Author: Allisonnnnn

Allison loves horror movies, writing about horror movies, and making fun of horror movies. Allison also likes writing in third person.

Geek On Set: Puppet Master X: Axis Rising

by Allisonnnnn

Following the 2010 Puppet Master: Axis of Evil, Full Moon Features’ Charles Band continues the famed saga with Puppet Master X: The Puppeting.  Two questions immediately spring to mind: 1. Holy crap, there’s already been nine Puppet Master movies?!  (Answer: yes.)  2.  “The Puppeting”, really?  (Answer: no.  I made that up.)

Having confessed that minor sin, I will reveal to you (because I am so very, very nice) the title of the tenth movie in the PM franchise… Puppet Master X: Axis Rising.

PMX takes off where the ninth installment left us, following secret-Japanese agent Ozu down China Town alleys as she flees the opera house with a puppet in a bag.

What, you didn’t see the ninth Puppet Master? What’s wrong with you?  To fill in this sad lack of knowledge…

In 1939, puppet master Toulon was gunned down at the Bodega Bay Inn, leaving behind his hidden puppet stash which the crippled woodworker, Danny Coogan, recovered and brought back to his hometown of Los Angeles to do some illegal puppet dealing.  Or, possibly, to find out what made the puppets tick.

While Coogan is mucking about in the puppets’ insides, World War II is launching and Los Angeles finds itself infiltrated with Nazis and Japanese agents.  Through a somewhat likely partnership, a Nazi and Japanese agent plot to destroy a Los Angeles arms factory, in order to cripple the war effort.  The wily…ish Danny Coogan finds out about the plot and, with puppets and sexy girlfriend in tow, puts an end to the Axis’ machinations, killing the Nazis as the Japanese agent (Ozu) escapes, having kidnapped one of the puppets.

Got it?  Great.  Continuing.

Ozu runs through China Town with her miniature hostage in tow, only to run into an entirely new Nazi foe, the sadistic Moebius.  After gunning Ozu down, Moebius snatches the puppet, Tunneler, and gives the pointy-headed puppet to his imprisoned scientist, Dr. Freuhoffer.   See, Moebius is obsessed with gaining the secret to eternal life, and he’s convinced that the good doctor can somehow grant his dream.

Dr. Freuhoffer, on the other hand, is obsessed with puppets.  Who knew puppets were so popular in the 1930s?  Seriously.

It is now up to Danny, his girlfriend, and their suddenly-found sidekick and comedy relief, Sergeant Stone, to save Tunneler from the evil German clutches and make sure America has a fighting chance against the Axis!

Full Moon Features’ Puppet Master X: Axis Rising releases later this Fall, but you can catch the premiere at Stan Lee’s Comikaze, the night of September 15th.

Geekscape Book Reviews: Batman And Psychology

by Allisonnnnn

What kind of nutjob dresses up like an animal and crawls around a night fighting crime?  We’re talking about someone who has an obsession of fighting crime, devoted their life to intensive training, and can’t maintain a healthy relationship with anyone but their butler.  On top of this, he’s followed around by a string of acrobatically-inclined kids in tights and the love of his life is a jewelry-snatching furry.

If you said “The Riddler,” you’d be wrong.  Like, really wrong.  I don’t even understand your thought process there.

If you said “Batman,” you’re stating the obvious and not being clever at all.  Though, of course, you’d be correct.

But is Batman actually crazy?  And, if he is, are all of the incarnations of Batman through the years crazy as well, or are some of them less nuts than others?  What about his famous Gallery of Rogues?  The Mad Hatter… probably nuts.  But villains like the Joker walk that fine line—is he insane, or is he just acting insane?  Why do some of Batman’s enemies end up at Arkham, but others end up at Blackgate?  And what’s up with all of those Robins?

In Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight, psychology professor and Batman fanatic, Dr. Langley, answers these questions.  With chapters like “Why the Mask?”, “The Fathers: Why do we Fall?”, and “The Madhouse: What Insanity?” Langley tackles not only the mind of Batman as we currently know him, but the collective being that is Batman from the character created in Detective Comics #27 to Adam West’s quipping crime fighter down to the darkly brooding Batman of Nolan’s Dark Knight series.

Through Langley’s explorations, we learn of the people –both villains and friends—that have touched Batman’s life through case studies, as well as how external events influenced the direction that the comics Batman inhabited took, like the impact Dr. Wertham’s book, Seduction of the Innocent had on the comic book industry.

Batman and Psychology is not simply an easy read about Batman but, first and foremost, an academic text.  Langley cleverly combines his two loves –as evinced by the title—to create a work that will draw the most disinterested psychology students in by using the seemingly universally loved Byronic hero of Batman.  Using concrete examples from the Batman universe(s), Langley explores Freud, Jung, Erikson, as well as Kubler-Ross’ Stages of Grief and many other classic theories psychology principles, making it a helpful read for any struggling student of psychology.

 

Batman and Psychology is published by Wiley.

Geekscape Book Reviews: Seraphina

by Allisonnnnn

When I was little, I was obsessed with dragons.  They were the beasts that replaced my beloved unicorns once I realized that the single-horned equines were for weaklings—scales and breathing fire?  So much cooler than a horn and the ability to attract virgins.

Rachel Hartman gets that.  Stepping away from the vampire/werewolf/zombie nonsense that has caught the young adult genre by its under-developed… er… boot-straps, Hartman has created an amazing world in Seraphina that doesn’t just feature dragons, but is defined by their presence.

The eponymous Seraphina is the latest assistant to Goredd’s court composer, Viridius, taking on the job just as one of the city’s beloved princes has gone and lost his head… to a dragon.  Well, the theory is that a dragon was the cause of death, but in a city only four decades into a rather unstable treaty with dragon society, that theory rapidly becomes “fact”—whether it’s true or not.

What makes things worse than they already were is that Hartman’s dragons can take human form.  That doesn’t sound too bad until we learn about the doubtful social skills of the dragons— skills a few steps removed from the comparatively charming cordiality of Star Trek’s Vulcans.  The culture clashes in the story hearken back to the race riots of the mid 1900s—with only one side erupting in violence.

But it is because of the dragons’ ability to take human form that Seraphina exists at all.  The supposedly impossible offspring of a human and dragon, Seraphina possesses physical and metaphysical manifestations of her blended heritage and does her best to hide them—something that was infinitely easier before she caught the notice of the royal family.

Running through a city slowly going mad, trying to uncover political machinations worthy of Lord Littlefinger while keeping her origins hidden, Seraphina finds that she might not be the only child of mixed blood and that sometimes that very blood comes back to haunt you.

Seraphina is one of those books that, if you risk putting it down, thoughts of it will stay with you until you pick it up once more.  The prose is simple and intense, dreamily romantic yet cuttingly precise.  You will fall in love with Seraphina and the beautifully wrought world she inhabits in minutes, so prepare for a captivating ride.

 

Seraphina is published through Random House Children’s Books.

Geekscape Interviews: ‘Fish Hooks’ Noah Jones and Maxwell Atoms

by Allisonnnnn

Geekscape writer Allison interviews Noah Jones and Maxwell Atoms from Fish Hooks!

So, tell me a little about what you’re working on now.

Noah Jones:  Well, my name is Noah Jones and I am the creator and one of the executive producers of Fishhooks on the Disney Channel and this is Maxwell Atoms, the other executive producer.  We’re in our third season of Fishhooks.  We’re really excited about where the show has been and where it’s going.  There are lots of fun, exciting, fishing adventures in store ahead.

How did you guys come up with this idea?

NJ:  I was illustrating children’s books out of my house on the coast of Maine and one day I got a call from one of the executives at Disney and they said, “Hey, we saw your characters online, we really like them, do you want to pitch us some shows?”  And I’m, you know, working out of my house on the coast of Maine, so I’m like, “What are the chances that anything will ever come of this?”  So I say, “Sure, of course, I’ll pitch you a show!  Why not?” and a week later I sent in five ideas and one of them was these little fish characters Milo, Bea, and Oscar.  Originally they were a punk rock band of fish, but they were like, “We actually don’t like the punk rock angle, but we love the designs of the fish.” – they were these crazy jellybean colors— so we kinda started from there.

From there we did a short and the whole time we were working on the short, I was thinking, “This isn’t ever going to go anywhere.”  You know, I’ve been around for a while, I’ve worked on a couple projects fall through so that I never got too excited about it, but they’re like, “Hey, short’s testing really well.  Do you want to do a pilot?”  And I’m like, “Okay, why not?”  So we did a pilot episode and the whole time I’m still living in Maine and they said, “Just so you know, the pilot’s testing really well and we might make it into a series and if we did, would you move your family out to Los Angeles?”  So I said, “Let me talk to my wife and see what she thinks about it.”

She thought it was a great idea because Maine was cold and rainy and so we had a one and a half year old son and my wife was seven months pregnant with our second child when we moved out to California.  She had never been there before, and it was this really weird kinda way to get into Hollywood.  Like Disney put this amazing team of directors, artists, and writers together, Maxwell was at the head of that and he has tons of TV experience and they put me in very good hands.  And that’s how this show thing started.

Has Comic-Con been really crazy for you this year?

NJ:  I remember last year at Comic-Con, I was nervous.  We had a panel and I was afraid that nobody would show up, you know?  It would be us two jerks just sitting there at the table going, “Hey, we’ll answer any questions that anybody has,” but there’s nobody there to ask us any questions.  But we filled the room and that was a pretty good feeling.  It was like 2,000 people, and it’s nice to know that you’re connecting with somebody.  We signed posters afterwards and the line was so long it was snaking across the court and we actually ran out of posters.  Part of that was we actually just came from the panel with Chelsea Kane and people adore her—she’s the voice of Bea.

MA: We ended up last year with some of the actors just walking around the floor and checking it out and then about five minutes into it, the job just became protecting Chelsea.

NJ:  It was like a thousand Batmans and Boba Fetts and here she was just in the middle of all of that.

I noticed that the animation style changes from outside the fish tank and inside the fish tank.  What was behind that divide in design?

NJ:  When we were first talking to Disney about doing the show seriously, they told us that they wanted us to do something that was different visually and totally from what else was on the channel, so this kind of collage-style was something that I came up with very early on.  I just took a picture of a fish tank and put out a chair and put it in the middle of it and dropped one of my fish on it.  And it looked so funny.  It was so funny seeing this dumb googly-eyed thing in the middle of this realistic environment.  We carried that through.  And one thing we are trying to do is to get back to a simpler background style.  Naturally as the show has gone on a lot of things have changed and evolved and there are some kinds of simpler things about the earlier episodes that I want to get back to.  I think it’s funnier.  The stupider it is, the funnier it is, as far as the look goes.  Visually we can make it look really goofy, and I think that works the best.

MA:  The photo collage  was something we kinda had to experiment with just because it was really intensive with all of the Photoshop the artists had to do.  At first we didn’t do too many of those, but I think everybody got up to speed and knows how to handle it now.

NJ: The animation studio, Mercury Filmworks, up in Canada, they’re really good at animating those photo collage characters, so once we figured out they were good at it, we’re like, “Oh, yeah, we’re going to do that a lot more.”  I think we’re all very proud about the show in general, but also about how it looks.  It does look very different, it does kind of plant a flag in the sand in a kind of a benchmark on how something could be visually interesting.

Do you have any plans on the series going forward?  Any hints you can give us?

MA:  Like I said, we’re in our third season working on pre-production.  We’ve got a really good second season finale—fish prom.

NJ:  The theme of the prom is ‘Under the Sea’.  That’s brilliant, right? [laughter]

But, really, we just watched the final picture this week and it came together really well.  The story is there, the heart is there, there are some emotional moments.  And it’s really funny.

MA:  I don’t want to give anything away, but the fans will be really excited to see what happens to the characters.

Are they ever going to go to college?

NJ:  Yes.  There is Fish University.

If they go to Fish University, what classes would they take?

NJ:  Fish Physics.  Fish American Literature.  Fish Film Theory.  I’m trying to think of stupid fish classes.

Which subject would each of the main characters major in?

NJ:  Milo would major in Fish Partying and Fish Video Games.  And Bea would do theater.

That’s been more of a trend in recent years of fan-interaction.  Have you been using that more as the show has progressed?

NJ: I think it’s something we’re all aware of.  We’re aware of the internet, and it’s the giant beast that’s constantly breathing down your neck and like analyzing every single moment of the show and line of dialogue.  And we do put things in there to kind of feed that beast.

MA:  Well, we honestly try not to do that most of the time.

NJ:  But there are things that we’ve read on the internet that are completely wrong fan theories that I feel that we’ve tipped our hat to, but in our own way because it amuses us.  Like, somehow it got out that Milo and Oscar’s last name is “Fishtooth” but it’s not.  We’ve never ever said their last name, but the entire internet is under the impression that that’s their last name.

MA: So they sort of make up these fictional identities in one of the episodes and that’s the last name they use.

NJ: Fishtooth.  Yeah, we don’t know where that came from.

Have you ever read any fan-fiction on the internet and thought “Wow, this is so insane” or “Wow, this is so brilliant, I wish I could use it”?

NJ: Mostly it’s the insane part.  And also, partly “how does somebody have this much time?”  But I love that they’re that passionate about the show.  Someone theorized that one of the first episodes was called “Pizza Cave” –I don’t know where that came from— and the kids go to a cave to get pizza.  And that’s something that I loved the idea of—a pizza cave!

Geekscape Movie Reviews: Exit Humanity

by Allisonnnnn

Before sitting down to watch Bloody Disgusting’s Exit Humanity, I found myself examining the box and asking myself one simple question: how do you survive a zombie uprising in the 19th century?  By the end of the movie, I had my answer: by carrying a six-shooter and being the original emo kid.

That’s right.  Shoegaze fans, I have found your progenitor and his name is Edward Young (Mark Gibson).  But let’s back up a little bit and focus on the fantastic(?) plot.

Sometime in the future, zombies have begun to sprout/hatch/breed/propagate, causing devastation the world over.  Somewhere in all of this, someone has come across an old journal that details the first zombie attack, which happened the year the Civil War ended.

This is where we meet Edward.  Young, dashing, and sporting what might be a neckbeard, Edward’s magic powers include drowning zombies and shouting… a lot.  Like, seriously, all the time.  If he was a Pokemon, his name would be YAARRRRRRRRGH.

I’d like to relay the plot to you, but as it seems to change every fifteen minutes or so, I can’t quite tell you what the overall driving force behind the story was.  It’s really as though someone pitched a TV show about zombies during the American Civil War and, after repeatedly rejections, decided to make a two hour long movie out of the five seasons they had already dreamt up.

It was too much.  Between Edward sobbing about his dead wife, sobbing about his missing kid, sobbing about his (un)dead kid, sobbing about his dying horse, sobbing about the bad man who knocked him out, sobbing about sobbing and then sobbing some more, this movie drags on like a bad fish, if such a fish was prone to dragging on.

“YAARRRRRRRRGH.”

High points?  The narrative voice of Malcolm Young (Brian Cox) had enough of the South in it to bring Sookie to her knees.  The flash animations that helped keep the budget costs down were pretty, though always a shocking contrast to the live-action Civil War era storyline.  Yeah… that’s about all I’ve got.  Sorry, emo-fans, I just can’t support a man constantly screaming in zombie-infested woods and surviving.

Geekscape Movie Reviews: V/H/S

by Allisonnnnn

I attempted to be raised on Tales From the Crypt when I was a wee fledgling.  It didn’t work—my father was too obsessed with subjecting me to terrifying doll movies and Wings.  Since that time, I’ve always had this soft, very unfulfilled, spot for anthologies that I attempted to placate with terrible, terrible marketing ploys put on by the SyFy Channel and others.  It was a sad time in my life, full of suffering.

Then, one magic day, I was invited to see V/H/S.

V/H/S is a found-footage horror anthology put together by a list of rising horror directors: Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, and Radio Silence.  That last one isn’t a person –it’s a group of people—in case you were concerned that Frank Zappa had a fifth child.

What makes V/H/S unusual when it comes to both the found-footage and anthology subgenres is that it doesn’t suck.  Sure, some of the shorts are better than others, but none of them are terrible and the collection as a whole doesn’t have that typical “Well, one out of three isn’t entirely bad…” ratio.

V/H/S’s tales are encompassed by a larger tale in Wingard’s Tape 56, which tells the story of a small posse (and it is a posse) of young hoodlums who are paid to break into an old man’s house and steal a particular video tape.  This might prompt you to ask two questions:

1. What makes this video tape so special?

2. Who the hell still uses video when DVDs are available?

What the boys are told about this video tape is “they’ll know it when they see it”—which is waaaaay too elusive and mysterious for me.  But they go along with it and start digging through the hordes of tapes this old man has in his house, with each of them retreating to watch a tape on their solo, and it is in this clever way we get to watch the rest of the anthology, retreating back to the Tape 56 story between each short.

My favorite, hands down, was Amateur Night.  Directed by Bruckner, this short follows a trio of young men hitting the town… with a catch.  One of the men has a miniature video camera installed in the center of his heavy black hipster frames, with the hope of snagging some naughty, back-at-the-hotel-room-post-trolling-for-hussies-at-the-bar footage.  Needless to say, as this is an anthology of horror and not of porn, their night is less than stellar.

Ti West’s Second Honeymoon is next, and follows the tale of a young couple via their hand-held video camera as they drive around the middle of nowhere (Arizona) on their honeymoon.  While I love West’s other work, this one was the weakest of the set for me—lacking the supernatural element the others all contain.  It wasn’t that it was bad –not at all–, it just didn’t fit properly, a jarring note.

In Tuesday the 17th (Glenn McQuaid) a daytrip goes awry when one of the oddest (and freakiest: half Bigfoot, half Silent Hill radio static, half Jason Vorhees for 150% freak factor) monsters begins quickly killing off a group of teens one by one.  My amusement in this short is that the male lead, “Spider”, is played by Jason Yachanin—the star of Troma’s Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.  His counterpart in both movies is a girl named Wendy.

Another strong piece is Swanberg’s The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger.  Talk about a mind trip.  The found-footage angle on this is interesting as well—it’s a recording of video chats between Emily and her long-distance boyfriend, James.  Emily is a bit of an oddball, while James appears to be the steady one in their relationship, trying to care for her through the internet as ghosts begin visiting her apartment.

The last in the set is 10/31/98 (Radio Silence), which is a recording of the Halloween adventures of a group of four friends as they explore a festive “haunted” house that turns out to actually be haunted.  The effects in this were stellar and the house concept was gorgeous, but my main beef with this short is that it should have been a movie on its own.  So much was jammed into a brief span of time that it felt more like a plot-spoiling trailer of something that could be really awesome.

So if, like me, you’ve spent most of your life in a gaping void wishing for a decent horror anthology, check V/H/S out.  Pro tip: if you don’t fall into that category, you should probably see it anyhow so when your cooler friends bring it up at parties, you can actually contribute to the conversation.

 

You can catch V/H/S in theaters on October 5th, or you can watch this awesomefest on Video On Demand on August 30th.

Full Moon Features Announces “Win A Role In Our Horror Movie” Sweepstakes!

by Allisonnnnn

What could be more awesome than ending up on the business-end of a camera in one of Charles Band’s movies?  Probably nothing you could ever think of, I’ll tell you that right now.

Beginning August 6th, you can enter to win a role on an upcoming Full Moon horror movie by applying at Full Moon’s Facebook page.  The sweepstakes ends on October 14th, and the winners will be announced on… Valentine’s Day!

Okay, I lied.  That’d make no sense.  The winners will be announced on Halloween, of course!

So go apply!  And, while you’re at it, pick up a copy of their latest movie, Zombies Versus Strippers.

Geekscape Movie Reviews: REC3 – Genesis

by Allisonnnnn

Nothing should get in the way of a woman and having her perfect wedding—not crazy relatives, not poor catering or a stuttering priest and definitely not zombies.  Fortunately for Clara (Leticia Dolera), the first three potential terrors were not an issue, but when one is a fictional character in a Paco Plaza film, zombies are the order of the day.

Tackling [REC]3: Genesis without his usual co-director, Jaume Balaquero, Plaza broke away from the expectations of the franchise and angled off to explore a different direction: a comedy of the undead.  Stifle your gasps of horror—the movie is still quite enjoyable, though if you are looking for the usual intensity and seriousness of the first two [REC] movies, you’re going to have to search elsewhere.

We are introduced to our lovely couple, Clara and Koldo (Diego Martin), just before they tie the proverbial knot.  The rest of the cast is cleverly introduced as two cameramen, the official wedding photographer Atun (Borja Glez. Santaolalla) and the potentially annoying cousin, Adrian (Alex Monner), explore and interview the wedding guests.

What is lovely about the humor and found-footage style during this decently lengthy section is that we are able to view the relationships between the characters, to see the humanity and experience that loss later on as each character turns into a wandering, teeth-chattering corpse.

However, what should become an emotionally intense tragedy as the wedding party descends into the world of brain-consumption, turns into a building farce as more and more absurd situations come into play.  Koldo dons armor and runs through the reception hall waving his sword while Clara’s weapon of choice is a blood-spattering chainsaw and the zombie battles border on ridiculous.

I am not saying, mind you, that this is a bad movie—it’s very much not.  It’s highly entertaining, beautifully shot, and quite hysterical at times.  But putting the label of the dramatic and intense [REC] franchise on this film was an error, and will certainly cause disappointment in more than a few fans as they settle into their comfy couches to witness an entirely new episode of [REC] that is not at all what they expected.

[REC]3: Genesis will be available on Video On Demand on August 2 and in theaters starting September 7.  In the meantime, check out the awesome promotional posters below.

J. Michael Straczynski Talks Vlad Dracula, Studio JMS, And More!

by Allisonnnnn

During the chaos that was San Diego Comic-Con 2012 Geekscape staff writer Allison got the chance to sit down with  J. Michael Straczynski. He’s the famed author, comic writer, and creator of Babylon 5.

A: On July 11th, you were announced as working on Vlad Dracula.  There were no details released, so what is that going to be, exactly?

JMS: What we wanted to do with that was to mix the historical story of Vlad Dracula with the fictional Dracula of the Bram Stoker novels and, in a way, by merging the two it deepens both stories.  We know from history that Vlad was with the Ottoman Empire for ten years— he had been given there as a child, as a hostage, basically, with his brother to guarantee that his father, Vlad Dracul, would never attack the Ottoman Empire, as a sort of insurance.  For ten years, he was raised by the sultan of the Ottoman Empire and then came back to Wallachia at the age of 23.  He was actually hailed as a hero by his people, he was revered because he helped kick the sultan out and he fought for his people in many cool ways at the beginning.  Over time, though, he got more and more dark, more dangerous, and was doing more things that were inexplicable or horrific.

So we thought it’d be interesting if, to explain that transition in his character, we discovered that he was cursed and became the first real vampire.  The cool thing about it in terms of what has already been done in vampire literature is that, for most stories, the whole lore of vampirism is a cliché— we know how it works.  Vlad doesn’t.  He’s the first.  He has to figure it out as he goes through it.  He goes to a chapel to try to pray and ask forgiveness from his god and he can’t even walk in the door and he doesn’t understand why his god has rejected him.  When he has a problem with daylight for the first time, he doesn’t understand why or what’s going on.  The process of figuring that out with him gives it a whole new dynamic and explains why the vampire thing works the way that it does—there’s a reason for it that is explained in the storytelling.  The show will track the first year or so of his rule as he’s trying to hold onto the things that made him normal— his normal life, his wife, his kingdom— as this affliction gets worse and worse and drives him right down into the abyss.

A: Since you’re combining the history with the Stoker novel, are you going to be setting the whole series in that older timeline, are you going to be jumping back and forth between the two stories, or are there going to be flashbacks from modern times?

JMS: In the first year, it’s all going to be set in that older period, the second year we’re going to move it but I can’t tell you where.

A: Cliffhanger!  So how are you going to be blending Stoker’s Dracula into that?  Just by using the same vampire mythos?

JMS:  To answer that question, I’d have to tell you where the series is going.  But you may see the events of Bram Stoker’s book set a couple hundred years later from a different point of view, that’s all I can say about it right now.

A:  Are you going to be creating people that you are just for this story that didn’t exist in history, or focusing more on existing characters, like his family?

JMS:  There were a lot of characters that were in history that we’re going to be using.  His wife, Justina, and his father, but we are creating additional characters.  Tamal, who was a friend of his for the ten years he was being raised by the sultan.  His brother, Radu.  When he and Radu were first turned over to the Ottoman Empire, Vlad resisted all Muslim influence while his brother went for it, which caused a schism between them.  When Vlad came back to Wallachia to rule the country, Radu stayed behind and was somewhat scheming against his brother.

There are others where we created fictional characters in a realistic context.  For instance, when Vlad came back, there was a group of guys called the Boyars who were the aristocracy in Wallachia.  They were like the mob, and had killed his father.  The Boyars were a tyranny throughout Wallachia, and Vlad arrested all of them, killed most of them, and then went to the average person in the street and asked them to pick the new Boyars, basically saying, “You chose who you want to help your country, you choose who you want to represent you.”  And this, in a way, introduced representational democracy long before anyone else was doing it.  For that, for driving out the sultan, for restoring order, actually to this day makes them still consider him a hero and we want to delve into why such bright beginnings had such dark endings.

A:  So how much research have you had to do for this?

JMS:  A lot.  I really wanted to take his background, ground it as best I could, and introduce the fictional elements to try to explain why did he did what he did.  Could I stick with a historical reason or could I go with a fictional reason?  Impaling people, that wasn’t his idea initially.  When he was with the sultan, and that’s how they dealt with guys who were trouble— Vlad learned it from them.  So when he starts staking people, he’s sending a message back to the sultan saying, “Don’t screw with me, I’ll do to you what you’ve been doing to others.”

A:  Is this project something you pitched to a studio or something that was handed to you?

JMS:  It was a meeting of minds— myself and Robert Tapert, who brought me on this thing.  We talked about it and I developed it further and made it what it is.  That’s part of this thing I’m doing, Studio JMS, if you’ve heard about it.  I announced it here at the convention.

I started my own studio.  We have two series that are in development right now—Vlad Dracula and Epidemic, for Will Smith’s company.  I signed a deal with Image Comics to bring back Joe’s Comics, and I have more comics coming out from them starting in the Spring.  We’re doing a web series for MTV.com and another one we’re still financing.  I have a movie I’m shooting in Berlin next year.  So we’re putting all of this under one roof now.

The funny thing about my career is that the comics fans I have don’t watch my television stuff that much and my TV fans don’t know about my movies or my comics.  So let’s get organized, get it under one roof and create a studio that is self-sufficient, not tied to a large studio.  The goal of that is, essentially, to own my own stuff, produce my own stuff, and have creative control—which is everybody’s dream.

A:  Yeah, I noticed when I was looking into your history that you had a lot of divisions with people where you were working on a project and it was going great and they’d take it into another direction and you’d back off of it.  So this is really going to help you not have to do that.

JMS: Yeah, if it’s going to be a dumb studio, it should be my dumb studio.

A:  Yeah, and you should be able to make your own dumb decisions.

JMS: Exactly, and I’m proud of that. [laughter]

A:  So how did you get to that point?  Why didn’t you start a studio earlier?

JMS: I didn’t have all the pieces together and I really have developed over time into the person that can do this.  There are a lot of guys that have a bigger footprint in television that I have and there are people that have a bigger footprint in comics and movies than I have.  But no one has all three.  Joss Whedon does the occasional comic, J.J. does movies and television but not comics.  So let’s take this and really make something out of it.  And it’s only been the last year that I’ve really had the resources that I needed.

A: So who’s in the studio with you that you’ve worked with?

JMS:  We’re just starting off, so I have Patricia Tallman who’s helping me run it.  She’s on the acting side of things and has her own business.  She has the business acumen to help me keep the thing on target, but we’re just gearing up.  We’ve got a guy we’re hiring to work on the web stuff, we have another guy we’re hiring to do demo reels, so we’re really starting to crew up now.

A:  And then you’ll have a lot of support under you when you start working on all of these of projects.

JMS:  Exactly.  And eventually I’ll be able to bring some writers on behind me.  So I’ll be writing just a year or two of comics and then co-write the next year or two with another writer and see where it goes from there.  So eventually we’ll bring in more writers, but right now it’s me doing my own stuff.

A:  Do you think it’s going to give you more free time?  It seems like you’re doing so incredibly much.

JMS:  I’ve never had free time.

A:  Yeah, it didn’t sound like you had.

JMS:  I write ten hours a day, every day, except my birthday, New Year’s Eve, and Christmas day and that won’t change.  It may go up an hour.

A:  Ten hours a day?  Some days have to be really grinding.

JMS:  No, it’s never a grind.  It’s always fun.  Writing should not be homework, should not be a hassle.  If it is, you’re doing it wrong.  It needs to be enjoyable for yourself because if you’re not enjoying it, no one else is going to enjoy it.

The problem that most writers have is that they can’t get out of their own way and they try to force it to happen and if you try to force it to happen, if doesn’t work.  The secret to writing, well, imagine your best friend for a second.  You’re walking across the living room and all of the lights are off.  And they bang their shin on the coffee table.  You know your friend, you know exactly what your friend’s going to say when that happens.  You don’t have to think about it, chew on it, worry about it.  You just know.  Writing should be no different.  You should know the character well enough that you just sit back, drop them into a situation, and write down what they do.  That’s how I work.

A:  Is there any part of a story in its development that is harder for you?

JMS:  Initially the research is the hardest part.  And then you get going and at a certain point, the characters start talking to you and they won’t shut up.  That’s when I know I’ve got it.  And I try to avoid writing it as long as I can to let the pressure build up so all the scenes are there in my head and the characters are talking to each other and I run to the keyboard to get it down.

A:  You’re not worried that, while you’re letting that pressure build up, you’ll forget parts of it?

JMS: For some reason I have a fairly good steel trap when it comes to dialogue.  I can hold every line of a screenplay in my head and all the scenes until it’s really there.  I write as fast as I type and I can type 120 word per minute, so I get it done pretty fast.

A:  Apparently. [laughter]

JMS: I’ve never not enjoyed the process.  I’m the luckiest guy in the world.  I get up every day and I get to do what I love for a living.  How great is that?

 

You can check out Studio JMS at StudioJMS.com, like them on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter: @Studio_JMS.

This Geek in Netflix: Carnival of Souls

by Allisonnnnn

After a series of unfortunate events that caused one too many reschedulings of happy-fun-time, I was pissed.  Absolutely pissed.  Pissed and annoyed and ranting to an ex-boyfriend about the vagaries of men who can’t manage their own schedules.

So I thought that, instead of attempting to find a good movie to watch, I’d go straight to something that I could release my very pent up frustration upon.  I dug through Netflix Instant with a fervor that could be likened to my occasional desperate (and often disappointing) hunt for AAA batteries.

Probably has nothing to do with the above paragraph.

But I wasn’t ready for the level of frustration that Wes Craven’s Carnival of Souls conveyed.  Released in 1998, CoS is touted on Netflix as being the story of a young girl, Alex (Bobbie Phillips) who witnesses her mother being raped and killed by a clown (who then comes back to seek revenge on the grown trauma victim).

I now address Netflix thusly:

FUCK YOU, NETFLIX.  RAPED AND MURDERED BY A CLOWN?!  HE WASN’T EVEN IN CLOWN MAKE-UP AND THERE WAS NO GODDAMNED RAPE. FUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOU.

“Rape time?” No, Alex, it’s disappointment time.

Not only was there no rape, Alex is absolutely convinced that the clown, Louis Seagram (Larry Miller), was coming back to get her.  You know, tie up loose ends.

First off, where’s his motivation?  Look, I understand the wanting to bang both the mother and the daughter.  That’s a thing.  Hell, if I could get away with an attractive dad/son combo, I’d do it.  But he didn’t even bang the mom so it’s not like there’s this awesome double-package deal.

Secondly, it’s revealed decently early on that not only is the clown dead, but that Alex is having hallucination after hallucination with hallucinations inside the hallucinations inside those hallucinations.

It’s fucking Clown Inception.

Basically my expression throughout the film.

With all this tear-inducing madness, there are two vaguely bright rays of sunshine in here.  One, Sandra Grant, Alex’s younger sister, is played by Shawnee Smith.  That name may sound familiar if you’re a fan of the Saw franchise, as Smith plays Amanda Young, Jigsaw’s apprentince.  Two, the male love interest, Michael, is played by Paul Johansson.  In my world, he’s just boneably hot but in the OMG teen girl world, however, he’s One Tree Hill’s Dan Scott.

So if you like your movies without clownrape, this is the film for you.

Exclusive Interviews From Comic-Con 2012: Mark Z. Danielewski!

by Allisonnnnn

Mark Z. Danielewski is the author of the cult classic, House of Leaves, as well as its companion novella, The Whalestoe Letters, and the poetic Only Revolutions.  Danielewski is known (and loved) for his intense and emotionally impacting work as well as his use of unusual type-setting and beautifully convoluted burying of passages and codes within his books.  We were able to sit down with him at this year’s Comic-Con and hear about his latest release, The Fifty Year Sword.

MZD: This is my first Comic-Con.  I’ve been hearing about it for years and finally I did it.  It’s such a sea of possibilities.  Different tidal currents and you enter into different places.  But I feel a little like I’m coming in much later.  Like when I went to Burning Man for the first time last year.  It’s sorta similar in a way, in the sense that it’s highly organized.  The way it started was like a communal pit where everyone would deposit their effluence.  But now it’s like a town with wonderfully groomed streets, you know, and it was a blast but I can’t say that I’m a Burner.  And I’ve been talking to some of these people that have gone to Comic-Con for sixteen years now.  It’s great.

A:  I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

MZD:  Yes.  Pantheon has me here for The Fifty Year Sword.  The Familiar is coming out in a few years.  It’s a ways off.  I’m writing this twenty-seven volume creature.  I finished volume nine recently and on Monday I’ll start the next.  Anyway, The Fifty Year Sword is probably what we should focus on because people can actually read it in October.  There’ll also be a tour around the United States and for the last two years running, I’ve done a shadow show and a reading of The Fifty Year Sword at the Disney Concert Hall, so we’re going to do it for the last time this Halloween— we’re going to have two shows.  We may do a version of in Seattle, and we may possibly do it in Chicago or New York.  It depends.  And Chris O’Riley who is a pianist who does arrangements for Radio Head and Elliot Smith and is also an NPR host for From the Top is going to be playing the piano with music that he’s composed and actors will be reading to it, so I’m pretty excited about that.

A:  I fortunately got a copy of The Fifty Year Sword just before Comic-Con.  It was really interesting.  I liked it, though I wish it had been in color.

MZD: The final one that is coming out is 288 pages, it’s full-color, and has about 88 images.  The heroine is a seamstress who is recovering from a divorce and she goes to this Halloween party and along comes the Storyteller and she ends up basically shackled to these five orphans and slowly but surely she realizes that the Storyteller is full of malice and the children are in jeopardy.  A lot of it is how we stitch together stories and how they unstitch us.

To create the artwork you’ll see in the book, I started sewing paper and eventually I had two other people helping me and we were sewing endlessly in these big sheets of paper all sorts of colored thread that were very specific to the colors of the book—the quotation marks.  That was a really challenging experience, how we created those pieces, and yet it was very exciting because it wasn’t just, “Oh, we’re going to illustrate the text.”  For me, it was creating pieces that were integral to the text, so you see that even this piece [on display], which is towards the end, is all sewed paper with red thread.  The text sort of interplays with all of that, and the book is going to be beautiful.

A: I figured it would be.   I have Only Revolutions and House of Leaves— I’ve had them for many years.  They’re both gorgeous books.

MZD:  Yes, we even did the same thing as with Only Revolutions where we have a cover with an orange jacket and underneath we have actually this piece printed, but on a higher quality.  And there’s going to be a special edition, just a thousand copies, that has a Nepalese binding and it’ll come in an orange box that has five clasps.  The Nepalese binding is the stuff I really love.  The spine is sheared off so that you can see the actual thread that binds the paper.  We’re getting the thread red, so you’re going to have the glossy photographic images of that on the front and back and then you’ll actually have the red thread.

There’s a lot of play, too, with what’s thematically represented and what is actually literal.  We have literal thread and literal cuts in the paper and, with that, you’ll have this image, this representation of it.  And it’s that constant play, as within all of my books, between the story that’s told and the context in which that story lives.  Because we all know that world around us far exceeds any story we can tell.  So there’s that presence throughout the book that this is a representation of sewing, and that there are threads holding everything together… or are they?  Language, which is amazing, is the purest form of all of that.  The words, as soon as you put them in your ear, dissolve and immediately become a part of your mental genetics and that’s what’s really exciting for me.

A:  So you picked “Chintana” as the main character’s name.  And that’s Hindi?

MZD:  There are all sorts of things.  I won’t parse all the names because there’s a lot of fun, as you can imagine, with them and how they’re pronounced.  She’s Thai, so the way everyone in the reading pronounces it is Chint-ahna, which is the way an American would pronounce it, but one of the actors we have is of Thai descent and she pronounces it correctly, which is Chin-tihn-a.  And, of course, there are meanings to that.

A:  And then there’s a misspelling of it, which looks like what you’ve done your previous works.

MZD:  Yes, there are no misspellings. [laughter]

A:  I figured.  While I was reading it, I was thinking to myself, “Oh god, it’s like I’m reading James Joyce right now.”  There’s definitely more of an awareness for me now of your work, after reading Joyce and going back to your books, how he plays with text.

MZD:  Joyce is such a pleasure to read.  And the specificity of his work.  Something that seems like a mispronunciation can be a reference to The Odyssey.  Especially in Finnegan’s Wake, there’s all this word play where you realize that “Oh, that sounds out the name of an Irish king or a river,” but at the same time it means something else.  But you have to be as responsible as you can so it influences a text correctly, which is certainly part of The Fifty Year Sword.  It’s not long, and to come up with that specificity and yet keep the playfulness of it and, you know, it’s sort of an eerie story.

What did you think it was finally about, or how did it live with you?

A:  It was different.  I usually review horror movies and, academically, I’m studying the memetic nature of fairy tales so, while I was reading this, I combined my horror-love with the fairy tale background.  Going through that knowledge base and looking at the structure of the story that the Storyteller told Chintana and the orphans and how he used a lot of the classic motifs but still totally broke away from them in a surprising way… and I’m still trying to figure out what cultures that it drew from, if any.  And it’s very Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  Almost that kind of curse.

MZD:  Coleridge is a good example.  That’s definitely an influence.  Poe, Coleridge, even people you wouldn’t think of as horror writers— Whitman and Wordsworth, are in there.  One writer I would check out is Aimee Bender.  Aimee Bender wrote The Girl in the Flamable Skirt—incredible use of fairy tales.

And since you write about horror, I think one of the things that fascinated me the most about The Fifty Year Sword is that a lot of art’s experience of horror and fear is about anticipation.  The actual gorefest tends to be funny and maybe shocking, but the fear is always in that anticipation, so there is something strange about a story in which a blade inflicts its wounds on the fiftieth birthday and you’re dealing with kids.  In a little way, you’re going, “Well, they’re still young, they’re still going to get a full life.  So who cares?”  Yet how terrifying is the notion that your life could be cut short at that moment, that some disaster will be there that would be known and certain? And what is that particular agony?

I think that horror is a wildly complex weave and yet when you start to pull it apart you realize that there are many different types of horror.  Different shocks of violence and fear and incongruities in the way we negotiate our anxieties.  I think the particular thread—all puns intended on the thread thing—that is important in The Fifty Year Sword is the fear and the anticipation of a certain death, a certain wounding, and how that’s really what’s at stake for people.

A:  It’s interesting that it also calls back, at least to me, the things you do when you’re little that come back and end up killing you later.  Little injuries, little damage, and that’s you stamped with your death date.  Right there.  That you achieved, you know, when you were seven years old.  And then you’re gone.

MZD:  And you know it.  Why is it so important to protect ourselves from that?  And it is, in a way.  I was at a showing of Danny Elfman’s music and he was being interviewed by Elvis Mitchell and Elvis Mitchell had a wonderful description about the playfulness of Danny’s music, that it was a combination of menace and fate.  I love that use of the word, “fate”.  Because that’s what it is in The Fifty Year Sword, that expression.  It’s fitting because, as soon as you’re fated, there’s a horror to that.  You’ve suddenly been marked and what a weight that is, what a fear.

 

The Fifty Year Sword will be available for purchase on October 16th, 2012.  

This Geek in Netflix: The Legend of Lucy Keyes

by Allisonnnnn

Kids, you’re going to have to forgive me for this review, as I’m still coming down off the high of Comic-Con.  And by “high”, I mean total lack of sleep.

“I’m done with your imaginary friend horseshit, Lucy.”

While digging through the horde of Netflix Instant movies, I discovered The Legend of Lucy Keyes, which had a fairly decent rating from its users and claimed to be about the haunting of a farm or some such nonsense.  What occurred, however, I would not exactly call a “haunting” as much as random vaguely spooky occurrences that really didn’t impact anyone among the living in any significant way.

It started off promising with my preferred generic opener: scene setters placed alongside really nondescript music.  Here’s a farmhouse.  Oh, here’s another farmhouse.  Here’s some leaves.  Here’s a cemetery.  Here’s a quaint town.  OH, FUCK, IT’S A MOVING VAN ATTACHED TO A STATION WAGON/MINI-VAN/OTHER FAMILY-ORIENTED VEHICLE.

“I’m never getting laid again.”

I like the classic clichédness of it all, as it reminds me of 70s horror films (i.e. a favorite of mine, Burnt Offerings) and it seems like it might have some promise at this point.  In pursuit of contract that would enable him to build eight windmills on some countryside acreage, Guy Cooley (Justin Theroux) moves his wife (Julie Delpy, who I know from a brief period in my life where all I would watch was Disney’s Three Musketeers—don’t judge) and their two little girls move to an old farm deep in the middle of nowhere.

What I will give this movie points for is actually attempting to try to establish the characters before launching into the… hrm.  It’s not exactly horror, as there isn’t anything really resembling a scary moment.  Huh.  Wait, I know!  Launching into the brief interactions with the not-so-recently deceased who don’t really seem all too unpleasant, honestly.  Sure, they’re a little loud at night and cause flashbacks, but other than that… very few unpleasant side effects.

Stays up at night wishing he had got the Comic-Con Derpy pony.

However, when you bring in the crazy neighbor, Judd Jonas (Mark Boone Junior – Robert Munson from Sons of Anarchy), and his Cruella deVille-like cousin, Samantha Porter, (Brooke Adams), suddenly ghosts aren’t needed for the horror factor anymore, as Porter does her best to keep the audience’s something-ain’t-right-here-sense tingling.

This film felt lacking for me.  Delpy was the workhorse of this film, pulling it with all her might (and a sexy accent), and Theroux definitely pitched in at times, but the overall effect was still somewhat lacking.  For a little over an hour and a half, I kept waiting for this movie to hit its stride and it never really did—all the pieces were there, they just weren’t assembled quite properly.

Comic Consequence: Preview Night

by Allisonnnnn

Comic-Con: Day Zero

Mr. Bibbiani and I arrived to our lovely seaside resort(slash) hotel in the early afternoon after rocking out to the rhythms of such classic artists as N’Sync and The Backstreet Boys on our trip down the 5.  Ex-Geekscapist Mr. Seibold met us at the hotel, briefcase containing unmarked $10s and $20s and one CD (a single of Beyonce’s All the Single Ladies) in hand.

After a jaunt to a nearby oyster bar (oysters devoured = 0), we attempted to board one of the many shuttles to the convention center—unsuccessfully.  Faces pressed against the darkened windows licked their panes in a flip-book style series of tauntings as the bus sped into the distance.  I sat and moped on the curb as The Bibbs attempted to calm The Sieb’s sobbing fit as the bus driver’s rejection of his plaintive cries apparently brought forth some unaddressed childhood trauma.

20 minutes later, a shuttle with at least 50% less nerds rolled to a stop, causing what I assumed was a homeless man in a purple Magic: the Gathering shirt who had, thus far, been laughing loudly at some unseen stimulation, to hasten to his feet and lunge towards the promise of air conditioning and the impending gratification of an oversized tarpaulin bag with The Vampire Diaries’s Nina Dobrev’s pouty face staring blankly into the distance.

As we chugged along to the convention center, I passed the time by pointing out various attendees and their physical similarities to ancillary Super Mario Bros. villains, while Mr. Bibbiani found himself awkwardly accosted by a bucktoothed screenwriter who felt the need to bond with a new-found nerd friend on his way to the Gaslamp.

Many drawn-out pauses later, we escaped the metal torture device and headed into Line Central: Land of the Bottlenecks.  Unable to find a Comic-Con employee with the knowledge we needed, The Seibs—always up on the latest technology—used his GPS to locate the Press and Industry line, and thus we shuffled along in what I’m sure will be one of many lines this weekend, being elbowed, bagged, and thudded by various nerdlings as they wandered to their next destination.

Once we had been regurgitated into the main lobby by Comic-Con registration staff (adamantly refusing aforementioned tarpaulin bags), we found that we were still hours off of anything of interest occurring.  Deciding to make our own entertainment, we strolled into the Gaslamp, immediately fixating on a restaurant that had been converted into The SyFy Lounge: Home to the World’s Most Expensive Tuna Salad.

Very impressed (and rather horrified) by the thought that anyone would pay $17 for a tuna salad, your destitute author, Mr. Bibbs, and Mr. Seibs shared a $7 basket of chips and salsa, with Mr. Seibs splurging on a $8 rootbeer float.  (“A bargain at one-quarter the price,” comments Mr. Seibs.)

At 6PM, we found ourselves in yet another cloud of people—90% saturation making rain increasingly likely—hovering outside one of the entry doors as Comic-Con staff herded us in a sudden (and unwanted) right turn up a set of escalators.  As your author found herself transported in the way Mufasa was transported by wildebeests, she cried out for The Bibbs but was swept up the escalator minutes before rescue could ever hope to arrive.

Once the musical number involving the warthog and meerkat was complete, the Exhibition Hall swung its tiny glass doors open wide, ready for violation in the worst possible way.  Into this brutal scene the trio went, miners’ helmets and pick axes ready to stave off the sturdiest foes.

Between visiting Sideshow to plead for their daily gift card (Darth Maul for Wednesday—Thursday is a mystery, but your author hopes for Purple Tentacle but, of course, she just hopes for tentacles in general) and starring glassy-eyed at the limited Comic-Con 2012 Derpy pony figure, your author found herself in one of the worst situations known on this earth: a four electric wheelchair bind.

More rare than “Makin’ Bacon” in Pigs in a Blanket, the four electric wheelchair bind is an impossible foe to defeat, as the four-wheeled terrors gravitate towards each other in such a violent and magnetic way that it has been known to provoke seizures in small children and the elderly.  While nearby responsible parties deal wrench open tiny jaws to prevent tongue dislocation, the surrounding viewers come to a grinding, throbbing halt of awe.

Your author was trapped and, as the hours passed, she realized that there would be no surviving Comic-Con 2012.

This Geek in Netflix: White

by Allisonnnnn

Dear readers, you may have noticed a several week absence on the part of your author.

By your author, I mean me.  Please save yourself some confusion.  I know dealing with second person point of view can be a bit disorienting at times, but try to keep up.

Cuter than any sleeping kitten video.

Trust me when I say that it was absolutely necessary to take those few weeks to floss my Japanese turtle.  Which is much kinkier than it sound, believe me—I’m a professional.

In celebration of my long-awaited(ish?) return, I’ve decided to gift myself with the 2011 Korean flick, White: The Melody of the Curse, AKA: White: Melody of the Curse, AKA: White: Curse of the Melody, AKA: White: Curse Melody of the.

WTMOTC is about a not-so-much-loved K-Pop all-girl group, Pink Dolls, that discovers a VHS tape in an old studio that has a song and dance number that suddenly catapults them into fame.  Tragically, the tape comes with a curse: the angry white-haired ghost of a former pop performer set on the destruction of any one who attempts to take the lead role in the song.

Random herbal drinks give you wiiiiings.

I know, I know—it’s amazing that I kept myself away from it from so long, especially given my love of K-Pop.  But I did manage to finally sit down and learn to love the four girls of Pink Dolls.

Okay, that was a lie: three of them were total cunts.  Yeah, you heard me.  Jenny, A-rang, and Shin-ji kept picking on the poor back-up dancer, Eun-ju, who was such a sweet heart.  And I heard from Sun-ye that A-rang even switched Eun-ju’s shampoo for a name-brand!!  WHO DOES THAT?!!

The Asian version of “The FP”.

Fortunately for Eun-ju, between over-imbibing fluids, what appeared to be self-impalement, and a tragic accident involving a crane, those little show stealers are soon put out of business.

This movie started off as one of those underdog-rises-to-fame flicks.  Everything was in place: the lead female on her way out the door due to age, the three other group members biting at her heels to leave, the pathetic loss at a competition to another girl group, and the miraculous discovery of the song “White” that would save the band.

Proof that there are mimes in Korea.

It’s almost as if one writer turned in a screenplay to his partner who, as a practical joke, rewrote it as a horror flick.  Or maybe I’m just projecting my own love for team-killing onto the writing world.

The imagery in the film was often intense and, as the story began to reveal itself, the recurring themes began to make more sense and added to the film’s artistry.  Sure, a few parts of it were very much the standard gore that I see way too often in Japanese flicks like Tokyo Gore Police, but even with those hiccups, it was still fun.

This woman almost converted me to lesbianism in less than 90 minutes.

Of course I have a soft spot for those cheesy dance movies (Step Up, Center Stage, Take the Lead, etc. embarrassed etc.), so combine anything along those lines with a tragic ghost story and people running around shrieking their little K-Pop heads off, and you’ve got a perfect winner for my late night consumption.

No, not that kind of consumption.  RedTube and I will be discussing that after I wrap up with Netflix.

If you find yourself craving a late night snack, that special blend of two delightful worlds, start buffering White: The Curse of the Melody of the Melody of the Curse on Netflix on Demand.

Grown Up Fan Films: On the Set of Terminator XXX

by Allisonnnnn

In a world full of crimpers and side-ponytails, Kyle Reese (Brendon Miller) and Sarah Connor (Bailey Blue) fight side by side to bring down the Terminator (Dick Delaware) in this yet to be released Hustler film, This Ain’t The Terminator XXX.

Through awkward mishaps and a high body count, will Kyle and Sarah be able to link access ports long enough to produce John Connor?  What happens when The Terminator receives his very first lap dance?  Exactly how many Sarah Connors are there in Los Angeles?  These questions and more will be answered in The Terminator XXX!

The Terminator XXX also stars Julez Ventura, Billy Glide, Alex Gonz, and Julia Ann.

Geekscape Movie Reviews: Apartment 143

by Allisonnnnn

Continuing on the popular found-footage trend that has haunted us to varying degrees of intensity since The Blair Witch Project, Nostromo Pictures’ Apartment 143 delves into the oft-visited world of parapsychology in apartment number—you guessed it—143.

Dr. Helzer (Michael O’Keefe) has descended upon the home of the White family with gadgets ablazing in an attempt to locate, document, define, and hopefully banish what they hope to be an actual paranormal event.  His team consists of the beautifully accented, technically-oriented Ellen (Fiona Glascott) and the likely high school drop-out and camera man, Rick (Paul Ortega).

The White family’s case is an odd one, as it has the elements of several different types of paranormal sources.  Bizarre sounds, the apartment shaking, objects moving around the house, apparitions, possessions, hovering, and the likelihood of a traveling spectre, as the White family moved once these events began plaguing them.

What makes this film fascinating is not the haunting itself, but the chase the movie puts you on as you attempt to figure out its source.  First, there’s the daughter, Caitlin (Gia Mantenga), who clearly has some sort of trauma-based psychological issue.  Then there’s the four year old son, Benny (Damian Roman), who by virtue of being a small child in a horror film immediately rises to the top of my list of suspects.  The father, Alan (Kai Lennox), does not seem to be without his own demons—one in the form of his recently and violently deceased wife—yet another possibility.

Of course, then one has to wonder if they had the bad luck of escaping one haunted residence into a new residence that was haunted prior to their arrival.  At that point, really, you just have to give up on life—that’s like moving from a house located on top of an Indian burial ground to a house located on top of a pet cemetery: you’re clearly fucked and a third relocation will probably land you at a refurbished mental hospital converted (after a tragic fire that killed all of the terribly violent inmates) into a set of charmingly underpriced apartments.

The movie was mostly typical of the genre, very little that hasn’t been done in other films.  But it did have its fun moments and the explanation at the end didn’t quite satisfy my curiosity—something I love.  I kept thinking I knew the answer and realized that I only knew parts of the whole, as the film slowly trickled out information as opposed to doing it all in shoddy, expositional conversations that always feel so false.

Apartment 143 is available On-Demand through Magnet Releasing.

This Geek in Netflix: House of Voices

by Allisonnnnn

In 2010, I watched a Spanish horror film called The Orphanage.  That movie scared the shit out of me in a way that hadn’t happened since I was little and was pressured into watching one of the Chuckie movies with my father who proceeded to spend the next several months trying to create exciting new ways to terrify me with antique dolls.

Clearly the love-child of Geena Davis and Natalie Portman.

The Orphanage was released in 2007, three years after the French-Romanian horror film House of Voices (original title: Saint Ange) debuted.  I bring the former up as House of Voices is, essentially, its mellow French counterpart.

No, not in its plot or atmosphere, but in the motifs that cycle through the two films.

House of Voices revolves around the happenings at Saint Ange, an orphanage in the French Alps in 1958, and the newly hired cleaning woman, Anna (Virginie Ledoyne – Francoise from The Beach).  Anna arrives to Saint Ange during a mass exodus—the orphanage is shutting down as the children are being shuffled away having all been miraculously placed with foster families.  It is Anna’s job to help put the building back in order.

I’m a rocket… man…

No, don’t worry, this isn’t some sort of oddly arousing BDSM flick of the sexy scullery maid working herself to the bone while some disturbing landlord looks on and strokes his… chin.  Anna has help in the forms of the haunted Judith (Lou Doillon) and the stout cook, Ilinca (Dorina Lazar).  The trio are left quite alone as they scour the kitchen, dry the laundry, and play dress up.

This solitude is good for Anna, as we quickly discover that she is pregnant and very much against this whole state of child-bearing and wants to desperately pretend that her rapidly expanding stomach is just a case of extreme gas.

[Insert the lyrics to every Madonna song ever here.]
During her moody explorations, Anna begins hearing noises and seeing children scurrying about the deserted hallways of Saint Ange.  Convinced that something is up, especially after being warned by a departing orphan to avoid the ugly children (really, don’t we do that naturally?), Anna starts digging into the history of orphanage, with the trusty Judith by her side.

This film was an interesting contrast of elements.  Visually, it was full and beautiful without being overly lush, save for those brief transitions into “ghost areas” while being heavily contrasted against a very small amount of dialogue, almost enough so that the story could become easily lost if a single sentence was missed or misheard.  This minimalist take on the dialogue removed a lot of the traditional verbal exposition and explanation, leaving the movie wide open to interpretation.

I call her “Twitchy McGee”.

The character of Anna swung between being sympathetic and loathsome, causing me to alternate between cheering for her and wanting to punch her whining face, which is a fairly conflicted stance to take on a serious horror movie and an odd choice of presentation indeed.

In the end, this was more of a ghost story with heavy psychological elements than it was a horror movie, causing the tale to be of a more mellow form than that of The Orphanage, but even with its gradually accelerating pace it certainly never strayed—at least for me— into the territory of the boring.

If you’re looking for a movie to slowly unfold before you with a haunting echo, queue up House of Voices on Netflix Instant.  If you’re looking to be scared shitless and possibly never sleep again, watch The Orphanage and be prepared to cry yourself to sleep that night.

Zombies Versus Strippers: An Interview with Alex Nicolaou

by Allisonnnnn

Director Alex Nicolaou recently wrapped up one of Full Moon Feature’s latest projects, Zombies Versus Strippers.  During an all too brief break, Nicolaou– yes, you do recognize the name, as he’s the son of Subspecies director Ted Nicolaou– took the time to speak with Geekscape about the trials and rewards of working with an excess of zombies and bare flesh.  As if there could be an excess of either of those.

A: Was this your choice?  When this project came up, were you like “Yes!! Zombies and strippers!“?

No, actually, it’s a funny story.  I got hired to rewrite a pre-existing script and apparently an executive at Red Box had come up with the idea and they had the script  and I got hired to rewrite it.  I brought my friend, Frank, to write it with me.  We do a radio show on KXLU and we write all sorts of sound sketches and special episodes so we’ve done a lot of writing together.  We hammered it out in probably seven days for no pay, just a page one rewrite.  We kept in some of the lines, the basic trajectory of the plot and what happens, stripped out some unnecessary exposition and increased the character quirks and changed the characters around.  We decided that frat boys weren’t as interesting as punks, so we changed frat boys to punks and basically we were working out of love for movies like Return of the Living Dead and just all these really inspirational movies from the 80s.  So we’re trying to work that retro vibe into it, but as soon as we rewrote it, I pitched myself as the director to Charles (Band) and got the job.  Immediately after that, pre-production began.  Which was its own special chaotic situation.  We basically had to cast the movie as quickly as possible.  I think casting ended about two days before shooting began.  We had a table read that went really well, we have a pretty amazing cast—they’re really working their asses off, they’re all really great actors, they all fill their characters out really nicely, come up with brilliant suggestions and ideas to throw in there.  The only problem is, thus far, we’ve started with two of the heaviest scenes in the movie in terms of just dialogue and the amount of characters, so it’s been a really testing first couple of days, but we’re getting through it and the stuff we’ve shot so far looks great.  I’m really excited about it, I can’t wait to see how the rest of the shoot goes.

A: And this is your first movie?

This is my first movie, correct.  I made a bunch of films in college and had been writing a lot of stuff, but I put it down to pursue other things.  I worked for about a year in a sort of punk rock cinemateque called Cine Family on Fairfax, where it was a continuation of my film education.  We were showing a different movie every night, from the insanely obscure Son of Dracula, which is a Bollywood horror film that just has some of the most psychedelic bizarre sequences to John Cassaveti’s(??) movies.  So this theater just shows everything.  They’re amazing and I learned a lot from them.  And then I stopped working there in December and started writing again, got the call from Charles and wrote the script.

A: So everything’s great, this is something you wanted to do– direct films?

It’s something I’ve really wanted to do, and this is definitely one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, just trying to block scenes and stage action on the fly… because often times, by the end of the day we’ll have three hours remaining and still a number of scenes we have to shoot and suddenly the set-ups and shot lists that I had intended to use are no longer possible.  So immediately I have to think of something completely different.  I guess what we really realized is that the script we wrote and the script as it appears on the page cannot be the same one… it would be impossible to get the script that we wrote fully on camera.  Time makes everything different.  Time is the most important thing, making the schedule.  So, we’re trying to throw in as many artistic and aesthetic flourishes as we possibly can but the most important thing is that we get this movie shot in nine days and there’s a ton of action and a ton of characters and we want that to be the case, because we feel like everyone has a really nice character arc, the story’s cool and the dialogue is funny and there’s cool references in there.  But, man, is it hard to jam it into such a condensed time period.

I would not be able to do it if I didn’t have such an incredible camera crew and DP.  Everyone is fighting so hard to help make the movie that I’d like to make on this time frame.  So if I didn’t have some of those people backing me up, there’s no way I’d be able to.  I am directing this one, we’ll see where it goes from there.

You can check out the on-set coverage of Zombies Versus Strippers over here.

This Geek in Netflix: Chawz

by Allisonnnnn

Sometimes, I worry about the state of America.  We disrespect the trees, the animals, and our neighbors—okay, so I’m not so concerned about that last one, I’ll admit.  But the animals!!  They’re so goddamned cute and fuzzy and I want to cuddle them until their little cute and fuzzy heads pop off.

...what?

This view was clearly shared by Korean director Shin Jung-won when he decided to make the environmentally-focused Chawz (AKA: Chaw or Chawu).  Get this: there’s a plague of chipmunks in a small forest in Korea.  These chipmunks are so goddamned adorable that humans cannot help but pick them up for some mad cuddle action.

Unfortunately for the human populace (and practitioners of bestiality), these chipmunks have bred with some genetically-modified porcupines from a corrupt laboratory in Seoul and, whenever squeezed, they shoot deadly spikes that were previously buried under their sleek chipmunk pelts.

Chipmunk-related wound.

This wouldn’t be so bad save that, due to massive deforestation by a logging company, the chipmunks are fleeing into nearby towns, hypnotizing residents with their big brown eyes and stripy little behinds into fiercely cuddling them.  With the plague of chipmunks spreading quickly, Officer Kim and environmentalist Soo-ryuun have to work together to stop the impending devastation.

…I may have just made that all up.

Okay, I did.  I couldn’t help it—the idea of somehow rigging one of these chipmunks with a delayed squeezing device and tossing it into a crowd of hipsters was too appealing.  I was weak.  I’m sorry.

I said I was sorry!!

In reality, Chawz is a combination of many (too many) moving parts centering around a giant hybrid boar living in the woods outside of Sam-mae-ri, “the crimeless village”.

Moving Part #1:  The Village Chief and the President (president of what exactly, we never learn) are encouraging deforestation and land development to take their tiny crimeless village and revitalize its economy by labeling everything as “organic”.

Moving Part #2:  Grandpa Chun’s only granddaughter gets eaten by a mutant boar while he’s passed out from too much booze and not taking her calls, rekindling his hunter’s spirit.

Moving Part #3:  Officer Kim is suddenly moved to the crimeless village with his crazy mother and angry pregnant wife.  He daydreams of leaving his mother at a truck stop.  I’m pretty sure his mother daydreams about being invited to the Royal Twinkie Ball and being seduced by Prince Sno-Ball.

Loves Hostess products.

Moving Part #4:  Graduate student Soo-ryuun and her oddly Shaggy-esque partner find parts of Grandpa Chun’s granddaughter while camping out like a pair of dirty hippies in a field while looking for evidence of the giant boar.

Moving Part #5:  Totally unneeded character of crazy, gothy village woman and her “adopted” son Duk-goo(!!) who does absolutely nothing but instill sudden distrust of infantilism.

Moving Part #6:  Famous hunter Man-rae Baek (who winds up in Pampers at the end of the film, by the way) and his team of “Finnish” (AKA American) bear hunters descend upon the village to wipe out the boar menace.

I don't even know. But definitely not Finnish.

Moving Part #7:  Boars.  Offspring of cast-off government hybrids who have learned to love human flesh due to their forests being demolished and the only food available being freshly-ish buried human bodies.

It’s a mess.  It’s a two hour, two minute long mess.  Half of the moving parts listed above could have been rendered completely unnecessary to the film with slight adjustments instead of causing this unfocused hairball.

However, this movie provide things I’ve never seen before, like a boar in hot pursuit of an old handcar or a boar that squeals so loud it shatters glass or even a boar with a hide so tough that bullets bounce off of it.  And, on top of those highlights, the CGI and animatronics team did amazing things—so much higher quality than I expected from this film.  I was thinking it was going to be another Pig Hunt which, while fascinatingly amusing, lacked on the boar-puppetry.

Chipmunk explosion!!

Do I recommend it?  Not really.  It’s so disorganized that it’s almost boaring… see what I did there?  “Boaring”!  HA!  What, not funny?  Crap.

If they decide to make a squeal, er, sequel and it’s only an hour and a half long or less, maybe we can renegotiate my terms of mental engagement.  However, if you don’t want to wait for an unannounced sequel and you’d rather brave this film’s boorish waters it is –as always– available on Netflix Instant.

Geek On the Set: Zombies Versus Strippers

by Allisonnnnn

Being on a Full Moon Features set would be a dream come true for some people, a Make a Wish Foundation project come to fruition, without that pesky immediately-descending-death thing.  Full Moon is, after all, the company that brought us such movies as Puppet Master, Subspecies, and The Gingerdead Man among so many countless others—and they really feel countless.  This is a film company with a horror movie pedigree that can’t be easily compared.

So you can imagine the sound of my delighted girlish squeal when I was invited by Full Moon to set to watch the magic in action.  And by magic, I mean zombie horde.

Recently, Full Moon began working with Red Box to bring more of their movies into the public eye, making it now quite easy to drop by your local Red Box stand and pick up titles like The Dead Want Women, Killer Eye: Halloween Haunt, and Killjoy’s Revenge.  With this, Full Moon has begun to produce movies with a wider audience in mind.

Thus film Zombies Versus Strippers is about to descend upon us in all its brain-consuming glory and, yes, my right frontal lobe already has started to feel devoured… by excitement!

Spider (Circus-Szalewski) is a business man who is down on his luck.  His strip club, The Tough Titty, isn’t doing well and has put him into dire financial straits.  An offer of buyout from Ralph Fiorentino: The Parking Lot King has started looking more and more like the only way out and Spider is finally starting to seriously consider it.

Now, this could be a movie on its own.  Throw in Tom Hanks as Spider and Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman as strippers (one of them has a deathly ill kid—probably that little girl with leukemia from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) and this could be a heart-warming tale of wrecked lives healing through someone’s rundown dream of perfect tits bobbing along to a great beat.

Or it could be a great musical.

But this movie doesn’t have any fatally flawed kids.  What it does have is a set of strippers and a zombie outbreak.  Let’s focus on the important part first.

Bambi (Victoria Levine) is an adorable little blonde and one half of the movie’s brief love story, and she is flanked by the sassily stereotypical Vanilla (Brittany Vaughn) who could double in spunk for Foxy Brown and Sugar Hills (Eve Mauro), an older but still quite libido-friendly woman with a smart mouth and a penchant for booze.

Then there’s the zombies… and there’s a lot of them.  They like brains and shuffling.  One of them looks like Michael Jackson.  And they’re never explained.  This movie focuses on what would happen if the employees of a strip club with no internet access in the middle of the ghetto was caught in the middle of a zombiefest and had no idea what was going on.

Because, really, when you’re in the not so pleasant parts of town, most of the people smell like rotten meat, shuffle, and are prone to launching themselves at you with teeth a-chomping.  I’d like to say that I haven’t experienced this first hand, but I’d be lying.

The patrons of The Tough Titty probably wouldn’t have survived on their own for long but, fortunately, a group of bikers led by the reformed Red Wings (Brad Potts) and an unrelated wild young punk (Adam Brooks) find themselves taking refuge among the denizens of the Titty as they hatch a plan for escape.

Who will win in this battle of breasts, booze, and decaying flesh?  Find out by picking up Zombies Versus Strippers at your local Red Box this summer, or by purchasing your own copy from Full Moon Direct.

Also, come on over and check out this interview with Zombies Versus Stripper‘s director, Alex Nicolaou!

I'm surrounded by zombies! YAY!

This Geek in Netflix: BreadCrumbs

by Allisonnnnn

Some weeks it feels like I just can’t win the horror movie lottery, no matter how many tickets I purchase.  Not only did I buy the ticket this week, I also managed to fall asleep when they were calling the winning numbers—not that my numbers were the lucky ones.

These socks remind me of every Max Hardcore film ever made.

Okay, this metaphor is going on far too long.  So, if you didn’t get it: I watched another bad horror movie and it bored me to tears.  ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?!  Fuck, stop forcing my inner literary student off the symbolic road.

In 2011 (last year, for those of you who aren’t keeping track… of time!!), Industrial Motion Pictures released the vaguely Hansel und Gretel-themed film, BreadCrumbs.  No, that “und” is not a typo.  Go read a book or something.

This is what happens to you when you don't read.

If you don’t remember, Hansel und Gretel was a Grimm Brothers story featuring—you guessed it—two children named Hansel and Gretel who, through all the variations of the tale, basically wound up being left in the woods by some adult (who was occasionally related to them) and one of the kids, while being taken to his/her leafy fate, left a trail of bread crumbs behind them.  Unfortunately, the bread crumbs were eaten by birds, the kids found some sort of witchy dwelling (typically a house made of candy), and then were captured by a witch who wanted to do horrible things to them.

This has next to nothing to do with this movie other than some references that briefly pay homage to the classic tale.  So why did I recount this highly memetic tale that you probably already knew?  Frustration.  It’s this amazingly classic tale with all these wonderful tropes to work with and the finished product of BreadCrumbs falls terribly short of expectations.

Except for this scene. Expectations = totally met.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

BreadCrumbs tells the story of Angie (Marianne Hagan), a MILFy porn star in every sense of the word—save that she has no actual offspring.  Which means that, basically, she’s an older performer who now gets contracted to do MILF-themed and cougar-themed porn.  (Who knows too much about porn?  This chick.)

Angie and her co-workers have decided to rent a cabin in the woods (no relation to the movie Cabin in the Woods) and film an adult movie (aka: porn).  So we have the creepy camera guy (Jim Barnes), the doubtfully straight make-up artist (Shira Weitz), the annoying director (Mike Nichols – also this film’s director), the producer (Darbi Worley), and four other performers (Zoe Sloane, Alana Curry, Douglas Nyback, and Steve Carey).

Uh, like, yeah, this bathrobe is so Fall/Winter 2012.

Unfortunately, even with this fairly visually accurate crew, the script failed to provide any sense of realism of a porn set to those of us who have been on them.  More on that later.

While in the woods, the group comes across two “kids”—Patti and Henry—who seem to be rather insane and out of place.  After handling them oddly, the kids are dismissed from thought and it’s down to partying and filming.  However, before they can really get down to business (*rimshot*), things begin to go awry and one of the performers ends up being really well hung.

By the neck, people!  By the neck!!

Oh, hai! I got you this rock!

Was it the kids?  Was it the wielder of what sounds to be some sort of electric trimmer in the distance?  Don’t worry—Scooby and the gang will find out!

When this movie wasn’t boring me to pieces, I was either busy yelling at the screen about basic realism (on so many levels, so many levels—what porn star shrieks and covers her chest when she sees someone watching her film a scene??) or moping that a movie that had the beginnings of a solid concept behind it failed so miserably script-wise to deliver.

The casting of the children did not help either—the dialogue and interpersonal interactions showed a clear relationship between adults and what should have been nine-year-olds, but the people who were cast were in their late teens which caused incredibly heavy dissonance.

WARRRRRBLE!

Recommendation?  Avoid.  I could see some of the actors and, yes, even the director, doing some good things—but this isn’t one of them.  Between the miscasting of the “children” and the thoroughly unresearched script, this film was sadly doomed to failure.

But if you want to experience this for yourself you can, as always, find it on Netflix Instant.

This Geek in Netflix: Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge

by Allisonnnnn

Sometime in the mid-2000s, someone translated a manga to its English title, Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge, and was immediately fired for their translation skills.  But due to freak accident involving a stapler, a copy machine, and a micro-ferret, it was too late to retract the press release.

Micro-ferrets! Man the cannons!

Thus the live action Japanese film, Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge, was released with its bizarre title in 2008, allowing yet another triumph to go to the side of the micro-ferrets.

What can a film with such a title be about?  Well, I think it’s quite obvious—if you rearrange the letters in the title, you’ll get one of the main character’s names: Eri.  And because of where the chainsaw’s sun sign was at the moment of its birth, we know it’s a Leo with a Gemini rising and, therefore, has Venus in retrograde, meaning the male lead’s character name is Yosuke.

Yosuke. He's a squirter.

So we have the pretty Eri and the doubtfully attractive Yosuke, who we know has a bit of an afro due to the reaction of magnets and a hair pick to this homeopathic water that we have taken from set.  Now, because of the vibrations coming off this theremin, the story rapidly opens up…

Yosuke is a not-quite-devoted high school student with no real passion for life, other than “topping Noro”—no, not in a BDSM sorta way.  Noro was one of Yosuke’s good friends, a charismatic, devil-may-care, other clichéd descriptors blond who died in a motorcycle accident.  After Noro’s death, Yosuke realized that he’d never be able to naturally do something as cool as die in a motorcycle accident, so he began searching for a way to “top Noro”.

I don't know what the one on the right did, but he did something.

Fortunately for Yosuke, on the way home from a recent bout of kleptomania, he comes across the haunted figure of Eri, a young girl with a tragic past.  Recently, Eri has found herself in possession of super powers—the usual magical girl stunts without any of the sparkly powers or light-show enchanced transformation: speed, ability to jump thirty feet in the air, sudden prowess with weapons, etc.

With this odd blessing comes a curse: the Chainsaw Man.  Unlike the very clear title of the movie, the Chainsaw Man is a bit more complex… he has a chainsaw.  And he’s a man.

Exhibit A.

Eri and Chainsaw Man do battle every night.  From what I can tell, the Chainsaw Man lives either on the moon or underwater and his arrival is always preceded by a halting snowfall.  This is never explained.

In their battles, it is Eri’s job to pierce the Chainsaw Man in the heart with some sort of weapon.  When she does this, he does not die, merely gets a little irritated and flees back to the moon.  This is also never explained.

Yosuke decides, with all of this, that the best way to “top Noro” is to force his friendship on Eri and stalk her until something goes horribly, horribly wrong with one of her fights and then dramatically save her by sacrificing his own life.  You know, the basis for a healthy relationship.  Hijinks ensue.

She'll clean your windows... for vengeance!

This movie is pretty typical for a manga translated into a live action film.  The male characters, especially Yosuke, are completely over the top—think Great Teacher Onizuka over the top, but expressed in live action, which can be a little disconcerting if you aren’t used to the usual anime tropes.

Other than that, the movie was beautiful, the acting was solid, and, yes, while the pacing definitely seemed as though someone was taking a very long plot line and condensing it into a little less than two hours, it was still entertaining.

No! Not bad!!

Almost makes me to want to forgive it for the bizarre title.  Almost.

So if you’re an anime fan with an interest in live-action films… or if you just want to see what a battle between a chainsaw and a golf club looks like, fire up Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge on Netflix Instant.

Geekscape Movie Review: Entrance

by Allisonnnnn

Living in Los Angeles, you get stuck with this breed of people we call “hipsters.”  They’re six shades of awful toting around oversized Raybans and ugly sweaters with the occasional neckbeard and, honestly, there’s this trend for one-size-too-small pants that the guys rock that isn’t remotely flattering.

So when I put in IFC Midnight’s Entrance and saw that it revolved around events in what I’m certain must be the hipster capital of the world, Silverlake, I cringed.  No, no, no, I thought, please, no.  I want to like this movie.

Suzy (Suziey Block), a young woman in aforementioned Hipsterville, moves about in a mind-numbing routine of feeding her dog, applying make-up, and working in a coffee house.  But there’s something a little off about her.  She’s nervous, twitchy, unhappy, and more than a little isolated even though she lives with one of her friends.  Instinctively she knows that there’s something out there, something that’s not right at all.

Her instinct is definitely on the mark.  Little things begin to happen, easily dismissed, but they still keep her a bit high strung.  As the movie builds, she retreats from the incoming danger, only to find that it brings it that much closer with crazed aggression.

At first, the movie is choppy, disjointed.  Feels an awful lot like Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, save that it manages to stay in chronological order.  The camera is shaky and obviously tripod-less when she goes for her walks through the city, which annoyed the hell out of me, but I was eventually able to accept the bobbling of the view.

As the movie progresses, I was strongly reminded of the recent horror film, Silent House, starring Elizabeth Olsen.  That particular movie’s gimmick, much like Hitchcock’s The Rope, was to appear as though they had shot it in a continuous take.  The camera never leaves Olsen’s side.

It’s much like this for Ms. Block.  The camera almost never leaves her and, not only that, but the takes are insanely long.  It’s amazing watching the product of what had to be strenuously worked through choreography between the camera man and Block, and having this constant input of only seeing what Suzy sees and her reactions to said stimuli is incredibly intense.

This movie is definitely worth seeing so, if you’re like me and carrying a hefty amount of hipster-disdain, leave it at the door and enjoy this lovely film.

Entrance can be found in theaters, on IFC Midnight Cable VOD, SundanceNOW, iTunes, Amazon Streaming, XBOX, and Playstation Unlimited on May 18th.

Geekscape Movie Review: Asylum Blackout

by Allisonnnnn

I have a few deep-seated fears: dolls, children, and crazies.  If you ever want to make a movie that will cause me to go out of my mind, make it about a children’s insane asylum—the dolls will work their way in there somehow.  I mean, you can’t not have crazy children toting around dismembered dolls, you know?

When IFC’s Asylum Blackout showed up on my door with that intense red and black cover, I was a little nervous.  Sure, I love horror movies— I watch them more than any other genre, but some of them still manage to scare the crap out of me.  But I steeled myself and settled down for the ride.

Asylum Blackout tells the story of George (Rupert Evans), Max (Kenny Doughty), and Ricky (Joseph Kennedy) —three bandmates who spend their days working in the kitchen of Sans Asylum, a high security mental institution for the criminally insane.  Their shift consists of doing the standard kitchen stuff: receiving food, preparing food, serving food.

It just all happens to occur behind a thick glass window with a tiny little opening to shove through the tray.  Because that’s not unnerving or anything.

After a chunk of time spent being introduced to the kitchen workers (most specifically George— I could not differentiate the other two band members and their friends due to near identical grunge hair and beards) and the creepy, shuffling, and occasionally violent inmates, a storm hits and wipes out the building’s power.

You know, hence the word “blackout” in the title.  It makes sense, yes?  Great, we’re moving on.

The power blowing out means, in this case, that the outside perimeter of the building is locked down but, for some not-quite-explained reason, all the inside doors are unlocked.  With what appears to be a growing inmate conspiracy, George and co. run through the asylum looking for a way out while fighting for their lives.

This film started out, while not exactly strong, interestingly.  The visuals were good, the lighting was intense, the atmosphere was coming along nicely, and the soundtrack called to my inner grunge kid.  But as the movie progressed, it shifted to the sort of Hostel gore that has become increasingly popular in the last several years.  You know, noses being bitten off, fingers being eaten, hands being chopped up, one of the characters slowly having their skin removed with a potato peeler… you know, that great stuff.

When I approach a mental hospital-centered movie, my desire is to have an exploration of insanity—why else choose an insane asylum?  But there was only one inmate, Pete (Darren Kent), who really pulled off any solid degree of insanity.  The other inmates were simply violent— overly violent, sure, but only violent.  They still had their minds as they enacted their revenge on their guards (such as the swoon-worthy JB, as played by Dave Legeno—Harry Potter’s Fenir Greyback), nurses, and chefs, just as I would assume any horror movie focused on a similar situation in a normal high-security prison would have.

It’s not a bad movie, I will say.  It does keep up a level of tension and gore that will please most gore-hounds.  But the ending doesn’t make much sense, leading me to believe at least one important scene was cut, and the acting was very occasionally jarring, especially near the end.  Even with that, the work put into this film is clear, and I think it would be worthwhile to keep an eye on its director, Alexandre Courtes.

Asylum Blackout has been released in select theaters and is available on SundanceNOW, iTunes, Amazon Streaming, XBOX, Zune, and Playstation Unlimited.

This Geek in Netflix: Assault of the Sasquatch

by Allisonnnnn

Assault of the Sasquatch?  Assault of the Senses is more appropriate for this creature feature centered around—you guessed it—a sasquatch.  What you may not have guessed, however strong your psychic powers might be, is that this particular sasquatch has Barbara Streisand hair.

Didn’t see that coming, did you?  That’s right, here at Geekscape we keep you on your toes.

Don't rain on his parade.

What you can probably guess by the title alone, however, is that this movie is steaming pile of… puppies.  Sorry, Mr. London has decided that I’m no longer allowed to curse while I’m geeking out on Netflix movies and must substitute my profanity with more pleasant phrasing to reach the “family” market.  Write him nasty letters.

Assuming you want the plot and not a rant about the injustices perpetrated by the ferreting Mr. London on his poor, downtrodden writers, let’s move on.

I got bored with taking screen shots. Here's a cat.

Somewhere in a bear preserve in New England, three hunters accidentally trap Harry Henderson via a pizza-baited bear trap.  What they were doing in the woods hunting eighth grade boys, we’ll never know.  What we do quickly learn about these gerbil-cuddling backwoods hicks is that there can be only one—as long as he sports a magical roaming eye-patch.

Through a short series of expected bungles and low budget effects, One-Eyed Willy (Kevin Shea) finds himself in the back of a ranger-mobile being hauled into the city for poaching thirteen-year-old boys on a bear preserve.  Or poaching bears on a bear preserve.  This movie isn’t quite coherent.

Are also waiting for the movie to make sense.

Before he and his night’s hairy snatch are dragged in, he manages to get one phone call off to a jet-owning, pith hat-wearing, trophy hunter who is willing to spend one million dollars for the privilege of being able to hunt the sasquatch.

One million dollars to snag a yeti?  Man, you can go to a dive bar and do that for a couple two dollar beers.

He sure bagged that pussy... cat?

The rangers haul Willy’s (actual name: Terry) van back to the city, unknowingly toting his furry prey along for the ride.  Then things get… interesting?  That’s not the right word at all.  Then things… maintain the same level of tedium for the rest of the flick.

The sasquatch breaks loose of his metal confines and starts strolling the boulevard causing havoc with what appear to be indiscriminate killings, startling chubby nerds everywhere.  As the police officers realize something is going on, they turn to their prisoner, One-Eyed Willy, and he preps them by extolling the inner psychological workings of the mighty sasquatch, which seem to be summed up with the phrase: don’t attack him and he won’t attack you.

This insight to Bigfoot isn’t exactly accurate, as the movie proves, but it’s not like someone was writing this thing and had to maintain some form of consistent internal logic.

Also wasn't built with consistent internal logic.

So the minimal police force sits inside their station and eventually fights the hair-beast as it suddenly comes back to attack them.  What will happen?  Will the trophy hunter bag his prize?  Will the cops win out?  Will anyone survive?  Do I even care?

Let’s spice it up to see if we can induce some sort of caring.  Throw in a strained father-daughter relationship with a spoiled little cun—uh, hedgehog, an ass-kicking stripper gone “good” (which is not nearly as awesome as it sounds), a snotty prostitute, and a mother-murdering criminal and suddenly this movie has more moving parts than the screenwriter could ever hope to maintain.

Not that I have any faith that he’d be able to maintain much in the first place.  The script is clunky at the very, very least.  Not that the casting helped.  The two eligible bachelors both came off as potential (if not already active) serial rapists, the “hot” young daughter whose beauty was constantly referred to was the least attractive female in the movie… though ever assigning her a make-up artist or a hair stylist might have helped.  Maybe next time, kids.

While we wait, here's a rodent!

This movie, if you’re down for a senseless creature feature, is on Netflix Instant/Streaming/On Demand.  Whatever flavor your cookie is, take a bite and settle in to watch the seasonal migrations of Willy’s eye-patch.

Geekscape Movie Reviews: Area 407

by Allisonnnnn

Very few horror movies will inspire me to nearly fall off my treadmill in fright.  IFC Midnight’s Area 407 did exactly that.  Don’t worry—nothing too important is bruised.

Area 407 is one of a growing number of what are called “found footage” films.  If you don’t recognize the term, then you’ll recognize films among their number—most notably The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.

Found footage films find a logic supporting at least one video camera’s presence and attempt to use the visual perception of realism to heighten the tension.  You know, “this really happened”.  In The Blair Witch Project, three film students were making a documentary, in Paranormal Activity, husband Micah was a camera bug and eventually had security cameras installed throughout their house.  In Area 407, little sister Trisha (Abigail Schrader) steals a video camera from her older sibling, Jessie (Samantha Lester), in an enthusiastic desire to document their New Year’s Eve flight back to Los Angeles.

This is incredibly, incredibly clever.  Toss a precocious girl behind a video camera and watch her interview fellow passengers, alternating between annoying them and endearing herself to them.  We get to meet every major character pre-shitfest (technical term) and actually get attached to them before things fall into chaos.

And it is chaos.  The sisters’ lovely flight from New York goes quickly south just when the plane hits a patch of turbulence.  Now, I’m not prone to watching movies with plane crashes, but I was enrapt and absolutely horrified witnessing the— what I imagine to be— much too realistic footage of the event.  It was truly terrifying.

Once the plane is on the ground, the sisters regroup and we are properly introduced to the survivors.  Jimmy (James Lyons) is a journalist and the source of some of the camera equipment and lighting used throughout the film.  Laura (Melanie Lyons) is the lovely accented air marshal, while Charlie (Brendan Patrick Connor) fills the role of the irrational, selfish jackass who consistently manages to upset any trace of cool-headedness that might be found.  One flight attendant, Lois (Samantha Sloyan), survives as well as the now widowed Tom (Ken Garcia).

As the survivors begin to collect themselves from what could be termed an already horrible evening, Tom rushes off into the night to search for the other half of the plane which would, he wildly theorizes, contain his wife.  After a brief interval of various coping mechanisms, noises are heard in the distance.  Noises like screaming and unearthly growls.

It’s not a great time for anyone.

Things progress from bad to worse to downright sadistic as the night continues onward and the survivors realize that help is not coming and there’s a beast in the woods slowly picking them off.  With no idea of where they are and no light aside from the cameras, the group heads into the woods to find some shelter, some assistance, some thing to save them.

I loved it.  Well, I loved most of it.  The story was excellent take on a somewhat traditional tale, the dialogue was realistic for the situation, the camera work—while a bit too high quality for the found footage genre in my opinion– was lovely.  They did an excellent job of bringing it together, justifying the nearly continuous filming, and showing just enough—but not too much!—to keep me on the edge of my… treadmill.

However, there was the matter of the monster.  The movie has this pretty cool concept going on that I think is executed excellent for the style they chose.  And then, when the monster is finally revealed… it’s a letdown.  You’re sitting there going, “Oh.”

I’d liken it to meeting someone on a dating site who seems amazing.  Wonderfully written profile, gorgeous pictures, witty repartee.  And then you meet and the pictures are not only about fifteen years and fifty pounds ago, but also neglected to show that the left side of his face is melted off.  It doesn’t negate that you had some great and exciting internet exchanges, but you feel more than a bit misled.

My recommendation?  Watch it.  Watch it with full knowledge that the last two seconds of the movie are going to make you wince, and enjoy the rest of the movie as much as I did.  It released in select theaters on April 27th, but you can also find it on SundanceNOW, iTunes, Amazon Streaming, XBOX, Zune, and Playstation Unlimited.

This Geek in Netflix: Tokyo Gore Police

by Allisonnnnn

I have this friend.  This friend that somehow manages to consistently convince me to watch certain movies I would normally do my best to avoid.  After watching one of his recommendations, I always swear to myself that I’ll never listen to his film advice again, and I usually manage to succeed for at least a few months before submitting myself to torment yet again.

This explains so much about my life.

It has been almost half a year since I took a recommendation from him but, while I was over at his house watching Pocket Ninjas (My recommendation?  No.  Just no.), he mentioned a flick he had recently seen: Tokyo Gore Police.  I was skeptical, but when he said “means of locomotion via crocodile vagina,” I once more fell prey to his wiles.

I’ll never listen to his film advice again.

It's a nice night for an evening.

Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura (Vampire Girl v.s. Frankenstein Girl, Mutant Girls Squad), Tokyo Gore Police released in 2008 and, yes, everything you need to know is in the title: it’s in Tokyo, features the police, and there’s more gore than you can shake an amputated limb at.

As you start watching this movie, you might experience feelings of discomfort and uneasiness at the introduction of Officer Ruka, the film’s main character.  Don’t worry—these feelings are perfectly normal as a result of having seen Audition, as the actress who plays Ruka is Eihi Shiina, the lead from that incredibly terrifying film (trivia tidbit: also recommended to me by aforementioned friend).

Up-skirt or no up-skirt, I'm fucking creeped.

Knowing my friend as I did, I decided that I wouldn’t witness Tokyo Gore Police alone, so I hopped onto OKCupid to look for a lovely young man to stream it alongside me, chatting back and forth as our eyeballs melted into one flowy mass of visual purification.  Once I located my victim, a spectacular moustache-toting San Diego resident, together we descended into madness.

And it was madness, should there be any accusations of over-exercising my right of dramatic license.  Do you question my judgment?!

Well, I don’t blame you.  But let me build my case first.

Exhibit A. Yes, you just got owned in one picture.

The year is unknown.  Sometime in the future, Tokyo has come under control of a privatized police force that has taken to wearing bastardized samurai armor that actually looks kinda awesome.  On this police force is Ruka, a wrist-cutting, righteous enforcer of the law who occasionally travels by bazooka (you’ll understand when you’re older).

Tokyo is plagued by a new sort of criminal—the engineers.  Rather than harmless desk jockeys that whose lack of social skills may or may not be autism-related, these engineers are self-created mutants who, when injured, use that injury to form a bio-weapon.  Basically the equivalent of a lizard losing its tail only to grow back a giant machete with the capability of launching poison darts.

Not quite what I was talking about, but still terrifying.

It is the goal of the Tokyo Police Corporation to completely eliminate these engineers and Ruka is on the job as one of their top engineer-hunters.  Wielding a sword and the occasional wicked chainsaw, she cuts through the enemy to find their weak spot—a little bit of flesh shaped like a key that, when separated from the body, causes the host to die.

As things are going as smoothly as they can in terrorized Tokyo, a new enemy surfaces: the Key-man.  After divorcing a madam’s blood from her body and doing a hatchet job on her limbs, the Key-man steps up to battle the fierce Ruka and wins.  For his victory lap, he plants one of the flesh-keys into her arm, converting her to the race she loathes.

For yooooooou!

I will admit that this sounds like the standard Japanese tale and you probably think that it does not warrant accusations of madness that I have made.  You’d be wrong.  Here’s a short list of reasons why:

Upwards bazooka travel.  Crocodile vagina.  Toothed breasts.  Urinating flower-chair mutants.  Latex fetish club.  Mutant snail girl whore.  Levitation via blood-loss.  Bullet-firing elephant wang.  Being drawn and quartered by cop cars.  Amputee bondage slave.  Amputee bondage slave with sword limbs.  Amputee bondage slave with gun-limbs.  Little Shop of Horrors left arm.  Penis removal via teeth.  Brain-shooting eyeballs.  The worst press-on nails I have ever seen.  Bush.  Dance of the chainsaws.  Face-splitting.  Advertisements for wrist-cutters.  Advertisements for swords for seppuku.  Dispatcher dance number.  Midget Satan.  The best blowjob experienced by anyone.  Wine bottle face-fucking.  Acid-lactating nipples.

Are you not entertained?  Are you not entertaiiiined?!!

If I could do this once a month, I'd be much more satisfied with my life.

I can barely articulate an opinion on this film.  It had so much stuff in it, but it moved pretty slowly—too many excess scenes with excess characters that did nothing but say, “Hey, look at my acid-lactating nipples!”  Mutant design was wonderful, but the movie was too often prone to backsliding into humor and traditional anime motifs and, on the gore level, there were a few scenes where I thought my gag reflex was going to kick in.

I can neither recommend or reject this movie, so if you think the madness list above sounds like a good time, enjoy yourself on Netflix on Demand with Tokyo Gore Police.  While you do that, I’ll quickly retreat into my fantasy that every Japanese person ever only creates things like Katamari Damacy.

This Geek in Netflix: It’s My Party and I’ll Die if I Want to

by Allisonnnnn

At 1AM on Monday night, I was feeling kinda loopy.  You know, that pleasant tired when one starts hallucinating that there might be clowns in one’s pocket.  Instead of doing what any normal person would do and curl up in sweet unconscious oblivion, I decided to watch a movie on Netflix.

After sorting through various obvious rejects (The Exorcist??  What a lame name—pass.), I decided on a swell looking flick called It’s My Party and I’ll Die if I Want to.  How could I go wrong?

Especially with a cover like this!

Almost exactly 24 hours later, I’m not quite feeling equally loopy, but I’m definitely getting there.  So here’s some lazy reporting.  This low-budget film, shot for less than $20K per the production company’s website, has won awards at the Full Moon Film Festival (not associated with Full Moon Features), the Action on Film International Film Festival, the Dark Carnival Film Festival… okay, I’m stopping there.  This is boring me as I write it.  That’s talent.

The movie was made.  The movie was released.  The movie won some awards.  The movie had some unknown (but surprisingly decent) actresses in it, one of which is also in a movie called Fetish Dolls Die Laughing, which appears to be about how the “tickle monster” is real and turning women into perverted tickle fetishists.  This is almost the most fantastic thing I’ve heard all week.

Don’t ask what the most fantastic thing is.  Trust me.

It's not this, I'll tell you that much.

According to legend—or at least the beginning of this film—in 1930, Jacob Burkitt locked up his family in their “manor” and, in typical batshit fashion, went on a murderous rampage, killing his wife and their six children.  Since that time, no one has been able to occupy the “manor” (it’s a goddamned house) for more than a few months and several more deaths have occurred within its walls.

Fast-forward to present day.  It’s Halloween—like it tends to be in horror movies—in some non-descript Midwest town.  While Sara, an over-achieving redhead, is out over-achieving and being generally sexless in nature, her friends are putting the finishing touches on her surprise birthday party… at the haunted Burkitt house.

Happy birthday, all of your friends are dead!

Sara, you see, is a big horror movie and Halloween fan.  Maybe she’s simply just one of those quirky girls that loves the dark and macabre.  Maybe she’s self-obsessed and wants to celebrate her birthday year round because she’s a soulless redhead.  We’ll never know.

As her friends slowly trickle into the house to do pre-party hijinks, they start dying off.  And by dying, I mean they’re being gruesomely murdered by the ghosts of Jacob Burkitt and his family.  Just after the token Asian chick, Jill, gets her heart ripped out (not in that lame metaphor way), Sara receives her last minute party invite and pulls out a costume she “happened to have on hand”.

What is she for Halloween?  Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.  Fuck.  Yes.

Rushing over to her party, Sara soon finds that she’s got more in store for her than a few presents and some GHB.

Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid?! Count us in!

This movie was incredibly low-budget.  Film quality hearkens back to the 70s—even though it was supposedly shot digitally.  Lighting was abysmal.  The sets were severely limited and the “manor” was laughably unmanor-like.

However, I actually enjoyed it.  The abysmal lighting added a realistic edge to particular scenes, addressing a constant mini-frustration I have with horror movies—the sudden disconnect from characters when we can see more than they can.  This movie managed to make me jump a few times, even with clichéd and should-have-expected-that maneuvers, and the acting was, for the most part, good.  I mean, the actress who plays Sara isn’t Nicholas Cage or anything, but she’s fine.

Sweep the leg... with your sword!

Primary complaints?  Complaint, really.  But it’s going to be an angry one.  The goddamned soundtrack.  Jesus would weep at this soundtrack, and then crucify himself in what would be a spectacularly failed attempt to redeem the movie.

Imagine this: you’re a very white-washed teen in rural U.S.A.  You wear pink jeans and may never have had a decent hair cut in your entire life.  Your friends are steps away from running the glee club.  What’s your soundtrack?  Angry rap?  Oh, of course.  This makes so much sense to just insert at every possible moment of character introduction to really give you a feel for the movie.

After effects of the soundtrack.

Other than that blip in an otherwise enjoyable film, it was fun.  While in the realm of the standard Tales From the Crypt feeling (with a nod to Trick ‘r’ Treat with graphic novel-style transitions), it managed to exceed my expectations and actually provide decent entertainment where the only time I felt like smashing my laptop closed was when the torturous soundtrack flared up.

Check it out on Netflix on Demand if you want a short horror film to temporarily call your own.  There’s tits and even a body double in a “goddamn, the director really wishes this was porn” shower scene.

DVD Review: The Dead Want Women

by Allisonnnnn

Full Moon Features has moved from their usual quirky possessed toy movies and traveled into the realm of the classic ghost story with their latest feature, The Dead Want Women.

Based on a story by horror legend, Charles Band, The Dead Want Women begins at the tragic unraveling of the siren of the silver screen, Rose Pettigrew (Jean Louise O’Sullivan) in 1920s Hollywood.

While hosting a party in celebration of her latest silent film, Rose leaves her mansion and slips off to a secret grotto with her three gentlemen companions: the Abbott-influenced Tubby (Nihilist Gelo), the lecherous horror icon Eric Burke (Robert Zachar), and the cowboy Sonny Barnes (Eric Robertson).  While engaging in a mild orgy, Rose is interrupted from her delights by her agent, Norman (Circus-Szalewski), and hesitatingly informed that, because of the failure of the very film they are celebrating and the sudden popularity of the “talkie”, the studio has decided not to renew her contract.

After putting on a very distraught performance and receiving oaths of eternal devotion from her three companions, Rose surprises the group by grabbing one of Sonny’s guns and shooting not just the three gentlemen, but also one of the orgy participants.  When she goes to add herself to the body count, she learns she’s out of bullets and instead slits her own throat with one of Tubby’s knives.

Moving into the present day, realtors Danni (Ariana Madix) and Reese (Jessica Morris) arrive to the Pettigrew mansion on a mission to clean before meeting to complete a sale with a mysterious buyer.  After an afternoon of scrubbing and no wealthy gentleman caller, Danni and Reese break open a bottle of wine a drink themselves into pleasant unconsciousness.

When they wake, their adventure begins.  From waterfalls turning themselves on to lustful specters, Danni and Reese have their hands full trying to escape the grounds of the Pettigrew mansion with not just their lives intact, but also their virtue.

Then things start to get really weird.

This movie is not what you’d expect from a typical Full Moon movie—if there is such a thing as a typical Full Moon movie.  It echoes back to the classic Tales from the Crypt story, but with a modern twist… and a longer format.  The Dead Want Women allows the plot to build and introduces us to the characters long enough to get to know them before they’re keeling over or running through dark hallways screeching at top volume.

From the sound track to using Silent Era Hollywood as a setting, Full Moon did something different with this movie, experimented in a new direction and the results are surprisingly entertaining. You can check it out yourself on May 1st, 2012 at Full Moon Direct or at your local Red Box.

This Geek in Netflix: Rare Exports

by Allisonnnnn

After being forced to sit and endure the double-feature of Shark Attack 3: Megalodon and 2-Headed Shark Attack, I decided to give the finger to the evil duo of Mr. London and Mr. Kelly and watch something this week that didn’t look like an eye-raper.

Feeling rather festive with my rebellion, I turned to a promising looking Finnish movie— Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale.  I know it doesn’t sound nearly as amazing as 2-Headed Shark Attack, but my survival rate is much higher with this one and, honestly, I like surviving.

Always drink your Ovaltine.

Rare Exports is the third in a series of Santa-focused endeavors directed by Jalmari Helander, the first two being internet shorts titled Rare Exports Inc. (2003) and Rare Exports: The Official Safety Instructions (2005).  Assuming those two are of the same quality and idea of this movie, it’s safe to say that they’re pretty awesome.

Yes, I said it—I watched an awesome movie.  I admit I deviated from the recent spate of total suck in a major way as my rebellion bore non-Busey-related gingerbread man-shaped fruit.

Wordsworth would like you to consider the dandelion.

I will confess to being biased and, yes, having a major thing for the evil Santa Claus concept.  This started when I was a young little horror nerdling, sitting around playing Hunter: The Reckoning: Redeemer on X-Box.  You see, there’s this one scene where you stop at one of those mall-like Santa Claus areas and suddenly Mr. Claus walks into view and sprouts tentacles and pulls two giant (and angry, very, very angry) teddy bears with fangs out of his sack and it’s breathtakingly amazing.

But enough with my rhapsodizing about Tentacle Santa, let’s get to the reindeer meat of this movie.

Not reindeer meat.

Subzero Inc., a company purported to be engaging in seismic research on the border of Lapland, has been drilling into the Korvatunturi Mountain—not to further the field of seismology but, more deviously, to unearth the frozen Santa Claus.

Brilliant, right?  Free Santa Claus from his icy fortress of solitude so he can rain down presents on all the good boys and girls of the world.  That’d easily clear out the waiting list for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, no problem.

Also fulfills several wishes.

However, all is not as silent and holy as it seems as the butcher’s son, little Pietari, delves into old books on local folk lore after eavesdropping on the company’s plan.  In his reading, he discovers that Santa Claus is not the loveable old gent we all believe him to be, but is instead a giant beater, broiler, and eater of naughty children.

As Christmas quickly approaches, the drilling goes silent and the town’s source of income, a large herd of reindeer, is brutally slaughtered by what the townsfolk believe to be large wolves and Pietari takes steps to protect himself once he finds footprints on the roof outside of his second-floor window.

Footprints?! Must be a clue!

The night before Christmas Eve, all of the children—save Pietari— disappear and Pietari’s father discovers an old man has fallen into one of his wolf-pits, pierced through the chest by the wooden stakes at the bottom of the hole.

He takes the dead man into his butcher shop but soon discovers that, while mostly non-responsive, the man is alive and reacts violently to gingerbread cookies and little Pietari.  Soon two other men from town join him as they attempt to determine what to do with this odd old man and find that they may have captured something more strange and powerful than they bargained for.

Buy one naked guy, get several hundred others free.

This movie was wonderful, and so much more than what I expected from the usual Christmas horror movie.  It was clever.  It was truly, absolutely clever.  Helander managed to work in and warp all of our Santa-related Christmas mythology in a lovely little, almost Gaimanesque way that I don’t have the pleasure of seeing all too often.

Story aside, visually this movie was stunning.  The colors were intense, the shots wide and very dramatic— everything lent itself to the sort of fantasy setting this movie needed.  The acting was wonderful and the boy who played Pietari was perfect for the role, a silent, studious Data (The Goonies) that stepped up to the plate when everyone else was wallowing in Christmas confusion.

So start a fire (preferably in the fireplace), set out some milk and cookies, and queue up Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale on Netflix on Demand.  It’s that time of year, after all.  Right?