Album Cover of the Whatever

I'm man enough to admit that Bathory's discography is a bit of a blindspot for me.  Truth be told, I wouldn't know which album to start with, but I do know that 1996's Blood on Ice has a sick cover.

Space Monster Wagmagwi

I did the unthinkable.  I found a kaiju flick so obscure, I had never heard of it.  To be exact, it's a South Korean title.  Initially, 1967's Space Monster Wangmagwi (exclamation point optional) seems direct, but the sinuous plot bobs in and out of rhyme, ultimately settling as a quaint, yet anfractuous (!?) stretch of celluloid.  The script goes through the sci-fi motions.  Aliens with toaster heads are devising a full-scale invasion of Earth.  Their designs preclude them from getting their hands too dirty, as part of the plan involves dropping a monster into our orbit.  I'm not making this up; when we first see the titular varmint, he (I don't think I'm overstepping the bounds by assuming its gender identity) is handcuffed and behind bars.  That's when I knew this was a "special" film.

Wangmagwi abducts the wife of an Air Force pilot.  I would call out the subtle allusion to King Kong, but the movie beats me to the punch.  That has to be one of the earliest examples of wry, self-aware humor in genre history.  Well-played, Korea.  Well-played.  Before you can predict the next move, a child crawls his way into the fiend's colossal nasal cavity.  We follow Spider (I'm just now learning his name) as he stabs Wangmagwi and - again, I'm not making this up - takes a piss inside his skull.  In another scene, a man defecates in the middle of a crowded room.  I can understand the impulse to aim for potty humor, even if I don't personally find it funny, but gee whiz.  Get it?  Whiz?  Oh, bother.

For the most part, the film plays it straight.  Once Wangmagwi reaches his maximum height, we ride a wave of miniature-demolishing action to the resolution.  I enjoyed the workaday special effects, although I've seen so many kaiju wonders, I should really withhold judgment on the technical side of things.  I mean, would you be able to spot substandard miniatures if you saw them?  Maybe you could.  Good for you.  Hey, here's some filler...the Guinness World Book of Records lists Space Monster Wangmagwi as having the most extras on a film set at 167,000.  Wait, strike that.  IMDb says that's bullshit.  That's what happens when you let alcoholics record world records.  Get it?  Guinness?  I'm done.

EDIT: I'm not done.  Three paragraphs is too long for a blood capsule, so I might as well add more filler.  Did you know that Space Monster Wangdoodle was considered to be a lost classic for decades?  It was only recently emancipated onto Blu-ray.  Give it a whirl.  It's as entertaining as most Godzilla entries, and in my opinion, it's actually better than 1956's Rodan or 1961's Mothra.  Robert Z'Dar says, "I once pissed in a guy's skull.  No one called me a hero, that's for sure."

   

Now Playing

Fires in the Distance - Air Not Meant for Us

It has been a full month since the last sighting of this column.  In that time, I've listened to scads of music, but usually, there will be a couple of records that stand out from the pack.  That's just the nature of things.  Your listening rotation probably operates in the same manner.  My May has been saturated with what I consider to be "autumn metal."  Fires in the Distance write songs about leaves and idiopathic despair, as illustrated in the track "Idiopathic Despair."  They monopolize the realm of melodic doom/death, a subgenre I know inside and out.

One could argue that 2023's Air (not to be confused with that Nike movie) relies too heavily on a lumbering gait.  And yeah, the tempo could stand to be kicked up a few notches, but this is doom.  That's what doom does.  Tack on a multitude of majestic guitar solos and you've got yourself a righteous album.  Favorite tune?  I'll go with "Psalm of the Merciless."

Redemption - Snowfall on Judgment Day

I love progressive power metal.  Can't get enough of the stuff.  I found Redemption through then-frontman Ray Alder, a throat you may know from Fates Warning.  This guy is steadfastly becoming one of my favorite vocalists.  Dude can write a chorus like nobody's business.  Apparently, this project now employs Tom Englund of Evergrey fame.  As an aside, I suppose you could slot Evergrey into the same bracket.  I dig them, too.  Anyway, Snowfall was Redemption's fourth long player.  It came out in 2009, and I can't believe I missed it.  The musicianship is preeminent.  Listen to "Walls" and tell me those aren't powerful melodies.  You simply can't!  Favorite tune?  I mean, "Walls," but listen to all of them.

Geek Out #163

Over the past few days, I've watched several episodes of The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs.  The man is a national treasure.  Here he is schooling human vaginal irrigation device (or douchebag) Jay Leno on the importance of Basket Case.  God bless him.

Transformations

I'm approaching this review as a writing exercise.  The question is, can Dom bullshit his way through what amounts to being a progress report on a sci-fi lime wheel?  NOTE: I could have said "lemon," but why limit myself to a single citrus fruit to describe a genre as colorful as the b-movie?  If anything, 1988's Transformations is a kumquat, as it's fairly insignificant and hard to find.  For what it's worth, I spotted it on laserdisc while riffling through eBay.  If that's your bag, knock yourself out.  Personally, I had a hard time believing that Transformations would live up to its VHS box art (see for yourself below).  Back in my days as an avid collector, this is a title that would spring up on occasion, but I neglected to take a gamble on it.  Did I make the right call?

Define "right."  Clearly, I threw an undisclosed sum of money at this thing.  In consequence, I do feel a little dirty, but that's a testament to director Jay Kamen.  He must have done something right.  Hmm, how the hell do I define "right" anyway?  Transformations is an omnium-gatherum of ideas, both good and bad.  NOTE: The band Omnium Gatherum is middling.  I just checked out of curiosity, and holy shit, they have issued nine albums.  I mean, they're fine if you're looking for basic melodic death metal, but I...I need to focus.  Our plot will track as familiar territory if you've seen as many Alien(s) ripoffs as I have.  An astronaut has a seriously close encounter with a succubus during one of his hypersleep cycles.  Basically, picture Ripley's cryostasis set-up in Alien, only without the sleek gadgets.

So right off the bat, we have a good idea.  I dig the concept of demons in space.  Sure, Lifeforce touched on these grounds, but here, the naked lady is carrying a pestiferous disease.  Slowly, Wolfgang - the astronaut at hand - transforms (take a shot of your adult beverage of choice) into an ooey-gooey monster.  I'm positive that it was unintentional, but Species II used some of these ideas, right down to a feisty, brazen sex scene that is more uncomfortable than it is arousing.  For the record, I prefer Species II.  And that is a sentence you will never read again for the rest of your life.  Moving on!  Actually, that's pretty much where the synopsis ends.  There is a forced love angle, but why go there?

Transformations looks like it had a budget.  That's primarily because it appropriated sets from Arena and Robot Jox.  Hey, weren't those New World releases?  Yes, and this flick was set to be plastered onto home video via the same company, but it went bankrupt before that could happen.  It seems that nobody was terribly happy with the finished product.  Even Charles Band removed his name from the project, which is f*cking astounding when you consider the stuff he's proud to associate with, y'know?  Transformations isn't monumental, but it's not exactly a hopeless situation either.  The acting is (inter)stellar, relatively speaking.  Professional cutie Lisa Langlois stands out as the love interest.  She's better than she needs to be, and I applaud her for the effort.

It's easy to dismiss the special effects as amateurish, but I didn't have a problem with the latex (or whatever) on display.  I did have a problem with the non-ending.  Come to think of it, Transformations is full of non-kills and non-suspense.  Eh, it is what it is.  How's that for a critic quote?

  

Blood Capsule #149

CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN (1958)

Another day, another z-movie that isn't worth the punctilious scrutiny you've come to expect from me.  I promise I'm not phoning it in; I'm just surveying a barren landscape.  Today's landscapegoat (ha!) is from the late 50's, which means it's worth tracking down.  I know I sound defeated, but Curse is imaginative enough to watch on a slow weekend.  An archeological dig exhumes the petrified corpse of a noticeably robust slave, an unfortunate victim of the Mt. Vesuvius eruption.  His features have been obscured by time and erosion, but his heart...ah, his heart.  It still beats to a rhythm of terror (wow, I should have been a marketing consultant in the 50's).

Scientists are reticent to entertain the notion that our faceless man could still be alive.  Understandable, but how to explain the muckle of crushed skulls in the presence of the supposedly dead body?  The titular mugless chap is a fantastic villain.  Sure, he's basically a mummy, but hey, I'll play ball.  It's fun watching him cause havoc, and the slim running time makes it hard to stay bored.  Having said that, I did get bored.  Curse is a dull, long-winded sit.  Director Edward L. Cahn manages to cram a profusion of exposition into several tight spaces, resulting in fairly repetitive dialogue.  I prefer his other creature feature, the iconic It! The Terror From Beyond Space.  Man, 1958 was a banner year for horror and science fiction.  Animated courtroom dramas?  Not so much.

Tip Jar

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Top 5 NOLA Albums

Quick disclaimer...these are my favorite "NOLA metal" albums.  This isn't a list for anyone hoping to plunge into the arcane depths of the scene.  You'll notice that my picks aren't terribly underground.  Reason being, I don't live in New Orleans!  I would make a list of the top five bands from Hickory, North Carolina, but folks, that would be one pathetic list.

5. FLOODGATE - Penalty

I'm going to cheat for this entry.  I already reviewed this record, and you can read that sumbitch right HERE.

4. GOATWHORE - Carving Out the Eyes of God

One of the self-imposed rules that I'm following bars me from enumerating multiple albums by the same band.  Unfortunately, I'm forced to leave out killer stuff.  On the other hand, you know that I'm listing stealthy, high-grade records.  I'm told that cream rises to the top.  That sounds like a lewd euphemism to me, but whatever.  Carving kicks ass.  It's actually what I'm listening to at this very moment.  It's my favorite concentration of Goatwhore's rectitude for a couple of reasons.  First off, it's their most diverse album in terms of mood and tempo.  Also, this is where Sammy started to play more guitar solos, which can only be an awesome thing.

3. CROWBAR - Sonic Excess in its Purest Form

I don't know that this is my favorite Crowbar platter (2011's Sever the Wicked Hand might have something to say about it), but I do know that it was my introduction to the world's heaviest sludge savants.  Sonic Excess is just massive.  The riffs pummel you.  They smite your vital organs, or at the very least, they lace into your neck muscles.  And the opening notes of "The Lasting Dose" are f*cking perfection.  What else can I say about this record that hasn't already been said about nuclear proliferation?  The production is fine-tuned to the point where you can practically see glass shattering in the recording studio.  To build a mountain takes a long, long time indeed.

2. ACID BATH - Paegan Terrorism Tactics

Well, what do you know?  I reviewed this album, too.  Click HERE.  I should note that you could just as easily slot When the Kite String Pops into this position, but hey, it's my website.

1. DOWN - NOLA

Doesn't this album have to occupy the top spot?  For my money, it contains Phil Anselmo's best vocal performance to date (post-falsetto, yet pre-heroin).  The riffs have reached near-mythical status, but the focus is on songcraft.  "Lifer," "Rehab," "Eyes of the South," "Losing All," "Hail the Leaf," and "Stone the Crow" are personal favorites.  You won't find a weak track in the bunch.  The fact that the line-up featured on this record is a veritable supercluster of stars from most of NOLA's heavy-hitters essentially cements it as the apotheosis of "Southern metal."

Album Cover of the Whatever

If plodding German death metal sounds like your cup of plasma, check out Atomwinter's Iron Flesh.  The cover teaches us an important lesson about perspective, friends.  Without perspective, I'd say there was a ginormous severed head hanging from that turret.  But no, it's a stock severed head in the foreground.  Either way, it's a cool visual that accurately represents the band's militant riffage.

Panels From Beyond the Grave #38

THE TWILIGHT ZONE (#1, Nov. 1991)

I've said this before, but when it comes to genre television from the 60's, I prefer The Outer Limits to The Twilight Zone.  It's a decision you have to make in the crib, much like the eternal debate over which family you want to join, the Munsters or the Addams (I'm a Munsters guy, natch).  Of course, I don't mean to suggest that I have some sort of acroamatic problem with The Twilight Zone.  Hell, I don't even know what "acroamatic" means!  I dig it.  Conversely, I'm all about The Outer Limits to the point where I've made it a religious persuasion to watch the first episode every October, which is usually when the mood strikes.

The Twilight Zone is cool, but it never turns me into a foaming fanboy.  I do like it enough to buy merchandise branded with the show's insignia.  A comic book, for instance.  Rod Serling's brooding, esoteric anthology series is so iconic, I could believe that there was a corresponding comic published in each decade since the show's premiere.  For the record, the book I'm reviewing was parceled out in the 90's.  You wouldn't be wrong if you said I was bound to enjoy it, but I approached it as an unbiased, yet ardent enthusiast for all things spooky.  Did it make the grade?  Yes.  Keep reading, though!

Our story is entitled "The Big Dry."  Stanley and Carla are always at odds with one another, discordant daggers drawn.  To stamp their relationship as rocky would be an understatement, but they stay together for the sake of their daughter.  It's intimated that Stanley isn't the biological father, but he has a genuinely great relationship with Corky (why they settled on that name is anyone's best guess).  The fissures within their family unit are put under a magnifying glass when they embark on a road trip.  Lost without a map, they find shelter in a big, creepy house.  I swear to God, I've never had car trouble or whatever near a big, creepy house.  How does this happen so f*cking often in works of fiction?  I digress.

I'll spare you the rest of the synopsis.  If I detailed every beat of the plot, I wouldn't be doing NOW Comics any favors, now would I?  That's partially because you need to read this baby for yourself, but it's also because the plot is a shade silly.  Believe it or not, that's a compliment.  The mystery of the big, creepy house involves a monster, and my stance on monsters is well-documented.  Deciding on the rating was relatively easy.  There are two prominent, eye-catching checkmarks in the "pro" column.  Checkmark #1: The artwork!  Everything here is bold.  Even talky scenes that don't feature a lot of movement are dazzling.  The cover is a fine example of the lustrous colors inside the pages.

Checkmark #2: The dialogue!  I was pleasantly surprised by the rich character development.  Kudos to writer Bruce Jones for keeping his interaction grounded.  I mean, he isn't Leo Tolstoy, but this is solid stuff for a comic book.  As for the "con" column, it's virtually empty.  Highly recommended for fans of ink and text bubbles.

    

Geek Out #162

Here's a chunk of my favorite episode of The Twilight Zone.  Consider this a harbinger of things to come.  We're about to cross into another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind...

Blood Capsule #148

BLUE MONKEY (1987)

I was all set to write at least four paragraphs on this film.  That's right, folks.  I was going to put actual effort into this (forced) labor of love.  But then I realized what I was writing.  The awkwardly-titled Blue Monkey didn't give me a superfluity of material to work with.  For those curious, the title comes from a throwaway line delivered by a child actor who should have been thrown away at birth.  Egads, I need to reel myself in a bit.  Get this; the working title was Green Monkey, but that was scrapped to avoid confusion.  Ha!  Oh, the plot.  I'm getting ahead of myself.  A hospital is besieged by an economy-size insect that looks like a cross between a praying mantis and a postmortem Ellen DeGeneres.

I don't know why I'm being particularly brutal, but let's face it.  If any creature feature deserved a tepid, unenthusiastic review, it's this one.  It's almost as if director William Fruet was aiming for mediocrity, what with the largely apathetic death sequences and the sapless finale.  We do get a gratuitous decapitation.  That's...something.  If I'm being honest, the overgrown snippersnapper doesn't do much of anything, aside from occupy corridors and lay eggs.  So basically, Blue Monkey is about your mother.  Woah, sorry.  I'm just punching at the air now.  I should stop before someone - namely me - gets hurt.  Robert Z'Dar says, "Thank God my face wasn't used for this damp squib."

Rassle Inn #40

The draft.  It's over, but I don't claim to be topical.  Can we talk about how it's f*cking useless?  At one point in time, brand separation seemed prudent.  WCW had just folded, and ECW was heading down strikingly similar tubes.  Suddenly, Vince McMahon bequeathed a veritable toy box of roster additions.  It is now well-known that certain stars (*cough* Sting *cough*) were paid handsomely to go on staycations, but what to do with all those nugatory midcarders?  And Scott Steiner???

Some wrestlers would appear on Raw and some wrestlers would appear on Smackdown.  Okay, got it.  Where do you put your heavyweight champion?  Wouldn't it make sense to allow your top guy to roam wherever he pleases, his belt being the golden ticket that annuls the partition between your flagship shows?  Yes, so of course, Vince didn't do that.  It wasn't long before WWF/E accommodated two champions.  Coincidentally (I use that term loosely), it was right about that time when pro-wrestling lost its foothold in America.

I know that there are a vast multitude of reasons why ratings declined, but in my personal opinion, the awkward situation in the main event was chief among them.  Which main event am I referring to?  Exactly!  Let me put it to you this way; how many teams won the Super Bowl in February?  And the World Series last year?  Professional wrestling should always try to mimic legitimate sports, whether the public knows it's a work or not.  Likewise, rasslin' should appeal to outsiders.  That's the only way to augment your fanbase and ensure that the business will be around for years to come.

This past Monday night, WWE took steps to excogitate (I use fancy words to describe fancy bullshit) a new world champion that will stand apart from the Universal Champion.  This will do nothing to rope in the common man, much less the common woman.  And while I'm on my handicap-accessible soapbox, who the hell cares which "superstars" are on which shows?  Unless you're exceptionally committed to your favorite color, does it matter if, say, Becky Lynch is on Raw or Smackdown?  It would be one thing if these programs were drastically different from one another, but they aren't.  In fact, they're virtually identical!

Good point, Dom.  Thanks, Dom.  Okay, I'm talking to myself, so that's my cue to leave.  Stay tuned to find out if I'm drafted to Bleacher Report or PWInsider.

Sick Day

I was all set to write about wrestling when a wave of BLUGH fell upon me.  I'm not exactly sick, but I'm not exactly well either.  Let me rephrase that; I'm not well enough to blather about wrestling.  I'll do it later!  Tomorrow.  I'll do it tomorrow.  Maybe.  Probably.  Tonight, it's computer golf and funeral doom for me.  By the way, the new Mournful Congregation EP comes out later this month.  Start getting amped for it because I have!