2012!!!!

Yep, that about sums up how I feel.  Have a good weekend and see you on Monday with another all-new It Came From IFC.

Robot Monster (1953) & Attack of The Crab Monsters (1957)

What can I say about Robot Monster that hasn’t been said before?  It is a true masterpiece of schlock and holds a special place in the hearts of all the cast and crew of MMTV.  No movie is as intertwined in the daily goings on here.  For what it lacks in story it makes up for in the insane special effects and monster design, and I’m not talking Michael Bay SFX – I’m talking not having the $1.60 to buy fishing line so it can’t be seen on film and using some poor crew member’s shoe laces to fly two aluminum pie pans into the scene.

The evil alien Ro-Man Extension XJ-2 (called "Ro-Man" by the humans) has destroyed all human life on Earth, except for eight humans, using the "Calcinator Death Ray". The survivors include an elderly scientist, his wife, two daughters and son, his young assistant and two pilots taking a spacecraft to an orbiting space platform. All eight have developed an immunity to the death ray since receiving an experimental antibiotic serum developed by the scientist.

Ro-Man must complete the destruction of all humans, even if it means physically killing them one by one, before his mission to subjugate the Earth is complete. After fruitless negotiations, he destroys the rocket ship headed for the orbiting platform with a laser. He later strangles the youngest daughter, Carla, off-screen and tosses the assistant scientist Roy over a cliff.

His mission is waylaid, though, after he develops illogical attraction for Alice, the eldest daughter. He refuses to eliminate her, forcing the alien leader, "The Great Guidance", to personally finish the genocide by killing Ro-Man right after he kills Johnny, the young son. He then releases prehistoric dinosaurs and a massive earthquake, rendering the scientist, his wife and Alice as the only humans left.

Ultimately the youngest family member, the son, wakes up after suffering a mild concussion, revealing that the film had presumably all been a dream. However, The Great Guidance is then seen coming out of a cave (three times in a row).

Twenty-five-year-old writer/director Phil Tucker made Robot Monster in four days for an estimated $16,000. The film is similar in plot to Invaders from Mars, released a month earlier by Fox. Both pictures contain a young boy stumbling upon an alien invasion who is captured as he struggles to save his family and himself. As the alien commences the final destruction of earth the boy awakens to find it was all a dream. Despite rumors to the contrary, the film did receive some decent reviews and grossed $1,000,000 in its initial release, more than sixty times its original investment. Except for a few scenes at a house, most footage was filmed outdoors in Bronson Canyon, the site of innumerable motion pictures and TV settings.

The score was composed by Elmer Bernstein, who also composed Cat Women of the Moon the same year, and, much more prestigiously The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, The Ten Commandments and Michael Jackson's Thriller.

The film's special f/x include stock footage from 1940's One Million B.C., 1951's Lost Continent, and Flight to Mars spliced into the film. Within the first viewscreen footage is a brief appearance of the Rocketship X-M ship during its initial boarding. A matte painting of ruins of New York City was included from Captive Women.

The budget did not allow for a robot costume as intended so Tucker used his friend George Barrows who had his own gorilla suit to play Ro-Man. Tucker added the helmet.

The film was shot and projected in dual-strip, polarized 3-D. The stereoscopic photography in the film is considered by many critics to be of a high quality, especially by a crew who had no experience with the newly developed camera rig.

In the film's opening credits, "N. A. Fischer Chemical Products" is given prominent credit for the "Billion Bubble Machine", used in the film as part of Ro-Man's communication device for reporting to his superior.

Robot Monster was originally released with the 3 Dimensional Pictures short Stardust in Your Eyes, starring nightclub comedian Trustin Howard as Slick Slaven.

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Giant crab monsters that eat the brains of the poor fools trapped on the island and then talk in the victims voice to lure the remain people to their doom.  Yep, they really made a movie with that plot…Did I mention it’s from Roger Corman?

A group of scientists land on a remote island in the Pacific to search for a previous expedition that disappeared and to continue research about the effects of radiation from the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests on the island's plant and sea life. They learn to their horror that the earlier group of scientists have been eaten by mutated giant crabs that have gained intelligence by absorbing the minds of their victims. Members of the current expedition are systematically attacked and killed by the crabs, which are invulnerable to most weaponry because of the mutation in their cell structure. Finally, they discover the crabs are the cause of the earthquakes and landslides that are destroying the island. As the remaining expedition members struggle to survive on the ever-shrinking island, they must also find a way to stop the crabs before they reproduce and invade the oceans of the world.

Writer Charles B. Griffith described the scripting process later:

Roger came to me and said, "I want to make a picture called Attack of the Giant Crabs, and I asked, "Does it have to be atomic radiation?" He responded, "Yes." He said it was an experiment. "I want suspense or action in every scene. No kind of scene without suspense or action." His trick was saying it was an experiment, which it wasn't. He just didn't want to bother cutting out the other scenes, which he would do.

Griffith also appeared in a small role and directed some underwater sequences.

The film was Corman's most profitable production to date, which he attributed to the "wildness of the title", the construction of the storyline, the structuring of every scene for horror and suspense and editing for pace.  As a side note, The Macra Terror - A classic Doctor Who serial that follows a similar plot.

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Related Articles

1. Robot Monster Movie – Wikipedia
2. Attack of The Crab Monsters Movie - Wikipedia

Blessed Yule

From Beyond (1934)/(1986)

"From Beyond" is a short story by science fiction and horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1920 and was first published in The Fantasy Fan in June 1934 (Vol. 1, No. 10).

The story is told from the first person perspective of an unnamed narrator and details his experiences with a scientist named Crawford Tillinghast. Tillinghast creates an electronic device that emits a resonance wave, which stimulates an affected person’s pineal gland, thereby allowing them to perceive planes of existence outside the scope of accepted reality.

Sharing the experience with Tillinghast, the narrator becomes cognizant of a translucent, alien environment that overlaps our own recognized reality. From this perspective, he witnesses hordes of strange and horrific creatures that defy description. Tillinghast reveals that he has used his machine to transport two of his house servants into the overlapping plane of reality. He also reveals that the effect works both ways, and allows the denizens of the alternate dimension to perceive humans. Tillinghast's house servants were attacked and killed by one such entity, and Tillinghast informs the narrator that it is right behind him. Terrified beyond measure, the narrator picks up a gun and shoots it at the machine, destroying it. Tillinghast dies immediately thereafter as a result of apoplexy. The police investigate the scene and it is placed on record that Tillinghast murdered the two house servants.

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From Beyond is a 1986 American science fiction-body horror film directed by Stuart Gordon, loosely based on the short story of the same name by H. P. Lovecraft. It was written by Dennis Paoli, Gordon and Brian Yuzna, and stars Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree and Ted Sorel.

From Beyond centers around a pair of scientists attempting to stimulate the pineal gland with a device called The Resonator. An unforeseen result of their experiments is the ability to perceive creatures from another dimension that proceed to drag the head scientist into their world, returning him as a grotesque shape-changing monster that preys upon the others at the laboratory.

The opening of the film pretty much mirrors the short story with the exception that Jeffrey Combs plays the role of Tillinghast the assistant to Dr. Edward Pretorius who creates The Resonator.  The short story ends with the destruction of The Resonator but that is only the back story for the film.  After being arrested for the murder of Dr. Pretorius, Tillinghast must convince the authorities that his story is true so he must repair and activate The Resonator.  What follows is just what you would expect from a Lovecraft inspired tale – insanity, unspeakable horrors and nudity.

If the cast and crew seem familiar that would be Stuart Gordon’s desire to recreate the working environment from Re-animator.  Gordon cut his directing teeth in the world of theater so he liked to work with the same people all the time but that just makes a more iconic production.  In my opinion Lovecraft is best when Yuzna, Gordon and Combs are involved. 

 

How about some obscure references to pad out the article?  

Ghoulies II (1988) -- The artwork for From Beyond is seen on one of the exterior walls of Satan's Den.

Slither (2006) -- Grant Grant's monstrous transformation is based after Dr. Pretorius return "from beyond."

Planet Terror (2007) -- Both films feature doctors named Doctor Block/Bloch (pronounced the same), and the female Dr. Block appears to have been made up to look exactly like Barbara Crampton in From Beyond. Also, her son's line about "I'm going to eat your brain and gain your knowledge" is a reference to a major plot point in From Beyond.

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Related Articles

1. From Beyond Short Story – Wikipedia
2. From Beyond Movie – Wikipedia
3. From Beyond Movie - IMDB

The Puppet Monster Massacre (2010)

I want you to imagine your perfect horror movie.  Great story, characters you come to care about, interesting and unique death scenes and of course lots of nudity and sex.  Now image the entire cast is made of felt.
I cannot stress enough that I am not joking when I say this has honestly become one of my favorite horror movies.  As screwy as the premise might sound I assure you this is written as if it is a major release horror film, they could have filmed this with real actors and the film would still be as good.  The fact the cast is made up of Henson level puppets only makes it even more amazing to watch.

A group of teens are challenged to spend a night in the Wagner mansion on the edge of town. Little do they know the owner (Dr. Wolfgang Wagner) has concocted a monstrosity in the basement and plans to make the hapless teens the creature's first big meal. This is The Puppet Monster Massacre, a wild and raucous love letter to the monster films of the glorious 1980's!

Created by Dustin Mills, the same man who is bringing you Zombie A-Hole and Night of The Tentacles, as a labor of love to the horror genre. He poured his heart and soul and over a year of his life to bring this tale to your eyes and brains.  I wish i could tell you more about him but other than his IMDB page and an interview over at Daily Grindhouse information is limited to "he made this" pages.  In addition Steve Rimpici, an American voice actor and on-screen actor, who has worked for Rockstar Games and the Discovery Health Channel. He provided the voice of Dr. Wolfgang Wagner. Additionally, Steve has voiced over 50 different characters for Strobie Studios’ productions of The Watson Files, The Ark of Time and The Horror of Poe.

Steve Rimpici also portrayed Dr. Avery Frank in Pioneer One, the first television series ever to be launched and distributed over torrent sites, and was the voice of Oma in Project London, the first feature-length live action film produced with over 700 visual effects and animations created almost solely with the open source software Blender and worldwide volunteers.

As of this writing his production team and him are looking to raise funding to create the sequel.  If you are interested or just want more information on this film the official website is at:
The Puppet Monster Massacre Official Site

Addendum:  I erroneously reported that Mr. Rimpici was the creator of this film, it is in fact Dustin Mills.  Please throw money at Mr. Mills so there can be a sequel.  Link is above this humble attempt to prostrate myself so I don't get more emails from Mr. Mills.  I am truly sorry for reporting incorrectly.

Quick note

Just wanted to let you know that I had scheduled tonight’s WTF Wednesday to feature “Southland Tales” but after six years of doing this thing we have come across a film that is beyond redemption.  I couldn’t get past the 20 minute mark.  Please do not watch this film.  For the sake of the children and all future children just pretend this movie never existed.  If you are a sadist and/or a masochist then I offer up once again a man I hold in high regard, Linkara at Atop the Forth Wall.  His review will explain everything.

Atop the Forth Wall: Southland Tales

I will be back later tonight with an alternative title.

Real life horror scenario #1

If you are looking for a plot for that horror movie you’ve been putting off writing then consider this a freebie.  Do you recognize the image above?  You can’t swing a dead CHUD without hitting some vehicle with a variation of that thing in the back window of their armored recreation mini-van.  In an age of heightened security and concern over identity theft you would think putting an advertisement like that on your car would be counterintuitive.  Follow my mad ravings for a moment.
As you can see just by driving behind you I know the first names of your children and pets.  A quick license plate lookup and now I know their full names, your name, your spouse’s name, your home address and if you own any other vehicles.  From personal knowledge I know that probably the children’s schools are online and with minimal effort I know where they go to school.  The amount of information gathered from just a license plate and one of those decals is staggering.  Now the pitch.
Father cuts off the wrong guy on the highway and by using the method I demonstrated gathers information and proceeds to first steal an identity, move on to impersonating a family member to show they could get to the kids and then finally top it off with a home invasion and bloodbath. 
So do yourself a favor and take that thing out of your back window please.

From Within (2008)

In a small Maryland town, the suicide of an outcast teenager triggers a string of violent suicides. These suicides seem to stem from a curse which spreads when any person, who witnesses the suicide, is possessed by an evil force that appears as the person's doppelganger that only they can see. A young teenager, named Lindsey, thinks there is a connection of the events to Aidan, the outcast brother of the first suicide case. But Lindsay must race against the clock when she witnesses her mother fall victim, and must try to find a way to stop the curse before it kills her too. Meanwhile the God-fearing townspeople, led by a fanatic preacher with a connection to the events also, form a vigilante group to take the law in their own hands.

I was going to write about a different movie today but since I literally just watched this film today on IFC I figured it trumped the one I was going to do.  Didn’t want to do that movie anyway.

The cable guide said this is a Christian horror film but I have issues with that as I will point out shortly.  So Aiden and his brother are pissed off at the very God fearing town for persecuting and murdering their mother ten years earlier for the unforgivable sin of being a Wiccan.  So they discover a spell book that includes the incantation to unleash the above mentioned curse and in their rage do just that very thing.  The price of the spell is heavy and the brother kills himself to set the ball in motion, exit first major character and enter bizarre makeup effects and creepy jump cut editing.

It might be hard to tell but I actually kind of liked this film.  The dialogue was decent, the characters were well constructed and over all the plot made sense and advanced at a decent pace.  What I did not like is the following points within that same plot.  A forced exorcism on our main character (That’s Lindsey to the left there), a mob killing of the only non-Christian in town, a minor character performs a rape in the name of Jesus and then sets the women on fire. Come to think of it there is a lot of violence in the name of Christ in this movie.  All in all it’s not a terrible 90 minutes but prepare yourself to get angry, unless you’re a hard core fundamentalist in which case you might think it’s the best movie ever.

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Related Articles:

From Within IMDB Page

Who Goes There and/or The Thing

That court mandated “quiet time” I referenced a few days ago gave me the opportunity to acquaint myself with a majority of the work of Lovecraft, his influences and his contemporaries and although I realize not everyone will share my views I believe his writings have influenced far more authors and directors than most people realize.  So let’s deconstruct John Wood Campbell’s “Who Goes There” and the three major films it has inspired.  As a side note ITunes seems to be shuffling the greatest hits of 70’s, 80’s and 90’s dance music so this may get surreal at some point.

Who Goes There? is a science fiction novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. originally under the pen name Don A. Stuart, published August 1938 in Astounding Stories. In 1973, the story was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the finest science fiction novellas ever written, and published with the other top vote-getters in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.

A group of scientific researchers, isolated in Antarctica, discover an alien spaceship buried in the ice. They try to thaw the inside of the spacecraft with a thermite charge, but end up accidentally destroying it when the ship's magnesium hull is ignited by the charge. However they do recover the alien pilot, which the researchers believe was searching for heat when it froze. Thawing the alien revives the being, which can assume the shape, memories, and personality of any living thing it devours. It immediately becomes the crew's physicist, a man named Connant, and with some 90 pounds of its matter left it tries to become a sled dog. They kill the alien as it becomes the dead dog.

The researchers try to figure out who may have been replaced by the alien, simply referred to as the Thing, and to then destroy the surrogates before they can escape and take over the world. Ultimately, they realize that even small pieces of the aliens will behave as independent organisms, and use this weakness to test which men have been "converted" by taking blood samples from everyone on the base and dipping a hot wire in the vial of blood. Each man's blood is tested, one at a time, and the donor is immediately killed if his blood recoils from the wire. The original Thing had (unbeknownst to the researchers) taken control of a man named Blair, who'd had a nervous breakdown when they discovered the creature's abilities and had accordingly been isolated to a small cabin. With the monsters inside the base destroyed, the surviving humans enter the cabin to find and kill the creature which had once been Blair, just as it finishes building an anti-gravity harness that would have allowed it to escape.

I find it interesting that pieces of the original plot would find their way into the 1951 and 1982 movies, destroyed spaceship by thermite charge in the 1951 version and the hot wire to find the alien in the 1982 version but these seem to be exclusive to their respective movies.  One of the things I really like about the novella is the snippets of internal dialogue of the one infected.  Campbell did a good job of using the “host’s” words and cadence while communicating the thoughts of the alien.

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The story is of an Air Force crew & scientists at a remote Arctic research outpost forced to defend themselves from a malevolent plant-based alien being. It stars Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, Robert Cornthwaite and Douglas Spencer. James Arness played The Thing, but he is difficult to recognize in costume and makeup, because of both the lighting and the other effects used to obscure his features.

No actors are named during the film's dramatic opening credits; the cast credits appear at the end of the film. The movie was partly filmed in Glacier National Park and interior sets built at a Los Angeles ice storage plant. In 2001, the film was deemed to be a "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant motion picture by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

This is one of the classic movies that I can and have watched every time I have come across it on the cable guide.  For a film from the 50’s it actually has a few scenes that would have been controversial at the time for example but not limited to the green house scene where the doctor is feeding The Thing’s seedlings bottles of human blood.  I can hear the gasps from the audience now.  The scene when the humans set fire to the alien and the barracks had to be a one take shot and I’m not sure how they kept from burning down the set let alone how no one got third degree burns.  Did I mention it’s a seven foot carnivorous carrot.  This is of course the film that the two following will be judged by most people but I will be examining all three as separate unrelated films and instead compare them to the original novella.

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Before I start talking about the 1982 film we need a quick refresher on At The Mountains of Madness. 

At the Mountains of Madness is a novella by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in February/March 1931 and rejected that year by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright on the grounds of its length.  It was originally serialized in the February, March and April 1936 issues of Astounding Stories. It has been reproduced in numerous collections.

The story has inadvertently popularized the concept of ancient astronauts, as well as Antarctica's place in the "ancient astronaut mythology".

Miskatonic University of Arkham, Massachusetts, sends a scientific expedition to explore the snowy wastes of Antarctica. Once there the team uses experimental drilling equipment to search for fossils from the days when Antarctica was a steaming, prehistoric jungle. In an icy cavern members of the expedition discover perfectly preserved specimens of a winged, column-like creature and bring them back to camp for study.

Informed of the momentous find by radio, the unnamed expedition leader and a companion race to the scene. When they arrive they discover the camp destroyed, the men and sled dogs alike slaughtered and dissected. The mysterious specimens are missing along with some scientific equipment and one team member. Suspecting mutiny or perhaps insanity the team leader sets off into the mountains, following the tracks of a hastily constructed sledge and footprints that are decidedly inhuman. Almost willfully blind to the truth until too late, the scientists realize the alien specimens were only hibernating and now seek to return to the ancient pre-human city that is their home. What follows is a story told in hieroglyphs, recording the rise and fall of an alien empire that genetically engineered man as a buffoonish, ape-like jester to amuse their inhuman intellects. The explorers must try to escape not only the city, but also the mindless, protoplasmic slaves who built it for their slumbering creators.

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In the midst of the Antarctica snowfield, the scientists and workers of a small American research base are shocked when a helicopter begins to circle their camp, chasing and shooting at a dog. When the helicopter is destroyed and the passengers are killed, the dog is let into the base and the American's begin to wonder what has actually happened. The helicopter has Norwegian markings, must be from the Norwegian base not too far from their own. A team of Americans are sent to the Norwegian base and find out what has happened. On arrival, they find that the place has been totally destroyed. They also discover a mangled body that looks as though it was once that of a person, which they bring back with them for further study. It is only then that the clues begin to add up; the dog morphs horribly into a strange creature that attacks the researchers. They manage to fight it off, but they come to a terrible conclusion: an alien with the power to transform and take the appearance of anybody else is amongst them. Who is infected already, and who can be trusted? Helicopter pilot J.R Macready sets out to find the answers to exactly that.

I once read in an interview with John Carpenter that he intentionally was trying to combine At The Mountains of Madness and The Thing, my opinion is it worked.  Desolate isolation, tentacle monsters and a heavy atmosphere of depression are items shared by both works.  Oddly, when I was younger I couldn’t stand his movie and it actually took me until I was in my 30’s before sitting through it from start to finish.  I have since changed my mind and believe this is a great film.  In addition to the Lovecraft imagery in the aliens it is also worth noting that is was not meant to be a remake of the 1951 film but a version closer to the novella.   If there is nothing else, watching Wilford Brimley be all creepy and torn apart by a monster is well worth the 109 minutes.

But even when I didn’t think much of this film the scene of the sled dog running with the helicopter chasing it piqued my curiosity.  I wanted to know that story as well so when I first heard of a prequel being made I of course was excited to finally find out what happened when the Norwegians encountered the alien…

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Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they're infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet. Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up. When a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew's pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish. The Thing serves as a prelude to John Carpenter's classic 1982 film of the same name.

Oh Boy, this movie sucks!  That scene I mentioned above with the sled dog, it’s weaved into the closing credits.  Like they forgot this was supposed to be a prequel and just threw it on at the end to have it connect with the 1982 film.  Still Antarctica and still a tentacle monster but now the special effects look like crap and the acting is stiff and looks like no one really wanted to be in this thing.  If you are interested in the opinion of someone I regard with awe and respect then please point your browser to Linkara at Atop The Forth Wall and watch his excellent video on the novella, two movies and the comic book incarnations of The Thing: Part 1 and Part 2.

Whoa, that took way longer to write than i expected.  Just made it Cthulhu CFriday.

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Related Posts:

1. Who Goes There? Home – A site dedicated to John W. Campbell’s Novella.
2. Who Goes There? Wikipedia Page – But of course.
3. The Thing (1951) Wikipedia Page – Better people have written before me.
4. At the Mountains of Madness H.P. Lovecraft Book Review – Allreaders.com.
5. At the Mountains of Madness Wikipedia Page – Yep, not a valid source of info.
6. The Thing (1982) IMDB page – Plot summary page to be exact.
7. The Thing (2011) IMDB page – Plot summary page again.

Project: Metalbeast (1995)

As I sit here tripping hard on a combination of Antibiotics and pain killers it occurs to me that for this WTF Wednesday I should combine two of my favorite things.  Werewolves and stupid secret government projects.

With the medical breakthrough of a metal-based synthetic skin called "bio-ferron" the prospect for pioneering surgeries for burn victims and cancer patients seems set to occur but for the warped head scientist in charge...it's a opportunist chance to reactivate a long forgotten classified project...that has been left frozen in a set of cryogenic chambers deep beneath the bowels of government laboratory. Convincing the other in the research team to start work on putting this living 'metal' skin on corpses, he now has the perfect test patients waiting on ice for them to work on. But there was a reason three of these stiffs in particular where left to chill. Due to an experiment gone bad these three only look human on the outside and none of them are as dead as everyone believes they are.

This movie really isn’t all that bad.  Bostwick and Delaney deliver a passable performance although not something either will be proud of latter in their careers.  The special effects are pretty good for a low budget film and the plot isn’t too bad either.  So what makes this a WTF film you ask?  The classified project is to make bullet-proof werewolves.
I’m sure that everyone knows the way to kill a werewolf, so what would be the reason to remove the ability to get silver anywhere near the innards of said werewolf?  The military wants a squad of special forces trained soldiers infected with lycanthropy to drop into unfriendly countries.
When I first saw this movie, many years ago on Encore Action, my first thought was of course, like any normal person, why would you make a bullet-proof werewolf.  Unfortunately after 17 years I still have no idea why anyone would think this is a good idea in practice or even for the plot of a movie.
If you are feeling daring the film is available right now by clicking the film reel below.

Trollhunter (2010)

To re-establish the rules of It Came From IFC, I have to have seen the film we are discussing on one of the non-mainstream movie channels such as IFC or Sundance Channel.  No HBO or Encore except for the strange variations like Encore Arts or Encore Extreme (In the past a great source for Japanese Action movies).  Usually the criteria for the films are foreign or fringe mainstream at the best.  My first ICFIFC may be pushing the rules a bit since I am pretty sure this may be a well known film.
What can I say about the Norwegian Movie Industry besides the amount of ass they kick?  Over the years I have developed a taste for import horror and science fiction mostly because of the the lack of a cookie-cutter style that seems to be present in American horror movies.  Explain to me the real differences between Saw, Hostel and Turistas?  It seems to me that film companies in other countries seem more willing to take a chance and explore their own local mythology and superstitions and throw a new coat of paint on them.

When bears are found dead in Norway, the students of the Volda University Thomas, Johanna and  the cameraman Kalle decide to investigate. They stalk the trailer of the mysterious hunter Hans expecting to find an explanation for the killings. The reluctant Hans tries to flee from the youngsters, but he agrees that they film him in action provided they follow his orders. Soon the trio of students learns that Hans is actually a troll hunter that works for a secret government agency. Further, several dangerous trolls have escaped from their territory and Hans is assigned to eliminate them.  --IMDB

Now if there was one type of horror film that I think it’s time to stop doing is the whole “found footage” thing, which this film is.  But it is handled better than I have seen in other films like “Diary of the Dead.”  The first time I saw this movie it was in it’s original Norwegian audio so I had to hunt down some subtitles but IMDB assures me it is now available with an English audio track on the DVD.  Are the special effects amazing?  Well in a world of Michael Bays and Jerry Bruckheimers the answer is no they aren’t over the top CG extravaganzas but they are good enough for the story being told.  And it is that story that makes the whole movie worth watching.  You start out thinking Hans is a complete asshat but by the end of the movie you actually care about what happens to him and even cheer him on as he battles the trolls. 
If you get the opportunity to see this movie I would recommend that you sit down and give the 103 minutes your full attention.

Kinda testing the feedburner but...

While I do that why don't you stop by the site and check out what i have done to it.

Thanks

Important Update

Now that I have completed my state mandated “quiet time” I have happy to announce the following two statements.

One, we have overhauled the look of the website and although we will be tweaking the details over the next few weeks I hope you find the new look to be appealing.

Two, Starting Monday December 10, 2012 we will be going back to a more regular posting schedule.  I hope to have a new original article for you guys on a weekdaily, that’s a word right?, basis.  In the meantime please bask in the glow of a Cthulhu Christmas tree.

MMTV not dead!

Currently working on a site redesign and will be back at it talking about movies and puppets…many, many puppets, many foul-mouthed puppets.  Don’t ask.

The Woman in Black (2012)

Finally, a movie I can be excited about. Classic snobbery aside, it is pretty obvious to anyone who's read my posts here that I loathe most modern horror, and by modern I mean anything done in the past 3-4 decades. There are rare gems, don't get me wrong, I'm not oblivious to some of the more tasty tidbits that have escaped from an otherwise dismal and disgusting era of films that are aimed more at making me vomit than stare at the closet in fear all night. Even some recent, almost promising, remakes turned out to be sad and disappointing (Don't Be Afraid of the Dark). Imagine my surprise to find little "Harry Potter" in what turned out to be one hell of a horror movie.




I LOVED THIS MOVIE!! I admit the ads were good, and the reviews were encouraging, but I could not avoid a slight bit of trepidation at actually sitting down to watch. Too many films in my past that just haven't lived up to the hype make me leery of most anything these days. I was wrong. This was classic gothic horror at its best. I would even venture to say that this movie could give one of my all time faves a serious run for its money.




The setting is gloomy, but not so dark that you feel like their hiding the crappy special effects. I was impressed with the cinematography. The scenes are foggy, dim, overcast and still in some odd way amazingly bright for the viewer. You can't miss a single shadow or hiding figure. Not that they are any less creepy in their pseudo obviousness, they are still quite eerie. Even the dark house with its cobwebs, candles and oil lamps still manages to let you see all the important bits in full clarity.




The story line is intriguing and engaging. You're interested in what's going on. There is a real plot here. It's not just scary for the sake of scare, although there are literally dozens of jump out of your seat moments. No slow spots here. I cannot say enough about this movie or how much I enjoyed it. It is well written and well executed with an ending that was completely unexpected.




I don't want to give too much away, but this film does not disappoint, nor does its young star. Daniel Radcliffe plays gothic very well, and does a convincing job of the not to be deterred hero. I am happy to see there is more to his repertoire than waving wands and fucking horses. I certainly hope to see him continue to expand his resume. If nothing else, I have to give him, as well as the other cast, crew and writers, kudos for renewing my faith in a genre I loved. I have always been more of an Edgar Allan Poe kind of girl, and that is exactly what I got!

See a Chart Comparing the Sizes of Movie Monsters

Click for larger and source.

Ecology of Homo Sapiens Lupus Part 1

As of this writing, it is the first night of the February three night period when werewolves may be active.  I was out on my deck earlier and had a few thoughts on the subject and wanted to bounce my ideas and questions off you guys.  I may also be revisiting this topic from time to time in the future.
First off, a few points for reference.  I am of the school of thought that transformations occur on the nights preceding and proceeding the night of the full moon proper, or more specifically – the waxing and waning full moons.  I also think lycanthropy has a biological cause and not just some “curse” someone has had cast upon them, maybe a mutated rabies virus that has integrated it’s RNA into the DNA of a host.  Most of my theories have their basis in the wonderful book “The Werewolf's Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten” by Bob Powers and Ritch Duncan, info upon clicking anywhere in this sentence.
I also believe in the various other types of were-beasts such as were-rat, were-bear and were-tigers.  I have noticed there is lack of non-mammal were-beasts, outside of The Howling III: The Marsupials, which may lend credit to my mutated rabies theory…can marsupials get rabies?
Anyhow, on to my queries:

1.  Whether you subscribe to the 3-day active period or just on the night of the actual full moon, I wonder what it feels like on the night just before one when the transformation will happen.  Not to be crude but it’s the only reference I can think of but, could it feel like being at the apex of sexual stimulation and just unable to climax?
2.  When in the dormant period of the cycle, does the infected regain the ability to digest raw red meat?  I’m sure even in the dormant state there is an increased craving for red meat, I just wonder if the predatory instinct kicks in and wants it as undercooked as possible.
3.  Does the infection grant a longer life or even immortality?  Assuming that getting hit by a bus is just as affective as a silver bullet in ending a were-beasts life, if I am careful and avoid crossing the path of both the Lone Ranger and a bright yellow Coast City bus can I effectively live a few centuries or does my body give out after a couple hundred cycles?
4.  Although it is usually portrayed as something the infected fears and wishes to avoid I think it is safe to say there are probably people who look forward and even relish the active state.  For those mostly and maybe even the ones who don’t want the infection, does the new moon bring a kind of sadness?

I think that will be it for now but I’m sure I will come up with more thoughts of the matter.  Thanks for listening to my rantings.

February 14th – All about blood, sex and werewolves

From Werewolves With Love - History Of Valentine's Day

By Brad Steiger - FATE Magazine - February 2006 - 2-11-6

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Everyone thinks they know the origin of Valentine's Day. According to the most commonly accepted story, Emperor Claudius of Rome issued a decree forbidding marriage in the year 271. Roman generals had found that married men did not make very good soldiers, because they wanted to return as quickly as possible to their wives and children-and they didn't want to leave them to fight the emperor's battles in the first place. So Claudius issued his edict that there should be no more marriages, and all single men should report for duty.

A priest named Valentine deemed such a decree an abomination, and he secretly continued to marry young lovers. When Claudius learned of this extreme act of disobedience to his imperial command, he ordered the priest dragged off to prison and had him executed on February 14.

Father Valentine, the friend of sweethearts, became a martyr to love and the sanctity of marriage, and when the Church gained power in the Roman Empire, the Holy See was quick to make him a saint.

The early Church fathers were well aware of the popularity of a vast number of heathen gods and goddesses, as well as the dates of observation of pagan festivals, so they set about replacing as many of the entities and the holidays as possible with ecclesiastical saints and feast days. Mid-February had an ancient history of being devoted to acts of love of a far more passionate and lusty nature than the Church wished to bless, and the bishops moved as speedily as possible to claim the days of February 14 through 17 as belonging to Saint Valentine, the courageous martyr to the ties that bound couples in Christian love.

February Is for Mating

Actually, there is no proof that the good priest Valentine even existed.

Some scholars trace the period of mid-February as a time for mating back to ancient Egypt. On those same days of the year that contemporary lovers devote to St. Valentine, men and women of the Egyptian lower classes determined their marital partners by the drawing of lots.

But the time of coupling that comes with the cold nights in February before the spring thaw likely had its true origin very near where Valentine supposedly met his demise.

Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Wolf Charmer was called the Lupicinus. Perhaps hearkening back to prehistoric times, the Lupicinus may well have been an individual tribesman who had a particular affinity for communicating with wolves. As the tribes developed agriculture and small villages, it was necessary to have a person skilled in singing with the wolves and convincing them not to attack their domesticated animals. The Lupicinus had the ability to howl with the wolves and lead them away from the livestock pens. In some views, because he also wore the pelt of a wolf, the Lupicinus also had the power to transform himself into a wolf if he so desired.

Rites of the Lupercalia

The annual Lupercali festival of the Romans on February 15 was a perpetuation of the ancient blooding rites of the hunter in which the novice is smeared with the blood of his first kill. The sacrificial slaying of a goat-representing the flocks that nourished early humans in their efforts to establish permanent dwelling places-was followed by the sacrifice of a dog, the watchful protector of a flock that would be the first to be killed by attacking wolves.

The blood of the she-goat and the dog were mixed, and a bloodstained knife was dipped into the fluid and drawn slowly across the foreheads of two noble-born children. Once the children had been "blooded," the gore was wiped off their foreheads with wool that had been dipped in goat milk. As the children were being cleansed, they were expected to laugh, thereby demonstrating their lack of fear of blood and their acknowledgment that they had received the magic of protection against wolves and wolfmen.

The god Lupercus, represented by a wolf, would next inspire and command men to behave as wolves, to act as werewolves during the festival.

Lupus (wolf) itself is not an authentic or original Latin word, but was borrowed from the Sabine dialect. Luperca, the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus, may have given rise to secret fraternities known as the Luperci, who sacrificed she-goats at the entrances to their "wolves' dens." For centuries, the Luperci observed an annual ritual of chasing women through the streets of Roman cities and beating them with leather thongs.

Scholars generally agree that such a violent expression of eroticism celebrated the ancient behavior of primitive hunting tribes corralling captive women. Once a wolfman had ensnared a woman with his whip or thong, he would lead her away to be his wife or lover for as long as the "romance" lasted. Perhaps, as some scholars theorize, this yearly rite of lashing at women and lassoing them with leather thongs became a more acceptable substitute for the bloodlust of the Luperci's latent werewolfism that in days past had seen them tearing the flesh of innocent victims with their teeth.

As the Romans grew ever more sophisticated, the Lupercali would be celebrated by a man binding the lady of his choice wrist to wrist, and later by passing a billet to his object of desire, suggesting a romantic rendezvous in some secluded place.

Christian Marriage

One can easily see why the early Church fathers much preferred the union of man and woman to be smiled upon by St. Valentine, rather than the leering wolf god Lupercus. And, of course, they encouraged a knot tied securely by the sacred rite of marriage and blessed by the priest, rather than a fleeting midnight liaison.

By the Middle Ages, the peasantry in England, Scotland, and parts of France honored St. Valentine, but their customs seemed very much to hearken back to ancient Egypt and Rome. On the evening before Valentine's Day, the young people would gather in a village meeting place and draw names by chance. Each young woman would write her name or make her mark on a bit of cloth and place it into a large urn. Then each of the young men would draw a slip. The girl whose name or mark was on the piece of cloth became his sweetheart for the year.

This method of celebrating St. Valentine's Day quite often led to circumstances and situations that encouraged long-term and lasting relationships, blessed by the recital of marriage vows in the local church. If the young couple did not take the necessary steps to become bound in a church-sanctioned union, the parents of the respective "bride" and "groom" would actively arrange for the marriage sacrament to be observed.

It wasn't long before the peasant method of utilizing St. Valentine's Day to guarantee the next generation of field hands, construction workers, and merchants reached the ears of the upper classes, and the custom became popular among the young men and women of the aristocracy and the landed gentry. Since the prospect of arranged marriages between successful families meant far more to the upper classes in Europe than to the peasantry, parental supervision most often limited the interaction between their children to be "sweethearts" during Valentine's Day parties.

By the late 1400s, the upper classes of Europe and England would come together in homes to celebrate Valentine's Day and allow their young men to draw a "valentine" with the name of a member of the opposite sex, beside whom he would be seated at a lavish dinner party. Hostesses took advantage of the holiday theme to express the tradition in colorful decorative schemes.

Gradually, Valentine's Day came to be synonymous with the exchange of pretty sentiments, written in flourishes on scented paper and decorated with hearts, arrows, doves, and cupids-those little pagan deities maintaining their hold on the ancient holiday. By the early 1800s, young men were taking care to create symbols of their passion on elaborate cards that they could offer to "My Valentine."

Today's Customs

By the 1850s, Valentine's Day cards were being manufactured and sold commercially in England, and the custom of observing the holiday with cards to one's sweetheart became popular in the United States in the 1860s, around the time of the Civil War.

Today, of course, we have vast commercial enterprises centered around St. Valentine's Day, insisting that callow young men and seasoned husbands must buy their sweetheart a box of candy, a dozen roses, a diamond ring or necklace, or at least a five-dollar card. But don't let the slick advertisers fool you with all this talk of a saint named Valentine who was martyred for love. Remember that it all began with a hyped-up wolfman smeared in blood chasing the object of his desire with a leather thong.

One last word of advice: Forget the whip and stick with flowers and candy

Brad Steiger is a professional writer who deals with the strange and unknown.

Found HERE if you want to see the source website.

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Do you need something special for date night?

Whether that special someone in your life has that certain “Dunwich Look” or you feel your sanity slipping away because their love is like a “Mountain of Madness” or your beau is the “Pickman’s Model” of masculinity,  Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs can hook you up with the perfect scent that will raise his Lost City of R’lyeh or get all the Mother Hydras to come a running…er, slithering.  Let’s just stop with the Lovecraft references and go to their press info:

 

The Lovecraft Collection.
Scents inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos.
Iä! Iä!
PERFUME OIL BLENDS
$15.00 per 5ml bottle.
Presented in an amber apothecary vial.

AL AZIF
An Arabic term that refers to both the chirping of nocturnal insects and the ambient sound made by the chattering of demons. This is the original title of the feared Necronomicon, the Book of Dead Names, penned by the Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred.
Nor is it to be thought that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substances walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man’s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones where Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.
A sinister, sinuous incense of summoning, a herald and paean to the Primordial Gods of Darkness, Chaos, Madness and Decay.

ARKHAM
Behind everything crouched the brooding, festering horror of the ancient town, and of the mouldy, unhallowed garret gable where he wrote and studied and wrestled with figures and formulae when he was not tossing on the meager iron bed. His ears were growing sensitive to a preternatural and intolerable degree, and he had long ago stopped the cheap mantel clock whose ticking had come to seem like a thunder of artillery. At night the subtle stirring of the black city outside, the sinister scurrying of rats in the wormy partitions, and the creaking of hidden timbers in the centuried house, were enough to give him a sense of strident pandemonium. The darkness always teemed with unexplained sound - and yet he sometimes shook with fear lest the noises he heard should subside and allow him to hear certain other fainter noises which he suspected were lurking behind them.
He was in the changeless, legend-haunted city of Arkham, with its clustering gambrel roofs that sway and sag over attics where witches hid from the King's men in the dark, olden years of the Province.
A shadowy, unapproachable forest of maple, birch, dogwood, cypress and pine softened by a garland of New England wildflowers: bergamot, columbine, rue anemone, blue violet, creeping phlox, bloodroot, toadflax, and pixie moss.

AZATHOTH
The Daemon Sultan, Seething Nuclear Chaos
...that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity -- the boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.
Azathoth is the blind, idiot god who sits on a black throne at the center of Chaos. His scent is high-pitched and screeching, both impenetrably dark and searingly bright with the clarity of madness: tangerine, saffron, vetiver, black amber and cedarwood.

BROWN JENKIN
The yellowed country records containing her testimony and that of her accusers were so damnably suggestive of things beyond human experience - and the descriptions of the darting little furry object which served as her familiar were so painfully realistic despite their incredible details.
That object - no larger than a good-sized rat and quaintly called by the townspeople "Brown Jenkin - seemed to have been the fruit of a remarkable case of sympathetic herd-delusion, for in 1692 no less than eleven persons had testified to glimpsing it. There were recent rumours, too, with a baffling and disconcerting amount of agreement. Witnesses said it had long hair and the shape of a rat, but that its sharp-toothed, bearded face was evilly human while its paws were like tiny human hands. It took messages betwixt old Keziah and the devil, and was nursed on the witch's blood, which it sucked like a vampire. Its voice was a kind of loathsome titter, and it could speak all languages. Of all the bizarre monstrosities in Gilman's dreams, nothing filled him with greater panic and nausea than this blasphemous and diminutive hybrid, whose image flitted across his vision in a form a thousandfold more hateful than anything his waking mind had deduced from the ancient records and the modern whispers.
A small, furry, sharp-toothed scent that will nuzzle you curiously in the black hours before dawn: dusty white sandalwood and orris root, dry coconut husk, creeping musk, and the residue of ceremonial incense.

CTHULHU
If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings... It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence...
A creeping, wet, slithering scent, dripping with seaweed, oceanic plants and dark, unfathomable waters.

THE DEEP ONES
I think their predominant colour was a greyish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked.
Black algae, drooping seaweed, salty brine, and crushed coral.

THE HIGH PRIEST NOT TO BE DESCRIBED
...and there... sat a lumpish figure robed in yellow silk with red and having a yellow silken mask over its face. To this being the slant-eyed man made certain signs with his hands, and the lurker in the dark replied by raising a disgustingly carven flute of ivory in silk covered paws and blowing certain loathesome sounds from beneath its flowing silken mask.
Monastic incense, blood musk, black leather, cypress, pimento, white pepper, and Roman chamomile.

MISKATONIC UNIVERSITY
A venerable New England university, whose vast library holds many rare, diabolical and obscure arcane works, including one of the few surviving legitimate copies of the Necronomicon. Home to innumerable scholars of the esoteric and the occult, and the notorious Dr. Herbert West.
The scent of Irish coffee, dusty tomes and polished oakwood halls.

NIGHT-GAUNT
No one ever found what the night-gaunts took, though those beasts themselves were so uncertain as to be almost fabulous. Carter asked them if night-gaunts sucked blood and liked shiny things and left webbed footprints, but they all shook their heads negatively and seemed frightened at his making such an inquiry. When he saw how taciturn they had become he asked them no more, but went to sleep in his blanket.
Their scent of their slick, rubbery hides is bittersweet, ticklish, and skin-creeping: something akin to yuzu, white grapefruit, and kumquat mixed with the snow-dusted flowers of Mount Ngranek.

NYARLATHOTEP
And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences - of electricity and psychology - and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of a nightmare.
Brooding, yet electric: the scent of buried secrets, roiling nightmares, the essence of the Crawling Chaos, the Father of Knives and Locusts, the Hunter in the Dark. This is the blackest of ritual incenses charged with flashes of ozone.

R'LYEH
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. The sunken city of the Great God Cthulhu. A hellishly dark aquatic scent, evocative of fathomless oceanic deeps, the mysteries of madness buried under crushing black waters, and the brooding eternal evil that lies beneath the waves.

SHOGGOTH
It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congerie of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.
An amorphous, radiant, incandescent scent. Ever changing, protoplasmic and primordial: white amber, green coconut meat, iris, palmarosa, Chinese peony, lime, water lily, snowdrop, muguet, lemongrass, osmanthus, wisteria, glassy musk, and hinoki.

SHUB-NIGGURATH
Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, the All-Mother and wife of the Not-to-Be-Named-One.
The lust incense of a corrupted Astarte. A blend of ritual herbs and dark resins, shot through with three gingers and aphrodisiacal spices.

HERBERT WEST
Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror. This terror is not due altogether to the sinister manner of his recent disappearance, but was engendered by the whole nature of his life-work, and first gained its acute form more than seventeen years ago, when we were in the third year of our course at the Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham. While he was with me, the wonder and diabolism of his experiments fascinated me utterly, and I was his closest companion. Now that he is gone and the spell is broken, the actual fear is greater. Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.
Aftershave, embalming fluid, and splatterings from a panoply of reanimation reagents.

Y'HA-NTHLEI
We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y'ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.
A great undersea metropolis located below Devil's Reef. A swirling, lightless, effervescent scent: the deepest marine notes with bergamot, eucalyptus and foamy ambergris.

NSFW: FDR: American Badass!

Maybe it’s the 3 hours of sleep or maybe it’s the cold medicine I’m tripping on but this is one of the funniest things I have seen in a while.  Originally from RoboPanda at GammaSquad but it was too good to not “borrow.”

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“FDR: American Badass!” Is The Best Of All The “President Versus Nazi Werewolves” Movies 

 

Why yes, that is FDR in a weaponized wheelchair.

It was just a short while ago that artist Jason Heuser made paintings of American presidents fighting classic monsters, and one of his paintings was a battlemech Franklin Delano Roosevelt which he also turned into the fake movie poster to the right. What he probably didn't know was that his poster was very close to Hollywood truth, as FDR: American Badass! is a real movie coming out this year (four swearword-filled videos below).

The movie synopsis -- which I couldn't have made up no matter how many Four Lokos I chugged -- is, "FDR rides a 'wheelchair of death' to stop the world from werewolves who carry the polio virus, including werewolf versions of Hitler, Mussolini, and Emperor Hirohito."

This concept has turned into a movie inexplicably starring Golden Globe winner Barry Bostwick (who would strike the Sun if it insulted him), Ray Wise, Kevin Sorbo ("Hercules"), the landlady from Kingpin, and Tom Cruise's cousin. Even though their official website expired last month and I've never heard of the writer or director (Ross Patterson and Garrett Brawith, respectively), I still suspect this isn't just an elaborate practical joke based on the number of well-known actors involved and the number of set pieces used in the red band trailer. Also, I so badly want this to be real based on this line of dialogue alone:

"A werewolf attacked you. It bit your leg. It release a small stream of . . . You've got the polio, Frank."

"Does my c*ck still work?"

Mister President! Such salty language. Speaking of which, the trailer and three promos below are full of salty language, so get your headphones up and your Four Loko at the ready. FDR has to have his Loko, son.