Halloweenie Roast 6: A Symphony of Horror

The 6th annual Halloweenie Roast has come and gone, and it was a pretty good one! This year's theme was horror movie musicals. On the agenda was The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Cannibal: The Musical, Sweeney Todd, and F.W. Murnau's silent film Nosferatu (it included music by Type O Negative, so it still fit the theme). We got through two and a half horror movie musicals (didn't get the chance to do the Nosferatu) before the group consciousness decided that it was time for sleep.

This was also the very first Halloweenie Roast that has taken place outside of my parents' basement, so that's kind of monumental. We fit about eleven people fairly comfortably in our dinky apartment, gorged on various chili dog creations, and experimented with new flavors of Doritos (spicy chili Doritos are way good, btw).

Highlights of the evening were when I tried to carry five twelve-packs of soda plus one big case of bottled water up the stairs to our apartment. I realized that it was a bad idea when I dropped them all mid-staircase. Luckily, the collateral damage of my overzealous soda-carrying ego only amounted to one diet Dr. Pepper, which exploded on the pavement; Matt Garcia's weird Hawaiian BBQ potato chips (they'd be good on a peanut butter sandwich! Don't knock it 'till you try it!); Danny's and Emi's giant tub o' popcorn (we ate most of it! Gluttony!); and Wong's visible disgust regarding Tim Curry in drag.

All in all, it was a good roast. Any suggestions on next year's theme? Or maybe other forms of debauchery that we could include in the glorious roast tradition? Anywho, thanks to everyone who came and brought food and stuff. You guys are sexy bitches.

We Found A Witch, May We Burn Her?

Young folks who unintentionally document the last horrific moments of their lives have become a pretty reliable horror/sci-fi convention nowadays (Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, Quarantine). It's also become quite a popular critical stance to describe these films as an exposition of how much we love iPhones and YouTube, which I guess has some merit. I'm pretty sure we're about two skips and a jump away from full on Philip K. Dick/William Gibson-style transhumanism. Bearing this convention and what it means for us in the information age in mind, it's nice to go back about ten years and watch The Blair Witch Project. This film pioneered the handheld POV convention while continuing to prey upon the audience's fear of the dark. Much like Orson Welles did with his radio broadcast of Wells' The War of the Worlds, Dan Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez combined a timeless fear with a new technological medium with such palpability that people actually thought it depicted real events.
Though the brilliant marketing campaign could be credited with the massive profits that this film accrued, it wouldn't have worked if the characters and situations came off as unbelievable. Even thought the movie is about an unexplained disappearance perpetrated by a dead witch, it feels painfully real. For example, the three types of college film students are represented perfectly (yes, there are only three types!). Heather is the serious one who thinks film is her way to make some difference in the world, and that documentary filmmaking is the only "true" art form and blah blah blah. Josh is the goth-geek who had a helluva time in high school, so he turned to his own world of horror movies and industrial music and tells people that he wants to make movies because he's an artist, but really he just wants to be famous. Mike is a frat boy who happened to have sound/recording experience, so studying film would be the easiest way to graduation. Oh, and let's not overlook the fact that all three of these characters start the film ugly and end the film butt-ugly. You saw Cloverfield. There's no way people that good looking could exist in the real world. And I'm pretty sure that they get better looking as the film goes on; hair artfully tousled with a smattering of fake dust, clothing rips that strategically draw the eye to ample cleavage or chiseled biceps a la personal trainer. Not in Blair Witch! Those people actually look like they're going through absolute overexposed, malnourished, hunted hell! The handheld camera captures the dirt under their fingernails, the sweat in their hair, and of course the fountains of snot and tears that gush out of Heather's nose as she comes to grips with the fact that they're gonna die alone and terrified in the middle of nowhere.
After re-watching Blair Witch, I've decided that modern POV movies aren't really a critique as much as they are an exercise in embracing the upgrade. They're flashier, heavy on the CGI, and star some flawlessly attractive people. They are the iPod to Blair Witch's Discman. Whoa. It feels weird to even write "Discman."

When There Is No More Room In Hell....

They're Probably Pretty Cool...Probably.

It's just barely October, and already I'm getting a serious urge to subject myself to lots of horror movies and lots of fun-size candy bars (truth be told, I start getting those twinges of blood/candylust around the end of August). The following is a list of movies that I've always wanted to see, but as of yet have not. I'm thinking that they might make the cut for the 6th annual Halloweenie Roast. Anyway, here goes:

Cemetery Man: From what I've read about this flick, it sounds pretty much right up my alley. It's basically about this dude who works as a cemetery caretaker. When zombies start to rise up from the graves in his cemetery, he takes responsibility for the zombie invasion and tries to kill them before they can leave, so as not to disturb the sleepy town surrounding said cemetery. Eventually he falls in love with a dark, beautiful, and recently widowed woman and their relationship takes a tragic turn when she becomes one of the cursed undead. Does he kill her? Does he decide to join her in zombie damnation? I don't know! That's why I'd like to see this movie. That and the zombies and cemeteries and brain mutilations.

The Last House On the Left: This one is important to me for a few reasons. It's Wes Craven's first movie, and I'm interested in taking a look at his first stab (get it?) at horror movies. Also, the story sounds both fascinating and terrifying. It's about a pair of girls who go to a rock concert and get killed on the way home. The movie then puts you in the perspective of one girl's parents who unintentionally welcome their daughter's killers into their home. Instead of taking a predictable turn and having the killers terrorize the quaint suburban family, Craven has the girl's parents find out the truth about their guests and cruelly mete out vengeance as the night progresses.

Wait Until Dark: Unlike many movies that I haven't seen but want to, I haven't spent much time reading about the synopsis of this flick. What I do know is that Audrey Hepburn plays a blind chick who gets mixed up with some seriously evil dudes (one of which is Alan Arkin! Him playing a psycho is 75% of why I want to see this movie) and terror ensues. The other 25% of the reason I want to see this movie is for this one scene I saw whilst watching Bravo's "Hundred Scariest Movie Moments" when Mr. Arkin leaps out of a dark room ready to attack the blind Ms. Hepburn. She can't see him! You can! Terror!

Dead End Drive-In: I know nothing about this one, save that it's a horror movie set in a drive-in theater, which is something Sheree and I have talked about a lot. The drive-in is one of the most perfect places to set a horror movie. It's dark, there's lots of opportunity for horny teenagers to fornicate before getting their throats cut, and the snack bar is open all night! Anywho, I might be overexcited to watch this one, because as you can see by the cover, it's probably a piece of fried crap.

I Am Omega: This one I know will be a total piece of fried crap. But, it's not on this list because I think it's a possibly brilliant exercise in horror, no no no, my friends. It's on this list because The Chairman from Iron Chef America is the protaganist and he battles zombies in a complete ripoff of both I Am Legend and Omega Man (see? I Am+Omega). Tell me that you're not just a teensy bit curious to see how they managed to take that concept and run with it.

The Hills Have Eyes: Just so we're clear, I don't mean Alexandre Aja's remake (which I've already seen. Meh), but Wes Craven's original. I just like the idea of a mutant clan that terrorizes travelers in the Southwest deserts of America. See that guy on the cover? He doesn't have any fingernails! In real life!

Right. That's definitely not all of them, but it's a good list so far, and I'm getting tired and hungry. 'Kay, bye.

25 Is So Last Year

On this most joyous day of my birth, please join me in an online movie marathon that I think pretty accurately depicts everything that is cool.

Enjoy!

Cool Stuff This Week: Spaced and The Boys

As Sheree already stated, Spaced is awesome. It's great that a show like this existed, and before I go on, I'd like to take you with me on an angry tangent about American TV. Okay, Spaced was on for two seasons (14 episodes), which is around the same length as some great American shows (Freaks and Geeks, Arrested Development, Firefly, Twin Peaks). The difference? All of the good American TV shows were canceled, whereas Spaced went off the air because the creators wanted to start making motion pictures. That being said, I'm glad that Spaced was birthed across the pond. Otherwise, who knows how many episodes might have been prematurely destroyed by a short-sighted American TV network?
Anywho, the show must really be seen to be believed, so here's a brief taste that Danny showed me a long time ago. Oh, and this quote's pretty good: "Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like f***king Shaft!"

On another, comic book related note, I recently cracked into a pretty good one by Garth Ennis called The Boys. In brief, it's about a semi-superpowered team of CIA spooks who make sure to hold superheroes accountable for the collateral damage that their exploits inflict on the innocent. Interestingly enough, artist Darick Robertson contacted Simon Pegg to use his likeness for a character named Wee Hughie whose girlfriend gets killed in a skirmish between a superhero named A-Train and some ignominious supervillain. As a way to deal with his grief, Hughie accepts an invitation to join The Boys from the aptly named team leader Billy Butcher.
Since it's a Garth Ennis tale, there's a lot of twisted stuff in here, most of it perpetrated by costumed superhero types. They're all about dogooding and justice while they are on camera, but in their secret fortresses and lairs they indulge themselves in bizarre excesses and deviant behavior that come as a byproduct of their apparent invincibility. So, you don't feel so bad when The Boys beat the snot out of a group called Teenage Kix directly after outing one of their principal members and ruining their public image. It's especially gratifying when Hughie, recently doped up on "super-serum" type pharmaceuticals, accidentally punches a hole through Blarney Cock's chest.
The action seems to be mounting up to a major confrontation between The Boys and America's leading superhero team, The Seven (Basically like the JLA, if the JLA let their celebrity status run away with them and turn them into a bunch of pricks). It's probably gonna be pretty messy.

How's that for a piece of fried gold?

I Eat Ganados For Breakfast...With Skim Milk.

So...close....to....falling...a....sleep.... Must....write.....weblo....g.....

Hoo boy, Tuesdays and Thursdays are lo-ong. As I write this, I'm in one of my four classes and I am having a hell of a time keeping my eyes open. Wanna hear about Resident Evil 4 and how I just barely finished it? You do? Okay. I'll tell you about my experience doing battle with Las Plagas.
So in this freaking sweet game, you play as a dude named Leon. Leon's pretty badass! He survived Resident Evil 2 and saw Raccoon City nuked by the American military as the T-Virus got totally out of control on his first day as a cop. Apparently, Leon is so impressed by the government's testosterone driven use of overkill that he decides to become a government security agent. A few years after the eradication of Raccoon City, Leon gets called to Europe to investigate the kidnapping of the U.S. president's daughter. At first, he thinks it's the work of an obscure Spanish death cult that harbors a secret terrorist agenda. And he's right! Except that the majority of the cult members have been enslaved by sentient parasites known only as.... Las Plagas. This means that once you figure out that shooting cultists in the head is the best way to kill them, the Plagas pop out of their bloody neck-stumps with tentacles and bones and try to eat your face.
Throughout his mission, Leon remains pretty dense as to what's really going on (he's just here to get the president's daughter and get out! What the hell are Las Plagas anyway? Who cares?) but he eventually figures it out when he gets injected with a Plaga of his very own. Once Leon starts to cough up blood and lose control of his will, he figures that something bigger is going down after all.
As the mystery unravels, it becomes revealed that a guy named Osmund Saddler is the leader of this cult (meaning he can control the Plagas themselves. He has this crazy staff that has eyes and tentacles that makes this possible), and his grand, malevolent plan involves injecting the president's daughter with a Plaga and sending her back home to infect the president and eventually....the world. As Leon's old friend/new nemesis Jack Krauser notes: "A conservative mind wouldn't understand the good that we're doing..." Sick burn, conservatives!

At this point, I imagine that many of you are saying to yourselves, "Alex, this game came out like, three years ago. How come you're just now getting around to finishing it?" Well, friend-o, I'll tell you. First, I didn't get a Gamecube for awhile. I purchased one for the express purpose of playing Resident Evil 4 because I played a demo whilst I was working at Gamestop. I played it pretty steadily, until I got to the freaking scary island facility and the freaking scary regenerators/iron maidens. Regenerators are genetically altered freaks of nature that can't be killed! That is, can't be killed until you get a thermal imaging scope for your sniper rifle. Then you have to shoot the Plagas that are responsible for growing back the creature's limbs after you blow them off with a shotgun.
So, I fought a couple of them, enduring their inhuman mouth-breathing and glowing red eyes for a pretty good amount of time. It was always such a relief when their metabolism sped up and caused them to implode. But there was this one encounter that scared me so bad that I peed a little in my pants and had to stop playing outright. I was faced with a regenerator, I accidentally shot its leg off, it slithered towards me like a giant snake, hopped up, and took a bite out of my shoulder! I couldn't handle the sheer shock of what happened, so I shut off my Gamecube and changed my pants. I didn't touch it again until it came out on the Wii, and decided to give it another go. I manned up, if you will, slaying all manner of Cronenbergian abominations until I stood face to face with Osmund "crazy legs" Saddler himself (well, it was face to face until his head blew up and turned into a scorpion made out of muscle and gravy). I blew his terrorist eyeball-mouth to kingdom come, rescued the president's daughter (on a jetski!), and blew up the island. It was awesome!

Resident Evil 5 is due out sometime next year, and I am stoked to once again play it, get too scared to finish it, and then come back years later for another attempt. It'll feature running zombies, a la 28 Days Later! F***k yeah!