denouement OH COME ON HE'S BEING SHOT POINT-BLANK IN THE FACE AND HE'S RUNNING FULL-TILT AT HIM



This coming Saturday is the Rochester Mini Maker Faire. I'll totally be there and I'm making a sweet dragon for the charity auction. So come on down!

Monday, November 3, 2014

I HATE MY VOICE PLAYED BACK

 
New Perky & Slick is up at their Patreon page. Those of you who support this comic get to read it now. Those of you who don't have three agonizing days spent in helpless wonder as to why they're acting all cool n' shit while Lara Croft carries a d20.

So I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween. I went as Anubis, Lord of the Egyptian Underworld: 
The mask was a Spirit brand Werewolf mask. I removed the fur and ears, painted it black and gold, attached sturdy scrap mat board ears, and attached the headpiece of an Egyptian Pharaoh costume. A very fancy hieroglyphicky ribbon brought it all together. Not too bad. And I'm too old to trick or treat, but NEVER TOO OLD to walk my dog in costume!

So I didn't finish that whole ONE HORROR FILM A DAY! deal. Sorry about that; October was uncommonly busy. I kept falling asleep through most horror films. I try not to build or draw during them so I can pay proper attention, but if my hands aren't moving then the rest of my body doesn't understand why it should. Eh, I'll keep watching stuff...

Here are two children running around the Village Gate at Mayday! Underground playing with a griffon and a dragon their parents bought from me. Don't you wish your children could be this happy? Come to First Friday this week and save their mortal souls!

Monday, October 27, 2014

The Book of MK3 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

New Perky & Slick is up; it's the Halloween episode and Karma tries to identify Perky's costume. So if you're pledging, you get to read it now. If you aren't pledging, well, there's only one thing for you to do if you can't hold out, isn't there...?


6 And so it was that Mortal Kombat 2 was released. And in every way it was better than the previous game with improved graphics, excellent gameplay, and even more gore. And FUCK: we got to play as a shapeshifter; my world hath been dropped on its head. And Baraka had blades, and we saw that it was good.
And Borderlands 2 was released, and in every way it was better than the previous game with improved mechanics, superb gameplay, and a welcome sense of humor. And the people danced, and they frolicked. And Terramorphous the Invincible died a sweet number of times and The Gil-Monster saw his Psycho rise to Level 72. And his wife played the Mechromancer and played a modern-first person shooter to completion and she saw that it was good.
7 And it came to pass that Mortal Kombat 3 was released. And, well... okay, and the people looked, and they spake saying well I get to play as a Goro-lady; that's novel. And they looked, and they that the character sprites were smaller and that there were no new moves for either Kung Lao or Liu Kang. And The Gil-Monster inputted the fatality codes he learned and LO, WHAT THE SHIT: these finishing moves are fucking SHAMEFUL. Inflating somebody's head so five legs explode off; do you just HATE us now, Midway?
And Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! was released. And I looked, and I saw that it was MEH. And the people at Gearbox had the game made by Gearbox Australia, which is a continent that receives its video games later than even the penguins in the Antarctic, and finds them marked up excruciatingly at retail and censored all to fuck. So there certainly isn't any bitterness to be had over a beloved IP. 
8 And so it was that chief good guy Raiden appeared in one title card, and the arcades were now silent of the cry of "Get Over Here!" And in his place was a chunky mall cop who never used his UZI except to fire a victory burst and whom nobody played for fear of being caught dead with him on the screen. 
 And so it was that Tiny Tina chirped but once about Bunkers & Badasses on the ECHOnet, and the living room was now silent of the cry of "You're going to be my new meat bicycle!" And in their place is a detestable lawbringer who speweth toxic homicidal shit and haveth a runt skill tree, and lo: the people remembered Face McShooty from the second game and remembered how dark humor was properly done. 
9 And it came to pass that the Running mechanic was fucking balls, and the dial-a-combos didn't really add anything new.
 And the lunar jumping mechanic proved to be obnoxious, since getting to where you directly wanted to go meant passing up every way point that would auto-save your progress. And lo, the people would die, and restart all the way back at the Fast Travel station. And they looked, and they saw that this got on their tits.
10 And so it was that the kombatants could knock each other through the ceilings of the arenas with uppercuts to continue their battles in different arenas. And I looked, and I saw that the backgrounds were always rotated in the same fixed cycle- so if you didn't want to spend the rest of the tournament in the Soul Chamber, don't use one of your best attacks in a fight, shithead.
And so it was that tamarin monkeys designed the explorable areas where long boring dungeons become longer and boringer with endless multiple key-fetching quests- right after killing a Big Boss, no less- and the enemies aren't populated properly. Like a pizza when the chef just fucking glues a packet of pepperoni to one slice of the pie and cries FINITO.
11 And so it was that The Gil-Monster really didn't miss Sonya Blade, and really wasn't sure what Kung Lao was even doing there since they never wrote a story for his involvement in the game.
And so it was that The Gil-Monster really doesn't need to hear Handsome Jack's side of the story- what wasn't fucking grasped? We saw him shoot our leader in the back. We witnessed him detonate Bloodwing with an explosive collar. We heard him callously murder hundreds of innocent people over the ECHOnet. We gathered that Angel's unmastered powers caused Jack to imprison and torture his Siren daughter once she accidentally scarred him and killed her mother. We have enough understanding of his evil, don't we? It's not like the Crimson Raiders were being coy about their motives to bring him down. EVERYONE is a killer in a Western- you hook up with the side that's the least crazy; case clo- Oh. Wait. Millions more dollars out of BL fans. THAT'S what wasn't fucking grasped.
12 And so it was that arcades demanded 75 cents per play, 50 cents per continue, for a game that likely runs thirty seconds.  
And so it was that Gearbox demanded $59.99 to play, $29.99 for a season pass, for a game that runs half the length of that of Borderlands 2.
13 And it came to pass that The Gil-Monster would come to play MK3 with his head hung low since he really liked Kabal, but he knows he's settling for less and likely can think of several other things he should have been doing as he liked the game one moment and hated it the next.
And it will likely come to pass that The Gil-Monster will come to play BL:TPS with his head hung low since his friends are playing it, but he knows he's settling for less and likely will hear several other people listening for periods in his verbal gripes so they can quickly insert attempts to correct him of his own opinion. And I looked, and I saw that this is why I have a blog.
   

Mayday! Underground is this weekend at the Village Gate, both Saturday and Sunday. So you should totally go to that.

Monday, October 20, 2014

ONE HORROR FILM A DAY! "The Monkey's Paw" and "Gargoyle"

New Slerky & Pick is up at the Patreon page. You can read it NOW by going here and parting with the teensy- but much adored- sum of one dollar a month! More... more is nice, too...

So I saw- FUCK, am I behind on ONE HORROR FILM A DAY!? This ALWAYS happens! I've actually been falling asleep on the couch to a lot of them lately; not out of boredom (except in the case of C.H.U.D.) but because of this. LOOK at this. Are you actually aware of how many PTUs* this little bastard pumps out?

 

*puppy thermal units

Well let's catch up with "The Monkey's Paw" which is a modern retelling of the old classic tale in which... well, let's put it like this. Say you want a puppy as adorbs as Max Damage up there, so you wish on the titular animal's titular severed appendage. How the paw will likely work is that while you're at work, a plane will crash into your house; when you dig frantically through the rubble and fire and debris for any survivors whatsoever, you'll discover beneath a fragment of burning wing the only one: a nine-month-old shepherd-beagle mix safe in his pet caddy. Neat, huh? Takes place in Nawlinns, which is always beautiful to look at and concerns a young foundry worker getting the paw. Wish #1 is "boy I'd like that car", Wish #2 is "please bring my friend back to life", Wish #3 is... well, Wish #3 takes about an hour and ten minutes to fulfill because our hero chucks the wretched thing away- which irks the friend, now a homicidal zombie who kills a lot of people who really don't have anything to do with the plot. This makes the movie far too long, but hey: it's pretty and has the great flair of NOLA. And the accents all seem legit. 3/5 industrial press kills.

Oh yeah, and I saw "Gargoyle". Oh, how could I forget "Gargoyle". Because there's a gargoyle in it. He shows up in the first like, two minutes... way to keep your monster hidden, Jim Wynorski! Oh, and he also has an egg chamber unlike anything you've ever seen before, except for maybe the one on LV-426. Michael Pare is FBI agent Eddie Wilson- no, "Griff" Griffon investigating a mob death in Romania and he runs into the PS2-rendered monster. There are excellent scenes where people do not properly interact with the CGI monsters they share a screen with, as well as a scene involving a SWAT team which I swear Pare slides directly into the line of fire of his partner's shotgun. That guy is always fun to watch, and always fun to quote saying "Hey, lemme TELL ya sometin'!" which I'm convinced was the only line anyone ever spoke in Streets Of Fire. Seriously, it's like Jack Torrance, but instead of All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

it's Hey, lemme TELL ya sometin'!
Hey, lemme TELL ya sometin'!
Hey, lemme yeah you get it. 1/5 devil worshiper dance clubs with the least Goth-people on the dance floor ever; fuckin' tourists...

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

ONE HORROR FILM A DAY! "+1"

NO, that's not "One Horror Film A Day +1", like it's a magical item in Dungeons & Dragons or something. The movie's called "+1". Plus One. Like the movie "Pi" was called 3.1415 or something. Yeesh...

So three or four college kids go to the biggest party of the year, right after a meteor lands. So what does the meteor do? Well it seems to throw everything into a quantum quandary in which the partiers find themselves doing everything they just did ten minutes ago, including main character David reconciling with his hurt girlfriend Jill and sex fiend Teddy "cockblocking himself" with new friend Melanie. What starts off as an indie-Groundhog Day turns panicked and violent, as the new renditions of the kids become more panicked and duplicate chases original. Kind of hard to follow almost, and it's not quite what I'd call a horror film (at least until the pool house beatdown) but I can't say it wasn't original. 3/5 missing daggers.

Monday, October 13, 2014

ONE HORROR FILM A DAY! "From Hell It Came"

New Perky & Slick is up. It suggests that "open carry" laws might be a less-than-exemplary idea, so you know the NRA will deliver a calm rebuttal with the politest of restraint. People who pledge as little as $1 a month get to read it now, while the poor and downtrodden must wait until Thursday. Be a cool kid- pledge today!

So while all of you were watching the season premiere of "The Walking Dead"- a show I don't follow, because the first four episodes were shite, shite, SHITE- I was sticking to my ONE HORROR FILM A DAY! thang and watched From Hell It Came. ...NOT From Hell, the Johnny Depp vehicle about Jack The Ripper. This is the better movie.

The setting: a remote Pacific atoll inhabited by "tribespeople" in tiki-patterned skirts and headdresses festooned in popcorn and paper-mache. They murder one of their own for daring to cavort with a bunch of hard-drinking scientists on the island, who are conceivably there to stop a tropical strain of the Black Death, but more likely there because 'Murica's been testing nuclear bombs in the same sea. The sacrificed tribesman swears he'll avenge himself from Hell, and he does- but as the Tabonga, a homicidal tree monster. The pretty but morbid Dr. Terry Mason uproots the tree and- with an IV drip, administerizations to "its adrenal gland", and no one nearby helpfully screaming IT'S A FUCKING TREE, YOU IDIOT- gets the Tabonga walking again. In full daylight, no less- the From Hell It Came crew is DAMN proud of that costume. "How do you know it was the Tabonga?" the tribal chief asks of one girl mid-flight. Murderously lumbering (pardon the pun) around the island and killing indiscriminately- even with its branch-arms locked at the elbows- the Tabonga finally meets his end when the scientists grab their guns and yes, yes, I know: it's a tree. We all yelled that fact at the screen several dozens of times. I won't mince words: you must see this.

Of note... "of note"? EVERYTHING in this film is "of note"! Where to begin? How about the dialogue? "Can trees grow in coffins"? And how about "Why do you have to be a doctor first and a woman second?" (I proposed to Dee with that line.) And we mustn't forget the character of Ms. "KILL-GORE", who is a dead ringer for the lead actress (give or take 10 years) and wakes up from a trauma with literally no idea of what her accent is supposed to be- it's like Siiri cycling through accents as you fly over time zones. Oh- and if you're itching to delve into the colossal library of 50's horror movies and you have yet to pop your "Don't shoot; you'll hit the girl" cherry, do not start here! 5/5 scientists incredulously theorizing around the Tabonga's grave, to the tune of their Geiger counter pounding faster than the heart of a rabbit on a treadmill.

Friday, October 10, 2014

ONE HORROR FILM A DAY! "The Tortured"

So I really, really hate the term "torture porn". Just so we're clear. Just to remind you: that genre of horror was borne of a new millennium where war was exploding all around us, and if we weren't on board with half the country over annihilating anyone who could be perceived as a threat to us, then we were regarded as clueless traitors. So rebellion came: in the form of a new uncomfortable horror film: a retaliation against the PG-13 crap of yore in which the act of torture itsself was revealed, examined, zoomed in upon, and shown in its awful glory as a mirror of what we had become in our quest for both vengeance and pre-emptive strikes. Trouble is, these films were hardly ever scary. At least Saw, even if it is a dollar-store Se7en, tried to put some urgency into its death-traps and freaked us out with a cloaked pigmask guy running out of the shadows.

Which brings me to The Tortured. Bill Moseley is sentenced to 25 years to life for kidnapping and killing a six-year old boy- but that's not enough; the boy's parents think, so they seek him out to kidnap and torture him. That's it. That's all of it. Well, not all of it. Both Mom and Dad trade the Conflicted Ball back and forth over what they're doing, and the best moments lie in the beginning. Dad was rummaging through a junk drawer hunting for sunscreen for the kid when he was abducted from the backyard, and when he angrily dumps its contents during Mom's accusations of incompetence, she confesses that she can't help but to blame him- unfair as it is. That was thought-provoking. And there's a twist ending- there has to be- to which I will only say this: if the Dad is such a great doctor that he can prolong the torture with chemicals, how can he not know the proper procedure for discovering if someone does or does not have amnesia? 2/5 ratings of 6% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is three times the Tomatometer rating of Left Behind with Nicholas Cage.

New Slasher: Dionne

Back from AMPUTHEATRE at Millennium Games. I updated the Temple Of Bloodshed arena with a new Chaos Card deck. Almost every Weapon in it lets you perform Reversals while wielding them- save for the Chainsaw, Cleaver and Crowbar that are Chaos Deck standards. Almost every Spell in it is a buff. Weaken, Impede, and Deafen are three new Spells that force its target to only Counter, Dodge and Resist attacks, respectively- in fact, a Slasher can choose to cast them on themselves.

But coolest of all, I introduced a new Slasher into the mix! Meet Dionne:
 
I don't have a proper history for her yet; I'll come up with that soon. Basically, Dionne is a maenad beginning her first year at college- and who killed everyone at a frat party because... because that's how hard maenads party. And she's still not satisfied! So of all the women in AMPUTHEATRE, there wasn't one that was an utterly chaotic, full-blown psychopath -neither a Harley Quinn nor a Tira in the bunch. For me, Dionne fills that niche. She's wearing an oversized Greek letter sweater as a toga, with a makeshift belt from some unlucky ombudsman's intestines.

Simply put, Dionne is a berzerker character. Every time she hits someone, she becomes more durable. She has excellent Movement, superb combo potential and a great wake-up game- she can Sunder from the ground. Her charge is longer than most, and she boasts a taunt that is both incredibly amusing and rewarding. On the downside, her Resist and Escape scores aren't the best (it is possible to Hold her still until she calms down) and her arsenal is probably too focused on the Counter-side of things.


Evil Deeds:
Bacchanalia: Dionne gains a stack of Carnage protection every time she inflicts Carnage. It stacks up to three times and can reduce Carnage against her by as much as 1/4.
Can Crush: Dionne chugs a beer and crushes the can against her forehead, Stunning herself. But this is a dare: anyone attempting to hit her must inflict at least 10 Pints of Carnage, or she reverses it into a Sunder! Dionne can perform this during the Rally Action, as well as While Rising. Beware: Missiles and Spells will override this taunt.
Party Crasher: Her most important Attack. Dionne charges all Slashers on a single space, Bleeding all she hits. It's a mid-to-long range charge that gets her into the thick of combat- where she belongs. This charge is completely safe if Dionne targets more than one victim with it- and the more Slashers on that space- the higher her chances of earning Bacchanalia.
Orpheus Strike: An Assault that inflicts double the Carnage during its Battery. Not a reliable death move, but the possibility of earning a Cheat is fairly high.

Desperate Measures:
Paradoxical Laughter: Dionne earns Cheats upon inflicting but 15 Pints of Carnage, instead of 20. Say no more.
The Bloody Earth: Dionne scratches a Blood Pool from the ground on her space. (I took that name from a My Dying Bride song.)

To succeed with Dionne, get her into the fray and never back down. Absorbing Blood Pools will shut off her Bacchanalia, so keep her Wounded to make use of Paradoxical Laughter. Taunt your opponents with a Rally Action Can Crush- many Slashers would rather nor risk getting Sundered.

We debuted her today and two players want this figure. I think she's a hit...

Thursday, October 9, 2014

ONE HORROR FILM A DAY! "The Reeds" and "Ravenous"

Okay, so I saw The Reeds which is about six British thirty-somethings who rent a small yacht and cruise up a freshwater river, only to find ghost kids who set fire to the dog of a marshland serial killer who stuffs his victims in gibbets at the bottom of the river in a doppleganger-heavy swamp which is trapped in a inter-dimensional quantum loop I think...? Well, the yacht gets moored on a sharp metal thing, which the most obnoxious Brit tourist falls on, so the other Brittourists have to walk along the boat very carefully so as not to aggravate the internal bleeding. And then they cut through the giant metal thing with a hacksaw, which I had trouble believing until all the other weird stuff happened. The acting was good, though. 2/5 times a guy with a massive chest wound is carted from place to place.

I had only seen Ravenous the one time, I think before the turn of the millennium when my wife Dee was still notably crushing on Robert Carlyle. It is during the Mexican-American War, and Guy Pearce plays John Boyd, a U.S. Army captain exiled to a remote fort in the Sierra Nevadas due to his cowardice. Not long after his deployment, a Scottish stranger named Colqhoun (Carlyle) arrives and tells them of his wagon train's fatal encounter with the man-eating, Native American monster Wendigo. I enjoy this film very much; it's almost a black comedy of sorts with Carlyle's psychosis and Pearce as a dubious protagonist. And I love cannibal films where they just tuck into the eating! Oh: and did you know Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz co-wrote the soundtrack? 5/5 droplets of blood pouring into someone's mouth.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Perky & Slick 2014-10-6: "O'Reilly's McRaiders"

New Perky & Slick for the week of Oct. 6, 2014! Support this comic for as little as $1 a month on my Patreon page, and share, share, SHARE!

ONE HORROR FILMS A DAY OR TWO: "Carrie" (2013) and "13/13/13"

Right, right, right... so I watched "Carrie", the 2013 remake with Chloë Grace Moretz in the title role, and Julianne Moore as her craaaaazy mom. You know the story: Carrie White gets mercilessly picked on by everyone, and just when she's having the dream date of her life and is made Prom Queen, she is drenched in pigs' blood. She then dons a purple wig, calls all the students "cunts" and fatally punishes them with batons and machine gu- no wait, I mean- she uses her telekinesis, which employs a lot of tai chi gestures- along with pyrokinesis and telepathy when the script demands. I don't know... I can't say this film was all that necessary. Moretz is waaaay miscast; the pressure with which she crushes her textbooks into her chest simply can't hide the fact that she isn't weird-looking enough. Any high school guy would spark up a conversation with her. I also felt like Julianne Moore was phoning in her performance- and I love her. Even sans makeup, I discovered. Of course, the final fates of Billy and Chris are much more satisfying, and there is fun to be had with Judy Greer as the kindly P.E. coach- especially when you hear Archer's Cheryl/Carol in her lines. 3/5 self-inflicted scratches in Margaret White's leg.

Then I saw "13/13/13" by The Asylum- yes, who ELSE would make a film called 13/13/13 besides The Asylum; it's them again and I think the only reason I watched this is because Chris Pallace is sick to death of them. This is the film that answers the following questions: 1) How can one shoot an apocalypse film that looks to have cost less than Robot Monster? And 2) What would 28 Days Later look like if no one wore any infected prosthetics? It's apparently the 13th day of the 13th month during the 13th year of the Mayan calendar, and everybody everywhere goes crazy-pants-pants-carzy... UNLESS you were born on February 29th, which is immediately deduced by two clueless survivors in the following exchange:
"Why didn't this affect us?"
"Well, are you a leap year baby? I was born on a leap year!"
The rest of the movie is crazy people talking to other crazy people- yes, they still keep their voices. So if they talk to each other, you're watching a bad improv group re-enact preschool, and if they threaten the protagonists, it's like watching very, very bad professional wrestling promos. I fell asleep. But it stars someone named Nihilist Gelo ("jello?"); he seems like a wonderful wackball and I'd like to meet him someday. 0/5 "whip crack" noises made by one's bachelor friends.

Monday, October 6, 2014

O'Reilly's McRaiders, Telgahr, and Cerberus


New Perky and Slick is up on the Patreon page. If you're pledging, which you can do for as little as $1 a month, you already know what Bill O'Reilly and this McDonalds employee are talking about. Otherwise, it's the purgatory of Thursday for you! Don't be unhip: become a patron today!


So as my Twitter pic has betrayed, I recently reestablished my old position of dog owner. Max Damage is a faithful little Shepard mix, and one of his buddies is Telgahr:
Telgahr has braces on his knees due to a bone deformity, and I'm helping my friend Bonnie raise awareness and money towards his surgery. This Sunday is a benefit for him at LUX on 666 South Avenue, and one of the prizes in the Charity Raffle is a pipe cleaner figure of the three-headed hound from Hell... everyone's favorite: Cerberus!



I'll have a clearer picture up soon; I wanted to get the word out. The lack of focus means that this is a fairly big figure, and it bears repeating: this is the only one like this OUT there. So if you want a unique handmade guardian of the underworld signed by a crazyman, head down to LUX this Sunday night and buy enough raffle tickets! All proceeds go to Telgahr's very costly knee surgery, which is something puppies shouldn't need... I'll also bring AMPUTHEATRE to Millennium Games this Friday night (the 10th) and the Cerberus will accompany me to promote more awareness.

If you can't make the event but want to help out Telgahr, his GoFundMe page is here. Max has just brought me something else he isn't supposed to be eating, so I'll see you this weekend.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

ONE HORROR FILM A DAY: "Long Pigs"

A Canadian cannibal documentary Man Bites Dog-style? Sign me UHHHP!!

So Long Pigs concerns Anthony McAllistair, a cannibalistic serial killer who lets two filmmakers (always in quotation marks in the film) follow and document his life and killings. It's undeniably chilling; one of my big complaints about cannibal movies is how long it takes for them to tell the audience what they've already figured out (to wit: THEY EAT PEOPLE) but this film tucks right in: fifteen minutes have elapsed and I've already learned to tie off the anus of the next overweight prostitute I prep for Thanksgiving. There's also a great sped-up sequence where Anthony turns a victim into freezer stock to The Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies. And the guy they got for the role is dead on; he plays the courteous cannibal with a terrifying calm.

Maybe it's too much like an actual documentary for its own good. There really isn't much of a narrative- none of the scenes really build up to anything. Bookending the footage of Anthony's life are dialogues from a late-night radio host and interviews with a police detective and a serial killer profiler, but they never truly gel. When the profiler mentions how "visionary" serial killers are the most dangerous of all- yet Tony neither has nor develops airs over what he does- we begin to believe that arbitrary roles have been given out to friends of the filmmakers. Speaking of which, if you're going to make a mockumentary, you might want to get some older actors... The detective can't be more than 30, so "in all my years on the police force" got a chuckle. Tony's Alzheimer's-afflicted mother in the nursing home (a subplot that goes nowhere) is only glimpsed between the shoulders of restraining orderlies for a very good reason- and her doctor! I hope he's aware that they're filming on a school night!

This is all nitpicking however; the performances are quite strong and Long Pigs pulls off a lot from its meager budget. 4/5 kittens in the pig entrails.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

ONE HORROR FILM A DAY: "Awakening Of The Beast"

For some time now I've been curious about the Brazilian horror hero Zé do Caixão, Known in America as "Coffin Joe", he's been terrifying movie-goers a good twenty years before Jason Voorhees sliced up a counselor or Michael Myers loomed behind a screen door. And unlike Freddy Krueger, his long nails are real: actor/creator/director José Mojica Marins grew his fingernails icky-long and kept them that way for public appearances. Bluck.

So on Frightpix they've got a couple of the Coffin Joe flicks, and I started with the most recent one on there: "Awakening Of The Beast". A round table of psychiatrists investigate claims of a connection between drug use and sexual deviancy, with Marins playing himself in the proceedings. A couple of sexploitation vignettes precede the Coffin Joe segments; these touch on themes such as deflowering, whoring, and a group orgy in which a co-ed dies from being penetrated by a wooden staff wielded by a Christ impersonator- edgy stuff for a B/W 1970 film.  The denoument is an acid trip into Coffin Joe's world which is filmed in color and feature weird-ass butt monsters, naked people falling down stairs, mass whipping, and other imaginative imagery.

It's Marins' self-defense in cinematic form; he poses that he's no more crazy than anyone else, and that drug use only induces perversion if you're perverted in the first place. But I wish I watched any of the other movies first; a clip played during At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul showed me what I wanted to be seeing. Pretentious, but still thought-provoking, and it gives you a glimpse into both censorship issues and the difficulties of filmmaking in Brazil- at least circa 1970. When Marins needs to round up four drug users from "all walks of life" for his final experiment, he looks directly into the camera and says "I know where to find some". 3/5 severed heads laughing on a man's outstretch arms.

Friday, October 3, 2014

One Horror Film A Day: "An American Ghost Story"

Yeah, I'm already behind. But I'll remind you of my rule towards One Horror Film A Day: so long as I total 31 movies by Halloween, I get to make up for lost time by watching two movies in a day. Not taking two days to watch a movie, which is what I did with "Revenant". What? You haven't heard of "Revenant"? You don't know what a revenant is? Why don't we call it "An American Ghost Story"? Oops! Did you mean to watch "American Horror Story"? Well you see... your money's already in the machine and I'm not authorized to open it; if you want it back I can give you a form to fill out and a guy will come by in... two, three weeks maybe?

So Paul and his girlfriend Stella knowingly move into this haunted home which can't be more than 60 years old, but nevertheless has had nearly thirty families live in it over its life. Paul needs a ghost to punch him in the dick so he can get the cred he needs to become a successful paranormal writer. That sentence isn't far off the mark in describing the plot, so Stella moves out after cabinets open at her menacingly. More like leaves the film. Then there are jump scares involving teddy bears and ghosts running around in sheets- which actually is somewhat effective, but only if it reminds me of the scene in Halloween where Michael Myers wore the sheet.

I've read comments on IMDb praising this film- and for the record "I've never written a review on IMDb before" is 1337 for "I am either friendly with or related to someone from the movie". I can forgive a low-budget, but I can't forgive wooden acting, a thread-bare plot, stilted dialogue, and no characters to speak of. And I thought that a revenant only went after the people who killed it; these are more like poltergeists... 1/5 murder house histories that The Amityville Horror told us we could use...

Hey: First Friday at The Hungerford is today! Come see us!


Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Perky & Slick 2014-9-29: "Commissioner Goodell"


New Perky & Slick is up! Support this strip for as little as $1 a month on my Patreon page!

One Horror Film a Day 2014! 10-1: "The Collection"

So last night; yes... I saw "The Collection". This is part of the ONE HORROR FILM A DAY! celebration that I do every October. Every October. Even the Octobers where my co-worker's wife is in labor and I have a puppy and there's a new comic due and First Friday is this Friday and the Vertex Goth Garage sale is on Sunday and I have to make a Halloween costume and Pressure is the enemy of creativity! Thank you, Joel Hodgson...

Right. "The Collection". Netflix said I'd love this. I dunno. I'm guessing it's a sequel to "The Collector" which I haven't seen, but I'm guessing The Collector is this serial killer who likes to murder an entire buildingsworth in the most Hollywood way possible, like with a huge thresher wheel shaving the top of a crowd of ravers, and then take one survivor to lock in a box or something. I don't think this truly makes him a serial killer in the traditional sense, but... Anyway, it's like Saw, but without any of that troublesome insight or poetry that Jigsaw infused into his deathtraps. So it's the sequel, so the survivor from the last film (I'm presuming) is wrangled into rescuing someone's daughter, and he's escorted by a paramilitary unit, and they all talk tough, and they all point their guns, and they... they... YAAWWWWWWWWWWWNnnnn, I confess to not making it all the way through this, and probably made a New Years' Resolution sometime back to sleep through any "horror" movie where the victims are all macho paramilitary. 2/5 appearances by Bubbles from "The Wire".

Monday, September 29, 2014

Ewww, there's like an OLD COCOON in here...

The new Perky & Slick is up on my Patreon page. Become a patron to read it now, or wait till Thursday now that all the comics are free to HOLY FUCKING ASSBASKETS; GIL IS USING HIS BLOG AGAIN! And there's an up-to-date convention calendar over there, and a Twitter feed, and a link to his studio and what the bloody monkey shit; I no longer know WHAT IS REAL

Facebook is getting tiring, that's for sure. Oh, I'll be there again and again, but nothing sucks the steam out of your witty little humorous post of the day like your up-to-the-minute Facebook feed churning out news of a plane crash or a school shooting. It's why Louis C.K. goes to the doctors for the results of his check-ups, instead of them running up to him on the Palladium's main stage. And then, there was this little moment of hooray:


This is me at Scare-A-Con 2014, with Frank Conniff and Trace Beaulieu of both Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Cinematic Titanic, posing with the miniatures of TV's Frank and Dr. Forrester I made them as gratitude for all the laughs over the years and the years to come. Here's a close-up of the figures:


These guys got so many hits that I realized that my own blog was in a sad, SAD state, and I kind of threw myself into an anxiety attack over it. That, and that I didn't put the watermark over the photo until now (which I know my assistant will kill me for.) Yeesh. So now we have a Twitter feed, updated links, and an actual Convention Calendar again.

Regarding AMPUTHEATRE: I'm a hell of a lot more done on the revised rulebook than I previously thought. I'm taking out the rules on Cheat Burns (the idea of just throwing Cheats into your die rolls) and just making far more useful Cheats. All it needs is a few more illustrations and formatting, and we're gold. I thought about adding a Glossary to the book, but... I don't know; maybe that can just go up on the website. The book is averaging like 50 pages now... I know that will turn off players, as if ripping off heads and arms won't turn off players...

Anyway. First Friday at The Hungerford is coming up, and I have chili to cook. And a new cartoon to start scripting... ya know, I love that panel of Slick whispering to Perky. That's likely going to become a meme in the near future.

-Gil

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Wednesday, September 17, 2014