Friends: A Tribute to Cats

This is a video that I started making the other night as a distraction from assignments. It was going to be a 30 second faux-experimental video starring all my favourite internet cats. It very quickly got out of control:

Olsen Twins & Friends

I found the alternative Russian title sequence for Full House starring the Olsen friends and Bob Sagglets. I uploaded it to my YouTube account, check it out:

Bloodied anus fun at LegumeMan Books

That short story I mentioned in the last post, The Grinning Idiot, is now up on LegumeMan Books website with sexual artwork by Pierre Lloga. Click here to check it out. Keep in mind I've never written anything creative outside of film and comics... well, at least not since high school. Not to say it's anything new in content. It's typical Pleasant Productions material, ie: completely revolting with no redeeming qualities. Let me know what you think!

The Grinning Idiot cover art

Long time no post, as per usual. In me related news, I've written a short story for Legumeman Books entitled The Grinning Idiot. It's completely immature and rotten (of course). I can also inform you that it contains the words "tobacco" and "mouth" used in a sentence together. Not only that, they are also written consecutively. Yes, you heard that right. At some point in The Grinning Idiot, you will see the phrase "tobacco mouth". How exactly will that work you ask? Well, guess you'll just have to wait and see. It will be online at the Legumeman website as part of their free series at some point in the super near future. For now, you can satisfy your desperate desire to read the short by viewing Pierre Lloga's awesome cover art that he delivered to me today. Pierre is the shit and I can assure you this cover is far better than the tripe you'll find inside. Click below to enlarge:

In other news, I've been on holidays and instead of finishing university assignments and preparing classes for next term, I've been pumping my tiny brain full of movies. I think I've sat through twenty or so in the last week. Pathetic, no? Last night I watched four movies of mixed quality. First I watched...

BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964)

Not a bad film by awesome dead Italian Mario Bava (father of the less competent Lamberto and precursor to horror heavyweight Dario Argento). I must say it did not quite live up to my admittedly massive expectations. It had been described to me as one of Bava's best, but thus far it has been one of my least favourites (methinks my opinion may not count as I rate the much maligned Danger: Diabolik very highly). Blood and Black Lace contained a meandering and incredibly shallow plot about a bunch of models getting murdered by some masked moron. Other than the woeful acting (to be expected in a dubbed Italian horror*, but it's worse than usual here), the story was certainly the weakest point. It was supposedly a murder mystery, but it failed on the mystery angle. When the killer was revealed about 20 minutes too early, my reaction was, "Oh, right... uh... who? Oh yeah, that character. Okay." However, the lighting and camera work was top notch and right up my alley (bizarre colour schemes and slow tracking shots for no reason). The killer's costume added a few bonus entertainment points (I think Alan Moore saw this before he wrote Watchmen) and the death scenes were brilliant. I give this film 7.5/10.

*Worst Italian horror flick dubbing I've experienced would have to be Lucio Fulci's House by the Cemetery... a child is dubbed by a middle aged woman. It may work for The Simpsons, but certainly doesn't for here.

Then I watched...

NORBIT (2007)

My housemate and I thought it would be funny to watch this Eddie Murphy turd and laugh at its incompetence. It was for the first hour, then it started to get VERY old VERY fast. Eddie Murphy should be punched in the wrist for, not only acting in, but also co-writing this rubbish. I have no idea what the fuck Eddie Murphy and his idiot brother Charlie were thinking/smoking when they farted out this poo-soaked script. Fat jokes and insanely racist stereotypes are thrown at the audience every two seconds of the running time with embarrassing slapstick and vomit inducing romance filling the rest. Oh and guess what? Eddie Murphy plays MULTIPLE CHARACTERS! It's all very exciting, as it's so rare to see a film starring Eddie Murphy where he plays more than one role. It's a delight to see him in "yellow face" as an old Asian man that seems confused as to whether he's Chinese or Japanese. Oh well, they're all the same aren't they? Fuck this movie and fuck the washed up shell of a man that is Eddie Murphy. 2/10.

Followed by...

FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1982)

For a dork that loves his 80s teen movies, it's surprising to me that I've only just got around to watching this. It was worth the wait as it is an absolute classic! Not much to say about this as I'm sure it's all been said before. This is probably the first film where I've truly enjoyed a Sean Penn performance. But Judge Reinhold stole the show for me playing the career obsessed arrogant-but-nice guy/older brother role (Reinhold's goofy deep voice is hysterical). Why didn't this guy have a better career? Also had a chuckle at Nicolas "Killing Me Won't Bring Back Your Goddamn Honey" Cage as a background extra. 9/10.


And finally...

NACHO LIBRE (2006)

Even though this wasn't quite as disgraceful as Norbit, it probably pissed me off even more due to the wasted talent. I really dug Napoleon Dynamite... it seems to be a film that divides people, but I thought it was incredibly well shot and written and contained some truly excellent anti-acting performances. Despite all the bad press that Nacho Libre received, I expected to get a little enjoyment out of Jared Hess's follow up. Now I see why it got the terrible reviews, it's just not funny. At all. I laughed ONCE (and it was at screeching wrestling midgets, pretty hard not to laugh). Gone is all the effortless quirkiness of Napoleon Dynamite, replaced with an awful forced quirkiness that is difficult to explain. Perhaps the giant budget took away all the charm, the way Hess shot this is entirely soulless. It looks and sounds like any other weak mainstream Hollywood comedy with "hilarious" slow motion editing and a wacky soundtrack. Hell, it even contains poorly dubbed fart sounds. The worst about this film is Jack Black. Hess should have gone with an unknown actor. Jack Black doesn't fit into the Hess style of comedy and can't even hold himself back from singing a Tenacious D-esque song as one point. The rest of the cast is actually quite likable. Héctor Jiménez shines as Nacho's wrestling partner and Ana de la Reguera is tolerable as the nun love interest. The concept of the film is quite fun (ie: deceiving), it's just too bad everyone involved fucked it up. An incredibly awkward and downright pathetic film. Big thumbs down. Three points for the concept and supporting cast. 3/10.

CANNIBAL SUBURBIA review

J.R. McNamara wrote a review our flick "Cannibal Suburbia". It discusses both pros and cons, but I think it's very fair and nice to us! Three out of five ain't bad. I've seen Jess Franco films with the same rating... oh wait... that's not a good thing. My favourite criticism is definitely the following:

I will start with a frivolous criticism of this film: I am a huge fan of female nudity, and I saw far too much man-dick in this film. I am OK with my sexuality and don't have a problem with full-frontal male nudity, but generally I like it balanced off with a bit of the same in female nudity, and there were some like looking girls in this film that could have done with fewer clothes.

Unfortunately, Secret Mango never wears clothes other than stockings and ping pong balls I'm afraid. Ahhh, man-dick. Anyway, here is the link to the review.

Faces of Crap

On another note, I finally watched the infamous Faces of Death with my buddy Pierre. For those that don't know, it's an exploitation "documentary" about... well... death (although in one classic moment it discusses post-death ghostly apparitions, oh gawd). I have never been so freaking bored during a film. We were hoping for some laughable fake death scenes, instead we got a bunch of shaky camera rubbish and some truly repulsive real footage of animals being slaughtered. The film is essentially a technically incompetent rip off of the far superior Mondo Cane films. Yeech. The worst aspect of this piece of crap is the holier-than-thou attitude the film takes. Throughout the mind numbing stupidity, we were subjected to a rambling mess of narration (from "Dr. Gross" or something ridiculous like that). The narration seems to think that this isn't an exploitation film. The worst example being when we're shown horrendous footage of a slaughterhouse Dr. Fuckhead claims "watching this footage made me consider becoming a vegetarian". Well done! Well fuckin' done! This is a movie containing footage of animal cruelty (that it lingers on for extended close ups... you can almost see the director salivating behind the lens) for no other reason outside of EXPLOI-FUCKIN-TATION. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my exploitation, but I hate it when an exploitation flick doesn't know its place. The only possible recommendation for this tripe comes from its outrageous ending that needs to be seen to be believed. 1 out of 10, just for the hysterical finale!

Christopher Lee is the greatest man alive

I've always been a fan of the great Christopher Lee. I grew up watching Hammer horror studio flicks and have a particular soft spot for his role in Horror Express (VERY underrated Hammer film). There's nothing better than kicking back to some Dracula or Frankenstein with Peter Cushing and Lee lighting up the screen. My ultimate childhood film, Gremlins 2 (odd choice, ey?), had a memorable Lee cameo... he stood out as an awesome presence despite his limited lines. As I got older and more film obsessed, he climbed higher and higher in my personal favourite top actors list. He secured himself a top three position after my first viewing of the original Wicker Man. I almost peed myself with joy when he appeared alongside the great Brad Dourif in The Two Towers and it was fantastic to see him in a Star Wars movie echoing his Hammer buddy Cushing's performance in New Hope. So yeah, Christopher Lee is an acting god, but man! I had no idea how much of a living legend this guy is!

A friend mentioned recently that he supposedly holds the record for starring in most amount of movies, so I shuffled over to his IMDB page. Scrolling through his trivia, I discovered many ridiculously exciting things about the best actor to play Dracula (sorry, Bela). Let's start off with some trivia that I already knew... Lee is the main man of franchises! He's been in a James Bond film, Star Wars, Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Police Academy (okay, not the best example), the Fu Manchu flicks and he's played pretty much every major classic monster (the Mummy, Frankenstein, Dracula etc.). Another fun fact: he's on the Wings album cover for "Band on the Run". Onto the stuff I didn't know... he played golf with Ian Fleming (and they're step-cousins). He was born on the same day as Vincent Price. He beats Kevin Bacon at his own game as he can be linked to ANYONE in Hollywood on average in 2.59 steps! He served the British Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve during WWII and was a member of the Special Forces. His great-grandparents founded Australia's first opera company. He's six foot five! He was a friend of Boris Karloff. He's been married to the same woman since the 60s (rare in Hollyweird). He is fluent in French, Italian, Spanish and German! His films have made more money than any other actor's in history! He used to hang out with Tolkien. He's been knighted... a couple of times, I think! He's 87 and still acting!

And most OUTRAGEOUSLY Christopher Lee is... wait for it... a fan of POWER METAL! What the hell! His favourite bands include Manowar and Rhapsody. For proof, check this out!



I've saved the best to last. Although he was usually cast as a villain (in 80 percent of his films) alongside Peter Cushing as the hero, in real life the two were inseparable friends. IMDB has this amazing quote from him about Cushing:

"I don't want to sound gloomy, but, at some point of your lives, every one of you will notice that you have in your life one person, one friend whom you love and care for very much. That person is so close to you that you are able to share some things only with him. For example, you can call that friend, and from the very first maniacal laugh or some other joke you will know who is at the other end of that line. We used to do that with him so often. And then when that person is gone, there will be nothing like that in your life ever again."

What a wonderfully articulate and gentle gentleman! It's difficult to choose his best quality, but if was forced to I'd go for his booming deep voice:



And finally, I have Chris Lee to thank for the end of an eighteen year search. In the early 90s, I watched an amazing made-for-TV version of Treasure Island. It blew me away. I only saw it once but it's been ingrained in my memory ever since. As I was only a kidlet, I didn't remember the cast members names and seeing that there's been a thousand version of Treasure Island, it seemed impossible to find the right one. Searching through Lee's film roles, I noticed a Treasure Island title from 1990. I looked it up on YouTube and nearly fainted when I recognized the song in the opening credits! It stars a young Christian Bale and Charleton Heston and is a truly awesome adaptation. Vote to make those douche bags at TCM release it on DVD! Thanks, Christopher Lee!

Modern Gentlemen review in FANGORIA!

A few weeks back Pierre and I sent off a poop load of Modern Gentlemen #2 copies for review. I did a Google search, and stumbled across the first review from that batch. Horror fans will no doubt be familiar with Fangoria Magazine. I'm pretty stoked that they gave us a great review... the reviewer seems to really get what we're about.

Check it out here!

Also for those of you interested in underground fiction, a friend of mine has set up the Underground Fiction Forum. Join up and makes somes posts!