Now Playing #25

Dissection - Reinkaos

I'm a late bloomer when it comes to Dissection.  I've apprised myself of the classics.  Yes, there is something special about The Somberlain and Storm of the Light's Bane, but if I'm being perfectly honest, I...almost prefer Reinkaos?  Don't lynch me.  Okay, lynch me.  I've tried to "get into" the first two albums because as a metalhead, that's what I'm supposed to do.  But yeah, no.  I put off listening to Reinkoas, perhaps in response to its reputation as a subordinate clunker.  I genuinely don't get it.  Why is it scorned so?  The riffs are less melodic, but the leads are still silky smooth.  I dig the solos on "Black Dragon" and "God of Forbidden Light."  The title track, a layered instrumental, might contain my favorite bits of guitar lickery here.  "Dark Mother Divine" is epic, even if it's mostly mid-paced.  I have to say, if we had gotten a fourth Dissection long player, I wouldn't have been opposed to more material in this vein.  Oh well.

Hey, why do Satanists love dragons so much anyway?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Hooded Menace - Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration

In the lead-up to this album's release, I went back and devoured the entire Hooded Menace discography.  Geez, what a band.  As much as I'm enjoying Lachrymose, I'm going to start with some constructive criticism.  The guitar tone.  Dude, Fulfill the Curse and Never Cross the Dead are bone-crushing.  This record (and 2021's The Tritonus Bell) sounds homogenized.  The riffs themselves are fine, but they come off as sterile.  Maybe it's the shift in songwriting.  Musically, I hear just as much traditional metal as I do doomy death metal.  Exhibit A: The closing riff of "Pain Masquerade."  That's very nearly Skid Row.  Now, I love Skid Row, so that's not a gargantuan obstacle.  Whatever.  On the whole, Hooded Menace has retained their Hooded Menace-ness.  "Lugubrious Dance" is my favorite cut of blind dead meat.  I'm all about the fiendish leads.  The leads, man!

These tunes may not be stupidly heavy, but they're worth playing in your cemetery of choice.  Year-end list?  It's very possible.  Oh, the Duran Duran cover.  I usually skip it.  It is what it is.

Blood Capsule #340

CRAWL (2019)

Crawl is twelve minutes shorter than Rogue.  So I'm tackling Crawl.  Normally, I wouldn't let you in on my selection process, but you should know that I'm just as brainless as the movies that I review.  Perhaps that's unfair.  This flick does have a brain.  It has the heart, however, of a French "survival horror" endurance test from about fifteen years earlier.  It was directed by Alexandre Aja, and it feels more like his High Tension than Alligator.  But is that a good thing or a bad thing?  From where I'm sitting, it's merely a thing.  It does hit strange to watch a gritty, ultra-realistic take on the "nature runs amok" subgenre.  To that end, I was reminded of 1977's Day of the Animals.  Again, that's neither good nor bad.  Crawl tells the simple story of a woman checking on her father during a hurricane.  Tempestuous flooding forces them into the crawlspace where they butt heads with a deadly mongoose.  Kidding!  There are gators afoot and afloat.  What happens when the levee breaks?  If only it was just a Led Zeppelin song.

Crawl's sizeable budget allows for polished special effects that extend to cool, atmospheric shots of inclement weather.  Sometimes, stormclouds are creepier than monsters.  The characters are sympathetic, but bits of exposition that develop their backstories come across as forced.  I get it, though.  There are only so many ways to establish that two people have a fractured relationship.  Thankfully, the acting from Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper is on-point.  Props to the stunt crew.  This couldn't have been an easy film to shoot.  It makes me wonder what other reptile romps would have been able to accomplish with the same amount of money.  In any event, Crawl is a suspenseful, well-structured sit at the cinema.  If I'm being honest, I prefer Alligator and Lake Placid.  There is something to be said for cult appeal.  Recommended for fans of Doppler radars.

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Blood Capsule #339

THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE (1959)

I didn't recognize her, but Beverly Garland also starred in 1957's Not of This Earth.  Man, she is the cat's pajamas.  Sorry, I think I started in the middle of this review.  Let me back up a bit.  The Alligator People is a hard film to describe.  The story is relayed via narration.  An amnesiac nurse (that would be Garland as Jane) is sent on a sodium pentothal trip to recover repressed memories.  Her psychiatrists decide later that these memories are better left repressed.  What does she divulge while under psychoactive hypnosis?  I don't want to reveal too much.  This flick functions as a mystery, and part of the fun is stumbling upon plot twists along with the main characters.  I guess I can tell you that alligators are involved.  That much is obvious.  The less obvious stuff has to do with a secluded plantation, a radioactive cobalt ray, and gratuitous limb regeneration.  Oh, and Lon Chaney Jr. as a hook-handed drunkard who hates alligators as much as I hate paragraph breaks.

I need to rave more about Beverly Garland.  She anchors The Alligator People.  That's not to say that the other cast members aren't up to snuff.  They are, especially Chaney.  It's strange to fathom that he was only a handful of roles away from his last, as he's certainly spirited here.  Pun intended?  You be the judge.  I highly recommend this one, mainly because there is a payoff.  You want to see a gator dude run around the wetlands of Louisiana, and that's precisely what the film offers.  Are the make-up effects silly?  Yes.  And they are magnificent.  Ironically, I was reminded of The Fly.  Fox distributed The Alligator People on a double bill with Return of the Fly.  Who do we have to petition to bring back double bills, preferably at drive-in theaters?  No, Barbie and Oppenheimer don't count.

Rassle Inn #56

A scene from AEW's WrestleDream.

Every time I order an AEW pay-per-view, I question my existence on this blue marble of ours.  The fact is, I crave mindless entertainment.  And last night, it didn't get any more mindless than WrestleDream.  First off, I'll say that it was a fairly typical AEW PPV in that there were too many matches.  Of course, most of the matches were too long.  Are we actually supposed to react when there are ten false finishes in every single contest?  You could even argue that the wrong person won half of the time.  Case in point, why isn't Toni Storm the (only) women's champion?  She's the most over talent you have, bar none.  I guess the women's titles are going to be unified now?  I have so many questions and not enough answers.

Then you have the main event.  What the hell are they doing with Darby Allin!?  This isn't professional wrestling anymore, not when the scrappy underdog is effing waterboarded in the middle of the ring.  Eventually, Darby is going to be gangraped on live television.  Actually, he'll probably die before that could ever happen.  The bumps he took - before nearly drowning - were so violent and so unnecessary, Tony Khan should be arrested for aggravated assault by proxy.  What does this do for the Death Riders?  "Boy, those are some tough fellows."  Give me a break.  The fans in attendance were cool with the ridiculous nature of it all, but they have already bought their ticket, both literally and figuratively.

What do I mean?  I mean that PPV's like WrestleDream do nothing, absolutely nothing, to rope prospective viewers into watching AEW, much less pro-wrestling as a whole.  Tony Khan currently has a built-in audience that will never see an increase in number as long as he's the guy in charge.  For the love of God, give the book to someone else.  It doesn't matter what the "sickos" want.  The ratings are dropping.  If Darby Allin has a death wish, so does AEW.  Yes, I'm about doom and gloom today.  Sorry.  I'm not exactly happy with WWE right now either, so don't think I'm picking on AEW.  Where did A.J. Lee go anyway?  She'll make everything better.  She always makes everything better.

Blood Capsule #338

STANLEY (1972)

My favorite bit of IMDb trivia regarding Stanley?  And I quote - "Screenwriter Gary Crutcher wrote the film's script in only three days while high on amphetamines."  I think that says it all, folks.  What am I doing with my life?  Alright, I'll curb the melodrama.  Stanley certainly plays it cool.  Twice in the first thirty minutes, we watch our main character fall asleep.  Our main character is not Stanley, by the way.  No, we follow a Native American Vietnam vet named Tim(my).  You could call him a serpent empath of sorts.  He loves...loves his rattlesnakes.  He finds humans to be pathetic wastes of flesh, so I guess we do have one thing in common.  Anyway, Tim wants revenge on the poachers who "accidentally" killed his father.  That's where his slithering friends come into play.  If the premise sounds familiar, director William Grefe is pretty open about the fact that he was directly influenced by Willard.  Just replace rats with snakes, add Floridian swamp water (Stanley was shot in the Everglades), and voila!

Grefe also helmed Sting of Death, which I covered late last year.  Scientifically speaking, it was fun on a bun.  Stanley doesn't have that same blithe spirit.  Part of the problem is ol' Tim.  He's so miserable, it's hard not for the viewer to share in his misery.  The laggard pacing further weighs heavy on the body of the film.  Oh, and it runs for 108 minutes.  Why 2.5 Z'Dars?  The acting is actually decent.  It would have been easier to invest in the story if it didn't ask us to identify with a guy who beds a 17-year-old (after killing her father, no less).  If Stanley were resculpted for modern audiences, it would stand a chance of being an intriguing character study.  There's a prizewinner in here somewhere.  Alas, it's obscured by crawling mounds of future wallets.

DOM RANKS Every Opeth Album

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Blood Capsule #337

LAKE PLACID 3 (2010)

I'm feeling trapped by this particular theme month.  It's like wanting to play outside with your friends when you're stuck inside because of a downpour.  As much as I would enjoy writing about aliens or...well, anything else, I'm stuck with reptiles for the time being.  More precisely, I'm stuck with gators.  Crocodiles?  I don't actually know which creature populates Lake Placid 3.  All I know is that I haven't seen Lake Placid 2.  I hadn't even spent time with the original until earlier this year.  It was a pleasant surprise.  Why did I skip a sequel?  Look, you should be used to my questionable tastes by now.  Do I know why I popped in Lake Placid 3 yesterday afternoon?  No, not entirely.  It worked out in the end, as this flick achieves quite a bit with very little ammunition (read: funding) in its firing chamber.  Let me get the negative stuff out of the way first.  The CGI is dreadful.  I think I saw digital waves at one point.  Egads.  And yet, the film manages to maneuver around these obstacles to deliver high-energy action sequences in the third act.

Plot, plot, plot...a little boy has been feeding meat to a pod of small-ish alligators behind his parents' back.  His excuse?  Boredom.  Personally, I've never been restless enough to risk losing a limb, but whatever.  He gets plenty of attention when a big-ish alligator shows up at his family's cabin.  There are also subplots concerning a hunting party.  They are not terribly interesting, but screenwriter David Reed does a tidy job of tying all of the characters together.  The kid I mentioned may have been bored, but I wasn't.  Lake Placid 3 premiered on the Syfy Channel, but it's worth noting that several boobs were added for the DVD release.  Apparently, the nudity was expurgated on Amazon Prime.  Okay, it wasn't worth noting.  My bad.  I had fun with this random sequel, although I doubt that I'll be trying out Lake Placid: The Final Chapter anytime soon.  The same goes for Lake Placid vs. Anaconda and Lake Placid: Legacy.  As if!

Dom's Nightmares

Because of the nature of this website, you can't tell that I've totally been slacking off the last few days.  Well, I'm about to get my rear into gear.  Over the next couple of weeks, you'll be seeing new editions of Now Playing and Iron Supplements.  To be honest, I haven't even watched many movies as of late.  I have watched episodes of Freddy's Nightmares, which is apparently on Tubi now??  Those folks must have the best legal team on the planet to be able to offer the stuff that they offer.  I'm not 100% sure who owns Freddy's Nightmares, although you would think that it falls under the New Line umbrella.  Who knows?  I had seen the pilot - "No More Mr. Nice Guy" - yeeeears ago, but it was a treat to revisit it.  There are scenes that function as a straightforward slasher where Freddy (in human form) creeps around the neighborhood and kills police offers Michael Myers-style.  Incredible.

I also enjoyed "It's a Miserable Life," an episode that happens to star Lar Park Lincoln as a requisite girlfriend.  Curiously, most of Freddy's Nightmares seems to work off of a blueprint, that being "bad things happen to a teenager."  Hey, it works.  Usually, when I try to binge a TV series, I lose interest after a few episodes and move onto something else, but I'm committed to watching all of this one.  Ask me how I fared come Thanksgiving.  Or better yet, don't.

Blood Capsule #336

RATTLERS (1976)

Muscle relaxers.  They give, and in the case of today's subject, they take away.  Man, about an hour into Rattlers, my eyelids were beginning to drag on the floor.  I managed to pull myself together, though.  I came close to hitting eject.  By that I mean, I came close to hurtling myself through the ceiling, as I watched this film on Tubi.  Rattlers feels like a made-for-TV cheapie.  But it's not that inviting.  I should have known better.  Any horror freak worth their Himalayan pink salt could tell you that snake movies are only rewarding propositions if the snakes involved are either giant or mutated in some way.  Or preferably, both!  Rattlers concerns...rattlers.  Technically, their genes have been modified by nerve gas, but big deal.  That just makes them aggressive.  And if I've said it once, I've said it a million times; an aggressive snake is not as interesting as a 50-foot snake.  Wait, have I ever said that?  I'm probably lying.  Let me start another paragraph before I divulge another untruth.

Our main character, a herpetologist (of course), is played by some guy named Sam Chew Jr.  How he wasn't a bubblegum mascot is anyone's best guess.  As an actor, he seems to be on the ball, but I don't think anyone told him that he was in a fright flick.  His blood pressure couldn't have eclipsed triple digits.  I know mine was low, but I wasn't dealing with live snakes.  Rattlers is humdrum through and through.  The script is floating with small talk, and I do mean floating.  There is no memorable score to punch up the scares.  Any screams you hear on the soundtrack merely break up perpetual lulls of silence.  If I wasn't an obsessive-compulsive when it came to logging my cinematic conquests, I seriously doubt that Rattlers would have made the cut for Random Reptile Month.  Hey, someone has to raise the red flag over this fiasco.

Sam Chew Jr.  No way that's his real name.

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Blood Capsule #335

KING COBRA (1999)

If I could give this film a standing ovation, I would.  It's not overly impressive as a "giant snake" vehicle, but it has three magic words on its side - the Chiodo brothers.  They handled F/X duties in a stunning show of anti-CGI sentiment that took me by surprise.  The technology was there.  Anaconda (don't worry, we'll get there soon enough) used CGI two years earlier, and it looked slick, but of course, that particular serpent was backed by a significant studio.  While King Cobra was released by Lion's Gate, I can't confirm whether the funding came from big wigs or regular-sized wigs.  Either way, there is no digital duplicity on display.  The title monster, a cross between a king cobra (Ophidiophagus hannah) and an eastern diamondback rattler (Crotalus adamanteus), is one hell of a creation.  The thing has palpable personality, more so than our human leads.  The acting isn't bad per se; it's just that the characters are offensively uninteresting.  I did like Erik Estrada as a gay-for-some-reason event planner.  Yeah.

It goes without saying that the plot insists on throwing a major shindig in a small town.  This time, it's a beer festival, and I have no idea why.  I guess they're opening a brewery or something.  Pat Morita stars as the herpetologist who knows everything.  For what it's worth, I enjoyed watching him condescend to government officials.  King Cobra starts and ends strong.  The second act...that's where I had problems staying awake.  If I wasn't so won over by the Chiodos' handiwork, it would be hard to recommend this flick.  Still, we're in solid 3-Z'Dar territory.  The directing team of David and Scott Hillenbrand also shepherded Survival Island, which I believe is about an evil piñata.  Now that's a resume.

DOM REACTS To R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead!

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Blood Capsule #334

GAMERA THE BRAVE (2005)

One look at my rating, and I know you'll think I'm crazy.  Apparently, the powers that be completely disagree with me, as this film effectively ended the Gamera franchise as we know it.  This is the best Gamera jaunt I've ever seen, and folks, I will die on that hill.  I think it's fair to say that most genre fans are familiar with our turtle warrior's Showa series, the string of cheese-grade kaiju epics that ran from the mid-60's to the early 80's.  They would usually depict a universe where austere government officials would be led around by cloying groups of children.  They were absurd.  Plain and simple.  Gamera the Brave answers the question, "What if those goofball movies were made by actual filmmakers?"  I won't denigrate the Showa era (I own half of them), but this Gamera should be seen as the Gamera.  Yes, I dig the 90's trilogy.  There is plenty of room for high-quality Gamera-based entertainment, and that includes bottles of Mtn Dew Code Red.

The plot is basic.  A little boy named Toru stumbles upon Gamera's egg and raises it like you would any pet.  Eventually, this cute leatherback levitates and triples in size.  It soon becomes obvious that Toru is dealing with the same kind of Gamera that saved Tokyo from Gyaos (kaiju Pterodactyls, essentially) in 1973.  And wouldn't you know it?  A new monster has risen from the ocean depths, and it's up to Gamera to save Tokyo from certain doom.  Again.  Maybe I'm getting soft with age, but lead actor Ryo Tomioka has expressive eyes that will pierce your soul.  You might even feel...emotions?  In all seriousness, the child actors are splendid.  They come across as real kids, ordinary individuals in extraordinary situations.  The script has more heart than all of the Showa films combined.  I was totally sold on the human drama, which is why I'm trying so hard to sell Gamera the Brave to you.  What's more, the special effects are just right.  Are they worthy of five Z'Dars?  I think so.

It's a shame that this flick was a box office failure in Japan.  I would line up next to myself to see a sequel with the same creative nucleus.  Why do I have a feeling that Random Reptile Month is peaking early?

Iron Supplements #8

MOTHER AUGUSTA

Mother Augusta is an Italian black metal band.  They're one of the more pleasant surprises I've come across thanks to this column.  However, their appeal is, shall we say, limited.  Allow me to explain.  I'm currently listening to Low Lights, the band's most recent full-length album.  Certain tracks could pass for 90's-style alternative rock...with black metal retches anyway.  The bulk of the record is mid-paced.  That's alright with me.  I realize that most metalheads would disagree, but I don't need a tune like "Pills" to launch into blast mode to keep my ears mollified.  If there were any doubts as to Mother Augusta's intentions, the "Similar Artists" tab on their Metal Archives page is littered with depressive black metal acts.  That's probably going to circumscribe their listener base or at least put a check on it.  It shouldn't, but you know it will.  And it's a shame because if you ask me, Mother Augusta delivers.

To date, these gentlemen have released an EP and two studio albums.  I hear a little bit of Forgotten Tomb, which can only be a good thing.  Highly recommended.

Blood Capsule #333

OCTOPUS (2000)

It's probably not a good sign that when someone was ensnared by a tentacle at a little past the hour mark in Octopus, I literally uttered aloud, "Oh, right.  This is a killer octopus movie."  I would be exaggerating if I said that I had completely forgotten, but that wouldn't be too far from the truth either.  This flick has more in common with The Hunt for Red October than it does It Came From Beneath the Sea.  Yes, it's a submarine thriller.  To boot, it's a submarine thriller that premiered on the USA Network.  I'm going to go out on a severed limb and proclaim that Red October might be the better film.  Of course, I'd rather watch Octopus anyway, but that's my problem.  A terse prologue tells us that the Cuban Missile Crisis resulted in barrels of radioactive waste being jettisoned to the ocean floor.  Cut to thirty years later.  A Bulgarian terrorist bombs the embassy, killing children and CIA agents alike.  And then a giant octopus...nope, not yet.  It's decided that the terrorist will be transported back to America in a submarine.  And then a giant octopus shows up?  Yeah.

First off, props to Octopus for dispatching a little girl in the opening scene.  Secondly, this isn't a bad submarine thriller.  NOTE: I don't watch stuff like Red October or Grey Lady Down, so this could be a terrible excuse for a submarine thriller.  Just saying.  All I know is that I didn't fall asleep in between bursts of cephalopod-coated carnage.  And for your information, we're dealing with a mutant octopus.  It's positively ginormous, and the best action scenes reminded me of Deep Rising.  Conversely, the special effects are mostly digital.  In other words, the special effects are mostly cack.  Excrement.  Codswallop.  I think I've made my point.  The only actor I remember is Carolyn Lowery.  She serves as the PG-13 T&A, and for some reason, the script pushes sexual tension.  It doesn't work.  At all.  Apparently, Lowery had a small role in Candyman, but I'll have to take IMDb's word for it.  She's in one scene, tops.  Director John Eyres is also responsible for 1993's Monolith, a sci-fi nugget that I reviewed forty-eight years ago.

I'll go to bat for myself and say my rating is fair.  There is a sequel.  Don't tempt me.

Blind Zombies and You

Just so you know, I'm going to be writing Blood Stains (mini-capsules) of the Blind Dead films over the next week or so.  You can read them over on the ol' Patreon along with almost sixty (!) other Blood Stains.  Plus, you get early access to reviews AND the knowledge that you're helping me out.  Support your boy!*

*That's me.  I'm your boy.

Blood Capsule #332

TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE (1958)

Never underestimate the power of hucksterism.  William Castle famously used gimmicks to sell his fright features, whether he was peddling ghosts (House on Haunted Hill was shot in "Percepto") or old-fashioned monsters (The Tingler was shot in "Illusion-O").  Well, he wasn't the only one.  Terror in the Haunted House - a.k.a. My World Dies Screaming - was supposedly filmed in Psychorama.  What is Psychorama?  I'm glad you asked.  It involves subliminal images that are spliced into the celluloid.  A similar effect is used in The Exorcist, although I don't think that Captain Howdy has ever been associated with Psychorama.  Only two films have ever been hawked with this particular ad campaign, the other being a melodrama called A Date with Death.  But that's enough about marketing.  The single-frame Psychorama flimflam is fun, but can this movie stand on its own two feet?  Actually, yes, I believe it can.  Let's do the plot summary thing.

Sheila keeps having the same nightmare, which may be a repressed memory.  She is afraid to enter her new house, as it looks just like the house in her dreams.  Why does her husband insist on pushing her into the creepy abode?  And what's hanging in the attic?  I hate to deflate a balloon (of terror), but there is nothing supernatural happening here.  There IS a nasty family secret, so at least we're spared the anticlimax of a Scooby-Doo villain.  The conflict is certainly real.  Cathy O'Donnell is dialed in as the wide-eyed Sheila.  She's quite intelligent for a final girl of the 1950's.  Gerald Mohr is convincingly smug as the gaslighting Philip.  I wanted to punch him.  While the lack of any cosmic horror is disappointing, I still enjoyed this flick on a gut level.  It gave me simple black-and-white scares, and sometimes, that's all you need.  By the way, this capsule was written in Thrill-O.  I'm working on the patent.

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Blood Capsule #331

THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING (2000)

By hazy memory recall, I think I read about this flick in Fangoria before eventually renting it at Blockbuster.  I wasn't bowled over by it, so I approached this rewatch with some trepidation.  I had forgotten that it was a Full Moon production.  Thankfully, it has a little more oomph to it than, say, Ragdoll.  The premise centers around a low-budget horror movie being shot at an abandoned hospital.  The crew gets decorous mileage out of the spooky set.  The question is, do I credit The Dead Hate the Living for having hair-raising Spirit Halloween visuals or do I credit the movie in The Dead Hate the Living?  Either way, everything looks scrumptious.  Back to the plot...our raggle-taggle band of budding auteurs unwittingly open a portal to another dimension.  Of sorts.  All you need to know is that the characters contend with zombies.  Said zombies are lead by the ghoulish Mr. Eibon, a bargain basement Rob Zombie that might have been a mad scientist in a former life.

I realize that my synopsis sounds like guesswork, but The Dead Hate the Living is "style over substance."  To be exact, it's all style, no substance.  That isn't necessarily a deal-breaker.  I love the neon lighting, in part, because it's excessive.  The script?  I love a little less.  It takes an interminable 50 minutes to get to the main event monsters.  I will say, I really dug the late Matthew McGrory (a.k.a. Tiny in House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects) as Gaunt, even if I didn't learn his name until the end credits.  I remember reading interviews with him, and he seemed like a cool dude.  Well, I'm sad now.  Great.  I'll wrap it up by recommending The Dead Hate the Living if you don't mind lower-tier Full Moon.  Also, it reminded me of 1997's The Convent, which is better by leaps and bounds.  So take that however you want.

Iron Supplements #7

XEPER

Today's band seems to have international roots.  They hail from Italy, but one of the members (guitarist Guh.lu) was a touring member of Gorgoroth.  Yeah, I don't know how those wires were crossed.  Musically, Xeper seems to take inspiration from the Norwegian strain of black metal.  I'm currently blasting 2021's Ad Numen Satanae, and I'm definitely hearing shades of late-era Mayhem.  You could tell me that these were leftovers from the Daemon sessions, and I wouldn't have any reason to doubt you.  On the whole, however, this is top-shelf stuff.  Xeper plays with tempo variation.  I'm digging the faster sections, in particular.  Lyrical themes?  "Anti-Cosmic Satanism."  I ask you, what is the difference between cosmic horror and anti-cosmic horror?  Only black metal musicians can answer that question, I suppose.

To date, Xeper has released four full-length albums, two demos, and a split with Brazil's Patria.  Apparently, there are three other bands called Xeper, but for the most part, they are dormant projects.  I proclaim this Xeper to be the most Xeperious of all the Xepers.

Blood Capsule #330

SLAUGHTERHOUSE (1987)

"Bubba has an axe to grind.  A big axe."

What a tagline.  It jumped out at me when I first saw it at the video store.  I've since seen the movie twice, and each time, I've been impressed by the ingenuity on display.  That Slaughterhouse takes place in a slaughterhouse shouldn't surprise anyone; the slick production values might surprise a few people.  This slasher was made for nearly nothing.  The grody atmosphere recalls the austere conditions under which another slaughterhouse-themed film were made.  Yes, I'm talking about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Slaughterhouse is no Chainsaw, but the parallels are hard to miss.  I don't think I've seen so many pigs and feathers on celluloid before.  The plot deals with the foreclosure of an abattoir (sorry, I'm already tired of typing "slaughterhouse").  Lester Bacon refuses to sell the property.  The sheriff gives him thirty days to evacuate, but if I know ol' Les, he isn't going to go quietly.  And by that I mean, his mute giant of a son is going to kill a lot of people.

This flick is a little too good.  It will catch you off-guard with a host of basic character types.  You think you're settling in for a routine slasher.  And while Bubba does hack up a number of attractive twentysomethings, the script pays just as much attention to the adults on the periphery of the butchery.  You may not be invested in one specific person, but take the sheriff, for example.  He's quite competent, as is the deputy.  I'm not used to the authorities being useful in these kinds of situations.  In that respect, Slaughterhouse is a far cry from - oh, I don't know - Halloween 5.  We also get plenty of bloodshed.  The climax is strong, though I'm not sure that a sequel was necessary.  I say that because director Rick Roessler delivered Slaughterhouse 2, like, last year.  From what I understand, it's not...it's not.  Let's leave it at that.

Dom Reacts and Ranks!?

So I've started uploading more stuff to YouTube.  This is my ranking of the Cannibal Corpse discography.  Let me know what else I should rank!  They could be bands, movies, candy bars, ex-girlfriends (mine or yours), whatever.

Blood Capsule #329

BELIEVE (2000)

Upon glancing at writer/director Robert Tinnell's IMDb page, it becomes apparent that his heart is in the right place.  Those are probably the most glowing words I can dish on Believe, a domesticated "haunted house" flick that barely earns its PG rating.  I considered skipping out on this capsule.  But!  It's not too shabby.  A teenaged boy is forced to move in with his salty grandfather, and almost immediately, he notices a ghost on the premises.  Is his grandfather hiding some abstruse family secret?  If so, what does it have to do with the family across the street?  I'll level with you.  Believe is remarkably light stuff.  If it were a boxer, it would inhabit the featherweight division.  Or bantamweight.  I don't know anything about boxing.  You may have seen the (admittedly cool) VHS cover in the horror section at Blockbuster, but it's horror by rote.  There is no blood.  Even the atmosphere is flimsy despite a preponderance of the action taking place near a cemetery.

But!  Again!  I've seen worse, especially when it comes to family-friendly spookshows.  Ricky Mabe gives a favorable performance as our lead.  His girlfriend is played by a young Elisha Cuthbert.  This was well before her breakout turn in 24.  She couldn't have been any older than thirteen (you creep).  All of the adults are fine, but Believe is tailored for the young adult demographic.  Unfortunately, it's missing the wackiness of Goosebumps or Eerie, Indiana.  Still, I'll give it a halfhearted recommendation, listless though it may be.  That's all I got.

Random Album Alert

I have a thing for slow and/or mid-paced black metal.  Thus, I have a thing for Old Forest.

Blood Capsule #328

THE HORRIBLE DOCTOR BONES (2000)

What is it that makes us seek out grubby entertainment?  I'm convinced that some of us are born with a specific gene that makes us enjoy the most rotten films in existence.  Take The Horrible Doctor Bones, for instance.  I knew it was crap.  Did that deter me from popping it into my Blu-ray player?  Of course not.  If anything, it augmented the dopamine boost I experienced when I pressed play.  If you're wondering why I own this movie on disc (as I am at this very moment), it was simply cheap.  That's all it takes, friends. Bones was one of two cheapies churned out by Alchemy Entertainment, a subdivision of Full Moon that was supposed to specialize in "urban" horror.  The other was Ragdoll, and man, how does Charles Band sleep at night?  From the ground up, there is so much wrong happening here, some of it feels right.  The titular Dr. Bones is a famous hip-hop producer.  He's holding open auditions, the likes of which range in unease from edgy rap to...help me.  Please.  God, help me.

So Bones is going to transform listeners into zombies through liturgical chanting and general, all-purpose black magic.  For those curious, we do see zombies, but they're just regular people.  Y'know, method actors.  The doctor is played by Darrow Igus.  I dug his garish make-up (supplied by Gabe Bartalos), and I have to hand it to the guy.  He's committed, probably - no, definitely - going above and beyond the call of duty.  None of the cast members are actually bad.  The Horrible Doctor Bones itself isn't actually bad, especially compared to other Full Moon flotsam from the late 90's/early 00's.  It's not actually good either.  I'm sitting here and trying to remember what happened in the third act.  Wait, how many acts are there in a 72-minute film?

Iron Supplements #6

GENETIC WISDOM

I'll be upfront.  This particular Supplement isn't great or anything.  Genetic Wisdom is pretty cool.  Interesting even!  I'm listening to their debut LP at the moment, and it's just cool enough to write about.  The Fear Dimension was released in 1993, which was a sweet year.  Don't believe me?  It was the year of Ticks and Doink the Clown.  It couldn't have been that bad, right?  I don't know where trends were in the Netherlands (the band's country of origin), but over here, we were NOT into progressive thrash around this time.  Genetic Wisdom would have been seen as emphatically unfashionable.  Maybe that's why I dig them.  The first track - "Perseverance Kills the Game" - isn't too far removed from what Chuck Schuldiner was cooking up on Human.  There are no death metal elements, though.  The vocals are...meh.  Again, this record won't destroy you, but it shouldn't be this obscure.  I had to dig for the songs on The Fear Dimension individually, as I can't find it anywhere to stream or download.

Genetic Wisdom churned out one more album before calling it a day.  Check 'em out.  Or don't.  For metal nerds only.

Blood Capsule #327

METEOR MONSTER (1957)

I don't run across much independent fright fare from before 1970, so this is a treat.  Thankfully, I enjoyed Meteor Monster, which was released as Teenage Monster.  Story goes, cinematographer Jacques Marquette needed an inexpensive film to serve as the second half of a double feature with The Brain from Planet Arous (an awesome flick, by the way).  After his director quit on him, he ended up helming the project himself.  All of this is ironic, seeing as how Arous is already a "budget picture."  This was Marquette's only directorial credit.  I'm not sure what that says for the movie itself, but if you adjust your expectations accordingly, you'll find that Meteor Monster wines and dines you.  Hey, that's more of a commitment than I'm willing to make.  Nothing personal.  Anyway, this screwy slab of sci-fi horror is unique for the 50's in that it's a period piece.  Our action takes place towards the end of the nineteenth century.  The location?  Um, somewhere in the Southwest.  A meteor crashes in the next paragraph.

Right, so the meteor - literally a sparkler - kills a man and wounds his son.  We cut to seven years later.  The son is grown, but his injuries have turned him into a hideous monstrosity.  He looks like a cross between a werewolf and a caveman.  I don't know how a meteor can keep you from visiting a barbershop, but them's the breaks.  The rest of the plot involves a gold mine and manipulative shrews.  I'll hand it to screenwriter Ray Buffum; Meteor Monster is more engrossing than it has any right to be, at least on paper.  Dandy make-up effects come courtesy of Jack Pierce.  Apparently, Quentin Tarantino is a fan.  A clip from Meteor Monster shows up in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  I'm going with four Z'Dars, but (and I know I'm repeating myself from other reviews) you have to consider the source.  I own the big box VHS that was released by Monterey Home Video as part of their Midnight Madness line.  That makes me cool, right?

Now Playing #24

Deftones - Private Music

I talked about this album on the debut episode of Dom Reacts.  At the time, I wasn't really feeling it.  But!  Those were my first impressions.  I have since accumulated, like, a lot of impressions.  As such, I can safely render a more official verdict.  This is a cool record.  It's not one of my favorite Deftones releases, but let's be honest.  It was never going to topple White Pony or Around the Fur.  That would just be crazy talk.  However, these new jams have seeped into my pores like a warm rush of air pollution (???).  I dig the menacing basslines of "Ecdysis," the sheer riffage of "Cut Hands." and the catchy chorus vibes found on "Metal Dream."  Any duds?  "I Think About You All the Time," a chill cut in the middle of Private Music, hasn't quite won me over.  It wouldn't be fair to call it a true dud, though.  Overall, I'd say this is a stronger batch of songs than Ohms, which in retrospect, seems a little patchy.

Craft - Total Soul Rape

These guys are often compared to Darkthrone, but the more I listen to Craft, the less I hear Darkthrone.  For starters, Craft is Swedish.  And while the production could be considered rough around the edges, it's nowhere near the level of Transylvanian Hunger or Panzerfaust in terms of "rawness."  Simply put, this is quality black metal.  The drumming is more involved than one might expect.  No, it's not technical, but it's...well-played?  Total Soul Rape might be my preferred Craft album.  They're all worth checking out, though.  You've got to love the songtitles.  "Death to Planet Earth," "Ultimate Satan," and "Past, Present, Dead" are my personal favorites.  My actual favorite song is "World of Plague."  It slows down at juuuuust the right moment.  If it doesn't make you overtax your neck muscles, you don't have a pulse.  Or to steal a famous tagline, if it doesn't make your skin crawl, it's on too tight.  Listen to Craft and prepare to be skinned.

Blood Capsule #326

THE SLEEPING CAR (1990)

This movie is so obscure, I once rented it on VHS and it wouldn't play in my VCR.  Okay, it's not that obscure, but I doubt that many cinephiles know that David Naughton had a spell of "train horror."  The Sleeping Car is on par with Night Train to Terror.  I'd have to rewatch Terror Train to comment on its viability in this category.  Let's see...oh, Horror Express!  That has to be the top pick.  In any case, Naughton stars as a college student pursuing a degree in journalism.  He's strapped for cash, so he has to settle for a makeshift apartment that used to be the caboose of a train.  On second thought, it may not have been the caboose.  It matters none.  Eventually, Naughton - er, Jason - realizes that his locomotive domicile is haunted by the restless spirit of his landlady's dead bridegroom.  Because the genre was still spinning its wheels trying to parrot the success of a wisecracking Freddy Krueger, our villain has a silly name.  The Mister!  Unfortunately, he has absolutely no charisma.  Hence, no sequels.

The Mister's makeup is abundantly spooky, but he might be the least interesting aspect of The Sleeping Car.  Kevin McCarthy shows up as a nextdoor mystic who supplies some of the comedy relief.  Overall, the dialogue is obnoxiously clever.  Every line sounds as if it's being read from a script.  However, I dug Naughton.  And I really, really dug his girlfriend, the impossibly sexy Judie Aronson.  I recognized her from somewhere, but I was drawing a blank.  Turns out, she was one of the camp counselors in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.  Killer resume, no?  We do get a charitable dose of nudity, so yay.  The death sequences are peculiar.  Each victim dies from being perforated by the coil springs of a sofa.  Points for originality, I guess.  Honestly, this isn't a bad flick, but I can't say that I was particularly staggered by it.  It will do in a pinch.  My rating is a tad generous, as I have a thing for films that failed to become franchises.  In that respect, The Sleeping Car doesn't quite reach the level of Brainscan or Dr. Giggles.

My copy.

Ra$$lin'

Finally!  My main wrestling crush from back in the day is heading back to the squared circle.  As much as I love Iyo Sky and Stephanie Vaquer, A.J. Lee is the reason why I'm going to be paying way too much money to watch wrestling in the not-too-distant future.  Peacock?  Cancelled.  Netflix?  Eventually, cancelled.  I have to make room in my bank account somewhere.  Thankfully, AEW and New Japan have been aggressively meager lately.  I can't keep up with everything anyway.

Am I just getting too old for this nonsense???

Blood Capsule #325

WAR OF THE INSECTS (1968)

I'll level with you, dear reader.  My mind is occupied...elsewhere.  I'm not "with it."  I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say, real-world stress is trying to rain on my b-movie parade.  I only mention it because horror fiction is the ultimate outlet for escapism, whether in print or on celluloid.  Today's subject is no different.  In fact, you could say that it's rather kooky.  Produced by Shochiku (the oldest among Japan's major movie studios), War of the Insects - a.k.a. Genocide - is a psychedelic slice of bug-addled horror.  My copy is a bootleg, but it's worth mentioning that it was released by Criterion in a swanky set alongside 1968's The Living Skeleton, 1967's The X from Outer Space, and 1968's Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell.  Do me a favor.  Don't let me buy that thing.  As it stands, I have a surplus of Blu-rays and tapes to sift through.  Do me another favor.  Don't let me drift off-topic again.  Just smack me.

Right, so War of the Insects.  The plot is baffling.  Pests everywhere are sick of humans destroying the planet.  They won't stand for it, man.  Somehow, they all agree as a hive mind to flip out and overthrow us.  I'm not sure if that includes mites and gnats, but this act of sedition manifests itself as a swarm of locusts (I suppose they could have been wasps or rabid dragonflies) that takes down a plane carrying an H-bomb.  It's all very apocalyptic.  What's more, we meet a mad scientist.  In a nice change of pace, our unhinged entomologist is a buxom blonde.  She's concocting a poison that will equip bees with a hallucinogenic stinger.  Apparently, her motives are not related to the bug uprising.  A happy accident?  To be honest, it seems unnecessary.  It's as if screenwriter Susumu Takaku simply wanted to jam as much conflict into the script as possible.  On the upside, none of it is boring.

If you're looking for a breakdown of the film's social commentary, you're woofing up the wrong tree.  I do appreciate the downbeat ending.  Go ahead and give War of the Insects a whirl.  Recommended to fans of The H-Man and the letter "h" in general.