Oofa! So let me preface this by saying that I’m a pretty big Eli Roth fan. I think he’s one of the sharpest minds making Horror today. And while he hasn’t really directed anything since the  merely “OK” Hostel 2, the man knows what it takes to make not only great but campy horror… so I went into The Last Exorcism, which he produced (his first as a producer), hoping it would be an extension of the witty, blood-soaked and tongue-in-cheek style he not only helped resurrect, but take to the next level.

Roth has been tweeting endlessly about the film and crowd reactions to its numerous festival screenings, reputed gorehound sites were singing its praises, and it had a clever viral campaign a week or so prior to its national debut. So you know, I had a pretty good feeling that this film would deliver a few solid thrills, some chuckles, and gore, gore and more gore. Oofa! Was I ever wrong.

I’ll give the film its due in how it cleverly revamped the tired exorcism model into something that could have been a great premise. Cotton Marcus has been groomed to be a reverend since he was a child, eventually taking over for his father preaching sermons and performing exorcisms. Problem is that Cotton is a great showman, and all of this is just a fun little act. For him, being a reverend is not about faith, but simply telling people what they want to hear to get past their problems. When Cotton reads about an autistic child who dies at the hands of another reverend during an exorcism, he has a crisis of conscious and decides that it’s time to expose exorcisms for the ruse that they really are. He teams up with a film crew who sets out to document every aspect of the preparation and staging of what will hopefully be the last exorcism ever.

Cotton and the crew head down to Louisiana to the Sweetzer farm after receiving a letter from Louis Sweetzer to come help his daughter, Nell, who is supposedly possessed and slaughtering livestock in her sleep. Cotton obviously doesn’t believe in demons and for him, the whole production of an “exorcism” is a sort of shock therapy for people move past some psychological baggage that they’re carrying. So Cotton does his whole exorcism shtick and proclaims young Nell cured. But funny thing is that later that night, Nell shows up in Cotton’s hotel room acting creepy as all fuck. From then on, the film shifts to Cotton trying to figure out what the underlying cause of her “demonic” behavior is, as the audience is left guessing if Nell is actually crazy or possessed all the way until the end.

Before I tear into the film, I would like to single out both Patrick Fabian (Cotton) and Ashley Bell (Nell) for their acting… actually the acting in The Last Exorcism is, overall, pretty damn good. It’s the directing and the plot that leave a lot to be desired. The whole film is shot from the perspective of the film crew’s cameraman, except none of it whatsoever looks like it was shot from one camera by a guy documenting something. It’s over-directed and so strategically shot and paced that you can’t help but wonder why the film couldn’t just have been about a film crew documenting the exorcism  rather than the supposed “real” film. This fault is very hard to get past, like speaking with someone with a bad toupee. Try as you might to get past it, you just keep wondering “how do they not know how bad this looks?” instead of actually concentrating on the conversation… or movie in this case.

The guessing game of what’s at the root of Nell’s “possession” is also pretty tedious and predictable — a melodramatic see-saw back and forth centered around family trauma that just makes you want to scream, “Ok, we get it! Show us more blood and creepy contortion shit!”, most of which had already been used for the trailers. After dragging on and on, at the very end you’re gifted with a bungled yet clever twist (right before sputtering into either a poor homage or comically bad rip of The Blair Witch Project) that just leaves you contemplating “why couldn’t this more just have been more of this?”. Those 5 minutes at the end are some of the films most interesting and it’s only suspenseful moment. It’s a shame they weren’t fleshed out more.

Maybe I expected too much from something Eli Roth would put his name and money behind, and that’s probably my fault because horror is horror and even the greats produce their fair share of crap. The Last Exorcism is about on par with the Horror movies that get dumped at 1am on Showtime 2, and that’s probably when and where you should catch it… preferably from the middlepoint on, after stumbling home half-soused.

No, I’m not talking about The Social Network, I said the “other” Facebook movie. This past Friday before enduring through The Last Exorcism (more on that tomorrow) I was treated to the trailer for Catfish, who prior to this I hadn’t heard, read or seen  jack shit about.

For the first minute and a half of this trailer my girlfriend, Yüng Chow and myself sat giggling over what we thought was some sappy mockumentary  style, feel-good, romantic comedy about finding love via Facebook until out of nowhere SHIT GETS REAL FUCKIN’ CREEPY! Watch it! It’s a really good trailer and has me amped on seeing this. I really hope this delivers because I can haz one good internetz horror movie?

Piranha 3D is a throwback flick, not just because it’s a remake of a movie that came out in 1978. It’s a throwback piece because its the kind of tit centric B-movie that the internet killed off. Back in the day a million movies like this were cranked out to hit video and shows like USA’s Up All Night with Rhonda Shear. Movies that allowed you to see half naked chicks skinny dip and then get chased/killed by some kinda monster. The type of movie that has giant plot holes, bad acting and questionable writing… but, lots of tits. Unfortunately, now that tits of all sorts are available anytime via the internet there’s no longer a reason to make these movie. And, that’s kinda fucked up because sometimes the world needs ridiculous and base flicks like Piranha 3D. Sometimes you need a shoestring of a plot with your titties to put everything in perspective.

I could describe the plot of this movie, but that misses the point of the movie. You don’t go to a strip club and talk about the quality of the buffet. You don’t want to know about the character development, how the story arc is resolved or the cinematography. So, let me tell you what you do want to know. This movie runs on over the top from the get go. When most other movies do 3D they say “we’re not going to be throwing stuff at the screen”, to let you know it’ll be a classy 3D experience. Piranha 3D has 3D vomit. That’s what you need to know about the kind of experience your in line for.

Ya boy Jerry O’Connell is also in this movie as what I’d imagine is a pretty on point version of the dude who owns Girls Gone Wild. He plays him as coked up and tit obsessed to the end. I’m pretty sure this is his best performance since Sliders Season 2. This movie also has Adam Scott (from the recently canceled Party Down) on a jet ski with a shotgun, shooting into crowded water. At fish. Dude is shooting fish in a lake with a motherfucking shotgun from a jet ski. Oh and Christopher Lloyd as your resident Piranha expert.

There’s a ton of half naked and fully naked girls, occasionally in three dimensions. I’ve not been a fan of the 3D movement at all so far and surprisingly adding breast to the mix has not changed my opinion. Maybe because in order for breast to really be 3D they’d have to be really far away from the body, and for that to happen you’d have to have some incredible monster titties jammed in a weird corset to get the proper distance. Physics of 3D breasts aside, if it’s slight titillation of the Maxim variety you’re looking for you’ll be covered. Elisabeth Shue though will not be the source of your titillation, she’s looking kind of old in the face. Fear not though, careful observers will be able to pick out porn star Gianna Michaels making a cameo as a chick para-sailing. If, you’re that dude who has always watched her “work” and thought “hey, you know what’d make this hotter? Her being dismembered by shiftily CGI’d fish” then this will be you movie.

About two thirds of the way through the movie is when all hell breaks lose and everyone turns into piranha bait, but what’s kinda interesting is how gory the whole thing gets. There’s about 15 minutes of pure blood and severed limbs that reminds you that Piranha 3D is an actual horror movie.  In this barrage of mangled bodies, the influence of Eli Roth (who makes a cameo as a wet T-shirt contest host) really shows on director Alexandre Aja (High Tension and the excellent The Hills Have Eyes remake). The scenes of swimmers trying to escape from the killer fish, looked a lot like some kind of zombie apocalypse. But, an apocalypse that’s immediately preceded by lots and lots of nakedness. If the apocalypse has to come, that’s how I want it.*

*The reason I want it that way is because I know I’m going to be safe. See,my blackness will not allow me to be frolicking in the water when killer fish bring about the rapture. I can’t swim, so I’ll be chilling on the beach while everyone else is getting nibbled to death, rocking ever so gently to a slowed down version of “Margaritaville.”

David Icke discusses his latest, ‘Moon Matrix’ theory

Man, does David Icke drive a hard line! One minute you’re completely down for the cause of questioning your reality and deprogramming yourself from the mind control manipulation of government, society, and the school system … then he goes and starts talking about the Reptilian Agenda.

Goddamn reptiles. Fucking up everything!

David Icke on the Reptilian manipulation of Humanity

Some believe his Lizard bloodline theory is just a ruse to make everyone believe he’s crazy. Some believe he IS an agent of the Lizards indoctrinating us to the brainwash. I don’t bother with rationalizing with these sort of concepts or making judgments on David Icke. It’s really up to what the listener wants to hear. So…

David Icke is back with a new book, Human Race Get Off Your Knees where he exposes our Moon as a fake broadcast beacon created by the Shadow Rulers of Earth to hack into the human ‘body-computer’ system.

Fake Moon?! Okay Icke, what ya’ got?

Mater Suspiria Vision returns after an uncharacteristically long gap in new material… well long for them is like a week or two. Brand new track featuring Butterclock who we profiled earlier on Sounds from the Otherside. Good stuff as you could probably expect from these two working together.

And don’t forget that unlike past Zombie Raves, the current Special Edition that ℑ⊇≥◊≤⊆ℜ (of Mater Suspiria Vision) did for us is still killer and available for download… so zombify your weekend and download it if you already haven’t. Or hey… just share it with a friend and induct him into the CVLT.

Halloween 2010 is the big (and appropriate) day for AMC to unveil it’s newest show, The Walking Dead. Here’s a meaty four and a half minute preview trailer for the series which will run 6 episodes in it’s debut season. It also looks that at some point between the announcement of the show and filming it, AMC switched who was playing Rick. Wasn’t it originally supposed to be Jonny Lee Miller?

Either way, whoever ended up playing Rick, I’m pretty excited to see one of my favorite Comics get turned into a cable show.  I just really hope this lives up to the high standards AMC has already set with their other shows and they really don’t alter the story too much.

Via New York Mag

I unfortunately can not claim to know the provenance of this epic metal menu, but I wholeheartedly endorse this establishment wherever it may reside and would gladly gorge myself on these delicacies. I mean, seasoned with “the sorrowful cries of freshly widowed women?!” It doesn’t get much more satisfying…

Go here to view the menu in all of its black glory!!

Rupert Sheldrake lectures on the Morphogenetic Field Theory

Our society is governed by the scientific disciplines of materialism. We’re taught in universities that the most fundamental component in the universe is matter while our governments spend billions of dollars on Hadron Colliders in search of the “God Particle.” Is understanding the nature of the universe all about breaking matter down to it’s smallest form?

Is that how we’ll know exactly how certain atoms and compounds form into trees and crystals, while others human beings and plants? What really tells the cells what to do? Yes, genes play a essential role in coding and synthesizing proteins, but perhaps genes are only a component in the forming of living things. What is it that truly organizes all of this information?

Rupert Sheldrake is a biochemist and physiologist with Ph.D’s from Cambridge and Harvard who served as a Research Fellow of the Royal Society. He theorizes that matter isn’t the core component in biological phenomena, but an energy field that shapes and influences self organizing systems (any living thing) at all levels of complexity. Not to be mistaken with the mainstream definition, Sheldrake has been championing his Morphogenetic Field theory as the master key in understanding how life and the universe operate.

Discussion between Terence McKenna & Rupert Sheldrake on Morphic Resonance (the collective memory of Morphic Fields)

Think of the Morphogenetic Field as architectural blueprints, providing all the plans and information to the construction of a building. In this case, the building is us, a blade of grass, or an amoeba… ANY LIVING THING. Genes serve as the workers executing the blueprints, and every class of organism has their own blueprints as the Morphogenetic Field shapes them into organization.
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Download Мишка Presents ℑ⊇≥◊≤⊆ℜ’s Zombie Rave: Special Edition (Click Here)

Happy Friday the 13th! So did any of you really think I’d not go out of my way to do a Zombie Rave mixtape for Мишка? Especially on this date of all dates? I know some of you love this (like I do) and others of you are still  scratching your heads about it all but there’s no denying that Witch House/Drag have become a force this year and ℑ⊇≥◊≤⊆ℜ (of Mater Suspiria Vision) Zombie Rave mixtapes have only helped cement that. If you need some more in depth writing on the matter head over to Seen where I wrote a small feature on Mater Suspiria Vision. But I’m imaging at this point if you visit the Bloglin you kind of know what’s what and have formulated your own opinion on it all.

This summer, ℑ⊇≥◊≤⊆ℜ of MSV started up the rather ambitious Zombie Rave Mixtape series, which forms the third unholy side in MSV’s triumvirate (the other pieces of which are their videos and their own music). These Zombie Raves are usually around hours of pop and dance music remixed and slowed down to a codeine pace and littered with horror movie samples. We’re fully aware that this has the potential to be completely unbearable. But trust us when we say it’s actually transfixing, especially if you’re the sort of person who is into darker dance music.

This Special Edition for Mishka is now the 4th Zombie Rave mixtape to come out this summer and among all the runes and mysticism, these mixes are starting to present a clearer definition and a broader scope to Witch House. Zombie Raves reanimate the dead and bloated corpses of decades of pop, rock and dance hits until they’re wholly their own catchy and evil creations that get your body moving while freaking you the fuck out.

This Zombie Rave: Special Edition is the first Zombie Rave mix to be released with an open-ended download policy. There were only 100 downloads for the original Zombie Rave, 200 for part 2 and 300 for part 3. If you didn’t catch them when they debuted, you were usually left out in the cold in just a day’s time. Anyone who is still salty about that, well this Special Edition Zombie Rave is for you. An hour and a half of pop and electro “dragged” through the deepest bowls of Hell, creating a dance party most are unaccustomed to hearing. Chug some syrup and prepare for time to stand still, your mind to be blown and to love every minute of it.

It also wouldn’t be MSV unless there were some sick visuals to go along with whatever music they are doing. I’ve peppered this post with some of the videos that were created for tracks used on this Zombie Rave: Special Edition. This past week they have been slowly leaking the videos starting first with Scooter’s “Posse (Zombie Rave Mix)” set to scenes from Poison Ivy, then there was Tears For Fears “Shout (I’m Not Afraid of the Devil Mix)” set to scenes from Fulci’s Zombi. Today along with the mix, comes the final video for Lady Gaga “Alejandro (Zombie Rave Mix)” up above.

I don’t even what the hell the visuals for this are taken from as I’ve never, ever seen them. But how appropriate is that giant eyeball headed female eh? If anyone has any clue what this movie is, I want to know now!

Head after the jump for the complete tracklist to Zombie Rave: Special Edition and Happy Friday the 13th! R-E-S-I-D-E-N-T-E-V-I-L!

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Can you see the signs? The Bloglin has become possessed by a brood of Witches whose coven lies deep below the grave of the Bava and Fulci section of Kim’s Underground video! If you listen close on the nights of the Crescent Moon you can hear their legion chanting out the occult prophecies buried within the lyrics of Tiffany and Real Life… and while Puritans were busy playing Ozzy records backwards, Witchy jagged toothed cackles bubble up from the abyss!

As season of the Witch takes full effect of the elements, the virgin initiates must bow to the High Overlord of the order… ALEX SANDERS. OOoooo

Like all Master Occultists, their biographies are skewed under a vague cloak. Though others claim different, Alex Sanders (1926-1988) recalls his first initiation to the black arts coming from his Wiccan grandmother. A bloodline ancestor of, Owain Glyndwr, the first King of the Witches, Grandma Sanders passed along the sacred wisdoms of witchcraft involving everything from the Book of Shadows to ritual sex with Alex.

Sanders:

“One evening in 1933, when I was seven, I was sent round to my grandmother’s house for tea. For some reason I didn’t knock at the door as I went in, and was confronted by my grandmother, naked, with her grey hair hanging down to her waist, standing in a circle drawn on the kitchen floor.”

Sanders attempted a dual life as an average Joe with a day job and Witch by night, but it eventually deteriorated his marriage and left an unfulfilled void in his life. Sanders faced a grim precipice, which led him to pledge devotion of his entirety to a life to Magic and Wicca… the complete immersion into the Left Hand Path. This submission into the Black Arts soon manifested an unforeseen source of dread in Sanders. After the suicide of one of his mistresses, Sanders took oath to use his powers as a healer and teacher to initiates. This is where his life turned to legend…

In the years following his white magic revelation, Sanders claimed to have healed the Cancer stricken, channeled past Wiccan mystics during seance, and even create a “Spiritual Baby” from an act of “sacred masturbation.” A newspaper article was written on the already too flamboyant Sanders in 1969, as well as a scandalous biography during the same year.

The movie, “Legend of the Witches,” is also allegedly based on his life and times. From all this mainstream publicity, Alex Sanders became an infamous pop star while the other witches grew resentment towards him as an exploiter of the craft. By 1965 he claimed 1,623 initiates in 100 covens, who crowned him with the sobriquet, King of the Witches.