The lady doctor had a terrible whiny voice too

Alright, I know that there's been a lot of downtime lately, so lets see if we can get back on track. I mean, how hard is it to sit down and watch a movie? Seriously.

No, you're right, it's not that hard. It's just that I have all of these....EXCUSES... and I want to use them SO badly. But I won't! Onward ho, to the movie!

King Kong Escapes was the sequel to King Kong vs Godzilla. You remember that one, right? Where Kong fights Godzilla in an all out street brawl to the death? No? Well, it was good. It was fun. KKE however was...well, less fun.

Basically, Dr Who is helping an agent of an undisclosed nation mine for Element X. Apparently, it's some sort of nuclear material. To mine it, he has built a giant monkey robot. Sort of like Mechagodzilla, only an ape. But the Mechani-Kong breaks down. Some sort of a problem with magnets. And then he kidnaps the real Kong to finish the job. And then robo-Kong and real-Kong square off in Tokyo.

Ok, I admit it, I stopped paying attention to what was going on in there somewhere. Damn thing just couldn't hold my interest for more than a couple minutes at a time. I did have a few questions about the whole thing though. A few...points to ponder, if you will...

How is it that someone can question the existence of a giant monster like Kong in a sequel? I mean, there he was. Fighting a giant lizard. How can you say 'but I thought he was only a legend' after that? It kind of ruins your credibility.

I don't care if it is a grown man in a costume stomping on toys. I like it. CGI is great, and in the right hands, can really look very believable. However, I hope that there is always a place in the world for miniatures and men in rubber monster suits.

The King Kong costume looked terrible. That's not a question. Wow! That thing looked rough.

I'll give the whole thing 5 'that's fair, right? I didn't really pay attention, so I can't give it a super low score for being bad, but it couldn't hold my interest, so I can't call it really good either's out of 10.

Shark Week: This time it's personal edition

Did you really expect Shark Week to go by without me doing a Jaws movie? Really? You did? Wow. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you then, because today we're looking at Jaws: The Revenge. Or, as I like to call it...The One Where No One Does Anything That Makes Any Goddamn Sense, I Mean, Come On!

What do I mean? Well, for one thing, when Sean goes out on the boat to move the piece of wood and is...I can only describe it as being pounced upon by a heretofore stationary shark and has his arm bitten off, he YELLS FOR HELP! There's no one fucking around! His best bet was to man up and pilot the boat back to shore, but no. The sissy screams for help until the shark kills him.

Micheal and his wife come up from the Bahamas for the funeral, and, ok, I'll admit, the scenes here between him and Ellen are...well, kind of touching. I guess. But enough of that, lets go to the Bahamas, where the water is too warm for great whites! But first, lets focus on the piece of wood that has now washed up on shore! Oh no! Wood!


It's frightening!

It's tragic!

It's unbelievable!It's a piece of fucking wood!
Ho-lee sh-yit!

To the Bahamas we go! You see, Michael is a...snail fighter. I don't know what he does. He tags conchs. That's what he does, along with Jack, someone who is OBVIOUSLY from one of the Caribbean islands. You can tell from his vaguely Jamaican accent. But one day, while sneaking up on the poor snails...a SHARK APPEARS!!


It's shocking!
It's terrifying!It's a fucking shark!
Ho-lee sh-yit!

At this point I can only shake my head and sigh. I mean, it's a movie about a shark attack that is essentially contrary to everything we know about shark behavior! Sharks don't take things personally. Sharks don't hunt you family because you killed one, they don't come back for revenge (bees on the other hand...). They don't stop and wait only to jump out of the bushes like some sort of wacky aquatic ninja. Do you know why? Because if the stop moving forward THEY DIE!

And while the shark has seemingly developed some sort of 'Brody-sense', Eleen has some sort of shark-sense. And it keeps tingling when the shark gets near a family member. And, why is she so scared? The shark kills 2 people. That's it. Sean dies in the beginning and then some random lady dies near the end. That's it. The shark destroyed almost as many planes!

And why the fuck does Eleen continually have flashbacks to events she was absent for? What the fuck is that about?

And the ending! What. The. Fuck. I mean, it just left me with this overwhelming, slack-jawed, 'huh?' feeling. I watched it the whole time just thinking 'wait. what?'

The movie is peppered with a sort of quasi-Carpenter meets Williams score. Which...I guess works if you try not to think about it. Though it's hard not to . I mean, it's the only thing going on to take your mind off of the terrible quick edits that plague every shark attack.

The sad thing is...I found it fairly enjoyable. I mean, if my choices were Shark Attack 3 or Jaws: The Revenge, well I'd pick Shark Attack 3, obviously. But, it wasn't like it was the worst movie ever. It was bad, sure. I mean, the acting was well below average, especially considering the actors in it. Not to mention that the story doesn't make a ton of sense and the whole things seems to have very little idea what it's doing or where it's going (I mean, the Ellen-Hoagie relationship is fairly unnecessary). And the shark...is it still the same shark from the first movie? Because it's looking pretty rough...and incredibly unlifelike...

5 planes eaten by sharks out of 10.

7 Dollar Popcorn Presents the 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Spectacular: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem Day 26: Imprint

Cheating for the first time it's 7 Dollar Popcorn Presents the 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Spectacular: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem. Today, like I said, I'm cheating. After 25 consecutive days of movies, we're going to look at an episode of a television show. The show is Showtime's Masters of Horror. The episode is the Takasi Miike episode that went unaired in the US titled Imprint.

A group of guys is on a boat. They're headed for an island of demons and whores. Christopher is looking for a whore he fell in love with many years ago. He wants to take her back to America and marry hear. The whore's name was Komomo. I say "was" because she apparently killed herself. Instead, Christopher meets a whore called The Woman.

"I feel pretty. Oh so pretty"

It's The Woman who explains to Christopher what happened to his love, Komomo. (By the way, isn't it kind of weird to say you fell in love with someone because they reminded you of your sister?) Her brutal torture over a stolen ring. Incense sticks in her armpits and needles in her gums and under her fingernails. But, it's a lie. But, Chris doesn't want the lie. He wants to know "the truth".

Torture is so sexy!



"Growing up my choices were ballerina, acrobat and whore. I decided to go for all three"

The Woman framed and killed Komomo. Chris still isn't convinced that this is the entire story. So, The Woman tells another version. Her parents were beggers, moving from villiage to villiage. Mom was less of a midwife and more of an...abortionist. Dad was a drunk and a wife beater. Upon her birth, The Woman was tossed in the river, where she survived for two days until mom decided to be a mom. As she grew up, she helped her mom with the baby killin...and the pleasing of dad...

After that it gets weird. She has a sister. And by sister I mean she has a hand and face growing out of her head like a demon. You see, mom and dad were siblings. So, inevitably, they were gonna be fucked up. It was the sister that stole the ring. It was The Woman who killed Komomo.

A tale of two sisters

Miike really has an interest in strange characters. Freaks. You look at his history, Ichi the Killer, The Great Yokai War, Izo. He has this love affair with crazy characters and fucked up situations. Imprint is a story of whores, torture, incest, dead babies, demons, murder and personal hells. And, it's not easy to watch.

It's Miike's take on Memoirs of a Geisha. It's everything you expect from Miike. It's pretty to look at, in it's own sort of way. The characters are certainly unique. The actors themselves have some trouble with the English dialogue. There's really not much else to say about it. If you're a fan of Miike, you'll probably dig this. If not, this won't change your mind. I don't know that I can really give an accurate rating to this. It was well done, but I was really kind of grossed out and put off by it. If I had a cable network, I'm not sure that I would have shown it either. So, I'm going to go dead middle on it and give it 5 stolen rings out of ten.

7 Dollar Popcorn Presents The 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Extravaganza: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem Day 9: Time Bandits

Greek warriors had to learn 44 different ways of unarmed combat before they were ready for Day 9 of 7 Dollar Popcorn Presents The 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Extravaganza: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem.

This time it's Terry Gilliam's 1981 movie Time Bandits. Now, I've seen part of this a couple years ago, but I fell asleep in the middle of it. I did that sort of thing pretty often.

The other time I almost watched it was back when I worked at the video store. We put movies on all the time. Mostly for background noise, and we didn't like the little ad reels they sent us, so, fuck it. Movies. We'd put in anything that wasn't R typically. After a while we went for under PG-13 (too many...incidents). And I remember putting Time Bandits in at least once.

Time Bandits is a movie about a half dozen dwarves who acquire a map of time holes in the universe. The steal the map to travel through time and steal shit. Along their way, they acquire a kid named Kevin. The steal from Napoleon, "donate" the goods to Robin Hood, get separated and then meet back up in the court of Agamemnon, get captured by an ogre in the Time of Legend, and then defeat Evil.

Sorry, it's a 20+ year old movie. You've likely seen it. If you haven't I wouldn't be too worried. I just wasn't into it. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with this movie, so I don't have fond memories of it. There's no nostalgia factor for me on it. I know a lot of people love this movie, I'm just not one of them (same goes for Gilliam's film Brazil).

R2D2!!!!!!

What did get me excited though, and this is the Star Wars nerd in me, was seeing Kenny Baker out of his R2D2 costume. That was pretty sweet.

All in all, I'm sure that it's a wonderful movie, just not for me. 5 "hey wasn't she in Soap"s out of 10.

7 Dollar Popcorn Presents The 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Extravaganza: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem Day 1: Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy

When you are doing an event like 7 Dollar Popcorn Presents The 7 Dollar Popcorn FILMuary Extravaganza: 28 Days of Movie Mayhem, you have to be sure of a couple of things. First off, make sure your blog is called 7 Dollar Popcorn. Check. Next, you've got to kick it of with a bang.

So, it is without further ado that we kick things off with the Sci Fi Original Picture, Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy. A movie with the tagline "When he began fusing human and shark DNA, his colleagues laughed at him. Now his creation is taking his revenge, and they aren't laughing anymore. " Pretty fucking sweet, right? A movie staring The Initiation's Hunter Tylo, not to mention Jeffery Combs (who was in that one movie. You know...that one. The one I made my ex-girlfriend watch only a couple weeks before she broke up with me. True Story. Mostly.), pretty fucking sweet, right?. A movie with this guy

"Candygram"

Pretty fucking sweet, right? Hell yeah. A movie with the label "Sci Fi Original", and all the mental associations that go with it. They can't all be Dog Soldiers and they can't all be Chupacabra. So, it is that I set out to begin my project. I stayed up late to watch this, and to try to get away with my first technicality. See, TECHNICALLY, I only watched half of this in February. I started watching it in January, but watched the last half in February. So, it counts dammit!

I really hoped that this would be a movie more in the vein of Jaws or Open Water. Something where people are on the water, surrounded by hammerheads. Something I could use to tie in to Final Girl's Animals Run Amok Week, because I'm shameless like that and will take any extra/inadvertent traffic I can get. And, the opening scene, would make you think that this is what it will be. However, immediately afterwards, we're in a lab with some sort of were-shark thing. And some scientists. And they're doing science stuff.

Jeffery Combs (well, his character really, Dr King) has created some sort of half shark half man thing. He's trying to breed it, but rather than fuck, the thing just wants to kill. See, he's hoping to usher in a new age of man, or something.

Regardless, he's discovered something about using stem cells and decides to invite his former coworkers to the island he's been doing his science on. He wants to show off his "discovery". Hunter Tylo (well, her character) used to date Dr King's son, who died five years ago. And now, she has King's old job. King says that sharks don't get sick, they don't get cancer (not true, they do, it's just rare), and that he found a way to mutate stem cells. So, he spliced his cancerous son's cells with that of a shark. Which naturally resulted in the half shark freakshow. Which he now plans to turn on his former coworkers as punishment for "stealing his research and forcing him into exile".

So, at this point, there are six people running around an island, being chased by this shark thing, and to top it all off, King has guards all over the island who are supposed to try to kill them to. Talk about being fucked! Luckily, the shark doesn't care who is really who, and he kills a couple of King's men.

If it came down to it, and you were being chased through the jungle by a landshark ("Flowers") and you were wearing heels, wouldn't it be easier to just go barefoot? Speaking of being chased through the jungle, the plants are somewhat carnivorous due to some of Dr King's prior experiments. Nice little twist, huh?

Naturally, the group of six is separated into two groups, and 2 of them are dead. The main group finds King's lab where they learn that he's trying to breed the landshark ("Plumber ma'am"). They also learn that it may be vulnerable to nitrogen.

They escape the lab and head towards the helipad, since there ought to be a radio there. And they need some tunes! Ok, not really, they're still hoping that someone will help them. They reunite with the boss and now it's 1 group of four. Then, one of the girls gets eaten and we're down to three. The boss, the ex-fiance, and the head of IT (who is, naturally, a great marksman and an expert at throwing knives).

King wants the thing returned to the lab, and Krause gets killed trying to retrieve him. Meanwhile, it's a race to the helipad for our heroes. The shark may be resting, the guards are still trying to hunt them down. And by now, our heroes are all excellent shots. The guards don't seem to be able to hit the broadside of a barn. They probably needed help making sure the guns were pointed in the right direction.

The 3 of them go all Rambo and storm the helipad, securing a helicopter. Unfortunately, the one guard who can manage to aim before firing hit the gas tank and blowing up the copter before it leaves the ground. The guards manage to take Amelia (Tylo) and Whitney (Roberts) back to the lab for King. King wants to get his son laid something fierce. He want to create the next phase in human evolution. So, hopefully, "Paul" will remember Amelia and want to get it on. But first, King feeds Whitney to him.

Luckily, here comes Tom with a spear gun, and a flare gun, and a gun gun, and a fertilizer gun. And naturally, like all monsters, the shark eventually turns on his creator, killing him. And Tom fills him with fertilizer, and he explodes. Nitrogen, remember? And they destroy the lab in one of the most anti-climactic and unexciting endings EVER.

Anything with the shark underwater is obviously, and painfully, CGI. He looks better as a man in a shark suit. Which is for close ups, or in land. You know, when he's more like a land shark ("I'm only a harmless dolphin..."). The shark suit is only seen in quick glimpses, which is too bad, it doesn't look that bad.

Jeffrey Combs is surprisingly good in his role as the doctor out for revenge. And Velizar Binev is great as King's assistant Dr. Krause. They have a good chemistry together. The others are all pretty average. Not bad, no one just phoned it in or anything. No one was terrible. The story itself is pretty generic mad scientist/monster man fare.

It's too cheesy to take serious, but everyone seems to have taken it too serious to be cheesy. So, what could have been a fun movie turned out pretty average, which, by Sci Fi Channel standards is practically a home run. I don't know, just a little more over the top and it could have been really enjoyable. I give it 5 sheds labeled "shark control" out of 10.

FGFC: Killing with a garden claw...I never thought of that.

It will inevitably be asked at some point, what I did this weekend. Well, let me tell you.

I rocked out.

You see, I'm something of a "hero" when it comes to playing the "guitar" or, gee-tar as you may know it. I have a Gibson SG that I like to refer to as The Terror of Tokyo due to it's custom Godzilla design. Friday night, I jammed with my friend, covering some hot Cheap Trick and Nirvana tracks. On Saturday, I just sort of played with myself (not like that), practicing some Deep Purple and White Zombie covers. It was sounding pretty awesome, at first...amps at 11, adding a little extra whammy bar flair to Iron Man. But then I upped the difficulty to medium and I just couldn't hit the blue notes.

So, I decided I needed to stop rocking out. I did not, however, stop my normal post show ritual. However, due to a lack of groupies in my apartment, I could only get drunk. And drunk I was as my friend and I popped this month's Final Girl Film Club movie into my DVD player. That movie being the 1984, Daphne Zuniga classic, The Initiation.

I did, desperately try to take notes, but I gave up only a half hour or so into the movie. I have no excuse. So, bear with me as I try to recall what I saw through my post-rock-out hangover.

After the worlds longest and least interesting credit intro (okay, it was only two and a half minutes, but wow was it dull. Even for credits!) it all starts off with a kind fast asleep. She wakes up to walk down a hallway, to appropriately creepy music. A child wandering through the house to her parents bedroom where there be some fuckin goin on. So, she stabs dad and then, someone else comes in and seems none to happy and ends up on fire in the fireplace.

Oh! It was a dream! Okay. Kelly wakes up to a bunch of lingerie clad ladies singing "Delta Rho Ki never will die", which as songs go, has a good beat, but the lyrics lack originality. Kelly is apparently pledging a sorority run by someone's mother. I'm sorry, but this Megan lady just seems too old to be in college. Regardless, she's come up with a prank that involves breaking into Kelly's dad's mall to steal the uniform from the night watchman. That's hot. Apparently Megan wants someone to go be a whore or something.

We then go over to a loony bin...full of loonies! And a gardener. A BURN VICTIM gardener. Foreshadowing! Apparently no one is interested in locking doors in this place.. As the Nurse Ratched wannabe walks to her car, all the loonies are out of their bin playing ring around the rosie in the parking lot. She gets to her care where she's carefully stabbed with a garden claw. By carefully I mean without enough real force to puncture the chest plate, but it's a movie and we'll suspend our disbelief for now.

Which brings up to the one thing we at 7dp industries couldn't stop laughing at.

Look behind him...on the chalkboard...it says anal! Ha! We laugh at fart jokes too.

This is sort of where my notes end...that's right, less than a third of the way into the movie. I'd like to say that it was because I was so ENTHRALLED by the movie, but let's be honest for a change. The reality is that it took me almost 20 minutes to lose interest. This is a movie who's own box advertises that it "delivers the goods with gratuitous nudity, carved-up co-eds and a truly wicked climactic twist." Of which, it actually delivered none. While there was some nudity, it could hardly be called gratuitous, which is a shame because that's my favorite kind. I would hardly call anyone "carved-up", it was more like "punctured with gardening tools" and the so called twist is...well, twisty and possibly unexpected unless you read the chapter titles before watching the movie (which I did). I will say this about the shocking conclusion, they did a fairly good job of leading you away from that possibility. The filmmakers did include, however, some rather unfortunate clothing choices, large belt buckles, and a guy in a penis costume.

And where were the corpses anyway? Half a dozen people are killed, yet only 1 dead body is really ever found.

Wait. I'm sorry. There were 2.

And wouldn't THIS just fuck your shit up?

The Initiation is not a great movie. Hell, I'm not sure that is was even a good movie. It reminds me of the stuff my brother and I used to watch on USA Up All Night with Rhonda Shear. This was of course, back when cable tv was a veritable wasteland after 11pm, littered with b-movies and infomercials. Now it's all Law & Order repeats.

In the end, I give The Initiation...let's go with almost 5 garden weasels out of the shed...I mean out of ten.

And now, they want my band Seratonin to do an encore. I think we're gonna do War Pigs. After that, we're going to go play a new venue. I'm so excited.

Edit: I've changed my "rating" of this movie three times now. In it's original form it was 3, then 4. Now it's a 5. Why do I keep changing you you ask? Well, the more I talk about it and the more I think about the movie the more I like it. And besides, it's entirely subjective and I CAN change my rating. I can't imagine going above a 5 for it, and it's a soft 5 to begin with, it was an average movie. It was a good movie to get drunk to, and that counts for something.