A cult movie that has only grown in estimation since it’s release, Paul Verhoeven’s fantastic adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s equally good satire Starship Troopers is one of the best popcorn movies ever, especially since it’s secretly really smart. Except it doesn’t care if you look at it that way or not: it just wants you to have fun and watch Doogie Hauser and Gary Busey’s kids fight with giant bugs that look like vaginas and staple removers. It’s the best! I like it so much, that I even like the two live action sequels (Hero of the Federation, and Marauder) even though they’re relatively objectively terrible.
This new, animated sequel, Starship Troopers: Invasion (also going straight to DVD, as with the other two) actually looks pretty damn fun though, and features Casper Van Dien (Rico!) and NPH, as well as being directed by Shinji Aramaki, who directed Appleseed and Appleseed: Ex Machina, the really cool early 2000′s manga adaptations. Though we don’t really see THAT much in this debut teaser, you can see some really strong visual design in the battlesuit, which latches on in a interesting mix of automated and manual motions. Plus there’s some stereotypically awesome motivational speaking that fits right into the world. Buy it this Summer, for the good of the Federation!
Up and coming horror disco label Giallo Disco Records, started by Antoni Maiovvi and Gianni Vercetti have a new EP coming out entitled ” Black Gloves.” Horror Disco takes cures from Italo Disco, Krautrock, New Beat, EBM, House, Techno and the film scores of the 70s and 80s. Check out the video above to get a taste.
As of writting this their indigogo page, has only $111 until reaching their goal of $1,200 to get the album pressed. They have 13 days left, and horror disco is the future… well future-past, so you do the math. I have a good feeling about it. The “Black Gloves” EP will be released on limited edition 12” vinyl and for digital download. I order you to listen to the album on their SoundCloud now.
On the one hand I want to relentlessly make fun of this trailer for being really idiotic. Just the whole “I know I said we were just going to Moscow – but!” turn is just so ridiculous. If I was trying to chill and get drunk with Russians and all of a sudden my homie was like let’s go hang out in what basically amounts to a giant microwave I’d pay someone to punch him in the face. but I guess this is how it goes when you’re all about EXTREME TOURISM *CHEST BUMP*
But on the other hand… I dunno this looks kind of fun. It’s nice to see that Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity, the atrocious TV series The River) is abandoning his usual fount footage deal (though it sneaks into the trailer a little at the end) and it definitely seems like they’ve found an awesome place to shoot. Visually sort of reminds me of the wildly underrated Session 9. Chernobyl Diaries is out soon.
I’m not sure I’ve ever read about movie that had more superlatives surrounding it than The Burning Moon. Vice did a movie club article on it several months ago (featuring Bloglin legend the Vidiot) and the adjectives “immoral,” “anti-human,” and “misanthropic” were used. Even the DVD’s cover reads “unconscionable.” The hype has been so huge that I expected director Olaf Ittenbach to burst out of the TV screen and rape me with a burning crucifix. But after the film’s 90 minutes, my soul and asshole were still intact and The Burning Moon even turned out be a pretty okay film.
German gore-maestro Olaf Ittenbach directs and stars as a nihilistic junkie who is forced to babysit his sister for one night. His parents are suck dicks! Once his idiot parents leave the house (seriously, I wouldn’t trust this depraved young man with a human life), Olaf takes his heroin kit, shoots up, and plays with a Slinky before going into his sister’s room to tell her some bedtime stories. She’s obviously uncomfortable around big brother, but there’s nowhere to hide once Olaf sits at the foot of the bed to play sandman.
That’s the frame story leading up to Olaf’s anthology of blood, bones, and Satanism. This movie is a fucking relentless disemboweling demon that eats intestines and shits teeth. Anything your sick mind can some up with is in this movie: rape, sacrifice, old lady beheadings, eye eating, and, the one that made me quiver the most, teeth drilling. The first story, “Julia’s Love,” involves a serial killer who targets a young woman and wants her to “absorb all of his love juice.” There’s heaps of gore and dismemberment, but it’s nowhere near the level of insanity that the second story holds.
“The Purity” is on another planet of mean-spirited insanity. It’s about a doughy, Satan-worshiping priest (amazing!) who rapes and kills his way through a small town. It culminates in Olaf’s bizarre vision of Hell: a nightmare basement littered with ravaged bodies and acts of torture that have been thus far uncharted on film. People aren’t simply slain in Olaf’s Hell, they’re destroyed.
The Burning Moon, presented in the U.S. for the first time on DVD by Intervision Picture Corp., was shot on video, so there’s not much room for improvement on the disc. But it’s not a third-generation dub so at least there’s no tracking issues and other VHS pits to deal with. The only extra is an awesome, 45-minute behind the scenes documentary that appears to have been shot right after the movie was made in 1997. There’s tons of on-set footage as well as interviews with Olaf and other people behind the camera. Olaf goes into detail about the film’s surprisingly effective special effects, how hard it is to find elderly people willing to be brutally murdered on screen, and how budgetary restrictions forced him to do a lot of the film’s stunt himself.
Gore hounds and lovers of the cult, The Burning Moon is a must-own. I can’t recommend it to the Bloglin community enough. Even if you’re not into gore (I’m not) it’s still a shotgun blast of evil, balls-out insanity the likes of which you’ve never seen. The Burning Moon drops March 13 from Intervision Picture Corp. and you can pre-order it here.
One of the screeners they sent out to press prior to last year’s Fantastic Fest was the Canadian sci fi thriller The Corridor. I loved the hell out of it but never got around to writing about it because I’m only one man and I saw a lot of movies the month of the festival. Get off my back. This month the film is being released by IFC, so I figured I’d show it some proper Bloglin love.
The debut feature from Canucks Evan Kelly and Josh MacDonald, The Corridor is a smart and wholly original trip into sci fi paranoid madness. Recovering from a psychotic breakdown after the death of his mother, Tyler Crawley heads to a remote cabin in the woods of Nova Scotia. As everyone knows, cabins in woods always lead to some sick shit. When Tyler suffered his homicidal burst of madness, he sort of tried to murder his friends – slashing one n the face and stabbing another through the hand. So what better way to make amends than with a little getaway in the woods?
The awkwardness and absurdity of going to a remote cabin with a man who tried to kill you isn’t lost on Tyler’s friends. A few even admit that they only came along out of a sense of obligation. Trust and unease constantly see-saw within the group, and tensions increase when Tyler admits that he may be hallucinating again. He comes across a phantasmal “corridor” in the woods. At first Tyler believes it’s just one of his hallucinations, but once his friends step inside the corridor, shit gets spooky.
The group gradually gains telepathic powers, portals are opened in their minds that lead to the subconscious. This, as you probably guessed it, isn’t fun when the subconscious belongs to someone with homicidal rages in their history. The Corridor never offers any answers as to what the corridor is or how it got there. Could it be alien? A military experiment? Obamacare? This adds some great mystery elements to the film, plus any attempt to explain the film’s supernatural elements would ruin a lot of the terror we experience alongside the group.
The sense of foreboding in the film is masterfully built up by Kelly and MacDonald, with some scenes that are downright unsettling. It’s a smart sci fi (a rarity these days) that holds some great ideas and a few moments of surprisingly shocking gore. Things sort of fall off the rails for a minute once the boys gain their powers and begin to play with them. It all just happens so damn fast and it takes a while for the pacing to settle down again. That’s really my only complaint. The Corridor is well-acted, well-shot, and a downright chilling entry in the lo-fi sci fi camp. You’re going to wanna keep your eye on the future of Kelly and MacDonald collabo films.
The IFC website just says March 30 for a release, but no info on whether it’ll be On Demand or in select theaters – either way, definitely check out The Corridor!
In comic book crossover canon, the introduction of horror elements into superheroic tales is nothing new. Over the years I’ve seen men in capes and tights battle vampires, werewolves, zombies, slashers, and even Xenomorphs and Predator. That doesn’t mean I don’t like it though! Banking on that being the case, IDW Comics has just started a second run of its Infestation series.
Infestation 1 ran last year and introduces both zombies and robots into the Transformers, Star Trek, G.I. Joe, and Ghostbusters universes (though I suppose some already had them…). It was a fun little miniseries. I’m definitely way more on board with Infestation 2 though. Why, you ask? Well because this time the infesters are HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos beasties. Fuck yes.
I realize that it’s sort of a cheap trick to get me to buy more comics, but fuck it, I’m buying! The series was started with a one-shot and now has branched out into the runs of Transformers, G.I. Joe, 30 Days of Night, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Yes, you heard that right, a TMNT/Cthulhu crossover. Excuse me while I roll my tongue back up into my head.
I haven’t been to the comic store yet this week (yikes) but I know as of last week the one-shot and the TF #1 were out and I really liked both of them. Especially the TF one which is set in the 1800′s and has really cool art. The series runs from now through April, look for it on the shelves, and try not to sucked behind the dimensional veil into the low place!
You know those things from your childhood that you were really into but forgot about for huge periods of time, only to rediscover them years later and suddenly remember a whole aspect of your fandom? Both of these somewhat similar series’ were like that for me, and both came back into my life about 2-3 years ago. Though in my mind I placed them around the same time, Eerie, Indiana aired on NBC in 1992 and American Gothic hit the CBS airwaves in 1996. Both are horror tv shows (some of the only good ones), and both are somewhat aimed at teen audiences.
Both come from established horror directors, Joe Dante and Sam Raimi, respectively. Both star great child actors in Omri Katz and Lucas Black. And both are really fantastic. Eerie is a horror-humorous monster-of-the-week story about a town with seemingly endless weird secrets, and Gothic concerns a young psychic boy’s battle with a supernatural satanic sheriff played by Gary Cole. Both of these series’ worked admirably to bring the best of horror to television, and both were rewarded with early cancellations. Now, one has to suffer that fate again. You know the rules. Choice is Yours…
Wow this movie looks so awesome! I can’t believe we get a movie this cool I really just can’t wait to- bahahaha I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just fucking with you, this looks terrible. I’m all for goofy action horror, and I was ready to be onboard with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter too. I don’t necessarily have a problem with Seth Grahame-Smith’s (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) one-note alterna-history schtick.
But seeing this now with mine own eyes, Lincoln standing on the national mall and then practicing his dumb Matrix axe swinging in his private chambers… I mean wow that looks stupid. Keep in mind a lot of people liked Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted – I thought it was an incoherent mess – so maybe people will like this. But for now, this smells like a bomb. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is out June 22nd.
No matter how awful they are, anthology films are always fun. If one story sucks, it won’t be long until you’re onto the next one. They always make good party films when you have some friends over. They have a special place in my heart – I wrote a fairly extensive look at horror anthologies for Topless Robot a couple years ago. The Theater Bizarre, the first film bankrolled and distributed by our friends at Severin Films (Bloody Birthday, The Baby), collects some diverse horror legends and craftsmen to weave together six tales or terror. Six tales with lots and lots of blood. So much blood.
The frame story involves a girl with runny makeup going into a closed-down theater where a slightly horrifying, robotic Udo Kier delivers esoteric intros to all six stories. It’s not really a frame “story” as it is an excuse for Kier to be a creep. I liked some of the tales better than others, one I hated so much you’ll get to read me bitch about it several times within this review.
Richard Stanley (Hardware, Dust Devil) kicks off the bizarre with a mash-up of Celtic paganism and Lovecraftian mythology called “The Mother of Toads.” A young anthropologist and his annoying girlfriend are traveling through rural France when they stop at a market. The girl finds some classy pewter earrings which her man instantly recognizes as being in the shape of Lovecraft’s Elder Sign. The leathery old woman selling the earrings says her family has a copy of the Necronomicon (if you don’t know what that is, it’s over) and she’d be happy to show it to them. It’s horribly acted and the story isn’t particularly shocking, but it does feel like a Lovecraft tale: a young student thinks he knows his shit and his thirst for knowledge of the unknown leads to his demise. And it’s super slimy!
Things pick up a bit in the next short, “I Love You”, a tense, blood-stained look at a doomed relationship directed by Buddy Giovinazzo (Combat Shock). A controlling boyfriend foaming at the mouth with jealousy tries to convince his lying whore of a girlfriend that no matter what how much she spreads her legs, he still loves her. The ending is a bit of a head-scratcher, but still enjoyable for Giovinazzo’s raw style and use of people who can actually act. Despite its violent nature (or maybe because of this) “I Love You” felt like the most personal of all the shorts.
Next up is horror make-up god Tom Savini‘s “Wet Dreams.” Thank god for Savini’s short. It’s super fun and the least serious of all the shorts. It features the goriest string of gross-outs of all the shorts, but the least substance, which is fine on this playing field. A douchebag keeps having dreams about a weird toucan-vagina monster thingy, his therapist (played by Savini) talks about raping his mother, and then a girl goes “This is my dream, bitch!”
Douglas Buck (Sisters) delivers the worst of the shorts, “The Accident.” It’s all about life and death through the eyes of a child and bikers hitting deer. It’s artiness just comes off as incompetence. Thankfully, it’s the shortest of the shorts.
Karim Hussain (The Beautiful Beast) brings a pretty interesting story to the table with “Vision Stains.” A girl gets her rocks off by stealing other people’s vitreous fluid with a needle and then injected the fluid in her own eye. Through this she gets to visit their memories. Shit gets weird when she experiments with an unborn baby’s memories. I really like the idea of Hussain’s story a lot, but after watching a needle go in an eye for about the 10th time, I got kinda turned off.
The final short is David Gregory‘s “Sweets” – a hypercolor, ultra gory tale of people who love eating. “I just love masticating!” one girl exclaims. Gregory, who directed 2008′s Plague Town, took the crown with this short. It’s super creative visually and a spot-on mixture of comedy and horror. There’s lot of detail everywhere and it just feels like he took the most time with his segment and didn’t spend all his time making a fake penis, like Savini did.
I feel like there should have been one less short in The Theater Bizarre, and that short is Buck’s “The Accident.” It feels really out of place here and sort of drains all the fun out following Savini’s wacky blood stomp and Stanley’s Frog Whore. It’s like the sober kid at a party where everyone else is wasted. So besides that small buzzkill of a short, the overall film is pretty damn fun. You can tell no cigar-chomping studio suits had anything to do with it – it was made completely outside of the studio system by horror fans for horror fans. It’s like Midnight Madness Heaven!
The Theater Bizarre is in a limited run right now. Don’t miss it if it’s playing near you or Udo Kier will crawl in your room at night and tickle your feet.
