Tag: Horror

Cocaine Bear (2023)

Cocaine Bear is a 2023 movie that is yes, legitimately based on a true story, with quite a few liberties taken. For example the part about someone tossing massive amounts of coke out of a plane and a bear getting into it is absolutely true, there is even a museum in Lexington Kentucky where you can go see the bear they found in the woods that ate about 15 million dollars in that beautiful white stuff.

Now on to the movie, which quite honestly is a big old pile of what the fuck did Elizabeth Banks just make. I mean that in the best way possible. This movie is gory, it is funny it has some great acting for a movie that does absolutely nothing to take itself seriously. The bear also looks pretty good for a pretty low budget movie.

The story itself is actually very simple, a plane is going down so a man tosses duffle bags of coke off the plane. He dies when his parachute doesn’t open so a cop that knows what is going on rushed to find the drugs. The cartel that owns the drugs also wants to find the millions in drugs. Unfortunately a young girl and her male friend also skip school to go paint a waterfall after the mother breaks a promise to go paint the before mentioned waterfall.

As the name of the movie implies,a bear eats bags of coke and becomes all coked up and decides to kill everyone in his way of, you guessed it, eating more coke that it is now addicted too.

Small things you get to enjoy is a bear doing a line of coke off a severed leg if you pay attention. A drug dealer constantly complaining about his favorite jersey getting messed up (but not his missing fingers) and possibly the last movie appearance of the late great Ray Liotta. (He did finish filming numerous projects before his death but not all were movies)

The movie is a ton of fun,I won’t say it is a good movie, but God damn it was one of the most fun movies I have seen in years.

Pearl (2022)

Pearl is the prequel to X and basically tells the story of how Pearl ended up on the farm with her husband. If you recall Mia Goth played both the main characters Maxine and Pearl in X and in this one also plays Pearl once more as a young lady.

Pearl has a much different time than X, taking place during the Spanish Flu of 1918 while most of the men are away during the first Great War it starts out quite happy as Pearl dreams of escaping the family farm for a life of dancing like the girls in her films.

We quickly find that her father is confined to a wheel chair and has very little know of what is going on and needs constant care and her mother, Ruth, an older German woman is quite the uncaring woman. She is constantly speaking down to Pearl and her dreams and simply wanting things done because that is what is best. One example of this was when Pearl rode her bike to town for more medicine she stopped for a show and didn’t bring back 8 cents. Ruth noticed this forbid Pearl from eating dinner and she was only allowed to eat this for breakfast the next day to make up for the money she spent.

This is where we see the madness in Pearl go from subtle to more and more pronounced as she desperately wants to leave this farm and her family behind.

The movie is great and makes an excellent edition to the series of films and there is more to come. It perfectly captures the feeling of the early 1900’s without resorting to using far outdated technology or anything silly like that. This one is definitely worth checking out. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Monster Friday -Trotterhead/Trotterkopf

Last week I started this new series with Monster Friday Wendigo and this week I wanted to continue with something much lesser known,and from my home state of Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania dutch,who are oddly German, bring us the legend of Trotterhead. (Trotterkopf in German)

Trotterhead is less a creature and more of a spirit but if what it is often debated. Some say it was the spirit of a witch trying to do harm while others say it was actually a spirit sent by a witch for the same reason. Either way you kind of need to upset a witch for this thing to show up and bother you.

As for where this thing would live or what it would eat, obviously one would think they don’t live anywhere but allegedly you could visit 2 of these creatures in Quaker Cemetery on Quaker Church Road in Perryopolis Pennsylvania. I have never been there myself,it’s in western PA and I’m in the North East, but I know the stories of the place. Apparently you disrespect the cemetery they will push you down and do all sorts of scary stuff.

Is this real or just the story of old time religious folk? My guess would be the latter, but they are interesting none the less. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Monster Friday-Wendigo

I have decided to do something a little different and set aside Fridays to sort of look into and discuss a different creature, monster, or supernatural entity. So if you like the series please let me know and enjoy our first entry, the Wendigo.

The story of the Wendigo goes back to the Native Americans and the people of the First Nation in Canada. One of the many stories goes like this. A hunter or group of hunters were out one winter day to get food and became lost, probably in a storm. Due to the weather, they were unable to find food or a way home and eventually became lost, hungry, and cold. Eventually, a hunter succumbed to his hunger and ate another hunter or human. This resulted in a sort of curse that made them constantly hungry and wanting nothing more than human flesh never able to get enough to eat.

How they look varies widely, some myths have them being human-like in appearance others have them being more animalistic but they are almost always much larger between 10-13 feet tall, and despite being almost skeletal in appearance because of them always starving they are much stronger and dangerous than they appear. They also traditionally have an almost demon-like appearance. Some say green skin with no fur, others say they have fur. They always seem to have large teeth and a large head and unparalleled strength, for comic fans try to imagine being a human trying to fight the incredible Hulk.

Their habitat is usually said to be the Atlantic coast and North America, most notably Canada and the upper part of the United States such as North Dakota tho it isn’t uncommon to hear stories in Pennsylvania from Appalachia. If you know, you know. If you don’t stick around and I will eventually get to it being from PA myself or you can check out TikTok, they will happily tell you about how they don’t go out at night, and if you hear voices or cries for help in the trees to definitely ignore them.

Now how do you kill a wendigo? Here is where the fun begins, the lore here is vastly different, and knowing what we do about these huge cannibal bastards none of them would be easy. Some of them are as straight-forward as grab a weapon and beat/stab/shoot them to death. Others state you will require a silver weapon. These are the easiest examples. Another example was that you need to subdue it somehow, cut out its heart and set the heart on fire. This one seems to be the most difficult because a few others I came across also require fire but they simply tell you to use something flaming to burn the heart within the creature or set the thing on fire in general. Either way, we should probably hope these things aren’t real or we at least don’t have to deal with them. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory, and just in case, happy hunting.

Hellraiser (2022)

This movie gets a lot of hell (pun intended) and honestly I don’t think it deserves it. I will go on the record and say it is probably the 2nd,if not 3rd best of the series. First off,it’s one of the few movies that still did practical effects in this day and age,so huge shout out to that. Jamie Clayton did a great job playing a difficult role, and unlike the most recent movies in the series this one had a plot and script that actually made some sense.

This time around we basically got to see what would happen if a very rich man got bored and collected the puzzle, had someone solve it and watched them die. Yes he was a very sick man, but at the same time who wouldn’t want to know what that thing did?

Obviously the story builds from there as we meet our main character Riley who’s brother has disappeared and she believes this insane puzzle is responsible,one that she now thinks may be after her (spoiler alert,it is) I truly wish I could get more into the story without absolutely destroying the movie for you all,but it completely would.

What I can say is the practical effects in this movie show why more movies need to go back to using them. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Troll (Netflix 2022)

Troll from Netflix is one of those movies you watch and leaves you wanting more and at the same time asking yourself what the person who made this thing was drinking. I mean that as a compliment by the way.

This thing starts off with a father and daughter climbing a mountain, a daughter that probably shouldn’t be doing this by the way. Once they get to the top they sit there having a discussion about myths and poems etc and she sees the faces of the trolls that drank too much and turned to stone with the sunlight.

We fast forward about 20 years and this girl is now on a dinosaur dig desperately trying to find some bones before their funding is gone and during a speech about having to have faith and deliver she finds a T-Rex skull. While all this is going on there is some digging and blasting elsewhere and a troll is awakened and gets a bit pissed and kills some people.

Of course in the small country of Norway the government tracks down a bunch of doctors,hacks a cellphone from one of those crushed people and manages to find footage and still nobody believes it’s a troll.

Like most monster movies it takes awhile before anyone will believe this thing is real, and when the big reveal comes the troll actually doesn’t look too bad. It’s about 130 feet tall for some reason and while not as fancy as the newer Godzilla vs Kong movie it looks better than many monsters we have been treated too.

This is one of the closest movies I have seen in a long time to a classic Kaiju film. It’s got a solid story,a giant monster destroying stuff and it looks good while doing it. The movie isn’t by any means fantastic,but damn if it isn’t fun. Check it out,and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Candyman 2021

If you never saw the original Candyman, it isn’t essential to understand or enjoy this one. Jordan Peele is a master of his craft. If you do however this movie is so much more than meets the eye initially. From how small parts of the original story are told wrong to0 misunderstood because of the time that has passed all the way to the realization to the people in the story that certain myths aren’t actually myths.

That isn’t to say the movie is perfect, many times it tries a little too hard to be deep than does silly things like the main character doesn’t bother going to the hospital for a bug bite that is engulfing his entire hand over the course of days and his obsessive girlfriend that dotes on him doesn’t seem to even notice he needs medical help. She does keep bringing up his obsessive behavior over his artwork. I found it hard to take it seriously with that going on. It would also make comments about things like gentrification, and have another character comment that the black main character complaining about gentrification is now living in the very buildings that gentrification built making those same characters uncomfortable. Small things like this are nice to see in a movie even though they aren’t put in there for me.

This is where the movie is strongest, Jordan Peele manages to make a horror movie that appeals to everyone without alienating anyone. It manages to have an impressive kill count while making you think about what is going on. It doesn’t insult your intelligence, but it isn’t trying to be an art film. It also has possibly the best cameo I have ever seen, and I won’t spoil it. So definitely enjoy Candyman as much as I did. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory and tell everyone.

Paper Cut mansion Xbox Review

As always I like to give a big thanks to the people that tossed me this one Thundeful publishing and Space Lizard Studios. Always nice to play a new game, and we all know my love of horror-related things so this was a special treat this time of year.

The concept behind this game is quite simple. They made a rogue-like game, set that game in a mansion. That mansion and the entire world are then crafted out of paper and made essentially into one big escape room. This may seem simple, and the idea is. The game however is not simple, and I mean that in the best way possible.

When I first entered the mansion I was greeted by a skeleton and a butterfly. It was explained to me that the butterfly would, land on walls in rooms where something important was and I should search that room. I should search for clues on how to solve the puzzles and get out and a talking door at the end of a hallway could help me. Something the skeleton had never managed to do.

This led me on a quest to discover, there are multiple dimensions to this mansion. The main place I had started in that I was free to search with little danger, a place that was cold and I could freeze to death and another that held enemies I could fight in various ways. Each of these sections is connected however if you unlock a door in one it unlocks all of them.

The same can’t be said for items. The item found in one won’t be found in all So you have to risk the enemies and ice at some point if you want to proceed to the next floor. Each new floor will allow you to find new evidence that will let you unravel what is going on in this mansion. Also between each of the floors you are met with a catchy cut scene and song about your character or the story. I found myself pushing on to find the next scene more often than not.

Dying however can be devastating as you have to start the process all over again, but many things will carry over. One example is the upgrades to your character such as weapons. These will allow you to proceed much faster and easier and find more new evidence. Even in failure there are things to be learned and earned and new characters to meet and interact with.

Graphically the game isn’t impressive but it is nice to look at. I loved the paper environments and how the people moved. The lighting was also a great touch as people standing by heaters seemed to shine a little brighter the closer they stood. The sound however was the real hero here. Accidently unleashing a ghost was enough to legitimately scare my child, while this isn’t exactly a challenge because she is five, video games aren’t normally on the list of things that do it. The sounds coming from blades in the walls and other things were really well thought out and represented and the music really shows the love put into it.

This is honestly one of the easiest reviews I ever had to write and one of the better games I’ve reviewed. This is a 9/10 Indy title for me. Everything works well, the story is interesting, and at no time did I feel lost as to what I should be doing.

Bones of Halloween Out October 28th

Bones of Halloween is a small but spooky first person shooter full of thrills and chills, just in time for your favourite holiday! You awaken in a dark forest near a castle, and quickly realize that you’re being hunted by grotesque pumpkin skeletons risen from the grave, and they’re after more than just your candy. Shoot down as many enemies as you can while you are still alive! You’ll have to deal with a myriad of monster attacks including arrows, lasers, fire, and explosions. Choose from multiple gameplay modes and difficulty settings, and gain access to powerful weapons. Fortune cards will have either good or bad effects on your fate. 

Features:

– Halloween-themed first person shooter
– Grotesque Halloween monsters
– Multiple game modes, difficulty settings, and weapons

Ratalaika Games and Petite Games are proud to announce that Bones of Halloween will be released onto Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4/5 consoles on October 28th 2022 for a price of just $5