"For Castle Greyskuaaaahhh, never mind..."

Hey!  Master THIS! 

Once upon a time, in a far-off time when Mattel ruled the world, there was an ectomorphic hero with a pageboy haircut with the embarrassing name of He-Man.

He began as a cheaply made toy; became a cheaply made cartoon; and ultimately a cheaply made fantasy/action movie that Dolph Lundgren (and many others, especially Courtney Cox and Frank Langella) would like to forget.

And yet ... it lives on.

In fact, yet another version of He-Man (and, one  must assume, the far more interesting She-Ra and Skeletor) has been in development at Paramount for more than two years.  (No, don't ask why.  No one knows.)  And in a sudden burst of good sense, Warner Bros (and therefore Joel Silver) have let the option with Mattel lapse, and the mythic Grayskull: Masters of the Universe is no more.

WB says they're going to go elsewhere; the director of Kung Fu Panda says he's kinda/sorta interested, but really -- is Matell going to let the denizens of Eterna get the KFP treatment?

We think not.

The whole affair is really just an indication of how desperate the studios are to find, revive, re-animate (so to speak), "reimagine" any damn franchise they can find.  Even the lamest of the lame.  (Sorry, Battlecat, but it's true.)

The Best Horror/Comedy on the Web: I Am Not Infected

For almost a year now, I Am NOT Infected has been telling the story of three ... well, total jack-asses, really -- trapped in a deserted L.A., inhabited by themselves, a dwindling number of really stupid zombies, and not much else.  And given that, it's amazing how much trouble they can get into while accomplishing almost nothing in the way of self-preservation. 

For more than 27 episodes, I Am NOT Infected has told a surprisingly subtle and complex story, with a new ep every two weeks or so (and continuing: the current installment is less than two weeks old).  And it is, by turns, apalling, hilarious, icky, exciting, and just plain weird. 

But rather than describe it endlessly, just go look.  It's one of the best-made and least-known horror web show around.  Let's viralate this mother!  (Did we just make up a new verb?  Well, it's about time SOMEbody did!)

 

Dean Koontz Goes a Little Funny in the Head

Relentless ... or Ridiculous?

It's almost not news that Dean Koontz has a new book out his month. Dean Koontz always has a new book out this month. Or next month. Or last month.

This new one, Relentless, has all the Koontzian commonplaces: a 'soft' man -- a writer -- as hero, with a brilliant kid, and wonderful dog, and a big-ass problem with evil/madness.

But there is something different about this one: basically, it's so over the top, we're not sure if Dean's kidding or not.

In Relentless, the protagonist is a relatively successful novelist, "Cubby" Greenwich ("Cubby"? Really?), whose new book gets widespread good reviews .. except from Sherman Waxx, "the nation's premier literary critic." Waxx (what is it with these names?) hates Cubby's book, and apparently in this Koontzian parallel world, people actually read and pay attention to book reviewers (ew! It's like Salem's Lot, only with critics!).

Cubby's career and mental stability immediately crumble because of the Waxx's wrath, so -- of course! -- he obsesses on Waxx. He even finds out where the creep has lunch, at a bistro in Southern California that just happens to be near Cubby's own digs, and in an ... odd? ... confrontation, Cubby's ever-so-cute six-year-old son -- a prodigy, of course -- nearly pees on the literary lion. To which the critic responds in the only way a nationally recognized book critic could: he blows up Cubby's house.

No. Really. He blows up his house.

Now Cubby and his family are on the run, and the damn near omniscient critic is giving chase. There's even a science fictional element thrown in rather late in the game, to justify some of the more absurd aspects of the story, but all in all, one is rather forced to ask oneself ... what the hell?

You could read this as a dark satire, or as a revenge fantasy from a very successful but wholly unappreciated pop fiction writer, or just a really bad idea for a thriller. There is an element of the irrational in the entire genre, we're aware of that: some absurdly awful thing that happens at just the right time to just the right person to make an interesting story. But this?

Dean Koontz himself wrote one of the best books ever about writing popular fiction called -- get this -- Writing Popular Fiction. It's out of print now, damn it, but we're sure Dean's got a few copies floating around in the library of his Orange County, California home. Maybe it's time to take a quick re-reading and follow some of his own advice. 'Cause Mr. Koontz? Relentless? Not so much.

Great Moments in Special Effects

Giant Shark Eats 747.  No, really. 

There is absolutely nothing to recommend SyFy's recent Saturday Night original movie, Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus.  In fact, it may be one of the worst pick-ups that SyFy has foisted upon us, and that's taking into account such crap-bad classics as Mansquito and Frankenfish.  Even the, ah, stellar performance by former teenybop singer Debbie "Deborah" Gibson and a bunch of B-level Canadian actors you never heard of couldn't elevate this muddled, boring, and ultimately embarrassing piece of work. 

Except ...

Except this may be the only time you ever get to see a shark eat an airplane.  A big airplane, like a  727 or an L-1011.  But after all, it's a big shark, too.

As the years go by, we may remember M-SvGO not at all ... except, for this:

Sn*kes *n a Pl*ne gets cleaned up. Damn it.

Monkey-Fighting?  Monday to Friday? 

One of our favorite web sites, Black Horror Movies, was the first one to point out this YouTube memoirialization of a classic action line -- the admittedly obscene slogan out of Samuel L. Jackson's Snakes on a Plane -- in what may be the single worst redubbing on film. 

Yeah, yeah, we understand the realities of FCC regulations and 'family hour'  but people, really.  Sometiemes we'd all be better off if you just cut the monkey-fightin' scene entirely, and leave us our Monday to Friday memories alone, you know? 

Look on these works, ye mighty, and despair:

The Shining meets Piano Cat ... the horror!

Just this one time.  We promise. 

We here are the Rush tend not to get involved in viral videos -- whatever the current trend might be -- but somtimes it's almost impossible to resist.

Current star of the interwebs, Piano Cat, has now invaded one of the classics of horror, Stanley Kubrick's interpretation of Stephen King's The Shining.  Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Jennifer's Body? True Blood? YOU be the judge!

We always like to point out this odd little coincidences -- that's all it is, right?  A coincidence? -- in imagery, like the famous Enron/TRON confabulation.  This time it seems to have happened with a promo poster for the Megan Fox vampire-horror-chiller-theater flick, Jennifer's Body ... and the beloved and increasingly cool HBO vampire series, True Blood. 

Look at this remarkable, ah, parallel evolution:

 

Here's the JB poster ...

 

Which came after the True Blood poster ...

Both of which look like a slightly messy version of the famous Rolling Stones logo, but still ...

Must have been a coincidence.  Must have been.

Special thanks to MonsterScholar at MonsterLand, one of our favorite blogs about ... well, monsters ... for being the first to point this out. 

We're just sayin' ...

True Blood: In the Beginning

The Art of the Title

The new season of True Blood  is almost finished, and it's just as weird as it was back on Episode One, Season One.  And one of the weirdest parts -- and least acknowledged -- is the title sequence at the beginning of each episode.

Where else are you going to find a river baptism, a road-killed possum, a country wedding, pole dancing, and a fast-motion rotting fox all in 45 strange seconds of jerky, old-style, over-processed in a single sequence, set to Jace Everett's Bad Things?  If the show itself were half as weird as the opening images, we're not sure if anybody could get through it.

Check out the sequence here ... or every week (over and over) on HBO.

3 out of 4 critics don't like Jennifer's Body...

 

Megan Fox, on the other hand, is perfectly fine.

There was a fair amount of buzz out and about re: Jennifer's Body, the latest in America's endless stream of multiple-murder teen horror flicks. This time, it was enlivened by the presence of ultrasupermegahottie Megan Fox in the title role and screenwriter Diablo Cody, of Juno fame. The basic premise sounded cool, too: gorgeous, popular cheerleader Jennifer is lured into the forest and assaulted by the high school football team (or most of it), but doesn't die: she comes back inhabited by a shapeshifting demon with needle-sharp teeth, bent on revenge. Or is it ... justice?

...Unfortunately, the final mishmash -- commonly described as a cross between Mean Girls and I Know What You Did Last Summer -- hasn't gotten a whole lot of love from critics or viewers. About two out of three of the reviewers didn't care for it. Peter Howell of the Toronto Star says, "Jennifer's Body comes across as Diablo Cody lite, something she seems to have dashed off in-between talk show appearances and updating her MySpace page with her latest caustic witticisms." (Oooh, jealous much?) Ty Burr of the Boston Globe observes, "Jennifer's Body falls into the dispiriting category of dumb movies made by smart people, in this case a glibly clever writer and a talented director who think a few wisecracks are enough to subvert the teen horror genre." Rafer Guzman of Newsday says it best: "Last year, a ... horror flick called Teeth, about a ... girl who had incisors where she shouldn't, covered this territory with more creativity, complexity and humor. Jennifer's Body, for all its promise, could use some of that bite." And even the critics who give it a luke-warm thumb's up damned it with faint praise, using words like, "common, doesn't deliver, serviceable" while excusing it as a send-up, an allegory about women's empowerment, or just "one of those movies that you'll like if you like this sort of movie." Yeah, that's why we go to see horror movies: to see something really, really serviceable.

Probably the most interesting thing about Jennifer's Body is what's going on around it -- the growing backlash concerning Megan Fox's alleged brains and bad attitude, jealousy or skepticism about Cody Diablo as a celebrity screenwriter. Seems like there's more entertainment to be had reading the jibes and counter-jibes at Fox from anonymous Transformers crew members, or even well-reasoned contemplations of the life of times of Ms. Diablo, like Desson Thomson's recent piece in The Wrap.