Gimme your dead links!

Is your website cool?  Does it have something to do with horror, metal or - Satan forbid - wrestling?  Well, then tell me about it!  Help me help you!  Drop me a line at caincalaway@hotmail.com...you can include a brief description if you want.  In fact, you probably should.

Geek Out #116

I detest modern mainstream horror, but over the last couple of years, gainful independent pictures have skulked their way into my telescopic sight.  For the most part, the indies are where you find creativity.  While I haven't viewed it (yet), 2013's The Demon's Rook seems like a strong example of "dat shit," as the kids say.  In my weird opinion, it strikes a balance between Nightbreed and...The Guyver?  Maybe that's off-base.  Again, I haven't seen it, although there are practical creature effects galore.  Galore, I say!

Album Cover of the Week

Selected for its..."huh" factor.  And for its beryl, teal-as-fuck background.  If you're curious, Zed Yago is a German pirate metal band.  Because why wouldn't they be?

Return of the Return

So obviously, I'm back!  Due to several reasons, I've decided to have another go at this website thing.  I think this is just how I'll operate from here on out.  A few months on, a few months off...it's probably the healthiest way to do this without exhausting all of my mental resources.  RR Inc. will still be a full-time gig with some sort of update everyday.  Tomorrow marks the return of the Album Cover of the Week, which is my favorite "column."  It's easy, and furthermore, I like looking for kewl covers to showcase.

Later!  Spread the word!

The Child

Spooky, spooky, spooky...I'm drawn to spookiness.  You should have some idea of what I'm talking about, but if you don't (goddamn slacker), I'm illuminating a specific vibe.  Conveniently, Spookies has that vibe.  If you know me at all, you know that I fucking love Spookies.  The Universal monster movies also have that vibe, that unaccountable fetor that creeps into your pores and makes you feel like a kid staying up late to watch scary stuff on television.  Man, 1977's The Child is flush with that full-flavored balm.  Plus, it's from the mid-70's!  It's built from the same parts that worked Alien and Martin into a lather.  I'm not even a big fan of Martin, but that's beside the point.

This low-budgeter was released under a mint of disparate titles.  Everything from Zombie Child (my personal favorite) to Kill and Go Hide to Jurassic World.  Okay, I may have fabricated one of those titles, but I'm not telling which.  So a caretaker/babysitter is hired to tend to a little girl who has repelled other workers in the past.  Why?  How?  The sitter (let's call her Alicianne...since that's her name) can't seem to find out, as no one will tell her.  She attempts to make nice with the gruff father figure, but that goes nowhere faster than a pitbull terrier chasing its own uterine wall.  The little girl (we shall call her Rosalie...for no particular reason) is a strange bird who visits her mother's grave every night.  At midnight.

You see, from time to time, Rosalie makes reference to her "friends."  We eventually find out - drats, I'm conflicted.  Should I spoil it?  I'm not sure it's a real spoiler.  Fuck it.  We discover that the titular child has preternatural powers and that she controls a cabal of zombies.  That's right; this is a zombie flick!  Who knew?  I didn't, and to be honest, they don't make or break The Child.  It's all in the atmosphere.  The ever-minacious fog, the stranded locale, the manifold shots of the moonlit sky...speaking of which, can we dish on the day-for-night photography?  Wait, why am I asking for permission?  It's my review.  I'll dish on whatever I want, motherfucker!

I could never tell what time of day it was because the wild yonder was usually the same shade.  That's a con, I'm afraid.  Another con would be the egregious dubbing, which put a sizable dent in the acting.  These weren't Oscar contenders to begin with, but all of the dialogue sounds stilted.  And yes, all of it is dubbed.  Lucky us!  If you can defer to the lethargic exposition, the rest is gravy.  The listless pace didn't bother me.  Again, it's all in the atmosphere.  I was too busy swimming in the unearthly mood to lose patience.  Sure enough, the payoff was worth my while.  The last twenty minutes or so brought The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to mind, what with the screaming and the rotting cadavers.

The Child isn't perfect, but as a sheer horror shill, it hits the spot.  I'm already planning an October viewing.  Well, there isn't much perspicuous planning involved.  I will simply enjoy it.  You should, too!

Soon...

...the dead will fucking rise.

A new bloggy depot?

If you've been missing Random Reviews, fret not!  No, the site is not returning, but I have carved out a cozy parking spot on Tumblr.  Click HERE!  It's called Kingdom of the Shatners.  Obviously, I brilliantly named it after the "spiders run amok" flick of the same name.  It will have the same general tone of RR Inc.  One major difference will be the focus on the horror genre ONLY.  No wrestling chatter, no music reviews...just spooks.

I may write full-length movie reviews over there in the future.  Thyme will tail.

Indefinite Hiatus

I've given this a great deal of thought, and I've decided to put the site on hold for a good while.  It may be permanent.  I don't know yet.  Inspiration is lacking, and as I near 30 (*breathes into a brown paper bag*), I feel the need to engender some type of financial...bedrock?  To be frank, I need to be an adult.  Hobbies are fun, but at this very moment, I don't have time for them.  Plus, this particular hobby isn't supporting itself.

If I decide to give it another go, I'll flood the airwaves.  Random Reviews Incorporated will remain, so feel free to dig through the archives, either by date or by column.  I want to thank Erin Williams for her donation, although she may not crave the attention.  You have her to thank for the seventh edition of Bookworm Infested.

I'm off to...do something else!  Actually, for those interested, I'm going to dive into creative writing (my first love).  My e-mail address still works.  The Facebook group is still open.  Reach me if you are inclined.  Lastly, THANK YOU to ANYONE who has read ANYTHING I have EVER written.

Dom Coccaro

Tired Sleepy

Awake not as much.

Bookworm Infested #7

THE HELLBOUND HEART (Clive Barker)

I vividly remember renting Hellraiser with my cousin as a teenager.  I knew of Pinhead, the Lament Configuration and the name Clive Barker.  That's basically all I knew.  I went in expecting Krueger-screened carnival horror, a commodity that the 80's had been known to ferment.  Obviously, I didn't see much of that.  Where was the psychoactive spangle?  Wasn't the lighting supposed to be colorfast?  Why isn't the villain running around with weapon in hand?  For one, I mistook the Cenobites as the real bad guys.  Over the years, I came to appreciate the film series, but deep down, I knew that Barker got it right the first time.  I knew I had to refer to the source material.

I was wrong.  This is a shitty fucking book.  Just kidding!  I'm becoming something of a Barker demagogue.  No, that's not the proper term.  A dogmatist?  That's still too strong.  An enthusiast?  Yeah, that's it!  I'm a goddamn enthusiast, and I'm in the centriole of learning everything I can about the sententious, semen-throated prose pitcher.  Hey, give me some credit.  I waited until the second paragraph to unstrap a blowjob joke.  And I'm no bigot, if that's the charge you're preparing to inveigh next.  I love homosexuals!  Why, I've swallowed more seed than an acreage farm.  I'll have you know that I very nearly poked a hole in...hmm, I would have to backtrack to finger the exact point of deflection, but I seemed to skid abroad and beyond the main topic.

Barker has created an extremely intriguing mythology to wrap his characters around.  I couldn't wait to flip the page, but I found that it was his writing that kept me reading.  He has a way with words, doesn't he?  "Blood-buttered."  That's probably the loveliest adjective my eyes were lucky enough to scour.  There were many other attractive units of language, of course, but what kind of picture did these vocables paint?  Themes of self-control, existential suicide, stagecraft and duplicity underpin what amounts to being a fucked up love story.  The Cenobites are window dressing.  Now, I don't mean to insinuate that the showy gore is negligible.  At the end of the night, this is terror fiction.

Pinhead is never named.  As a matter of fact, The Engineer is the only demon/angel to be designated.  I'm dying to know how these beings were turned into Cenobites.  There is so much to reveal as it relates to The Order of the Gash, and you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll be in line to purchase a hot pressing of The Scarlet Gospels.  It's mind-boggling that literary sequels failed to transpire, unless you count comic books.  Speaking of which, I'm putting Hellraiser comics at the top of my chopping list.  Yahtzee scorecards and soft taco shells will have to wait.

Album Cover of the Week

Blood Capsule #50

COMBAT SHOCK (1984)

This dowdy, callous war drama was distributed by Troma, but don't pick it up thinking that you're in for a stub of barometer-neutral Lloyd Kaufman-style folly.  You want schlock?  Give Toxie a call.  Combat Shock is the cinematic equivalent of an autopsy report.  It's deadly serious, and the perpetuity of plot points is thoughtful in its own unnerving way.  Frankie is a rattled Vietnam veteran suffering from a discounted case of post-traumatic shamrock deficiency (that's what PTSD stands for, right?).  He has no way of supporting his family, and he can't walk twenty paces outside of his apartment without being pestered by gangsters.  Oh, and that's his malformed baby boy staring off into nirvana.

Heh, nirvana.  Remember when that was just a word?  Anywho, Combat Shock ventilates a wide variety of social maledictions.  Hardcore heroin abuse, child prostitution, the sickening spoils of war...ew.  If you're in a good mood, this flick will tug you down into a joyless pothole of mescaline.  I already had the blues, so I could appreciate how well Buddy Giovanazzo directed his low-budget carrion.  The confrontational visuals hit hard.  In all honesty, this is the best Troma release I've ever encountered.  Don't do drugs, kids!

TYPE O NEGATIVE - World Coming Down

It's going to be hard to rise and shine to write this review.  I'll state right off the bat that I dig 1999's World Coming Down, but it's a bleak slog.  Years back, I read an interview with The Man of Steele where he remarked that he was a depressed, drug-benumbed sorehead during the recording of this album.  He didn't like listening to it much because it reminded him of his inner cricks and fidgets.  Now when I listen to it, I think of how we lost an impossibly talented frontman who spent the corpus of his adulthood in the kedge of distress.  You never get anywhere with a corpus in a kedge.  My point is, World Coming Down is a bummer.  While it's true that I listen to mopey metal all the time, this record leaves a dyspathetic gash near my pulmonary valve.

It's hard to explain.  "White Slavery" and "Who Will Save the Sane?" turn my recesses to gruel.  "Everyone I Love is Dead" turns my entrails to polenta.  "Pyretta Blaze" turns my...um, breadbasket to a chunky lobscouse.  I told you it was hard to explain.  Since those sentences didn't make a lick of goddamn sense, I'll repeat the fact that these tunes are a bummer.  You can practically smell the self-loathing.  That's the main reason why I spin this Type O Negative long player (and boy, it's long) less frequently than the others.  Musically, it's indisputably capable.  Kenny Hickey is let loose, and he hurls hostile riffs to the heavens with the mighty strength of a hundred Hulks.

Guitars rung attenuated on October Rust, almost faint.  There is no mistaking World Coming Down as anything other than a guitar-heavy ("Hickey-heavy" sounds wrong) collection of jackhammer dirges.  The opening chug of "Everything Dies" alone seals the deal.  Sexually.  There is plenty of good stuff here, but in my two-faced opinion, we have winks where the boys mimic themselves.  By 1999, their signature moves were set in stone.  I sense that Peter was playing it safe, timorous of alienating core fans any further.  Thus, the songwriting is kept in a predictable vain.  Did the title track really need to extravagate for eleven minutes?

Earlier efforts mixed shit up with puckish gaiety ("My Girlfriend's Girlfriend") and lethal repartee ("Kill All the White People").  World Coming Down doesn't offer spirited experimentation until you reach the finale, a plucky, first-class Beatles medley.  Eh, ratings can be a bitch.  I don't know where I fall on this one.  "All Hallows Eve" is fun as the token horror shanty, but it's not a patch on "Wolf Moon" or "Black No. 1."  The drum machine is in tip-top shape.  I'd probably enjoy World Coming Down more if it smiled every so often.  God, I can't believe I said that.  Abbath says, "God, I can't believe you said that."

The Three B's

On a total whim, I watched Blood, Boobs and Beast earlier today, a documentary about cult maestro Don Dohler.  'Twas enlightening.  I didn't expect it to tug at my heart strings, but it most assuredly did.  I was also flooded with tidbitoids recounting the productions of The Alien Factor (man-o-man, I heart this supreme b-movie), Nightbeast and Blood Massacre.  Highly recommended!

PS-I didn't have much access to my laptop yesterday, so the TON review is still forthcoming.

Magic Dragon of the Week

Currently listening to World Coming Down.  Review forthcoming.
 

Demon Warrior

NOTE: There is no note.

The Native American burial ground...it's a fixture that we're all familiar with as horror hounds.  It's a common appurtenance.  It's genre gingerbread.  It's terror tinsel.  Man, I need to watch myself; I'm only allowed so much alliteration per review, and I fear that I may have already burned through my annuity.  My gratuitous gratuity?  Knock it off, brain.  So!  Dead Indians.  There is a weird little clique of movies that makes use of evil redskins.  Eek, can I say that?  It feels racist, but if it were truly offensive, Robert Griffin III would be a Washington Polecat or a Washington Tree Apron.  Anyway, this caste of cinematic tomahawks (I'm uncomfortable) includes 1980's Ghost Dance, 1975's Johnny Firecloud, 1978's The Manitou and 1983's Scalps among others.  You could even toss in 1990's Grim Prairie Tales, if you were so inclined.  In terms of plot, 1988's Demon Warrior is most comparable to Scalps.

Incidentally, I haven't seen Scalps.  What's up with that?  In the context of this campfire story, a "demon warrior" is an ancient spirit deputized to pay a visit to an explicit strip of land every ten years.  It has to do with a curse placed on the property in response to the plundering ways of our main character's grandfather.  Goddamn white people.  The grandson decides to be typical and invites his buddies (both fuck and platonic) to go hunting on the hexed tract.  Would you believe that it's the tenth anniversary of his uncle's insoluble death?  You would?  Would you believe that I have a penis for sale?  It's the size of a pony truss bridge.  Er, I didn't tell that joke correctly.  Something about selling a bridge or exchanging gullible genitals for money.  A gangplank maybe?

Needless to say, the cracker youths (I'm still uncomfortable) are executed one by one.  The weapon of choice is a bow and arrow.  That's pretty nifty.  I can roll with it, but the kill sequences are disagreeably edentate.  With the exception of a near-obligatory scalping, there is a shortage of gore.  Nada.  Zot.  Nada and zot.  I'm cool with the titular villain, though.  Motherfucker is built, and that mask is begging to be stocked at Spirit Halloween.  I expected to drown in boredom at some point, but the pace was industrious enough to keep me cognizant.  If I'm being honest, the acting was passable, too.  Remember, this is a film called Demon Warrior.  Standards have been adjusted to fit your screen.

The ending is beyond goofy.  If you don't want it spoiled (wtf lmao), stop reading...now.  Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat's doppelganger enters a trance state to dovetail and synchronize with an electrical storm.  Telepathically, he fries the devilish spirit slicker via controlled bursts of lightning.  And that's how Demon Warrior wraps itself up.  Hey, if you chance upon the tape at a flea circus (a flea market will work as a stand-in), swipe it.  It's as sharp as a haversack of wet leather, but when it comes to b-fuckery, I've weathered worse.  Robert Z'Dar says, "The bitch who plays the callgirl.  With the tits.  If I were her father, my soul would be burning right now."

Album Cover of the Week

Paul Fucking Heyman

I just watched Ladies and Gentlemen Long Title, a documentary DVD released by WWE.  Obviously, it traces the career of former ECW figurehead and current Brock Lesnar advocate Paul Heyman.  I am here to tell you that it's worth checking out.  For starters, it's goddamn inspiring.  You see how he got tangled up in the wrestling business despite not being a wrestler himself.  It's a candid breakdown of his personality, and it doesn't pull any punches.  Mr. Dangerously never tries to hide the fact that he's a flawed specimen.  If you're worried about overlapping anecdotes (maybe you know everything there is to know about ECW), don't.  I descried (sic) a wealth of mint, supplementary information.

Renee Young is featured as one of the interviews.  She looks tantalizing in a spring dress.

Spending the day in bed...

Hold all my calls.

Picnic at Hanging Rock

I watched this movie once.  Ideally, I would watch it again before reviewing it, but who has that luxury?  I do, actually; it's just that I'm busy.  Try not to ask too many questions.  That's a prudent nugget of advice to follow, and it applies to 1975's Picnic at Hanging Rock.  This is an inscrutable grabber that involves the disappearance of schoolmarms and day-pupils at the turn of the 20th century.  Hanging Rock is a real geological formation, a mamelon (pronounced "land lump") forged by volcanic lava spillage.  Hanging Rock (you know I'm referring to the film because it's bold) is entirely fictional, however, despite author Joan Lindsay's claims that it might have been based on historical facts.

That's right.  We're dealing with the adaptation of a novel.  From what I gather, Lindsay left the ending open to interpretation.  Screenwriter Cliff Green and director Peter Weir take the same approach with the motion picture, but in my supplicatory opinion, the mystery isn't supposed to be a mystery.  Huh?  If you send out a probe for a sampling of other reviews, you will come across a mess of far-reaching theories and cherry-picked conjecture.  The girls fell into a wormhole!  They were suspended in time!  They were raped by gypsies!  They were abducted by unidentified flying fucking saucers!  Okay, those are plausible scenarios.

But does it matter what happened?  I mean, really?  To me, Hanging Rock is about the outgrowth and backwash of tragedy.  It's about how seismic loss changes the lives of those affected.  Whether the apprentices at a finishing school were deflowered by raiders or stolen away by intergalactic pillagers, their loved ones are still left with a void.  It causes them to do irrational things.  I really, really like the way the script examines these issues.  Weir looks at shock and grief from a sideways glance, as most Australian auteurs are apt to do.  Oh, did I not mention that Hanging Rock is a wad of Ozploitation madness?

I've been beefing up on Australian horror flesh-ticklers, and I've noticed a linking plot mechanism.  They're all...hazy.  Distant.  Accessibility plays second fiddle to gonzo ambiance.  I tend to get frustrated when edible storytelling is low on the totem pole, but in the case of Picnic at Hanging Rock, it definitely works.  Visually, it's a dream.  The camera movements are supple, the scenery is striking and Anne-Louise Lambert is cute.  She portrays Miranda, the lass on the poster.  The only character who sours my milk is Edith, the dumpy crosspatch lacking an inside voice.  Motherfuck, she grated my bones.  The rock didn't even want her!  Yogi Bear can be seen standing behind her in a phantom frame aiming a musket at her skull.

Why Yogi Bear?  It's a picnic, people!  C'mon!  Blimey, did the ants carry your sense of humor to their hill?  NOTE: My rating is somewhat conservative.  I have a hunch that it will climb after repeat viewings.