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Thursday, June 27, 2019

Digital Slashers...

Jumping back into Friday the 13th and starting Dead by Daylight again.  I feel like I've been missing out on the party, Friday the 13th has been polished a lot since I last logged in, there was no offline mode at all.  I have been having fun exploring all the offline content there, it feels more cinematic and encompassing, can't wait to get warmed up enough to jump back to the online rooms.  Anybody want to play?  I'm on PS4 as CPLCHUD, hit me up sometime if you see me stalking online.  I would like to get a regular room for Friday the 13th going every Friday night for anybody who is down. 

Yup I got the Savini skin, pre-ordered this game years ago for the kick-starter campaign, totally worth it.

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Child's Play art










I've been on kind of a Chucky kick lately after seeing Child's Play 2019.  It really made me pine for the older entries; they are still cheesy as hell but I love them anyhow.  Expect a review on the whole series coming up in the next few weeks, I'm just making it through Cult of Chucky now.

NECA Ultimate Child's Play

Yeah I'm a little late to the party on this, but I am really digging the Chucky series right now.

Had to nab this little killer cutie....





Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Scream Resurrection - TV

Looks like Scream is coming back strong on television with the original Ghostface mask and voice actor returning -

Scream Resurrection trailer

I still have to catch up with the other seasons...but will check this out when it drops on July 8th.


Child's Play 2019 - Review



Child’s Play (2019) – The new, upgraded, 2.0 version of Child’s Play is not as frightening as the original, plain as that, but please don’t let that scare you away from watching it on the big fancy silver screen.  Chucky is no longer a doll possessed by a black magic wielding serial killer, but rather the result of a snubbed factory worker disabling all of the uber advanced doll’s AI safeguards; more like the cyber-nightmare of Elon Musk than a product of evil supernatural powers. Voodoo always comes off as creepier to me because you can never be sure what the rules are; with malfunctioning robots it’s always the same, unplug and disconnect the fucker from the master control program; but with demon possessed dolls you can’t even be sure if burning it seals the deal.



The new Chucky is sadly no longer a Good Guy doll, but a “Buddi” toy that’s more like an advanced but creepier version of Amazon’s Alexa, a “smart” device for the home that connects and controls all the appliances while acting as a personal assistant for the kids.  The new Andy is too old for dolls but takes to the malfunctioning robot anyways to appease his hard-working mom who got it on return at the retail store she slaves away at.  Little does she know; the device lacks any safeguards, which means this Buddi doll can swear, act violently and develop independence from its owners.  At first this amuses Andy and his newfound friends, but things quickly take a darker turn when the doll’s AI confuses violence and pleasure (thanks Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, you ruined another life 😉) and begins attacking anything that even remotely threatens Andy or their precious “play time”.  Chucky truly becomes Andy’s “best friend”, leaving him grisly gifts and gruesome trinkets after each murder. I don’t know what Andy’s problem is, that sounds pretty rad. I want a killer robot AI friend.

Chucky’s ability to control other blu-tooth enabled objects around the house leads to some great stalk and slash set-pieces and unique kills involving several household appliances.  The complexity of these gore-soaked set-pieces gave me that old school stalk and slash rush and there’s a healthy spattering of witty black humor throughout to lighten the mood; it doesn’t take this shit too seriously.  The last scene devolves into a full-scale department store massacre when Chucky takes possession of other Buddi dolls and drones to cause retail store havoc on the scale of the legendary Cabbage Patch Kid shopper stampedes from the 80’s; it certainly doesn’t try to hold much back and embraces the over-indulgent, insane madcap violence of old school robot-gone-crazy horror flicks like Chopping Mall.   The final confrontation is as open ended as you expected; I assume the new Chucky 2.0 can simply upload his deranged AI persona to another doll, making him practically immortal, and the sequel possibilities endless.



Mark Hamill does well as the voice of the pint-sized psycho doll but he’s no horror cult legend like Brad Dourif, and this new doll comes off as cozier and much more kid friendly than the old incarnation.   While the new entry doesn’t shy away from the crimson carnage the old series always had some cool body-horror FX going on where Chucky would begin taking on more human form as a doll and is subsequently dismembered into bloody plastic covered chunks by the conclusion; a shocking fusion of flesh, bone, and burnt rubber.  You really can’t do that with the robot Chucky, which is a pretty lame step back for me.  I prefer the old Chucky to the millennial snowflake version, but I think there’s enough room for both concepts to survive as the old Chucky has pretty much fallen into the hell of self-parody.

LONG LIVE THE ORIGINAL CHILD'S PLAY! A TRUE SLASHER CLASSICK!

Friday, June 21, 2019

The Hatchet series




Hatchet – I am not sure I can cover just one Hatchet movie at a time, the trilogy and subsequent secret fourth entry are all chunk blowers of the highest caliber; a cinematic love note to the lords of gore and the gods of 80’s VHS horror art, each subsequent entry raising a higher blood stained middle finger to good taste.  Gallows humor, black as tar, the 3 B’s are in full effect; blood-boobs-bad words, the body count hits the double digits and then some, Victor Crowley strives hard to prove he’s the next big tier slasher, with the immortal Kane Hodder behind the makeup it’s practically guaranteed that this crypt keeper is going to have fun.  Fuck all the haters and cinematic snob jobs that troll anything that tries, the Hatchet series rules, and seems to only get better with time.  If you aren’t having fun, chances are you’re thinking too hard.

The first 3 movies focus on the revenge of Marybeth Dunston, whose father helped cause the curse of the bayou butcher in the first place, throwing firecrackers at young Victor Crowley’s swamp shack that caught it on fire, prompting the terrible accident that resulted in his gruesome accidental death at the hands of his own father.  Now Victor’s cursed to be a “returner”, reliving the night he died in an endless loop of torment, slaughtering everything in his path in a never-ending fit of rage.  The curse also effectively makes him immortal, whenever the night falls he rises from his grave, a nocturnal predator resurrected and ready for revenge, setting the perfect stage for a stalk and slash story set deep in back water Louisiana. 



All taking place during and around Mardi Gras and keeping with the old school slasher tradition set by early Friday the 13th and Halloween movies the trilogy is set back to back, each sequel picks up precisely the moment the prior leaves off.  It starts with a group of Mardi Gras revelers on the tail end of a bender; a pair break off from the group to experience some quiet down time at a haunted swamp ghost tour.  Marybeth Dunston hitches a ride on the tour bus as well in hopes of finding her lost father and brother in the dense wilderness; redneck crocodile hunters who have wandered too close to Victor’s island and have paid the price for their transgressions.



To nobody’s surprise their swamp boat, helmed by an incompetent tour guide, crashes into a rock, and the group is stranded on the island just as Victor rises from his grave.  What follows next is one over-the-top kill after another, each as brutal and unforgiving as the last; elaborate and gory set pieces that emphasize old school creature FX and creative bodily dismemberment.  Bring a barf bag, because the blood doesn’t stop flowing until the gut flinging finale which leads right into the next movie, where Adam Green (director/writer/slash-head) manages to up the ante with mercenaries and bounty hunters looking to kill Crowley for a $5,000-dollar prize.  The kills are some of the most creative in cine-splatter history, the movie goes full tilt gore crazy towards the end, which leads into another planned sequel and end of the Marybeth trilogy, this time the local police force and SWAT is involved, but all prove to be just more meat for the grinder as the blood-soaked mongoloid Victor appears practically unstoppable.



The fourth movie, filmed in secret and toured around the US roadshow style, breaks from the trilogy mold to follow the lone and cowardly survivor of part III as he returns to the swamp once again, earning a sort of celebrity status from his harrowing ordeal.  His pill popping agent convinces him to do an interview on Victor Crowley’s old hunting grounds, which has now opened for tourism, complete with vendors selling cutesy Victor Crowley plush toys and other kitsch trinkets.  Tragedy again strikes when his plane crashes into the swamp around the same time Victor is summoned from the grave by a dark magic ritual spoken over a cell phone recording (you might think this is convoluted, but your first mistake was thinking) and the bayou butcher is back to bring the brutality.  Severed limbs are stuffed into body cavities, intestines are used to choke out people, and life is good again.

Hatchet has acted as a sort of pied piper call for cult horror celebrities; each movie is a virtual who’s-who of horror convention personalities.  It proudly carries the flag of unrepentant, unapologetic, old school horror and practical FX work that defies critical analysis; these are anti-intellectual films catering to the worst of our bad tastes, and I couldn’t be happier they exist.  While they can sometimes come off as more parody of slashers, the acting seems almost deliberately sub-par, the characters all act like buffoonish caricatures  of real people, but it plays into the carnival Troma-like atmosphere of the films, where almost anything goes. 

         OLD SCHOOL AMERICAN HORROR FOREVER!
    


Laurie Strode coming back?

Halloween 2 rumors are rearing their ugly head, I'm very much down with a sequel but I am not sure I want it to focus on Laurie, again.  Why not just have Michael move to a new town to stalk babysitters that remind him of Judith?  Jamie Lee Curtis seems to go in circles about whether is will be her "final final" Halloween movie; to be honest I'm not her biggest fan and am kind of sick of seeing her in these.  She seems to say contradictory things all the time in interviews when she isn't trying to speak over writers and directors and doesn't seem to have the best things to say about the fan base; actively avoiding horror conventions for most of her career alluding to die-hard slasher fans as weirdos.  But I do want to see Michael stalk and slash again, I don't feel like the last movie was a good send off for the character, they left a huge "exit right" for him....

Check out the latest news:
Bleeding Cool H2 news

Halloween fans, it may be time to get excited all over again. It is being reported that the sequel to last years smash hit Halloween will go in front of cameras this fall for an October 2020 release. It is also being said that David Gordon Green will likely again direct from his own script, with Jamie Lee Curtis coming back as Laurie Strode, along with Judy Greer and Andi Matichak as her daughter and granddaughter. The film would be another co-production between Universal and Blumhouse.



Thursday, June 20, 2019

Child's Play 2019



Confession; I've never been big into the killer doll movies.  For some reason Chucky just never really scared me as a kid so I never latched onto the franchise like I did Halloween, or Friday the 13th.  However I am hearing some good things about this remake, not ground breaking but it seems to dabble heavily in the old school slasher game.  With all the rain we are getting today it seems like the perfect weekend to give this one a gander...review later...

JASON TAKES NO PRISONERS

I think the Friday the 13th re-fake from roughly decade ago gets a lot of undeserved guff and backlash for not capturing the feel and atmospheric dread of the classic films, lacking the classic Manfredini soundtrack and ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma zazz.  Jason has become a cultural icon, the films themselves have carved a niche in the horror community for being fun popcorn slashers repeating the same stalk and slash formula ad nauseum with boobs, bad words, and booze on both sides of the screen.  The refake was pretty and polished, practically an Abercombie and Fitch ad with nubile teens and soft skin in dressed in ripped jeans and covered in pseudo-Americana, practically a spiritual opposite of the original films, but none of this really bothered me.   The director Marcus Nispel is a music video director from Germany, so some of the backwoods stuff feels more like a Hollywood backlot than a real location, kind of like the German approximation of what camping in America feels like, but again none of this really bugged me, his Texas Chainsaw Massacre refake looked and felt like it was pulled from the same universe.  The first 15 minutes of the movie really ratchet up the tension and are probably some of the most intense moments in the franchise history.  Jason displays a new bag of tricks, each increasing his threat level exponentially.  He runs, he sets traps, and is generally much faster and more aggressive than any Jason we've seen before, which is awesome.  However, what is not awesome is Jason actively kidnapping and taking people prisoner.  There really isn't any precedent set, you could argue "new remake, new rules" but typically the new rules don't cut against the core of what defines the character.  

Well what defines the character of Jason?  After over a decade of films I think we have a pretty good template to go on; for one Jason doesn't talk, or reason with his victims.  He's essentially a land shark with machete teeth killing anything that wanders close to his camp, including poodles (part 2).    Jason's not completely mentally handicap, he has displayed some mental capacity through using various power tools and prank calling Alice, it's a fair bet to say he isn't trying to solve the mystery of the missing dark matter in the universe from his shack in the woods, but setting and baiting traps around Crystal Lake is probably not much of a stretch for him.  In parts 2 and 3 he was fairly speedy as a regular human mongoloid, so running isn't much of an issue either.  These new aspects only act to enhance his lethal repertoire and they use them brilliantly in the 2009 remake.  

In over a decade of films centering around Jason there are really no instances of him showing any hint of mercy for anyone invading his territory, much like the land shark he is, there is no room for any forgiveness or cajoling him into stopping outside of temporarily tricking him with his mom’s favorite threads.  Essentially Jason is defined by killing relentless; the bull in a china shop.

So why does it make any sense to suddenly have him kidnapping women who remind him of his mother (without looking anything like her, or even having that worn out sweater)?  It cuts against the core of his character; by kidnapping and allowing to live he is essentially showing prolonged mercy, which should never be in Jason’s highly limited vocabulary.  I know this is a refake, but this isn’t a ground up re-imagining of the mythos; there are certain expectations one has with a Friday the 13th movie that they do manage to adhere to throughout, it’s just that one plot point sticks out like a severed limb to me, even a decade later.

The good news is this movie looks better in retrospect and with time, as the future of the Friday the 13th series remains up in the air, at least we can settle on the fact that the last movie wasn’t too bad, but for my money I just want Kane Hodder back!  Just one more film!  Jason in the snow…make it happen!  Derek did a fine job, but least Kane would have never agreed to the kidnapping bit….




Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Dead by Daylight - Ghostface

I was so disappointed by Friday the 13th's legal struggles and woes that I took a long break from the game, but I think it's time for me to dip back into the world of digital stalk and slash.  It's time to take another look at Dead by Daylight...is it worth it?  Looks like they just added Ghostface to their killers.


Another reason I stopped playing Friday the 13th the game was the endless nerfing and complaining about Jason being over powered.  Well derrrr....he's supposed to be, there should be a slim chance for survival.  There shouldn't be car loads of people driving out of Crystal Lake every round with ease.  Survival is earned, not awarded for meekly participating.  Anyways I hope I can jump back into that as well and give my take on the state of the game.

Monday, June 17, 2019

Never Hike Alone



Never Hike Alone I am honestly not sure what state the Friday the 13th franchise is in, and who owns what, to me thats all slick lawyer mumbo jumbo, but one thing is probably for sure; you cant count on a new Friday the 13th movie to hit the screens anytime soon, which is a major bummer for this diehard slash-head.  Luckily some fans are keeping the dark spirit of the franchise alive, and the curse of Crystal Lake lives on through fan films and fiction.  Never Hike Alone might be the best fan movie I have ever seen.  With no budget and a very limited cast they managed to capture that classic Friday the 13th feel that the highly polished refake seemed to miss; the tension and atmosphere is all there in spades.  The setup is a lone hiker creating Youtube videos of his solo hiking adventures stumbles upon Crystal Lake Camp, something he has only heard about in ghost stories from his older brother.  After wandering the camp grounds, he quickly discovers Jason is real, and hes still out there.  This simple setup works magnificently for the length of the movie, which seemed perfect at the 1 roughly hour mark.  After spending the night running away from the teleporting masked killer, the hiker, at the end of his frayed wits, is rescued by an ambulance, with none other than the original Tommy Jarvis from part 6 at the wheel!  Axel from Friday the 13th part 5 is also name dropped, so is Sean Cunningham (Cunningham Road).  Jason attacks the ambulance, killing two of Tommys coworkers, and speeds off into the night with the hiker in tow, now insane with fright.  I loved it, simple, atmospheric, with all the Friday tropes of boobs and blood.  Definitely check it out maggot-heads!    



Thursday, June 13, 2019

Black Christmas remake - Blumhouse

Jason Blumhouse seems intent on nabbing up all the golden 80's horror properties, which I guess I am fine with as long as we get some quality stalk and slash.  The last Black Christmas remake was cheesy over-the-top fun where the killer whittles down candy canes with his teeth and stabs unsuspecting airhead sorority girls, but it doesn't hold a candle to the original, which I consider to be one of the essential slasher movies, and a pinnacle of the form, right up there with Halloween and Psycho.  Here's hoping this goes more for the creep out than the gross out, but I will be happy with either.  Just don't make it another horror-lite movie for tweens who need a safe space.


NECA Freddy Vs. Jason ultimate figure

I think this might be my favorite looking incarnation of Jason. 

This beast comes out 7/31/19.

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Eat pizza, worship horror!

This is just a daily reminder to eat pizza, worship horror!  Hope you couch potatoes are getting out to the remote places of the world, performing dark rituals at the altar of the slasher! 

Friday, June 7, 2019

Gutter Garbs 4 day Friday the 13th part 6 shirt sale

I dig it like the grave, get me the long sleeve to cover up the scars.  Have a good weekend flesh fiends!

Gutter Garbs 4 day sale


Thursday, June 6, 2019

NECA Halloween 2 Ultimate figure

Too rad...Halloween 2 might just be my favorite movie like evarrrr...this is a must have for me.  And Halloween 3 toys on the way?  NECA you are really going after my frozen black heart.



Mondo Halloween Tikis

A little late to this party too, but only fashionably so, these TIKI MUGS based on Halloween look groovy, too bad this bodascious black one is already sold out...looks like only the "Alamo brown" ones are left at the moment:

Halloween tiki




Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Trick R Treat Studios - Halloween 1978 collection

A little late to the party on this one, but wow, Trick R Treat is really deep diving into their Halloween props and decor, loving it...

Trick R Treat 1978 collection


Time to get my Halloween duds together for this year, this silly thing was pre-ordered.  Time to make my Emmett Kelly Halloween cosplay costume a reality!  This will be the most obscure cosplay ever created for a comic book that never finished; "Halloween: The First Death of Laurie Strode".  Stay tuned fiends!