Blood Capsule #123

LAST GASP (1995)

One day, I'm going to write an article about the year 1995.  I may have mentioned it before, but 1995 was "my" year.  It was magical.  Why?  Well, that would require something more stout than a blood capsule.  I thought I was familiar with every cruor-curdling calash that shaded The Year That Did Shred (that's what I'm thinking of calling 1995; pretty metal, no?), but films like Last Gasp continue to prove me wrong.  Was this thing created in a vacuum?  Robert Patrick stars as Chase, a tight-fisted real estate developer who wants to clear an indigenous tribe from his acreage.  They won't budge.  This forces Chase's hand, as he does what any levelheaded businessman would do - he has them butchered.

Problem solved!  Unfortunately, the chieftain of the slain caste in question lived long enough to put a curse on Chase.  He now subsists with a compulsion to kill.  It's hard to feel bad for the guy, but there are other characters.  Joanna Pacula and Mimi Craven drop their respective tops, and while I should be scolded for reducing their roles to spouts of lechery, that's what Last Gasp wants me to do.  It never decides if it desires to be a softcore thriller or an infantile slasher.  The deaths are certainly bloody enough to appeal to any Beavis or Butthead looking for simple delights.  Ultimately, it fails to fulfill grander goals.  The final girl is frustratingly dumb.  Her stupidity almost single-handedly ruins the climax.  So.  Goddamn.  Dumb.

I wouldn't be embarrassed to own Last Gasp.  Then again, I could be saying that because I own Last Gasp.  You've seen better days, 1995.  You've seen better days.

Valentine

Say what you want about the late-90's slasher boom; I know I have.  At the time, I excoriated its very existence and questioned the sanity of its adherents.  Like any unsavory trend, it sweetened over the years.  I can now see the positive effects it had on the horror genre in much the same way that I can see the beneficial predications of nu-metal.  Think of how many ears Limp Bizkit beckoned and roped into the hegemony of real metal.  You probably weren't expecting to find a Limp Bizkit reference in the first paragraph, were you?  I'm sorry.  But my point stands!  Vapid "dead teenager" flicks served to reinforce the horror section of your local video store, even if the films themselves were nothing more than woebegone widgets.

Woebegone widgets...that's a business idea.  I just need to figure out the business.  And the idea.  NOTE TO SELF: Do something with that.  Aside from My Bloody Valentine, the most amorous of holidays had yet to be milked by bloodthirsty screenwriters.  Our stock premise could have supported beaming entertainment.  A prologue introduces us to Jeremy, a nerdy buck who asks several girls to dance with him at the school function.  One of them is bound to say yes, right?  Well, the big-boned girl complies, but the rest of them pitilessly tease him.  He begins to menstruate, which invites chants of "plug it up."  Travolta's performance is stunning, and although the tampon knives are a bit much, I...I have lost the plot.

Ah, found it!  Later in life, Jeremy decides that he wants revenge on the girls who rejected his advances.  Does he mail them glitter bombs?  Intercalate red fabrics into their wash cycles alongside whites?  Empty their salt shakers and replenish them with sugar?  None of the above, for those options would have led to abject, soul-rattling terror.  Ultimately, he goes with a classic, the ol' "scrupulous eradication of human life from behind a cupid mask" technique.  The first act is spent establishing red herrings.  Hey, red is popular today.  I wonder if that's why words of Christ are printed in red within the pages of The Holy Bible.  Perhaps J.C. was prophesizing, foretelling the rise of David Boreanaz.

This is, like, the worst movie review I've ever written.  Focus, Dom...focus!  Jessica Capshaw gives a respectable turn as the main target (or so we're led to believe).  Marley Shelton is decent, but no one else bothered to show up.  I sensed that each cast member was seconds away from leveling with the audience and issuing a formal apology for agreeing to star in Valentine.  Denise Richards plays a pedantic bitch, but she doesn't believe her own dialogue.  By the way, these beautiful women stay clothed for all 96 minutes.  Did director Jamie Blanks know that he was synthesizing a slasher?

I dug the art direction.  The visuals deserve to be in a better motion picture.  The stalk sequences are flavorless, an adjective that cannot be applied to Capshaw's ass.  Clothed!  Forgive me for going blue.  That's what happens when a subject doesn't hand me anything that I can use.  I hate to admit it, but the twist ending is clever.  There is a chance I'm wrong.  There is also a chance that I've wasted too much time on Valentine.  I'm being generous with my rating, but there was axiomatic talent behind the camera.  As for the late 90's slasher boom, this was the final nail in a coffin fit to incinerate.

 

5 Cool Records Dropping Tomorrow

Every so often, I'll read an interview with an older metalhead, usually because they're in a metal band.  I'll try not to name too many names.  First of all, I'm old.  If you want to argue that 37 is not old, that's fair.  I would riposte by saying that 37 feels old.  At the very least, it's older than every age under 37.  The current generation is constantly reminding me that I'm the goof in the passenger's seat, periodically chiming in during the backseat conversation between kids/teenagers and saying something that widens the gap between us.  So where am I going with this?

No, I'm asking.  Why did I enter this room again?  I'm modest by nature, but I have to give myself credit where it's due.  I do a damned fine job of staying abreast of new metal releases.  That's why my forehead crinkles when Bald Guitarist (his name might rhyme with Berry Bing) says there are no new bands worth appraising.  He only listens to the shit he discovered as a youth.*  And that's his prerogative, but it tells me that he doesn't love metal as much as he claims.  There is at least one interesting metal record hitting "shelves" (be they tangible or digital) every week.

This week?  Your wallet is going to bleed, provided that you still buy music.  I was moved to write this syllabus when I noticed how many bitchin' albums were dropping tomorrow.  It's a spread that accommodates varied tastes.  Count the ways...

Abbath - Dread Reaver) The third solo album from Norway's clown prince of the left hand path.  I loved Outstrider, and if the advance singles are any indication, this is shaping up to be a banger.

Falls of Rauros - Key to a Vanishing Future) I found out about this LP a couple of hours ago.  Somewhere, the head of a marketing department deserves to be decollated.  If you aren't familiar with these Mainers (actual term; I checked), they play organic black metal with raging leads and melody-conscious songwriting.  Arresting.

Father Befouled - Crowned in Veneficum) Incantation worship.  Simple as.  Please note that I'm not deriding their perceived orthodoxy.  I mean, if it works, it works.  I fancy the riffs, so you better believe that I'm going to crank it up.

Deathspell Omega - The Long Defeat) The French polemicists are back to enrage the metal faithful and captivate just as many of us leering over the railing.  I call myself a casual fan (I'm partial to their Drought EP).  If you want to discuss matters beyond the music, I'll need another website's worth of chatter to hackle through it all.

Kvaen - The Great Below) The debut from this Swedish one-man project made my top 5 of 2020.  He deals in blackened speed, which sounds incredibly illegal.  Here's an image to bookend the text.  Man, graphic design is for the birds.

*The interview in question is from a decade back, roughly speaking.  It wasn't a recent sound bite that spurred me.  Honestly, I don't know why it was rolling around in my cranium, but the knowledge of these new releases made me think of mossbacks who complain about "today's scene" as if it has nothing to offer.  Mr. Bing can listen to whomever he wants.  I still don't care for his solos, though.

I'm big on green, apparently...

This is a truly random post.  I'm feeling scattershot this evening, though not in a bad way.  So who are the fellows soaked and inumbrated in green?  And it's obviously a film still, but how old is it?  Any guesses?  It's taken from Dr. Cyclops, a wildly imaginative sci-fi trek from 1940 (!).  It was the first genre film to be shot in three-strip Technicolor.  Presuppose it as gospel; the movie is a visual feast.  Director Ernest Schoedsack absolutely understands mise en scene.  I love the way everything is framed, the way that the foreground is used to deepen the background.  Needless to say, the florid colors drip off of the screen, so prepare towels at the base of your television to absorb all of that polychromasia.

Dr. Cyclops is not a case of style over substance.  There is an interesting story, an innocuously ordinary "mad scientist" yarn that sees our protagonists being shrunk down and terrorized by the titular doc.  Check it out if you can.  Hell, check it out if you can't!

Interview: Writer/Director Bobby Canipe

I'd love to continue interviewing folks from both the horror community and the metal underground.  Today, I bring you a chat with burgeoning writer/director Bobby Canipe.  He happens to be a friend of mine, so this one was relatively easy to arrange.  Mucho thanks to Bobby.  PRO TIP: Listen to the interview, as opposed to watching my fat face twitch indiscriminately for half an hour.

Dead Review Collection #14 - SKELETAL!

I'll come right out and tell you why it has taken me so long to knock this review out.  I have nothing to say about 2014's A Skeletal Domain.  We were riding high a mere two years after Torture, an apogee in the band's pilgrimage.  It never occurred to me that the next Cannibal Corpse record would be underwhelming in any way, shape, or form.  And that's taking Evisceration Plague into consideration.  I was already disgruntled by a CC crusade.  The odds of my favorite extreme metal band releasing another perceived misfire so soon after the last one were conscientiously low.  Besides, Torture was a walloping bundle of badass.  What could go wrong???

Not much could go wrong on a palpable, outward level.  It was impossible for this group of musicians to mint and mold a culvert as stunted as Lulu or Cold Lake.  I knew that kind of splashdown was out of the question.  No, if Domain was going to fail my sniff test, it was going to be because of weird, seemingly trivial bullshit that didn't faze other fans.  Love it or leave it, that's the stage of myopia (or "nerdy near-sightedness," as I like to call it) that I have reached as a dedicated CC listener.  In short, these songs sound very, very similar to pre-existing songs.  I can't point to specific riffs or phrases that have been rehashed; I'm talking about a general feeling of sameness.  These are not fresh donuts!

I can only compare it to how I responded to Plague.  I wasn't a happy camper there either, but at the very least, that was a set of material with its own garland, its own striations.  Domain doesn't lay claim to virtues unique to itself.  What differentiates "Vector of Cruelty" from a deep cut on Kill or Plague?  It's a competent CC strangler, but it's also safe.  This was their fourth consecutive album with the same line-up, which may have contributed to the cozy vibe in the studio.  I was ready to admonish the producer, but nope.  Erik Rutan is absolved.  Off the hook!  Fancy-free!  Mark Lewis manned the knobs and...um, yeah.  He did his job well.

Many of the cuts in the middle of the pack blend into one another.  Again, identity is the issue, and while "The Murderer's Pact" does drive a glottal, sabulous riff down your windpipe, it lacks identity.  Huh, I think that Glottal Sabulous was the name of the guy who tried to steal my father's identity overseas.  Anyway, I dig a handful of tracks.  "Kill or Become" is too catchy to be denied.  "Icepick Lobotomy" crawls along as if it were slithering behind you and making designs on your exposed flesh.  "Bloodstained Cement" is just cool.  See, I don't hate this record.

Unfortunately, I don't find it terribly appealing.  I gave it a few open-minded spins during the gestation period of this review and I actively tried to get into it, but all blood tests came back positive.  Or negative.  I'm not...I'm not sure how to cement that metaphor.  Hopefully, you didn't start with this paragraph.

 

Scott Hall R.I.P.

It's "funny."  I've prepared myself dozens of times to read the news that Scott Hall has passed away.  Haven't we all?  His name has forever been crosshatched in a rotary file in our minds, a file reserved for wrestling greats whose career-defining feuds have been with themselves.  But I wasn't really prepared.  It doesn't feel right that Hall was taken out by a goddamn hip surgery.  That's just too human, especially for a star as bright as The Bad Guy.

I have plenty of memories of watching Razor Ramon perform The Razor's Edge (still one of the best finishers ever) on some nameless jobber.  It is only with time and maturity that I can say I truly appreciate his WWF run.  His WCW run may not have cultivated as many classic matches, but it was more significant than anyone could have realized.  Both Outsiders played their parts effortlessly.  His TNA run...um, moving on!

This is a tremendously sad day, but can you imagine how sad it would be if Diamond Dallas Page hadn't stepped in to extricate his buddy from the mandibles of addiction?  At the very least, Scott Hall was able to be clean and sober for nearly a decade.  He was rightfully inducted into the Hall of Fame.  His story was given an ending (with his stamp of approval, no less).  That's the stuff I'll choose to remember.  It's like the man himself said, "Bad times don't last.  Bad guys do."

Take care, Scott.  Be sure to flick a toothpick at the man upstairs.

Album Cover of the Whatever

Yes, it's another album cover (of the whatever), despite the fact that I gave prominence to giant locusts six days ago.  There are two reasons for this anomaly.  ONE!  I want to kill a few days while I work on the next piece, a strenuous phase of my Cannibal Corpse discography breakdown.  TWO!  I'm not familiar at all with Tristitia, but jumping cheese balls, Garden of Darkness has an outstanding cover.  I had to blab about it pronto.  The grave colors, the cinematic framing, the beautifully placed lightning bolt...in a word, it's art.  It's also extremely metal.

Blood Capsule #122

THE KEEP (1983)

With hostilities brewing overseas, I thought it would be a prepossessing time to visit a war/horror hybrid.  That almost sounds intellectual, but the truth is...eh, I just wanted to catch a monster movie that I have yet to catch.  On two occasions, I succumbed to slumber halfway through The Keep.  That was ages ago.  In fact, my last viewing was at least a decade back.  My senses were telling me that the film was denuded of blame, that I was simply not metal enough for Michael Mann's surreal dollop of atmospheric dread.  My senses were right.  I'm glad that I gave The Keep another whirl, even if all I end up getting out of it is a sick name for my firstborn son.

Molasar!  That's the name.  Wicked, right?  Yeah, I'm never having a fucking kid.  Anyway, the plot is a tricky one to recapitulate.  Nazi soldiers are sent to protect a massive citadel that may or may not house an evil force at its nucleus.  We aren't told why they are guarding this particular fortification, nor are we told the identity of "the stranger at the inn."  Are we supposed to know?  These faint pockets of anti-exposition bothered me more than the showy, counterfeit visual effects.  Still, I came away from The Keep satisfied.  It's a picture held together with fantastic acting and forward-thinking dialogue.  I mean, it's no Miami Vice, but what is?

Rassle Inn #27

AEW's Revolution took place last night.  It was a speck interminable, but I was awake to enjoy most of it.  The promotion's harshest critics were powerless in opposition to one match.  They have been powerless in opposition to the entire angle because it's unquestionably good.  No other adjective fits.  It's just plain good, but not less than great.  It's fucking good, the way that a well-marbled ribeye is good.  The way that a supple lobster tail soused in butter is good.  The way that--okay, I'm making it obvious that I haven't eaten dinner yet.  I'll move on by naming the participants in said match, in case your reading comprehension is destitute of vision.  CM Punk took on MJF in a dog collar match.

This is why stipulations exist in pro-wrestling.  They are meant to dress up a rematch, to give the viewer a reason to want to sit through Starman vs. The Amazon part...three!  Ideally, the stipulation will relate to the feud.  Punk chose a dog collar from his satchel of provisions as a trenchant callback to MJF's own words.  The guy keeps evoking the genius of Roddy Piper, as he sees himself in Piper's league (no doubt, he sees himself above Piper's league).  One of Piper's most memorable matches from before his ordination into The Fed?  A dog collar match against Greg Valentine.

Everything made logical sense going into the bout, but the fight itself would have to be a thriller to continue the winning streak that both Punk and MJF have worked to secure.  And it sucked!  No, I'm kidding.  It was a brutal contest held together with believable selling and unique spots that we haven't seen a million times.  Of course, the match climaxed with a moment that fans have been clamoring for, a turn that has been DECADES...well, years in the offing.  It has felt like decades at times, which is a testament to the substantial contributions of the wrestling royalty involved.

Wardlow is finally a full-fledged babyface.  Was it too soon to switch him?  Did Tony Khan wait too long to rehabilitate his loyalties?  Honestly, I don't care.  Maybe I'm guilty of overexposing myself to wrestling, but on this spectrally mellow Monday, I have no desire to nitpick.  Glad to see Top Flight back on four operative wheels.  I'm a big fan.  Give it a few years and they will be AEW tag team champions.  Or ROH tag team champions.  Hmm...

Album Cover of the Whatever

The Locust play a frisky, enterprising blend of punk and grindcore.  For the most part, I'm not a grindcore guy, but I can listen to these insects.  The riffs are inventive and the artwork?  Shit, it has "1950's sci-fi" written all over it.  What's not to dig?

Dawn of the Beast

Man, there is a profusion of Bigfoot movies out there, huh?  I don't think that humanity is prepared to learn the actual count of them.  There are too many.  They're all around us!  First, you would have to cleave and dichotomize Bigfoot flicks from Yeti/Sasquatch exploits.  That rives our number in half, but the sum total of cheese (and let's face it; there isn't much non-cheese in this jumble) is still daunting.  Perhaps "unmanageable" is the more accurate word, although I only have to review one of these stunt escapades.  For the record, the best routs in this outlying subgenre are 1980's Night of the Demon and 1957's The Abominable Snowman.

An enchanting double feature, that.  Demon offers campy gore, while Snowman mines the survivalist horror of pitting Peter Cushing against the elements (plus the creatures in the elements).  Last year's Dawn of the Beast has the resources it needs to monger both splatter and charm in equal amounts.  The fact that it doesn't, shall we say, nail the dismount shouldn't surprise you, especially if you're as surfeited as I am.  I don't like being the cloyed dissident.  But am I a dissident, really?  At least half of the reviews I've found agree with me, so I challenge the views espoused by Pearl Jam.  No, sir; a dissident is not here.

The premise is intriguing.  Cryptozoological students take a field trip of sorts to a cabin in the woods.  It just so happens that this cabin is stationed in the northeast (city and state withheld to protect the innocent on account of a faulty memory) amidst a veritable ganglion of Bigfoot sightings.  It goes without saying that they run into trouble.  I know what you're thinking.  In all probability, you're yawning.  I'm not done with the synopsis yet, sucka!  As it turns out, Bigfoot shares this coppice with a fellow cryptid.  Does the term "Wendigo" mean anything to you?  I hope so because I'm not in the mood to be further inconvenienced by Dawn.  For the love of Bron Breakker, does everything need to be spelled out for you?

The cast is a grab bag of talent.  Most of the thespians do try, the results of their efforts varying wildly.  With certain folks, it's a case of performing above and beyond the constraints of their character.  Adrian Burke, for instance, clearly has more in the tank than what his role requires.  His role, if you're curious (shut up), is a hipster boyfriend who tells dad jokes and misses telltale signs that his peers deplore his presence.  Yeah.  On the subject of poor writing, the script was penned by Anna Shields.  You can catch her in front of the camera as Lilly, and as irony would have it, she appeared in 2020's Monstrous, a friggin' Bigfoot reel.  Oh, and she wrote it, too!

I don't know what the deal is here, but director Bruce Wemple also directed Monstrous.  And he directed 2020's The Retreat.  That b-picture concerned itself with the Wendigo.  The creature design is eerily similar to that of the Wendigo critter(s) in Dawn.  The fuck?  Unless I'm mistaken, the three films are not linked in any bizarro "monsterverse" way.  I don't get it, guys.  Listen, the dish before me is Dawn of the Beast.  Would I recommend renting it?  Not particularly.  We aren't talking about a pernicious washout, but it doesn't excel where it should.  Aside from drizzly, steam-stashed bloodshed, the exposition is a mere mixtape of horror hits.  At one point, I thought I hit play on the remake of The Evil Dead by mistake.

The last five minutes.  Without spoiling anything, I can vouch for the last five minutes.  Honestly, that should have been the whole idea from frame one.  It would have been fun.  On a bun.  Yikes, I've used "should have" or "would have" too many times.  I need Tylenol.