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".