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Friday the 13th part 6: Jason Lives

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So remember how part 5 ended with Jason becoming the new Jason at the end and that little note that Jason got cremated? Well guess what, part 6 didn’t.

Tommy Jarvis is back with a different actor and a new starting point to ensure Jason’s dead. Him and a friend go to Jason’s grave to make sure he’s really dead. Even though his corpse is rotted and decayed as hell, Tommy felt the need to desecrate his corpse further until a rogue bolt of lightening hit a metal rod left in Jason, reviving him from the dead. He comes back stronger and quickly starts another rampage through Forest Green (they renamed Crystal Lake). Tommy runs afoul with the Sheriff who fails to believe Jason is now a OP zombie shuffling about with his trusty hockey mask and machete. The Sheriff’s daughter takes a liking to Tommy and tries to help him finish Jason’s ass once and for all…again.

So again, Jason Lives is more funnier than scary but this time it’s trying to actually be funny. Jarvis is written to be more charismatic than before and pretty cool. There’s a lot of fun kills complemented with moments of meta humor and slapstick. Overall, I gotta say Jason Lives is probably the most enjoyable of the series and I will highly recommend it for a movie night with friends. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Friday the 13th part 5: The New Beginning

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So like every horror movie before and after it, The Final Chapter wasn’t the final chapter for very long. In this case, roughly a year before the title became obsolete. Part 5 is considered by many the Black Sheep of the franchise and all considering part 6 wipes it out pretty much. Still, if you need a laugh, this maybe the slasher film for you.

Part 5 picks up with a grown up, emotionally and psychologically damaged Tommy Jarvis as he is taken to a home where people with psychological issues can get back into society. Tommy is nearly mute and can be pron to violent outbursts when fucked with, while being haunted by images of Jason. Tommy is here to restart his life but it ain’t easy; there’s rednecks that hate them for being so close, one of the patients is murdered by a deranged handyman who I guess really hated chocolate bars, and there is a killer on the loose…did Jason return?

Ok, spoilers, no he didn’t. For horror, this movie sucks. The kills are either lame or flat out funny as hell like a Michael Jackson wannabe getting speared in a portapotty. A lot of the dialogue feels like came straight out of a porno and there’s a lot of…nudity in it. The twist ain’t great and though I appreciate where the story tried going, it felt too clumsy for it to feel really effective. In the end, part 5 is funny and awkward but that’s about it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory because damn those enchiladas!

Friday the 13th part 4: the Final Chapter

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So I got two shout outs for this review today, one for fan and dear friend Hatter who let me borrow the collection so I can refresh myself on the series and the other to Savior, who watched this puppy with me as part of our traditional Halloween marathon. You all kick major ass.

So there’s a recap as usual and every movie I get bummed aren’t narrarated by the Dragonball Z narrator. Everyone is dead after part 3, and the bodies are carted off to the local hospital morgue. Like Halloween 2, Jason isn’t actually dead and kills his way out back to his home of Crystal Lake. A group of teens rent a nice house across from the happy Jarvis family, the youngest Tommy will be the focus of the net few films. And there’s a dude named Rob lurking around hunting Jason because he killed his sister. Well, Jason had fun with this I bet…

Final Chapter maybe my favorite of the series. In a lot of ways, it’s the most suspenseful of the series and may I say, one of the goriest. The kills are sweet. The teens next door are goofy 80’s teens you don’t mind getting to know but also don’t mind Jason knocking off. I actually felt a bit of sympathy for the Jarvis’s. Young Cory Feldman was really good as Tommy Jarvis and sad at the end when he loses it and murders the shit out of Jason. Jason is at one of his best in this, being a badass. If you never checked the series out and you wanted to check a Jason movie out, this is my pick where to start. In other words, this movie ain’t a dead fuck. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Firefly Family sequel finally?

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So Rob Zombie came out a few days ago and said we were going to be getting a sequel to arguably the best movie he ever did, The Devil’s Rejects, or the concluding chapter of the Firefly Family’s trilogy. Now I have a sorted relationship with Zombie’s work: I loved his earlier music, wasn’t a fan of House of 1000 Corpses, loved Devil’s Rejects, appreciated aspects of his remake of Halloween but hated the ever loving shit out of 2. I stopped after that.

Now I gotta say, this news confused the shit out of me. Devil’s Rejects ended perfectly. Everyone died, the ending was sad but fitting. So my my first thought was, hey maybe it’s a prequel? But that doesn’t seem to be the case. So here’s my question, how the hell do you continue where Reject’s left off if all of you’re principle characters are dead? I have no idea. Personally, I think Rob Zombie should leave well enough alone. I felt he had a similar problem with Halloween; if the story ended with just the first, the story itself would’ve been much more effective on a whole. Halloween 2 muddied the waters and made me hate the first movie for a long time. I fear the same could happen with a Rejects sequel. But, I’m just me. I hope Zombie pulls it off and it’s awesome. Thank you as always and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

5 of my favorite monsters (Torsten edition)

I gotta give my partner and big brother Savior credit, he did a countdown of his favorite monsters that was pretty cool. So I thought I’d take a jump into the fray and talk about some of my favorites as well. In no particular order, though if you followed my work so far you may know I got a undying love for 1 in particular, so let’s begin with them.

alien c1 1 Xenomorph (Alien)- what can I say except that no creature in my mind represents beauty and dread like the creature ripped from Giger’s nightmarish design, the perfect organism.

2. Werewolf- tragic beasts that are man by day and monsters by night. My attraction to these creatures is that it is totally beyond there control; they are as much victims as those they slaughter. Also, they look epic and weren’t they a bitchin part of Skyrim?

3. Necromorph (Dead Space trilogy)- how do we make zombies scary again? Mix them with the sporadic nature of Carpenter’s Thing and put the bastards in space. Always in various fucked up forms, Necromorphs are a flexible zombie alternative to haunt your dreams.

nemesis 4. Nemesis (Resident Evil 3)- speaking of zombie alternatives, how about a zombie on steroids in a trench coat with long tentacles, a rocket launcher, and a screw you attitude. Also I forgot to mention, he doesn’t go down at all. Almost nothing stops this behemoth.

5. Frankenstein’s monster- a classic, tragic beast constructed from the dead body parts stolen by a young man curious about life and death. The monster has been brought to life many times but I can’t help but be fascinated by the idea and he is pretty epic in the book, a Karloff was amazing.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole

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Sometimes I feel like games stopped being fun, but I’m happy to tell you South Park: The Fractured But Whole is one hell of a fun game. Sequel to Stick of Truth, Fractured picks up directly after Stick ends and plays off of the superhero craze, playing mage to Civil War with Coon and Friends battling the Freedom Pals going head to head to see who can score the best superhero franchise. We customize our hero and battle the treachery of 6th graders, crab people, and a towel going through some serious withdrawl, as well the evil of Professor Chaos and the dark plot to bring South Park down. First, this game brings all the vulgar but cleaver humor of the show to the game and keeps fresh throughout. Seriously, with the graphics it looks and feels like you are in the show which is cool as hell. The combat is fun and easy to pick up. It’s turn based and feels like a chess game with positioning which was really cool, giving you opportunities to gather extra damage from knocking enemies into each other or there surroundings for extra damage. The powers can be blended and can be used to vary your experience pretty well. It’s a rare thing these days when games are simply fun but this definitely is and I highly recommend it for its creativity, humor, and fun combat. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

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Have you ever seen a movie that you never thought would get remade because the original was too iconic to touch? When Rob Zombie’s Halloween debuted, that feeling hit me. The slashers I grew up with I somehow thought were untouchable but alas I was wrong. 2007 Michael got his; 2009 Jason got his so in 2010 Freddy got his. Jackie Earle Haley replaced iconic Robert Englund as Freddy Kruger, a very fine actor but ugh…lets begin.

So we begin at a diner in Springwood on a dark and rainy night. Two teens are talking at a table, friends of there waitress Nancy. In fact everyone at the diner knows Nancy, but it seems everyone else has something else in common too. The dude at the table is skittish after not sleeping because of horrible dreams. For some reason he walks into the kitchen and we see the the first appearance of Freddy. We do get an interesting perspective of our main character holding a knife to his throat on the outside, while we get to see Freddy holding him hostage in front of everyone at the diner. So he dies and we set into what is mainly a retelling of the original with some key differences. The biggest change is Freddy was the elementary school’s groundskeeper who allegedly molested the kids and the parents cornered him and fried him alive because they didn’t want to have there kids deal with the trauma of going to trail; a huge part of the movie is the audience asking whether Freddy was a innocent man killing kids that lied and killed him or if he’s a child molester that’s out for revenge.

Ok, watch the original. This is a damn over CGIed, glossy Hollywood retelling that doesn’t have the charm or the imagination. I enjoy Haley as an actor but I don’t like him as Freddy. His make up isn’t great, looking more like a rash than realistic burns which is what’s it’s going for and he is far too gruff. What kills his movie are a lot of the effect choices, which makes the original that much more special. I don’t buy the teens as real teens, just prettied up celebs. Instead of atmosphere and freaky imagery we get gore and flashy ass jump scares. It’s a forgettable remake of Wes Craven’s classic but just meh. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Mummy (2017)

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I’m dedicating this post to a dearly departed mentor and friend of mine, Mr. Don Walsh, who loved the classic monsters and Halloween and knew what the season was really all about. The 2017 Mummy remake is literally everything wrong with modern movies and for my mentor and friend, I’m going to tear this bastard down and tell you why it’s ass cheese.

So it begins with Spooky Shield- I’m calling them Spooky Shield- led by a posh, one glove wearing Dr. Henry Jekyll in a tomb looking for a red gem. Then we get Princess Mummy’s backstory. Ok, I’m saying this right now, I have no problem with the Mummy being a woman nor the actress who portrays her. Her story was fine and I’m sure she would have been really good if Universal didn’t try making her sexy as well as threatening. Anyway, we cut to Tom Cruise and his friend playing some live action Uncharted in Iraq. Tom Cruise tries his ass off to be charismatic and keep this movie afloat; I’m not even a Tom Cruise fan but I applaud the bastard for trying. So on accident he stumbles on the tomb Princess Mummy is buried- because after she was mummified alive, they took her all the way from Egypt to Iraq to keep her away from the crystal. So we find out Cruise had some military connection because the Army shows up and decides “let’s take this old Sarcophagus because reasons” and we meet the love interest who’s a archaeologist and who’s pretty much there for exposition and to get kissed by Cruise at the end. As soon they army takes the Sarcophagus, Cruise gets images where a not rotted Princess Mummy shows him stuff and flirts with him. Suddenly all of this apocalyptic shit goes down like the minute they leave the tomb, sand storms, random birds going batshit, the works. Cruise’s friend gets bitten by a spider on the plane out, gets possessed by it and gets gunned down by Cruise because he started killing people. So the plane crashes, Cruise gets hurled out of the plane and doesn’t have a scratch on him because Mummy curse. Ok. Sure. His dead friend starts doing his best Griffin Dunne impression from American Werewolf in London and keeps revisiting Cruise in his Pg-13 zombie ghost glory. So we see Princess Mummy come alive and…to me it looks likes she kills you by making out with you because pounces and multiple times it looks like she’s frenching your life away. She restores herself back to a sexy grey with black tattoos and a skimpy set of bandages that leave just enough to the imagination because I surely wouldn’t think dream of finding sex appeal in a mummy. So more visions and expositions and finally Tom Cruise and Princess Mummy meet. Not going to lie, they milk the fuck out of her walking in slo-mo against a hazy background. Well, when all is lost, she gets harpooned a bunch of times by Spooky Shield and they’re taken in. Here comes the barrage of Marvel ripoffs- Jekyll has a liar full of monster Easter Eggs like vampire skulls, old fashioned tools, and a jar with a certain webbed, scaly hand in it and we get a assload of exposition from Jekyll, including the revelation that the Mummy will always haunt Cruise’s ass because he was the first person to come across her; there’s another scene that feels like a half-assed Loki scene from the first Avengers. So we find out Jekyll has a dark secret of his own because he constantly carries a silver briefcase and constantly keeps injecting himself because him and Spooky Shield are scared shitless of him being Hyde. Cruise and Hyde fight, which Hyde is a joke. His skin darkens like a shadow casts over him and his eyes change color; I had to laugh because Spooky Shield acts like Hyde is the Hulk, an unstoppable badass, and he ain’t. He gets his ass kicked by a normal guy. So Princess Mummy escapes, Tom Cruise kills himself with the Death God dagger, became a living good mummy that’s Set personified and kills her and sets up a sequel. FUCK!

This movies sucks emu balls. I really can’t tell you how bad this movie pissed me off. You can definitely tell Universal tried way too hard to ripoff Marvel to form its cinematic universe and they blew it worse than other company has. There is no horror, simply special effects and attempts to be something else except what it should’ve been. Tom Cruise tried his ass off to be charismatic and likable but shit there ain’t no saving this turd fest. The effects suck, the story is bloated and boring, and it’s trying too damn hard to be trendy. The old Universal monster movies were great and made to frighten people, intrigue people, and they became legendary for a reason. The 1999 remake wasn’t a horror movie but it kept a horror element and gave the movie it’s own life without harming the reputation of the franchise. Watch that. Piss on the 2017 copy. Best wishes to everyone out there and may the gaming gods bring you glory, because friends don’t let friends watch Mummy 2017.

Evil Bong

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Yep, this is a real movie. An old film partner told me about this movie back in the old days and I just laughed it off, thinking it was a joke- nope. 6 movies and a fucking versus movie against the Gingerdead Man. So, let’s get this outta the way, please don’t expect a chill-your-bones horror movie out of this. You will laugh.

So a nerd named Alistair moves into a cheap apartment with a group of stoners because he needs a place to study to get his masters and they need a roommate. As you’d expect, it ain’t the most helpful environment for Alistair to study in when everyone’s loud and high most of the time. Well the stoner’s have a great time when paranoid Larnell orders a rare bong. This bong ain’t no ordinary bong; once you toke is takes your soul and transports it to the Bong World, usually filled with murderous strippers. If you die, the Bong Eebee takes your soul. Suddenly, it looks to be up to Alistair to vanquish Eebee and save his friends.

Evil Bong…this movie is so fucking stupid I couldn’t help but love it. It’s absurd stupidity at it’s best. I saw a stripper’s boobs come alive and murder a dude; enough said. The acting is crap, the effects are crap, the music is stereotypical pot-head themes, but I love this movie. Check it out if you want a stupid laugh. Thanks as always and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Friday the 13th, Part 3

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Well, Friday the 13th part 3 is your typical Jason film but known for three things: the whacky 3-D, the debut of Jason in a hockey mask, and the “Jason rape theory”.

For a plot, it’s kind of the same as they tend to be- intro telling us everything up to that point, disco credits…ok, that isn’t normal but dude it was the 80’s, it was ok to have a disco remix here and there. So Jason stumbles onto a married couple in the woods; the wife looks like she’s in her twenties but is acting fifty, and her husband kinda looks like skinny live action Mario. After our first fill of 3-D and jump scares we join another group of teens and a couple of hippies as they go to Crystal Lake for summer fun and death. Jason kills these scamps off one by one. Ok, so I mentioned the “Jason rape theory”; the main girl’s backstory with her last encounter with Jason- it’s kinda gross. So at the end Jason seems dead and a pretty girl that may or may not have been raped by Jason lives…

As far as slasher films go, this is pretty good. The victims are just likable enough that you don’t cheer when Jason kills them. Jason has some decent kills but doesn’t look too intimidating yet but it’s a fair start. The winner of this movie is the shitty 3-D; I can’t describe the joy I get from shitty 3-D spectacles. In the end, it’s a fine movie in the series, just typical. As always thank you and may the gaming gods bring you glory.