Yes, it's really the end of the blog this time.
This news will come as no surprise to my readers who have noticed that I've slowed down a lot over the last couple of years and not watched many movies at all. For one thing, I don't have the time or patience for reviewing horror movies anymore, and for another, I've lost interest in movies completely. I could blame it on various health issues that have come and gone, but really it's just part of getting older and growing out of stuff.
I'll leave the blog up as some of what I wrote is funny to go back and look at. In particular, the horrible punctuation mistakes of the early posts are somewhat amusing, and all of the vitriol I poured out on crappy low-budget horror is still relevant. Pointless movies made by delusional people which I really only wrote about because I had nothing better to do. Meh, we live and learn.
So what's next? Nothing really.
Up until fairly recently, I'd still been buying the occasional DVD from CeX, and although I wanted to write a series of posts called "The Joy of CeX", it's just not the same as those fantastic pawn shop scavenger hunts I used to go on. There's no satisfaction from the hunt when you can easily look up whatever you want and buy it from a website. The bargains are there, of course, because DVD and Blu-ray are almost dead as a format. Hell, the entire movie industry is pretty much dead now too, or if not dead, it's certainly extremely poorly and ready to kick the bucket at any time. There's nothing relevant for anyone my age. In fact, there's very little which is relevant for anyone over 18 now. It's mostly a lot of misguided, preachy, virtue-signalling, political crap which is so poorly disguised with feeble "storytelling" that only the very foolish still buy into it.
Having said that, I don't even watch the older movies I collected, they just sit on my bookshelves as a reminder of this great time-wasting folly. Same with the books I will never read and games which I never play.
So yeah, that's it. Nothing more to see here unless I change my mind again one day. I can't really see it happening though. There's no money to be made from any of this. In case you missed it, the magazines are slowly disappearing, and the big name blogs (which have never been acknowledged by normal people for having any credibility) are apparently e-begging. Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and all those Patreon pan-handlers can fuck right off. If you really want to pay "idiot tax" to a bunch of people who don't care about anyone except themselves, go ahead, but I'm not falling for it.
The whole "scene" is now an even bigger pile of cliquey shit with nothing but the really shitty people left in it. When they aren't cross-promoting each other, or falsely playing the victim while bullying and inciting witch-hunts against anyone who challenges their brainwashed opinions, they are regurgitating the same old nostalgia crap as clickbait. It's pathetic and boring. The rest of us, the good people who've seen the light, have kicked the dust of this crap off our feet and moved on.
Later, gators.
Update
Photobucket is holding everyone to ransom over third-party image hosting. It looks like they finally did what all the trolls, haters, psychopaths, bullies, and pathological liars couldn't do. They killed my blog.
Showing posts with label editorial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label editorial. Show all posts
March 26, 2017
December 23, 2016
2016 - The Year in Review
Damn, it's that time of year again when all the movie bloggers post top ten lists influenced by their political ideologies. So, while they cross-promote and virtue-signal each other like crazy people, I'll just calmly sidestep the circle-jerk by not making any lists whatsoever.
Once again, there haven't been enough horror movies this year to make a "Top 10 Best Horror Movies of 2016", let alone another "Top 10 Worst Horror Movies of 2016" to accompany it. Even combining all the movies from other genres which I've watched this year, it would be impossible to find 20 in total which I feel like mentioning again. It's really been that bad.
Cue the comedy tumbleweed...
Movies I Enjoyed in 2016
There were a few movies I liked, but apart from "Gods of Egypt", "The Huntsman: Winter's War", and "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", none of them were from this year.
In October, I went on a minor journey into some Hitchcock classics with "The Birds" and "Rebecca", but I couldn't sustain enough interest in old movies I'd already seen dozens of times before to continue. I also discovered that I don't actually own DVDs of the more famous Hitchcock movies to make a series out of it and found myself slipping away from horror towards what can only be described as "great works of A-level English literature turned into dumbed-down movies for the plebs". I was just about to review "Great Expectations" when I realised that I couldn't stand any more of that horribly dated old bollocks. Even "The Joy of CeX" and their ridiculously low prices wasn't enough to tempt me back once the spell was broken.
Instead, I watched "The Wailing", hoping that South Korea was going to deliver the goods like they did with "Gwoemul" ten years ago. I got really into it to start with as it ticked all the right boxes of "otherness" and "different", but alas, it was not to last. This already tonally-challenged abomination turned into pure shit two-thirds of the way through, didn't make a lick of sense to me at the end, and I gave up on watching and reviewing movies again. We don't even "do" Hallowe'en in Britain, so there was no point in burning myself out even further.
TV Shows of 2016
Other than compulsory viewing of "EastEnders" and "Wentworth", I mainly used the television to play Xbox games this year. I didn't watch any "Game of Thrones" except the last two episodes, and I have no interest left in "The Walking Dead", "American Horror Story", or "Ash vs. Evil Dead".
I did force myself to watch the entire first season of "Westworld", although after a couple of episodes, it turned into yet another one of those shows with more padding than narrative progression. The whole thing could have been condensed into one movie without all the "Groundhog Day" repetition, flashbacks, "flashforwards", and general messing about with timelines. Oh wait, it already was. Yeah, I think I'll stick with the original 1973 movie, thank you, rather than waste my time with another "Lost". Just like how the "Losties" were dead all along, I expect the "Westies" will all turn out to be robots when "Westworld" returns for another season in 2018 (when everyone has forgotten about it) anyway.
In fact, the highlight of this year was watching Donald Trump win the Presidential Election. Considering that I'm not into boring politics, I was still intrigued enough to watch it on the BBC, who dragged the final result out forever in the vain hope that it would change in favour of their fellow Lefties. It was great but cringeworthy late night television. Watching more and more American Democrats and SJW-types get well and truly served when Hillary Clinton lost was hilarious to me, and the fallout which followed on social media was like bittersweet icing on a cake already made delicious with their salty tears of misery.
It would be fantastic if Trump's win signalled the beginning of a long overdue worldwide change back to normality and killed the annoying Millennial religion of SJW-dom, political correctness gone mad, and the crybully victim-culture which the mainstream media has milked for all it's worth, but I doubt that it will happen. The Illuminati bankers and Reptilians from Saturn have had their plans delayed a little bit, but that's all. The fact that we voted to leave the EU six months ago in Britain and still no "Brexit" has occurred speaks volumes. As the old joke goes, "It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government still gets in."
In Remembrance
A veritable shit load of actors, entertainers, and celebrities died again this year, including several "stars" who apparently only departed this plane of existence just to upset millions of people who had never been fans of theirs before. Here are the majority of the ones I heard about through the wailing and gnashing of teeth on social media. I've highlighted the names of those I knew of before they died. R.I.P.
...and this evil fuck. Burn in Hell! 
Once again, there haven't been enough horror movies this year to make a "Top 10 Best Horror Movies of 2016", let alone another "Top 10 Worst Horror Movies of 2016" to accompany it. Even combining all the movies from other genres which I've watched this year, it would be impossible to find 20 in total which I feel like mentioning again. It's really been that bad.
Cue the comedy tumbleweed...
 |
| Same time next year, Mr Tumbleweed? |
Movies I Enjoyed in 2016
There were a few movies I liked, but apart from "Gods of Egypt", "The Huntsman: Winter's War", and "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", none of them were from this year.
In October, I went on a minor journey into some Hitchcock classics with "The Birds" and "Rebecca", but I couldn't sustain enough interest in old movies I'd already seen dozens of times before to continue. I also discovered that I don't actually own DVDs of the more famous Hitchcock movies to make a series out of it and found myself slipping away from horror towards what can only be described as "great works of A-level English literature turned into dumbed-down movies for the plebs". I was just about to review "Great Expectations" when I realised that I couldn't stand any more of that horribly dated old bollocks. Even "The Joy of CeX" and their ridiculously low prices wasn't enough to tempt me back once the spell was broken.
 |
| Pure shit which makes no sense. |
Instead, I watched "The Wailing", hoping that South Korea was going to deliver the goods like they did with "Gwoemul" ten years ago. I got really into it to start with as it ticked all the right boxes of "otherness" and "different", but alas, it was not to last. This already tonally-challenged abomination turned into pure shit two-thirds of the way through, didn't make a lick of sense to me at the end, and I gave up on watching and reviewing movies again. We don't even "do" Hallowe'en in Britain, so there was no point in burning myself out even further.
TV Shows of 2016
Other than compulsory viewing of "EastEnders" and "Wentworth", I mainly used the television to play Xbox games this year. I didn't watch any "Game of Thrones" except the last two episodes, and I have no interest left in "The Walking Dead", "American Horror Story", or "Ash vs. Evil Dead".
I did force myself to watch the entire first season of "Westworld", although after a couple of episodes, it turned into yet another one of those shows with more padding than narrative progression. The whole thing could have been condensed into one movie without all the "Groundhog Day" repetition, flashbacks, "flashforwards", and general messing about with timelines. Oh wait, it already was. Yeah, I think I'll stick with the original 1973 movie, thank you, rather than waste my time with another "Lost". Just like how the "Losties" were dead all along, I expect the "Westies" will all turn out to be robots when "Westworld" returns for another season in 2018 (when everyone has forgotten about it) anyway.
In fact, the highlight of this year was watching Donald Trump win the Presidential Election. Considering that I'm not into boring politics, I was still intrigued enough to watch it on the BBC, who dragged the final result out forever in the vain hope that it would change in favour of their fellow Lefties. It was great but cringeworthy late night television. Watching more and more American Democrats and SJW-types get well and truly served when Hillary Clinton lost was hilarious to me, and the fallout which followed on social media was like bittersweet icing on a cake already made delicious with their salty tears of misery.
It would be fantastic if Trump's win signalled the beginning of a long overdue worldwide change back to normality and killed the annoying Millennial religion of SJW-dom, political correctness gone mad, and the crybully victim-culture which the mainstream media has milked for all it's worth, but I doubt that it will happen. The Illuminati bankers and Reptilians from Saturn have had their plans delayed a little bit, but that's all. The fact that we voted to leave the EU six months ago in Britain and still no "Brexit" has occurred speaks volumes. As the old joke goes, "It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government still gets in."
In Remembrance
A veritable shit load of actors, entertainers, and celebrities died again this year, including several "stars" who apparently only departed this plane of existence just to upset millions of people who had never been fans of theirs before. Here are the majority of the ones I heard about through the wailing and gnashing of teeth on social media. I've highlighted the names of those I knew of before they died. R.I.P.
| Lennie Bluett Leonard White Yves Vincent Richard Libertini Myra Carter Anna Synodinou Umberto Raho Angus Scrimm Ed Stewart David Bowie David Margulies Brian Bedford Conrad Phillips Franco Citti Alan Rickman Micole Mercurio Bairbre Dowling Sheila Sim Dan Haggerty Lois Ramsey Glenn Frey Colin Vearncombe Abe Vigoda Frank Finlay Terry Wogan Dave Mirra Richard Gladman Maurice White William Haze Louise Plowright George Martin James Douglas Nancy Reagan Richard Davalos Robert Horton Keith Emerson Sylvia Anderson Paul Daniels Larry Drake Ken Howard Earl Hamner, Jr. Garry Shandling Patty Duke | Frank De Felitta Ronnie Corbett Douglas Wilmer Merle Haggard David Swift Martin Fitzmaurice Doris Roberts Victoria Wood Prince Madeleine Lebeau Sylvia Kauders Reg Grundy Nick Lashaway William Schallert Nicholas Fisk Valerie Lush Ian Watkin Rosanna Huffman Burt Kwouk Angela Paton Harambe David Spielberg Muhammed Ali Lidia Biondi Ronnie Claire Edwards Ann Morgan Guilbert Dave Swarbick Anton Yelchin Sharon Douglas Götz George Stuart Nisbet Robin Hardy Caroline Aherne Michael Cimino Noel Neill Corrado Farina Seamon Glass Ken Barrie Vivean Gray Terence Bayler David Huddleston Barry Jenner Cynthia Szigeti | Kenny Baker Patricia English Arthur Hiller Michael Leader Steven Hill Marvin Kaplan Peter Comi Gene Wilder Jon Polito John Hostetter Johnny Rebel Hazel Douglas James Stacy Alexis Arquette Todd Kimsey Herschell Gordon Lewis Peter Collingwood Laura Troschel Pete Burns Gary Dubin Ricky Callan Jean Alexander Richard Cavendish Margaret Ashcroft Lene Tiemroth John Carson Robert Vaughn Lisa Lynn Masters Yevgeni Lazarev Andrew Sachs Colonel Abrams Bernard Gallagher Valerie Gaunt Van Williams Alice Drummond Don Calfa Margaret Whitton Peter Vaughan Greg Lake Walter Swinburn Alan Thicke Bernard Fox Rick Parfitt |
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
September 1, 2016
Still nothing good to review
Every so often I think about reviewing something again, but unfortunately, there's been nothing worth watching this year. The quality (and quantity) of new horror movies is even worse than last year, and the year before, and the year before that. There are lots of reasons for this, but the blame mostly lies with lack of talent and new ideas. It doesn't help that the various nepotistic cliques of niche reviewers keep praising utter shit (when they aren't writing lazy nostalgia pieces) because it's all they have left to talk about.
Yes, we've had "The Conjuring 2" which deserves some kind of mention for trying to match its sets to how things looked in the Enfield poltergeist haunting videos on YouTube. I noticed the pop posters and had a bit of fun trying to identify the ones which were obviously different or in the wrong places. The Bay City Rollers, David Soul, and Joanna Lumley posters were close, but I don't remember The Kinks pullout poster from Jackie magazine actually being one of the girls' decorations. I also have some concerns over the family owning 1960s-style telephones (especially the wall-mounted kitchen phone) rather than trimphones from the late 1970s, but I can let that pass as "good enough". British telecommunications were not this movie's focus or forte. As for jump-scares, yeah, the nun-demon got me, and old Reg had a good moment.
Some people remarked how "The Conjuring 2" felt like more of a Christmas movie than anything else (duh, because it's set at Christmas), and I have nothing else to add to that uber "insightful" (oh God, that awful low-brow word overused by sheep across the internet!) observation. It's not Christmassy like "Gremlins", but the seasonal trappings are there in the background if you bother to look for them.
Maybe I should congratulate James Wan on trying his hardest to make heroes out of a pair of known charlatans. I'd never even heard of the Warrens before "The Conjuring", mainly because I don't really "do" paranormal investigation bullshit, and of course, I'm not American. According to ghosthunter Harry Price, the Warrens only turned up once, very briefly, and weren't big players in the Enfield poltergeist investigation at all. Patrick Wilson singing an Elvis song as Ed Warren is also a bit weird, out of place, but probably kind of nice for the ladies. So kudos for having very little historical accuracy then. But hey, the whole thing was a hoax anyway, so who even cares?
I've also watched some horrid Kevin Bacon movie called "The Darkness". It's filled with clichés and the usual predictable possession guff, albeit with a couple of seemingly original "native American" touches which fall flat. Typical Blumhouse shit and as worthless and instantly forgettable as everything else they churn out. I think they tried to make it controversial by having an autistic kid in it and making him even more evil than autistic kids usually are in movies, but it didn't work out too well. Most "reviewers" simply saw Kevin Bacon attached, exclaimed "Doesn't he look old now?", and that was the highlight for them. "The Darkness" was rendered virtually unwatchable, however, by being filmed with a handycam with its very noticeable quivers and judders. Could nobody afford a tripod? Perhaps they spent all the budget on advertising their website. I don't know and don't care.
From other genres, "Green Room" bored me rigid. American Nazis (for lack of a better term) imprison a punk band in their backwoods concert hall and much merriment fails to ensue. I couldn't understand what that Yeltsin guy (who died by running himself over this year) said in any of his mumbled lines, and the namby-pamby feebleness of the instantly unlikable characters frustrated me. A couple of gunshot effects were undoubtedly cool near the end, but "Romper Stomper" is still the go-to movie if you like this kind of thing.
The biggest theatrical release for me was "Gods of Egypt". I actually enjoyed "Gods of Egypt" to the extent that I got threatened with physical assault on Facebook (and one person blocked me) because I dared to like something. The fucked-up-ness of that whole situation is quite hilarious. I've seen people getting all bent out of shape because I didn't like something but never the opposite. Even my infamous and blatant love for the "Twilight" movies never went that far. To this day, people still bitch about how I liked an incredibly successful franchise which they consider to be "non-horror" even though it had vampires and werewolves in it, while at the same time, they rave about their shitty horror-comedies which are even less worthy of being part of the genre. Some people, as we know, are just nuts.
Don't get me wrong, "Gods of Egypt" isn't a great movie, but it's easily as good as "Clash of the Titans" or any of those other adventures meant for little kids. It looks fantastic, the story is okay-ish, and it certainly didn't wreck Egyptian mythology as much as "Immortals" shat all over the ancient Greek legends a few years ago. I saw some SJW bullshit about "whitewashing" with the casting, but since those comments came from people who have no education or faintest idea about the diverse ethnicity in Ancient Egypt, I can laugh that off. There's no point arguing online with liberals, SJWs, or any other brainwashed "causers" because their combined IQs are less than a tin of pilchards. They clearly didn't watch the movie anyway, because if they had, they would have realised that there are more black characters than any other race portrayed. It may be one actor (Chadwick Boseman playing Thoth) repeated hundreds of times, but it still counts!
Lastly, as far as new movies go, I watched "The Huntsman: Winter's War" and almost loved it. Again, nothing all that new, and no Kristen Stewart in it, but it has some nice bawdy British humour and a little bit of visual subtext which reduces the current "gender wars" (which really only exist in fake realities such as American college campuses or online, you know) into the minuscule kerfuffle that they truly are. If you don't pick up on it, you aren't good at reading images and certainly shouldn't review movies.
Among many things I've boycotted, I obviously haven't watched the remake/re-imagining/reboot/sequel of "Ghostbusters" because I don't like horror-comedies and didn't ever like the original or its sequel. The original failed at everything I call entertaining, apart from the one scene with the old woman/librarian ghost, and is just too sickeningly "American" for my taste. In other words, its comedy is fucking lame. Big deal that they changed all the genders, I couldn't care less if they replaced the characters with talking bags of shit. I doubt that anyone would notice the difference, but it's possible that I'd be more inclined to watch it if they had. Replace the cast with cats though, and I'd definitely watch the next one.
Thanks to Amazon Prime (and a mixture of curiosity and boredom), I suffered through the three "Divergent" movies. I had no idea what to expect, and now wish I hadn't wasted my time. They are full of "pretty" talent, owe a lot to "Starship Troopers", and have some decent eyecandy here and there, but sci-fi blows anyway, and this is particularly shit sci-fi at that. When the kids all celebrated one of their minor victories by self-harming with tattoos, that was enough for me. I'm not the target audience for this crap, and even if I was, such trendy teen sci-fi has really gone downhill since "The Hunger Games" ripped off "Battle Royale".
In other news, I may start a new blog eventually about computer games. Aside from making cat videos and intentionally awful 5-hour podcasts, I've been playing computer games more than watching movies this year because, as I said at the start, this has already been a truly shit year for movies, and it isn't going to get any better.
 |
| The only "Summer movie" I watched. |
Yes, we've had "The Conjuring 2" which deserves some kind of mention for trying to match its sets to how things looked in the Enfield poltergeist haunting videos on YouTube. I noticed the pop posters and had a bit of fun trying to identify the ones which were obviously different or in the wrong places. The Bay City Rollers, David Soul, and Joanna Lumley posters were close, but I don't remember The Kinks pullout poster from Jackie magazine actually being one of the girls' decorations. I also have some concerns over the family owning 1960s-style telephones (especially the wall-mounted kitchen phone) rather than trimphones from the late 1970s, but I can let that pass as "good enough". British telecommunications were not this movie's focus or forte. As for jump-scares, yeah, the nun-demon got me, and old Reg had a good moment.
Some people remarked how "The Conjuring 2" felt like more of a Christmas movie than anything else (duh, because it's set at Christmas), and I have nothing else to add to that uber "insightful" (oh God, that awful low-brow word overused by sheep across the internet!) observation. It's not Christmassy like "Gremlins", but the seasonal trappings are there in the background if you bother to look for them.
Maybe I should congratulate James Wan on trying his hardest to make heroes out of a pair of known charlatans. I'd never even heard of the Warrens before "The Conjuring", mainly because I don't really "do" paranormal investigation bullshit, and of course, I'm not American. According to ghosthunter Harry Price, the Warrens only turned up once, very briefly, and weren't big players in the Enfield poltergeist investigation at all. Patrick Wilson singing an Elvis song as Ed Warren is also a bit weird, out of place, but probably kind of nice for the ladies. So kudos for having very little historical accuracy then. But hey, the whole thing was a hoax anyway, so who even cares?
 |
| Not the worst thing I've ever seen but damned close. |
I've also watched some horrid Kevin Bacon movie called "The Darkness". It's filled with clichés and the usual predictable possession guff, albeit with a couple of seemingly original "native American" touches which fall flat. Typical Blumhouse shit and as worthless and instantly forgettable as everything else they churn out. I think they tried to make it controversial by having an autistic kid in it and making him even more evil than autistic kids usually are in movies, but it didn't work out too well. Most "reviewers" simply saw Kevin Bacon attached, exclaimed "Doesn't he look old now?", and that was the highlight for them. "The Darkness" was rendered virtually unwatchable, however, by being filmed with a handycam with its very noticeable quivers and judders. Could nobody afford a tripod? Perhaps they spent all the budget on advertising their website. I don't know and don't care.
From other genres, "Green Room" bored me rigid. American Nazis (for lack of a better term) imprison a punk band in their backwoods concert hall and much merriment fails to ensue. I couldn't understand what that Yeltsin guy (who died by running himself over this year) said in any of his mumbled lines, and the namby-pamby feebleness of the instantly unlikable characters frustrated me. A couple of gunshot effects were undoubtedly cool near the end, but "Romper Stomper" is still the go-to movie if you like this kind of thing.
 |
| Fuck me, I liked something! |
The biggest theatrical release for me was "Gods of Egypt". I actually enjoyed "Gods of Egypt" to the extent that I got threatened with physical assault on Facebook (and one person blocked me) because I dared to like something. The fucked-up-ness of that whole situation is quite hilarious. I've seen people getting all bent out of shape because I didn't like something but never the opposite. Even my infamous and blatant love for the "Twilight" movies never went that far. To this day, people still bitch about how I liked an incredibly successful franchise which they consider to be "non-horror" even though it had vampires and werewolves in it, while at the same time, they rave about their shitty horror-comedies which are even less worthy of being part of the genre. Some people, as we know, are just nuts.
Don't get me wrong, "Gods of Egypt" isn't a great movie, but it's easily as good as "Clash of the Titans" or any of those other adventures meant for little kids. It looks fantastic, the story is okay-ish, and it certainly didn't wreck Egyptian mythology as much as "Immortals" shat all over the ancient Greek legends a few years ago. I saw some SJW bullshit about "whitewashing" with the casting, but since those comments came from people who have no education or faintest idea about the diverse ethnicity in Ancient Egypt, I can laugh that off. There's no point arguing online with liberals, SJWs, or any other brainwashed "causers" because their combined IQs are less than a tin of pilchards. They clearly didn't watch the movie anyway, because if they had, they would have realised that there are more black characters than any other race portrayed. It may be one actor (Chadwick Boseman playing Thoth) repeated hundreds of times, but it still counts!
 |
| Starring lots of beautiful actresses whose names I can't remember. |
Lastly, as far as new movies go, I watched "The Huntsman: Winter's War" and almost loved it. Again, nothing all that new, and no Kristen Stewart in it, but it has some nice bawdy British humour and a little bit of visual subtext which reduces the current "gender wars" (which really only exist in fake realities such as American college campuses or online, you know) into the minuscule kerfuffle that they truly are. If you don't pick up on it, you aren't good at reading images and certainly shouldn't review movies.
Among many things I've boycotted, I obviously haven't watched the remake/re-imagining/reboot/sequel of "Ghostbusters" because I don't like horror-comedies and didn't ever like the original or its sequel. The original failed at everything I call entertaining, apart from the one scene with the old woman/librarian ghost, and is just too sickeningly "American" for my taste. In other words, its comedy is fucking lame. Big deal that they changed all the genders, I couldn't care less if they replaced the characters with talking bags of shit. I doubt that anyone would notice the difference, but it's possible that I'd be more inclined to watch it if they had. Replace the cast with cats though, and I'd definitely watch the next one.
 |
| Please don't make any more of these! |
Thanks to Amazon Prime (and a mixture of curiosity and boredom), I suffered through the three "Divergent" movies. I had no idea what to expect, and now wish I hadn't wasted my time. They are full of "pretty" talent, owe a lot to "Starship Troopers", and have some decent eyecandy here and there, but sci-fi blows anyway, and this is particularly shit sci-fi at that. When the kids all celebrated one of their minor victories by self-harming with tattoos, that was enough for me. I'm not the target audience for this crap, and even if I was, such trendy teen sci-fi has really gone downhill since "The Hunger Games" ripped off "Battle Royale".
In other news, I may start a new blog eventually about computer games. Aside from making cat videos and intentionally awful 5-hour podcasts, I've been playing computer games more than watching movies this year because, as I said at the start, this has already been a truly shit year for movies, and it isn't going to get any better.
December 13, 2015
2015 - The Year in Review
Although I'm obviously out of the loop when it comes to all The Asylum/SyFy Channel movies, generic Blumhouse Productions, the lazy "mumblecore" abominations, and the slew of other low-budget "indie horror" camcorder shitefests which the Millennials (who need watering) keep shilling because they have nothing else to talk about, since I haven't seen any new movie this year which could rightfully be called "horror", there's only one way this year's lists can go.
My Top 10 Best Horror Movies of 2015
My Top 10 Worst Horror Movies of 2015
If there were enough "horror genre" (in the loosest sense) movies released to make two lists with, I certainly don't remember them. Actually, all the movies this year have been forgettable.
A lot of people will argue that the fault lies in the how the studios are sticking to known formulas because they won't take any financial risks, but even though I'm not into politics, I also blame the constantly whinging SJWs and Libtards for the fact that none of today's mediocre movie entertainment has any grit to it. The special snowflakes kept pretending to be offended by everything until "the powers that be" foolishly listened and pandered to their insanity. And that's why we can't have nice things.
I'll leave the more "informative" listmaking to the "professional journalists" (you know, the nerds who flip burgers or sit in call centre cubicles in real life but pretend to be movie gurus online) who are racking their pretentious brains to come up with enough movies from obscure film festivals to populate their clickbait "end of year" articles. Now that hardly anyone buys physical media, nobody cares what they write anymore either, and thus, my non-lists (which wasted much less of your valuable time) are equally valid. Ah, the irony. They fought so hard to get their names on DVD sleeves and used every dirty trick in the book to get where they are for nothing. Comedy gold.
My Top 10 Best Non-Horror Movies of 2015
My Top 10 Worst Non-Horror Movies of 2015
It's tempting to say that "Spectre" was the worst, but I could barely stay awake through that James Blond cashgrab, and I didn't have the patience to review it. "Mad Max: Fury Road", "Terminator Genisys", and "Jurassic World" were disappointingly shit too.
TV Shows of 2015
Other than "Eastenders", "Come Dine with Me", "Gogglebox", and a multitude of British real estate programmes, I didn't watch much television this year.
The first three episodes of BBC1's "River" were very good indeed, but the rest of the story dragged before it petered out into total bollocks.
From American TV, "Ash vs. Evil Dead" and "American Horror Story: Hotel" were as insipid as everyone expected, and I stopped watching either of them after only a couple of episodes.
Remembering Those We Lost
As ever, a load of actors, entertainers, and "celebrities" died this year. Here are some of the most famous ones. There were plenty more, but I've left out the names of those who I didn't recognise and, in all honesty, never gave two shits about in the first place. R.I.P.
My Top 10 Best Horror Movies of 2015
My Top 10 Worst Horror Movies of 2015
If there were enough "horror genre" (in the loosest sense) movies released to make two lists with, I certainly don't remember them. Actually, all the movies this year have been forgettable.
A lot of people will argue that the fault lies in the how the studios are sticking to known formulas because they won't take any financial risks, but even though I'm not into politics, I also blame the constantly whinging SJWs and Libtards for the fact that none of today's mediocre movie entertainment has any grit to it. The special snowflakes kept pretending to be offended by everything until "the powers that be" foolishly listened and pandered to their insanity. And that's why we can't have nice things.
I'll leave the more "informative" listmaking to the "professional journalists" (you know, the nerds who flip burgers or sit in call centre cubicles in real life but pretend to be movie gurus online) who are racking their pretentious brains to come up with enough movies from obscure film festivals to populate their clickbait "end of year" articles. Now that hardly anyone buys physical media, nobody cares what they write anymore either, and thus, my non-lists (which wasted much less of your valuable time) are equally valid. Ah, the irony. They fought so hard to get their names on DVD sleeves and used every dirty trick in the book to get where they are for nothing. Comedy gold.
My Top 10 Best Non-Horror Movies of 2015
My Top 10 Worst Non-Horror Movies of 2015
It's tempting to say that "Spectre" was the worst, but I could barely stay awake through that James Blond cashgrab, and I didn't have the patience to review it. "Mad Max: Fury Road", "Terminator Genisys", and "Jurassic World" were disappointingly shit too.
TV Shows of 2015
Other than "Eastenders", "Come Dine with Me", "Gogglebox", and a multitude of British real estate programmes, I didn't watch much television this year.
The first three episodes of BBC1's "River" were very good indeed, but the rest of the story dragged before it petered out into total bollocks.
From American TV, "Ash vs. Evil Dead" and "American Horror Story: Hotel" were as insipid as everyone expected, and I stopped watching either of them after only a couple of episodes.
Remembering Those We Lost
As ever, a load of actors, entertainers, and "celebrities" died this year. Here are some of the most famous ones. There were plenty more, but I've left out the names of those who I didn't recognise and, in all honesty, never gave two shits about in the first place. R.I.P.
| Lance Percival Rod Taylor Anita Ekberg Leonard Nimoy Lesley Gore Ben Woolf Robert Z'Dar Tom Towles Claire Gordon Geoffrey Lewis Richard Dysart Nigel Terry Betsy Palmer Grace Lee Whitney Richard Johnson Sir Christopher Lee Ron Moody Patrick Macnee Val Doonican | Lynn Anderson Zhanna Friske Irwin Keyes Omar Sharif George Cole Cilla Black Wes Craven Yvonne Craig Dean Jones Gordon Honeycombe Peter Baldwin Maureen O'Hara Saeed Jaffrey Warren Mitchell Gunnar Hansen Colin Welland Nicholas Smith Robert Loggia Anthony Valentine |
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
August 10, 2015
Onwards and Downwards
I've noticed that a lot of bloggers who were contempories (and occasionally friends) of mine when I first started doing this "blogging thing" have given up in the last couple of years. It's always annoying when you go to a favourite blog and the blogger hasn't posted for ages, but unfortunately, enthusiasm doesn't last forever, and that's just the way things are.
Each of them had their own reasons for quitting, whether it be due to health problems, financial difficulties, or simply the fact they couldn't be bothered to write anything longer than a status update on FaceySpace anymore. In a few cases, real life changes which prompted some people to start writing are the same ones which eventually contributed to them not wishing to continue. Sadly, some very good bloggers got ill, and a couple of them even died.
I'd also hazard a guess that the reason why the majority of bloggers gave up is when they realised that they weren't going to make it, or more specifically, they weren't going to make any money out of blogging aside from a pittance of Amazon affiliate revenue.
The thing is, if you think that you're going to become rich or famous from blogging or podcasting (which is so 2006 and utterly worthless that it's hysterically funny to me and my friends), you need a damned good shake. You're too late, the ship has sailed, and the people at the top who got there first have no intention of ever letting you join them. They're laughing at you, not with you. Even the new YouTubers with floppy hair, British accents, and/or big boobs aren't getting anywhere now.
I don't mind telling you that I've made just over $10 out of this blog in the last five years, which I blame more on the rise of streaming services and hardly anybody buying DVDs/Blu-rays anymore than the more obvious fact that I'm a shitty writer. Oh yes, I do realise that I'm not much of a writer, especially when I go back and look at earlier posts where I didn't have a clue about what the Hell I was doing.
If you're new to blogging, you'll soon discover that there are very few people at the top of the writing pyramid. As the rest of us know now, that area is full of nepotism where the same bunch of people (who don't write any better than anyone else) continually cross-promote each other, kiss each other's asses, and slither around the social networks like a poisonous nest of vipers ready to knock anybody down who might look for even a moment as if they could take a few pennies away from them. Yes, it really is that cutthroat, and it's the reason why you often hear that "everyone hates everyone else". The root of this evil is jealousy over tablescraps. Like most things online, including the passive-aggressive gaslighters themselves, it's truly pathetic.
Plus, even without those horrible yet seemingly "successful" people (trust me, they really aren't all that!) to discourage you, the poorly thought out and insulting comments which all bloggers get every single day are not something which we in our naiveté ever thought we'd encounter, especially from just talking about stupid movies which we have no financial or emotional investment in. Rarely do we get something useful such as "you spelled that wrong" or "your comma is in the wrong place", but that would be nice. The Internet, generally, brings out the very worst in people and hardly ever anything nice.
I've heard that women who blog get worse insults than men, but I doubt it. There's always been too much "crying wolf", attention-seeking, and card-playing from the person who told me. Having seen how this person operates, I don't believe a word of it, and neither should you. Although the nature of the insults may sometimes be different, it's not worse. We've all been lied about and insulted because of our perceived intelligence, our looks, our sexuality, or ridiculed for the things we like. There have been often comical attempts to demonise us, label us as things we aren't, and dehumanise us to a point where we can be "called out" or "brought down" (which ironically implies that we are considered above the attacker). We've even had death threats. Death threats over movie reviews? You have got to be fucking kidding me!
Yes, the bullying is real. It usually starts with two people disagreeing, then all their social networking buddies have to join in and one-up each other with insults, and then some random idiot (usually a whiteknighter who isn't even part of the often already resolved original problem) decides to continue the vendetta because he or she has no life and this is fun. Oh, it's so much fun, isn't it? It doesn't matter that whiteknighters invariably become ostracised by everybody including the very people they pretended to be defending. So think on that the next time you want to light your flaming torches. Online grudges remain for years, and even if you think you've escaped because all you did was comment, you're all on somebody's shitlist and your time will come. Of that, just like death and taxes, you can be sure.
Blogging is not a game for sensitive souls, and whoever wrote the famous blog post which said, "Why not write a movie blog? It'll be fun!" wasn't telling you the whole truth. If I'd known what I was getting into, and the type of disgusting and clinically insane people who I was to encounter online over the years, or that I might often be tempted to become just like them, I never would have bothered to create my first website. Self-praise is no recommendation, but I can assure you that even with the mistakes I've made in the past, I'm not like them and I never will be.
As I said, I make no money from this, and blogging for me has only ever been a folly to pass the time. I'm better at it than some, and not as good as others, but from time to time, I do try to write something interesting. I probably shouldn't, but there are still a few decent people out there who like reading blogs, and we're all each other's entertainment anyway. There are even some people who enjoy reading my blog posts and for the right reasons. Imagine that! What a novelty.
Rather than go on what certain toxic people on almost defunct message boards (including their equally cowardly inciters on social networks) refer to as "an insane rant"—because I hate to break it to those armchair-psychiatrists, wordy-pricks, and holier-than-thous, but apart from occasional minor bouts of depression and physical ailments, I am perfectly sane—I'll move on from this to tell you about some things which I will endevour to be changing on my blog.
"Stick to what you know" is the best advice that you can ever be given. I've passed that cliché to people who've ignored it, and I've even been told it myself and ignored it, but we all should have listened. What I've been doing on my blog is not what I ever set out to do, and I really have no idea why. It's all pointless anyway, but I'm going to stick to what I know from now on.
Over the years, I've been dabbling in subgenres of new horror movies which I don't even care about, and that has to stop. Not only is my jaded attitude to that utter rubbish boring to read, but it's boring for me to write.
When the Summer movies dry up, all that happens at this time every year is that people get frustrated. The social networks and message boards erupt with backstabbing, shit-stirring, insults, and everyone trying to ruin each other's reputations. It's happened so many times that it's predictable and almost funny now, except obviously, if you become the recipient of the wrath of the "horror nasties". I've done it before, and I've had it done to me. None of us are angels. If you could see the thousands of screencaps which I've collected over the years of everybody (from the fandom to "celebrities"), you'd either laugh or never want to have anything to do with them again. I now choose to have nothing to do with any of these people. They can chase my ghost, for whatever it's worth, because they're all dead to me.
I almost fell into the trap of having a pop about somebody else who I don't even know last night, but I'm not going to. The stickybeaks who can't seem to stay out of each others' business online should do what I'm doing by ignoring it. In fact, everybody should be more concerned about what they are doing rather than what everybody else is up to. I can illustrate this with a story about a guy I once worked with who was so intent on watching other people not doing their jobs properly that he cut his own finger off accidentally on a lathe. Hopefully, although I know that a lot of people seem determined to misunderstand the English language that I write in, you will see my point.
Seriously though, take a look at these people who cause all the trouble. There's barely a full head of hair, a mouthful of teeth, or a single-chin between them. Morbid obesity seems to be the fashion, and none of them have a penny to scratch their sweaty old asses with. Those of them who aren't continuously e-begging and who have jobs are a minority, and they aren't particularly great or intellectually fulfilling jobs at that. That's why they come online, because it gives them the opportunity to "reinvent" themselves and milk what little success they've ever had in their lives for all its worth, but nobody believes them or in them anymore. The ones who call themselves "filmmakers" and have IMDb credits for three-minute YouTube video-style shorts which you've never seen, or for donating $5 to their equally fake e-begging filmmaker friends with boring documentaries and camcorder movies which nobody wants, make us all piss ourselves with laughter. Don't even get me started on the hundreds of "screenwriters" and vanity-published authors whose work will never be read.
It's all bluff and bluster, smoke and mirrors, and the drama usually involves the same bunch of self-important, entitled, advertising-conditioned Americans (and a few Canadians, Brits, and Aussies, to be fair) who hypocritically adopt the latest trendy causes and buzzwords as they try to fool everyone into thinking that they are morally and intellectually superior, or just plain better than everyone else. They aren't. Nobody is better than anyone else. We all put on our pants one leg at a time, and have to eat and shit. They just choose to do the latter two things in the same place.
As a fellow horror blogger (who often hates me, but it's all good) once said,
But I said that I wasn't going to rant, so let's move on...
I started off my "reviewing career" (which hasn't ever amounted to much) by writing about vampire movies, sometimes ghosts, and occasionally computers or cats. Those were the subjects which I was most interested in, and although I'm not an expert in any of them, I used to enjoy them. So, to cut a long story short, I'm going to rewrite (or delete) a lot of my older reviews and articles when I get time, and focus only on the things I like from now on.
I stopped writing negative reviews of bottomfeeder indie horror movies a long time ago, because they aren't worth wasting my time or yours on anyway. You aren't ever going to watch them. Really, you aren't, and I wish that I hadn't watched them either.
For those people who still don't get it after all these years (and probably never will), I'm not part of the "horror community" (if such a thing even exists) or any community for that matter. I'm not a horror "fan" or a movie "fan". I may have accidentally used that term to describe myself before, but "fanatic" is not a word that could ever apply to someone as lazy and politically apathetic as me.
I'm not a "nerd" or a "geek" either. I'm not even sure when those terms ceased to be insults, because I still think of the people they are applied to as a type to be despised, wedgied, and locked inside their own school-lockers. Maybe that's why those who think they've "taken it back" have become cyberbullies now. It's their revenge on the world. Yeah, good luck with that.
There's a ton of stuff which I don't know about movies or books or music or games or whatever, and I don't care about any of them. I like what I like and have no interest in what I don't. I have also never had any desire to write for any of the "big name" horror magazines or websites (which I don't think much of and usually avoid anyway). It's all just wasting time between meals or until we end up six feet under, rotting in a box.
Basically, I'm just like you. I'm some average "man in the street" (so to speak) who watches a lot of movies, and who one day just got bored and decided to start writing about them online. Because I don't want to sit here and write "O level exam" (or "highschool" quality) essays every day for no money—I've already been there and done that—I'm probably not going to do it for much longer either. But we shall see.
Each of them had their own reasons for quitting, whether it be due to health problems, financial difficulties, or simply the fact they couldn't be bothered to write anything longer than a status update on FaceySpace anymore. In a few cases, real life changes which prompted some people to start writing are the same ones which eventually contributed to them not wishing to continue. Sadly, some very good bloggers got ill, and a couple of them even died.
I'd also hazard a guess that the reason why the majority of bloggers gave up is when they realised that they weren't going to make it, or more specifically, they weren't going to make any money out of blogging aside from a pittance of Amazon affiliate revenue.
The thing is, if you think that you're going to become rich or famous from blogging or podcasting (which is so 2006 and utterly worthless that it's hysterically funny to me and my friends), you need a damned good shake. You're too late, the ship has sailed, and the people at the top who got there first have no intention of ever letting you join them. They're laughing at you, not with you. Even the new YouTubers with floppy hair, British accents, and/or big boobs aren't getting anywhere now.
I don't mind telling you that I've made just over $10 out of this blog in the last five years, which I blame more on the rise of streaming services and hardly anybody buying DVDs/Blu-rays anymore than the more obvious fact that I'm a shitty writer. Oh yes, I do realise that I'm not much of a writer, especially when I go back and look at earlier posts where I didn't have a clue about what the Hell I was doing.
If you're new to blogging, you'll soon discover that there are very few people at the top of the writing pyramid. As the rest of us know now, that area is full of nepotism where the same bunch of people (who don't write any better than anyone else) continually cross-promote each other, kiss each other's asses, and slither around the social networks like a poisonous nest of vipers ready to knock anybody down who might look for even a moment as if they could take a few pennies away from them. Yes, it really is that cutthroat, and it's the reason why you often hear that "everyone hates everyone else". The root of this evil is jealousy over tablescraps. Like most things online, including the passive-aggressive gaslighters themselves, it's truly pathetic.
Plus, even without those horrible yet seemingly "successful" people (trust me, they really aren't all that!) to discourage you, the poorly thought out and insulting comments which all bloggers get every single day are not something which we in our naiveté ever thought we'd encounter, especially from just talking about stupid movies which we have no financial or emotional investment in. Rarely do we get something useful such as "you spelled that wrong" or "your comma is in the wrong place", but that would be nice. The Internet, generally, brings out the very worst in people and hardly ever anything nice.
I've heard that women who blog get worse insults than men, but I doubt it. There's always been too much "crying wolf", attention-seeking, and card-playing from the person who told me. Having seen how this person operates, I don't believe a word of it, and neither should you. Although the nature of the insults may sometimes be different, it's not worse. We've all been lied about and insulted because of our perceived intelligence, our looks, our sexuality, or ridiculed for the things we like. There have been often comical attempts to demonise us, label us as things we aren't, and dehumanise us to a point where we can be "called out" or "brought down" (which ironically implies that we are considered above the attacker). We've even had death threats. Death threats over movie reviews? You have got to be fucking kidding me!
Yes, the bullying is real. It usually starts with two people disagreeing, then all their social networking buddies have to join in and one-up each other with insults, and then some random idiot (usually a whiteknighter who isn't even part of the often already resolved original problem) decides to continue the vendetta because he or she has no life and this is fun. Oh, it's so much fun, isn't it? It doesn't matter that whiteknighters invariably become ostracised by everybody including the very people they pretended to be defending. So think on that the next time you want to light your flaming torches. Online grudges remain for years, and even if you think you've escaped because all you did was comment, you're all on somebody's shitlist and your time will come. Of that, just like death and taxes, you can be sure.
Blogging is not a game for sensitive souls, and whoever wrote the famous blog post which said, "Why not write a movie blog? It'll be fun!" wasn't telling you the whole truth. If I'd known what I was getting into, and the type of disgusting and clinically insane people who I was to encounter online over the years, or that I might often be tempted to become just like them, I never would have bothered to create my first website. Self-praise is no recommendation, but I can assure you that even with the mistakes I've made in the past, I'm not like them and I never will be.
As I said, I make no money from this, and blogging for me has only ever been a folly to pass the time. I'm better at it than some, and not as good as others, but from time to time, I do try to write something interesting. I probably shouldn't, but there are still a few decent people out there who like reading blogs, and we're all each other's entertainment anyway. There are even some people who enjoy reading my blog posts and for the right reasons. Imagine that! What a novelty.
Rather than go on what certain toxic people on almost defunct message boards (including their equally cowardly inciters on social networks) refer to as "an insane rant"—because I hate to break it to those armchair-psychiatrists, wordy-pricks, and holier-than-thous, but apart from occasional minor bouts of depression and physical ailments, I am perfectly sane—I'll move on from this to tell you about some things which I will endevour to be changing on my blog.
"Stick to what you know" is the best advice that you can ever be given. I've passed that cliché to people who've ignored it, and I've even been told it myself and ignored it, but we all should have listened. What I've been doing on my blog is not what I ever set out to do, and I really have no idea why. It's all pointless anyway, but I'm going to stick to what I know from now on.
Over the years, I've been dabbling in subgenres of new horror movies which I don't even care about, and that has to stop. Not only is my jaded attitude to that utter rubbish boring to read, but it's boring for me to write.
 |
| Even my cat laughs at you! |
When the Summer movies dry up, all that happens at this time every year is that people get frustrated. The social networks and message boards erupt with backstabbing, shit-stirring, insults, and everyone trying to ruin each other's reputations. It's happened so many times that it's predictable and almost funny now, except obviously, if you become the recipient of the wrath of the "horror nasties". I've done it before, and I've had it done to me. None of us are angels. If you could see the thousands of screencaps which I've collected over the years of everybody (from the fandom to "celebrities"), you'd either laugh or never want to have anything to do with them again. I now choose to have nothing to do with any of these people. They can chase my ghost, for whatever it's worth, because they're all dead to me.
I almost fell into the trap of having a pop about somebody else who I don't even know last night, but I'm not going to. The stickybeaks who can't seem to stay out of each others' business online should do what I'm doing by ignoring it. In fact, everybody should be more concerned about what they are doing rather than what everybody else is up to. I can illustrate this with a story about a guy I once worked with who was so intent on watching other people not doing their jobs properly that he cut his own finger off accidentally on a lathe. Hopefully, although I know that a lot of people seem determined to misunderstand the English language that I write in, you will see my point.
Seriously though, take a look at these people who cause all the trouble. There's barely a full head of hair, a mouthful of teeth, or a single-chin between them. Morbid obesity seems to be the fashion, and none of them have a penny to scratch their sweaty old asses with. Those of them who aren't continuously e-begging and who have jobs are a minority, and they aren't particularly great or intellectually fulfilling jobs at that. That's why they come online, because it gives them the opportunity to "reinvent" themselves and milk what little success they've ever had in their lives for all its worth, but nobody believes them or in them anymore. The ones who call themselves "filmmakers" and have IMDb credits for three-minute YouTube video-style shorts which you've never seen, or for donating $5 to their equally fake e-begging filmmaker friends with boring documentaries and camcorder movies which nobody wants, make us all piss ourselves with laughter. Don't even get me started on the hundreds of "screenwriters" and vanity-published authors whose work will never be read.
It's all bluff and bluster, smoke and mirrors, and the drama usually involves the same bunch of self-important, entitled, advertising-conditioned Americans (and a few Canadians, Brits, and Aussies, to be fair) who hypocritically adopt the latest trendy causes and buzzwords as they try to fool everyone into thinking that they are morally and intellectually superior, or just plain better than everyone else. They aren't. Nobody is better than anyone else. We all put on our pants one leg at a time, and have to eat and shit. They just choose to do the latter two things in the same place.
As a fellow horror blogger (who often hates me, but it's all good) once said,
"You aren't a journalist, you aren't a critic, you're just someone who has internet access!"It wasn't aimed at me, by the way. I've paraphrased it a bit and added the exclamation mark, but his point is still a valid one and is applicable to so many people.
But I said that I wasn't going to rant, so let's move on...
I started off my "reviewing career" (which hasn't ever amounted to much) by writing about vampire movies, sometimes ghosts, and occasionally computers or cats. Those were the subjects which I was most interested in, and although I'm not an expert in any of them, I used to enjoy them. So, to cut a long story short, I'm going to rewrite (or delete) a lot of my older reviews and articles when I get time, and focus only on the things I like from now on.
I stopped writing negative reviews of bottomfeeder indie horror movies a long time ago, because they aren't worth wasting my time or yours on anyway. You aren't ever going to watch them. Really, you aren't, and I wish that I hadn't watched them either.
For those people who still don't get it after all these years (and probably never will), I'm not part of the "horror community" (if such a thing even exists) or any community for that matter. I'm not a horror "fan" or a movie "fan". I may have accidentally used that term to describe myself before, but "fanatic" is not a word that could ever apply to someone as lazy and politically apathetic as me.
I'm not a "nerd" or a "geek" either. I'm not even sure when those terms ceased to be insults, because I still think of the people they are applied to as a type to be despised, wedgied, and locked inside their own school-lockers. Maybe that's why those who think they've "taken it back" have become cyberbullies now. It's their revenge on the world. Yeah, good luck with that.
There's a ton of stuff which I don't know about movies or books or music or games or whatever, and I don't care about any of them. I like what I like and have no interest in what I don't. I have also never had any desire to write for any of the "big name" horror magazines or websites (which I don't think much of and usually avoid anyway). It's all just wasting time between meals or until we end up six feet under, rotting in a box.
Basically, I'm just like you. I'm some average "man in the street" (so to speak) who watches a lot of movies, and who one day just got bored and decided to start writing about them online. Because I don't want to sit here and write "O level exam" (or "highschool" quality) essays every day for no money—I've already been there and done that—I'm probably not going to do it for much longer either. But we shall see.
December 16, 2014
2014 - The Year in Review
Since I haven't been reviewing for over a year now, but I've still been watching movies occasionally, I'll just end this year (and hopefully this blog forever) with three very subjective lists of what I consider to be the best and worst movies that I've seen in 2014.
Lots of people have tried to get me to come back to blogging. I thank them all for their encouragement and constant support, but my heart's not in it anymore. I can barely get back into character to write this post. I haven't been into the horror genre for a very long time (in hindsight, I should have stayed quit when I gave up on this foolishness back in 2011). Suffice it to say that I've moved on to other more lucrative pursuits, and I don't have time to argue the toss with online bullies.
This year has also been full of personal tragedies and unexpected bereavements which have been more important to me than reviewing stupid movies. I was already done with this pointless hobby and the dogs in mangers it attracts, but real life events cemented my decision.
On the plus side, I've cut ties with a lot of people who are too obsessed with movies for their own good (or anyone else's), I've made many new and far better friends than I ever had in previous years, and I even rekindled some old important friendships which I'd lost due to my own assholitis and neglect. We live and learn, I suppose. Well, some of us do.
Anyway, maybe you'll get something out of this post, maybe you won't. It is what it is.
My Top 10 Worst Horror Movies of 2014
1. Oculus - just another clone of "The Gate Crasher" segment of "From Beyond the Grave" (1974) but rendered incomprehensible and boring through bad writing and mostly annoying characters/acting. Karen Gillan is the only reason why anyone watched it anyway.
2. The Battery - aka Two drunken baseball players trapped in a car by zombies during a micro-budget clone of "The Walking Dead". Fucking dreck. I can't stand "The Walking Dead" either.
3. The Babadook - because it's not really horror, and although I could see what they were all trying to do, the story lacks cohesion in so many ways that it doesn't make any sense on any level to anyone (no matter how some people try to force it to). The pacing is very slow, and the movie lacks inertia, but I have to admit that it all looks good and the pop-up book is kind of cool. The kid in it is an outstanding actor for his age but intentionally annoying as piss too. A real shame because I generally love Australian movies, and I wanted to enjoy this one.
4. Annabelle - boring as shit sequel to "The Conjuring" which was also boring as shit. Sorry again, James Wan, if you accidentally read this, it's nothing personal, but you already know that I didn't like your ghostie movies.
5. V/H/S: Viral - aka Only one semi-decent segment (the parallel universe one) surrounded by more shakycam, puke-inducing, found footage shite.
6. Dracula Untold - bahahahahaha NO! Historically inaccurate and almost unwatchable! I tried though.
7. The Sacrament - "Bad Dreams" (1988) did the cult thing much better. Hell, even Kevin Smith's "Red State" (2011) did the cult thing much better. This is just a stupid Waco-style mockumentary for millennials. Aside from the horrible found footage gimmick, it all feels like an average TV movie. Not worth piss.
8. Leprechaun: Origins - No Warwick Davis? No fun! Get to fuck!
9. See No Evil 2 - a half-arsed sequel to a half-arsed WWE slasher which I didn't ever like very much. Kane is now F13's Jason and can survive being pumped full of embalming fluid. Whatever.
10. Starry Eyes - half-"Faust" and half-"Contracted" but twice as disappointing originality-wise. It could've been a classic, but it wasn't, not even for 2014. "Eat" and "Raaz 3" had similar themes. Mind you, so did "Showgirls".
Runners-up include nearly everything from Blumhouse Productions, all of the SyFy channel/The Asylum movies, and 99.9% of American indie (i.e. 5 delusional guys and a shaky Jazzcam in their backyard) horror movies made this year.
I had no interest in Ouija and didnt watch it, so I can't comment on that. I didn't ever see the remake of Blacker Than the Night either due to a very limited theatrical release. I don't consider ABCs of Death 2 to be anything other than a collection of mediocre YouTube videos, so that's not even a movie. There were others on DVD and Netflix which I watched about five minutes of each and then either fast-forwarded through or ditched, but other than Wer and The Quiet Ones, I don't remember what they were.
To balance things, however, here's a "Top 10 Best Horror Movies of 2014". Not that any of them were great, mind you, nor will any of them be remembered or thought of as "classics" in the future.
My Top 10 Best Horror Movies of 2014
1. S.O.B. Summer of Blood - yeah, it's mostly a comedy, but I liked it because it ticked every box necessary on the way through (especially for us older guys who loathe political correctness). Years ago, when my tastes were different, I would have switched something like this just after the pivotal scene, but I'm glad that I stayed with it. I hope to see more from everyone involved in this production one day. Having made some inquiries, I know that it's not a vain hope either.
2. Housebound - again, not too serious, but well acted and competent despite being all over the place tonally. It's from New Zealand, I believe.
3. When Animals Dream - sort of like "Let the Right One In" but with werewolves instead. I now prefer this to "Ginger Snaps" even though (subtextually) it's not meant to be another "coming of age" metaphor.
4. Tusk - hmmmm, bit of a theme here with comedies. It's very good though. I felt bad for the walrus guy.
5. 13 Sins - a remake, but far better than the original. Very "Twilight Zone"-ish.
6. Raaz 3: The Third Dimension - cool Bollywood horror. The best of its kind ever according to box office figures. The actresses in it are uber hot.
7. The Damned - really from last year, but I only watched it this year. It's core is "Restrepo" all over again, so the monster is not very original. Some would liken it to "Satan's Triangle" in places too. The acting and story is better and faster though.
8. The Town That Dreaded Sundown - a remake/sequel and a clone of "Scream" combined, but it's still highly entertaining and has better production values than most of the movies on this list.
9. [REC]⁴ Apocalypse - miles better than the last sequel, and a worthy finale. Possibly the second best of the entire "[REC]" series.
10. Wrong Turn 6 - Jesus fuck, the gore effects were brutal! Not the best story ever, but at least it had a story too. Apparently, all copies of this movie have been withdrawn now due to a kerfuffle over some private photographs used in poor taste and without permission. If you've already bought it, you can probably make a small fortune by selling it on eBay.
Runner up: Cheap Thrills - more of a thriller than horror, I suppose, but exceptionally good for what it is. More suspense than most horror anyway, and decent acting. I'd recommend it more highly if the hipsters hadn't latched onto it and overhyped it.
Runner-up 2: Bunshinsaba 3 - just because I hardly ever recommend Asian horror.
Runner-up 3: The Taking of Deborah Logan - despite taking me three tries to get through it.
And finally, for more positivity from a showbiz year filled with sadness, toxic people, disappointment, and negativity...
My Top 10 Movies of 2014
1. I Origins - one of the best indie movies I've ever seen.
2. Nightcrawler
3. The Voices
4. 300: Rise of an Empire
5. Bad Words
6. John Wick
7. S.O.B. Summer of Blood
8. Sin City: A Dame To Kill For - Eva Green again, 'nuff said.
9. Gone Girl
10. Edge of Tomorrow
Runner-up: Guardians of the Galaxy
Runner-up 2: Vendetta - the Danny Dyer one.
Runner-up 3: Fury
As for my "Worst 10 Movies of 2014", that would be too mean, especially since there are so many which seemed to be intentionally competing for the label. I'd like to give the top positions on that list to Lost Time, Septic Man, The Guest, Honeymoon, or I, Frankenstein, but from the major theatrical releases, Noah, The Equalizer, and Left Behind are even more boring. I haven't seen Exodus or Paddington yet though.
Bonus: My Top TV Series of 2014
1. Game of Thrones
2. Orange Is the New Black
3. The Leftovers
4. Wentworth
I haven't watched enough television to make a "Top Ten" of these either, plus I can't abide the more obvious choices of The Walking Dead or American Horror Story: Freakshow. They became too "samey", and I gave up on both. I binge-watched all of Fringe, Bates Motel, Doctor Who, and Breaking Bad earlier this year on Netflix, but they are old now (like me) and don't count.
I don't care if you enjoyed my choices or hated them, I liked what I liked and disliked what I didn't, and since this is still my blog not yours, that's all that really matters. There are millions of other bloggers publishing similar lists, so if you don't like mine, it's not the end of the world. Maybe you'll find one which you agree with somewhere else. Nobody needs to take this personally. Outside of the big name cliques and shills who all repeat each other, I'm sure everyone has different favourites from this very polarising year.
Merry Christmas, everybody, and have a very Happy New Year!
Adiós.
Lots of people have tried to get me to come back to blogging. I thank them all for their encouragement and constant support, but my heart's not in it anymore. I can barely get back into character to write this post. I haven't been into the horror genre for a very long time (in hindsight, I should have stayed quit when I gave up on this foolishness back in 2011). Suffice it to say that I've moved on to other more lucrative pursuits, and I don't have time to argue the toss with online bullies.
This year has also been full of personal tragedies and unexpected bereavements which have been more important to me than reviewing stupid movies. I was already done with this pointless hobby and the dogs in mangers it attracts, but real life events cemented my decision.
On the plus side, I've cut ties with a lot of people who are too obsessed with movies for their own good (or anyone else's), I've made many new and far better friends than I ever had in previous years, and I even rekindled some old important friendships which I'd lost due to my own assholitis and neglect. We live and learn, I suppose. Well, some of us do.
Anyway, maybe you'll get something out of this post, maybe you won't. It is what it is.
My Top 10 Worst Horror Movies of 2014
1. Oculus - just another clone of "The Gate Crasher" segment of "From Beyond the Grave" (1974) but rendered incomprehensible and boring through bad writing and mostly annoying characters/acting. Karen Gillan is the only reason why anyone watched it anyway.
2. The Battery - aka Two drunken baseball players trapped in a car by zombies during a micro-budget clone of "The Walking Dead". Fucking dreck. I can't stand "The Walking Dead" either.
3. The Babadook - because it's not really horror, and although I could see what they were all trying to do, the story lacks cohesion in so many ways that it doesn't make any sense on any level to anyone (no matter how some people try to force it to). The pacing is very slow, and the movie lacks inertia, but I have to admit that it all looks good and the pop-up book is kind of cool. The kid in it is an outstanding actor for his age but intentionally annoying as piss too. A real shame because I generally love Australian movies, and I wanted to enjoy this one.
4. Annabelle - boring as shit sequel to "The Conjuring" which was also boring as shit. Sorry again, James Wan, if you accidentally read this, it's nothing personal, but you already know that I didn't like your ghostie movies.
5. V/H/S: Viral - aka Only one semi-decent segment (the parallel universe one) surrounded by more shakycam, puke-inducing, found footage shite.
6. Dracula Untold - bahahahahaha NO! Historically inaccurate and almost unwatchable! I tried though.
7. The Sacrament - "Bad Dreams" (1988) did the cult thing much better. Hell, even Kevin Smith's "Red State" (2011) did the cult thing much better. This is just a stupid Waco-style mockumentary for millennials. Aside from the horrible found footage gimmick, it all feels like an average TV movie. Not worth piss.
8. Leprechaun: Origins - No Warwick Davis? No fun! Get to fuck!
9. See No Evil 2 - a half-arsed sequel to a half-arsed WWE slasher which I didn't ever like very much. Kane is now F13's Jason and can survive being pumped full of embalming fluid. Whatever.
10. Starry Eyes - half-"Faust" and half-"Contracted" but twice as disappointing originality-wise. It could've been a classic, but it wasn't, not even for 2014. "Eat" and "Raaz 3" had similar themes. Mind you, so did "Showgirls".
Runners-up include nearly everything from Blumhouse Productions, all of the SyFy channel/The Asylum movies, and 99.9% of American indie (i.e. 5 delusional guys and a shaky Jazzcam in their backyard) horror movies made this year.
I had no interest in Ouija and didnt watch it, so I can't comment on that. I didn't ever see the remake of Blacker Than the Night either due to a very limited theatrical release. I don't consider ABCs of Death 2 to be anything other than a collection of mediocre YouTube videos, so that's not even a movie. There were others on DVD and Netflix which I watched about five minutes of each and then either fast-forwarded through or ditched, but other than Wer and The Quiet Ones, I don't remember what they were.
To balance things, however, here's a "Top 10 Best Horror Movies of 2014". Not that any of them were great, mind you, nor will any of them be remembered or thought of as "classics" in the future.
My Top 10 Best Horror Movies of 2014
1. S.O.B. Summer of Blood - yeah, it's mostly a comedy, but I liked it because it ticked every box necessary on the way through (especially for us older guys who loathe political correctness). Years ago, when my tastes were different, I would have switched something like this just after the pivotal scene, but I'm glad that I stayed with it. I hope to see more from everyone involved in this production one day. Having made some inquiries, I know that it's not a vain hope either.
2. Housebound - again, not too serious, but well acted and competent despite being all over the place tonally. It's from New Zealand, I believe.
3. When Animals Dream - sort of like "Let the Right One In" but with werewolves instead. I now prefer this to "Ginger Snaps" even though (subtextually) it's not meant to be another "coming of age" metaphor.
4. Tusk - hmmmm, bit of a theme here with comedies. It's very good though. I felt bad for the walrus guy.
5. 13 Sins - a remake, but far better than the original. Very "Twilight Zone"-ish.
6. Raaz 3: The Third Dimension - cool Bollywood horror. The best of its kind ever according to box office figures. The actresses in it are uber hot.
7. The Damned - really from last year, but I only watched it this year. It's core is "Restrepo" all over again, so the monster is not very original. Some would liken it to "Satan's Triangle" in places too. The acting and story is better and faster though.
8. The Town That Dreaded Sundown - a remake/sequel and a clone of "Scream" combined, but it's still highly entertaining and has better production values than most of the movies on this list.
9. [REC]⁴ Apocalypse - miles better than the last sequel, and a worthy finale. Possibly the second best of the entire "[REC]" series.
10. Wrong Turn 6 - Jesus fuck, the gore effects were brutal! Not the best story ever, but at least it had a story too. Apparently, all copies of this movie have been withdrawn now due to a kerfuffle over some private photographs used in poor taste and without permission. If you've already bought it, you can probably make a small fortune by selling it on eBay.
Runner up: Cheap Thrills - more of a thriller than horror, I suppose, but exceptionally good for what it is. More suspense than most horror anyway, and decent acting. I'd recommend it more highly if the hipsters hadn't latched onto it and overhyped it.
Runner-up 2: Bunshinsaba 3 - just because I hardly ever recommend Asian horror.
Runner-up 3: The Taking of Deborah Logan - despite taking me three tries to get through it.
And finally, for more positivity from a showbiz year filled with sadness, toxic people, disappointment, and negativity...
My Top 10 Movies of 2014
1. I Origins - one of the best indie movies I've ever seen.
2. Nightcrawler
3. The Voices
4. 300: Rise of an Empire
5. Bad Words
6. John Wick
7. S.O.B. Summer of Blood
8. Sin City: A Dame To Kill For - Eva Green again, 'nuff said.
9. Gone Girl
10. Edge of Tomorrow
Runner-up: Guardians of the Galaxy
Runner-up 2: Vendetta - the Danny Dyer one.
Runner-up 3: Fury
As for my "Worst 10 Movies of 2014", that would be too mean, especially since there are so many which seemed to be intentionally competing for the label. I'd like to give the top positions on that list to Lost Time, Septic Man, The Guest, Honeymoon, or I, Frankenstein, but from the major theatrical releases, Noah, The Equalizer, and Left Behind are even more boring. I haven't seen Exodus or Paddington yet though.
Bonus: My Top TV Series of 2014
1. Game of Thrones
2. Orange Is the New Black
3. The Leftovers
4. Wentworth
I haven't watched enough television to make a "Top Ten" of these either, plus I can't abide the more obvious choices of The Walking Dead or American Horror Story: Freakshow. They became too "samey", and I gave up on both. I binge-watched all of Fringe, Bates Motel, Doctor Who, and Breaking Bad earlier this year on Netflix, but they are old now (like me) and don't count.
I don't care if you enjoyed my choices or hated them, I liked what I liked and disliked what I didn't, and since this is still my blog not yours, that's all that really matters. There are millions of other bloggers publishing similar lists, so if you don't like mine, it's not the end of the world. Maybe you'll find one which you agree with somewhere else. Nobody needs to take this personally. Outside of the big name cliques and shills who all repeat each other, I'm sure everyone has different favourites from this very polarising year.
Merry Christmas, everybody, and have a very Happy New Year!
Adiós.
July 28, 2014
The Top 200 Horror Films
Once you've seen all these films, there's little else that the horror genre has to offer except for more repetition and inferior clones of the same.
If you are new to the horror genre, just fill up your DVD/Blu-ray collection with these and throw any other "horror movies" that you may have acquired in the bin. You aren't going to watch any of them ever again anyway.
Also note that a considerable number of these titles barely meet the minimum requirements for "horror"—mainly because they aren't SCARY—but I needed 200 of them for this list.
If you want to buy any of these films, you can save a small fortune by getting them from The Bloody Horror Store.
March 2, 2014
The Top Ten Horror Blogs You Should Be Reading
...instead of mine. :)
Okay, so you should still be reading my blog, of course, even though it isn't that great, but as I've decided to extend my reviewing hiatus until after Hallowe'en, you may want to subscribe to better blogs than mine until I return.
These are the blogs I read regularly. They probably don't realise it because I don't use the GFC thingummy anymore (and I hardly ever leave them any comments), but I drift their way several times a week to see what's new all the same.
1. The Horror Club - http://thehorrorclub.blogspot.com
2. Raculfright_13's Blogo Trasho - http://www.raculfright13sblogotrasho.com
3. Horror Movies and Beer! - http://eerieeriksreviews.blogspot.com
4. From the Mind of Tatlock - http://www.mindoftatlock.com
5. Pickled Cinema - http://pickledcinema.blogspot.com
6. Left Field Films - http://leftfieldfilms.blogspot.com
7. DirtyGirl's Little Blog of Horror - http://dirtygirlreview.blogspot.com
8. Italian Film Review - http://www.italianfilmreview.com
9. Stabford Deathrage Shoots His Mouth Off - http://stabforddeathrage.blogspot.com
10. Film Plop - http://filmplop.blogspot.com
[Mr Plop has no header logo, but he has the kind of minimalist blog I wish I'd written.]
Laters, gators!
Okay, so you should still be reading my blog, of course, even though it isn't that great, but as I've decided to extend my reviewing hiatus until after Hallowe'en, you may want to subscribe to better blogs than mine until I return.
These are the blogs I read regularly. They probably don't realise it because I don't use the GFC thingummy anymore (and I hardly ever leave them any comments), but I drift their way several times a week to see what's new all the same.
1. The Horror Club - http://thehorrorclub.blogspot.com
2. Raculfright_13's Blogo Trasho - http://www.raculfright13sblogotrasho.com
3. Horror Movies and Beer! - http://eerieeriksreviews.blogspot.com
4. From the Mind of Tatlock - http://www.mindoftatlock.com
5. Pickled Cinema - http://pickledcinema.blogspot.com
6. Left Field Films - http://leftfieldfilms.blogspot.com
7. DirtyGirl's Little Blog of Horror - http://dirtygirlreview.blogspot.com
8. Italian Film Review - http://www.italianfilmreview.com
9. Stabford Deathrage Shoots His Mouth Off - http://stabforddeathrage.blogspot.com
10. Film Plop - http://filmplop.blogspot.com
[Mr Plop has no header logo, but he has the kind of minimalist blog I wish I'd written.]
Laters, gators!
October 22, 2013
I have over 400,000 pageviews!
 |
| It's an omen! |
Although I often half-joke about nobody ever reading my blog, and of course, my haters always claim that I'm somebody they've never heard of (even though they obviously have and they're jealous as shit), my stats indicate that I'm doing quite well. Thank you, whoever you may be and wherever you are, for reading.
To all the people who've purchased things from my affiliate links, I thank you even more. My cats are going to enjoy the bag of treats which I can almost afford now.
I'm hardly the best writer in the world, and most of my older reviews are utter crap with grammar and punctuation errors all over the place, but I'm working on tidying them up whenever I get the chance. I think I've improved slightly as a writer since I moved everything from my old website and MySpace to Blogger in 2010, but I'll never be famous for doing this. It's just a hobby, and I certainly don't want to write for any other site or magazine. I don't have any ambitions as a writer because, basically, this blog is just a blog, and it's what I use to keep track of what I've watched or highlight anything else that interests me. If it interests other people, for any reason whatsoever, it's a bonus.
Judging from my traffic sources, most of my hits tend to come from people looking up horror movie titles, so you can ignore that idiot (whose blog is all written with centred text like a poem) who often claims that horror movie review blogs are boring. If you also write horror movie reviews, I'm sure you'll have just as many hits (or more) as long as you stay current.
While I was checking my stats, I saw that a few hits were coming from Horror-Movies.ca, which is weird because we don't have anything to do with each other. Their forum is full of all those "hugs you" and "twirls you round the room dancing" thread-crappers rather than discussions about horror movies, so we haven't seen eye to eye for over six years. I'm not even going to hyperlink their address because they don't deserve the reciprocal traffic.
On further investigation, a link to one of my more viral posts, namely "Who are the Horror Lamers?", had been reposted recently in their forum by one of my jealous haters who thought she'd have everyone on her side tearing it apart. Unfortunately for her, it didn't quite turn out that way, which I find ironic and hilarious in my own special way.
I must be doing something right because one of the posters on that forum had this to say:
"I don't know this guy, or the history, but I actually loved that article. It started off as elitist, but then I realized he managed to knock pretty much every horror fan in a sarcastic way that had some honesty to it.
The 'Other horror cliques online' part at the end was nothing short of brilliant. Yeah its fairly extreme, but there is a thread of truth in all of it. The 'Horror Haters' and 'Horror Contrarians' in particular are very much dead on. I laughed out loud reading that section."
Nice! Thank you, whatever your name is. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I always get a kick out of people who find my articles funny (especially as I have no sense of humour).
In other news, it's nearly Hallowe'en!
That means that I only have to write a few more new reviews about shitty new horror movies, and then I'm done with all that nonsense. Nobody reads anything to do with horror after Hallowe'en anyway.
October 1, 2013
It's October! And we all know what that means!
Yes, it's that time of year again when all the fairweather horror fans and Horror Lamers start blogging furiously about the second biggest non-event "holiday" (which isn't even a holiday) other than Christmas! Yay!
Prepare to be burnt out by all the tiresome posts about Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and God knows how many more slashers which have nothing to do with the true supernatural meaning of Hallowe'en. Except on this blog, of course, where everything stays traditionally old school.
This year, however, I have something slightly different planned for you. Whether or not I achieve it will be another matter, but I'm cutting back on the reviews and adding some more interesting stuff. No, I'm not going to write about the pathetic internet dramas caused by chubby little girls and other attention-seeking cyberbullies whose cowardly actions towards free horror bloggers are fuelled by jealousy, nor am I going to post responses to the tirade of misinformed Disqus comments I get every day from people who don't seem to understand that this is my blog not theirs. Do people honestly think that I'm going to change what I write because they don't like what I have to say? It's not going to happen. That would be as dishonest as their blogs, and be even more boring to read than my usual posts.
What I've got instead is a theme:
I've been thinking of doing themed months for some time. Last month was Spanish Horror (in case you missed it), and next month will probably be all about Empire and Full Moon. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to talk about new horror movie releases anymore, but it does mean that there will sometimes be more than one post each day (or maybe none at all). Remember how I told you a little while ago that I was going to improve my game? Well, this is it. What else did you expect? I'm only a blogger.
Here's something to whet your appetite:
Charles Band recently posted this on Twitter accompanied with "By Halloween!". Thus, I assume that this resin "Ghoulies" figure will soon be available to buy from Full Moon Direct. Fantastic! Maybe Hallowe'en won't be such a non-event this year after all!
By the way, don't forget to "like" my Facebook page. The party (such as it is) continues there!
Prepare to be burnt out by all the tiresome posts about Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and God knows how many more slashers which have nothing to do with the true supernatural meaning of Hallowe'en. Except on this blog, of course, where everything stays traditionally old school.
This year, however, I have something slightly different planned for you. Whether or not I achieve it will be another matter, but I'm cutting back on the reviews and adding some more interesting stuff. No, I'm not going to write about the pathetic internet dramas caused by chubby little girls and other attention-seeking cyberbullies whose cowardly actions towards free horror bloggers are fuelled by jealousy, nor am I going to post responses to the tirade of misinformed Disqus comments I get every day from people who don't seem to understand that this is my blog not theirs. Do people honestly think that I'm going to change what I write because they don't like what I have to say? It's not going to happen. That would be as dishonest as their blogs, and be even more boring to read than my usual posts.
What I've got instead is a theme:
I've been thinking of doing themed months for some time. Last month was Spanish Horror (in case you missed it), and next month will probably be all about Empire and Full Moon. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to talk about new horror movie releases anymore, but it does mean that there will sometimes be more than one post each day (or maybe none at all). Remember how I told you a little while ago that I was going to improve my game? Well, this is it. What else did you expect? I'm only a blogger.
Here's something to whet your appetite:
 |
| "They'll get you in the end." |
Charles Band recently posted this on Twitter accompanied with "By Halloween!". Thus, I assume that this resin "Ghoulies" figure will soon be available to buy from Full Moon Direct. Fantastic! Maybe Hallowe'en won't be such a non-event this year after all!
By the way, don't forget to "like" my Facebook page. The party (such as it is) continues there!
July 18, 2013
A Week Without Horror
I haven't watched any horror movies for almost a week now.
For one thing, it's been too hot to concentrate, and for another, there's been loads of "horror community" drama going on which is far more interesting than a bunch of silly movies. I am, of course, referring to the latest plagiarism scandal.
Considering how I've already talked about it on social networking sites, I'm not going to get into another huge discussion of that foolishness on my blog. Lianne Spiderbaby won't be the first or last to plagiarise movie reviews from other bloggers, and just from knowing who she's associated with in the past, it didn't surprise me in the least that she turned out to be a fake. As far as I know, she didn't steal any of my stuff, so I don't really care, but I still found it absolutely hilarious to watch "the mighty" fall. Seeing a certain gender-based clique trying to promote their other half-arsed movie reviewers throughout the fallout straddled the line between irritating and desperate. Thus, I've also had a great time pointing a finger at them like Nelson Muntz from "The Simpsons" and laughing.
Suffice it to say that Lianne Spiderbaby's plagiarism highlighted a lot of hypocrisy from people who should know better, especially in the cases of anyone who tried to defend her actions because of her gender or (allegedly) because she's pretty. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and she does nothing for me, but this kind of "white knighting" nonsense is the bane of the internet (and real life). Many people stuck their feet in their mouths and lost all respect among their peers, friendships which spanned decades went down the drain, and insults were hurled at innocent bystanders who did nothing but see Lianne Spiderbaby's fraud for the crime it was.
The result of this is that I'm probably not the only person who is never going to buy another copy of Fangoria, Rue Morgue, or Video Watchdog again. But since I rarely buy obsolete papery media anyway, my attitude to those magazines is kind of redundant. All of them had their heyday before you could look up whatever you wanted on the internet instantly and for free. With the importance of the news aspect gone, these low-brow rags aren't much more than advertisements strung together with badly written fanboy articles which barely interest anyone. Hell, people aren't even reading blogs anymore, so what chance do niche magazines have in the foreseeable future?
In more important news, I've finally started watching the Drive-in Classics 32 Movie Collection which I bought last Summer. Some of the movies are pretty good although they aren't much of a step-up from softcore porn in most cases. I find nothing wrong with that whatsoever though, and I love Mill Creek's Crown International acquisitions for that very reason.
I briefly thought about starting up another blog just to review "drive-in movies", but I can't really compete with an excellent site like "The Deuce". I've found all kinds of interesting movies listed there which I didn't know even existed before. I always give credit where it's due, and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed browsing through their database. Check it out if you have the time.
Since I've been sacrificing quite a few of my social networking followers to the horror DVD gods in the hope of something good turning up to write about (although, in reality, it's also because they've bored me to tears with kiddified nerd-crap which I have no interest in such as San Diego Comic Con), I'll probably be back with more articles and reviews next week. It all depends on if the weather cools down enough to not have to sit in a room full of fans and an ancient air conditioner which barely redresses the balance between being boiled alive in the humidity or deafened, but we'll see what happens.
For one thing, it's been too hot to concentrate, and for another, there's been loads of "horror community" drama going on which is far more interesting than a bunch of silly movies. I am, of course, referring to the latest plagiarism scandal.
Considering how I've already talked about it on social networking sites, I'm not going to get into another huge discussion of that foolishness on my blog. Lianne Spiderbaby won't be the first or last to plagiarise movie reviews from other bloggers, and just from knowing who she's associated with in the past, it didn't surprise me in the least that she turned out to be a fake. As far as I know, she didn't steal any of my stuff, so I don't really care, but I still found it absolutely hilarious to watch "the mighty" fall. Seeing a certain gender-based clique trying to promote their other half-arsed movie reviewers throughout the fallout straddled the line between irritating and desperate. Thus, I've also had a great time pointing a finger at them like Nelson Muntz from "The Simpsons" and laughing.
Suffice it to say that Lianne Spiderbaby's plagiarism highlighted a lot of hypocrisy from people who should know better, especially in the cases of anyone who tried to defend her actions because of her gender or (allegedly) because she's pretty. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and she does nothing for me, but this kind of "white knighting" nonsense is the bane of the internet (and real life). Many people stuck their feet in their mouths and lost all respect among their peers, friendships which spanned decades went down the drain, and insults were hurled at innocent bystanders who did nothing but see Lianne Spiderbaby's fraud for the crime it was.
The result of this is that I'm probably not the only person who is never going to buy another copy of Fangoria, Rue Morgue, or Video Watchdog again. But since I rarely buy obsolete papery media anyway, my attitude to those magazines is kind of redundant. All of them had their heyday before you could look up whatever you wanted on the internet instantly and for free. With the importance of the news aspect gone, these low-brow rags aren't much more than advertisements strung together with badly written fanboy articles which barely interest anyone. Hell, people aren't even reading blogs anymore, so what chance do niche magazines have in the foreseeable future?
In more important news, I've finally started watching the Drive-in Classics 32 Movie Collection which I bought last Summer. Some of the movies are pretty good although they aren't much of a step-up from softcore porn in most cases. I find nothing wrong with that whatsoever though, and I love Mill Creek's Crown International acquisitions for that very reason.
I briefly thought about starting up another blog just to review "drive-in movies", but I can't really compete with an excellent site like "The Deuce". I've found all kinds of interesting movies listed there which I didn't know even existed before. I always give credit where it's due, and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed browsing through their database. Check it out if you have the time.
Since I've been sacrificing quite a few of my social networking followers to the horror DVD gods in the hope of something good turning up to write about (although, in reality, it's also because they've bored me to tears with kiddified nerd-crap which I have no interest in such as San Diego Comic Con), I'll probably be back with more articles and reviews next week. It all depends on if the weather cools down enough to not have to sit in a room full of fans and an ancient air conditioner which barely redresses the balance between being boiled alive in the humidity or deafened, but we'll see what happens.
June 21, 2013
De-hoarding My Horror DVD Collection
After 5 years of actively collecting horror DVDs, the time has come to start getting rid of the ones which I'll never watch again before I end up on "Hoarders". It's a slippery slope, and I'm getting closer to sliding all the way down every time I come back from the pawn shop.
A few things have prompted my decision to do this which I'll present for you as a list. If you can identify with any of my reasons, it may be time for you to at least think about de-hoarding too.
1. I don't weigh 500 lbs so I'm not going to make "show and tell" YouTube videos of my collection.
I've never intended to create a background of shelves full of DVDs to make other people feel jealous or to compensate for the inadequacies of my own unhealthy lifestyle choices. I may eat total crap and drink far too many Monster energy drinks, but I only weigh 168 lbs (just so you know) and don't spend all day slumped in front of the television watching movies.
Owning thousands of DVDs doesn't make you a better movie fan or make you better than anyone else, it simply means that you've had more money than sense and bought more DVDs.
2. I only bought my DVDs for something to watch.
I haven't had cable or Netflix for years; I just bought DVDs to watch instead. Now that I've seen them, reviewed them, and discovered that most of them are easily available online anyway, they can go.
I don't suffer from nostalgia. My visual memory is too good. If it wasn't for this blog, I would probably never rewatch any movie.
3. A lot of horror movies are too childish.
I'm a fully grown man in my early 40s. What use are movies about American teenagers to me?
Since I'm English, I barely identified with the protagonists even when I was the same age. Americans in movies come across as coddled children compared to people from other countries, and they disgust me. To be honest, my entertainment pleasure has started to come from watching entitled idiots get hacked to death or eaten rather than enjoying the story. Unfortunately, that leaves me even more frustrated as such wish fulfillment never comes true.
Pretty/stupid people who get everything handed to them on a plate will continue to dominate the planet for the rest of time. Bumping them off in horror movies only works for a short while before it becomes as irritating as real life itself.
4. I'm bored with horror movies anyway.
During my years of reviewing horror movies, I've seen the quality drop further and further every year. It's now got to the point where I could sum up any new horror movie with a couple of expletives rather than an erudite explanation. Although it's indicative of my far more realistic rental store conversations, it doesn't make very interesting reading.
"So what's this one like?"
"Complete and utter shit."
See what I mean?
It's not because of nostalgia or trying vainly to chase the fear buzz from my childhood, but simply because expectations have become lower right across the board. No effort goes into even trying to make anything original whether it be big-budget Hollywood blockbusters or low-budget, Wal-mart camcorder nasties. People have become so used to a diet of shit that new shit doesn't taste so bad to them anymore. It still does to me though.
Horror movies are nothing but formulas, clones, and remakes. Change the locations and the character names, and it's the same half-dozen stories over and over again with greater or lesser production values than before. It's product not art. It never really was art anyway.
5. I want the space back.
Having a lot of DVDs takes up too much room. I'd rather have the clean space to move in than rows and rows of dust catchers.
Being a "museum curator" of a load of old tat was never part of the plan.
6. One day I'll be going back to England.
Unless I have a huge yard sale, I've got to transport all these DVDs back home. It wasn't so bad bringing the ones I already had over, but now it's got silly. Even with lots more Case Logic folders, the excess baggage charges would be ridiculous.
Having moved four times since I've been living in America, I've had enough of packing and unpacking all these boxes of plastic and paper.
7. Horror DVDs are worthless.
If DVDs weren't worthless, I wouldn't have got them from the pawn shops, bargain bins, and yard sales. Even though I have great taste and discernment in all things, it doesn't make my DVDs worth any more second-hand. I'll be lucky to get $2 for each one at my own yard sale.
Even Blu-rays are worthless. From the moment you've bought them, you'll never get back what you paid for them even if you never open them (unless you have a valid reason for a refund). Everything is streaming or (illegally) downloadable from torrent sites so hardly anyone buys physical media.
8. I don't identify with the cliques.
I don't belong to any clubs, online forums (other than my own), or go to conventions so I'm not what you could ever call a "fan" as such. Apart from some aberrations in my past when I tried to force myself into fitting in, I never have done. In every case, it ended badly. I rub people up the wrong way because I speak my mind, don't support "hobby horror"... and I'm not social.
At the end of the day, I'm just some guy who watches a lot of movies and may have seen some that you have. I've never collected DVDs to be part of the gang.
9. I'm getting older and grumpier.
As I've got older, I've had less and less in common with other so-called "horror fans" to the point where I know how to work the system just enough to cause me to despise everyone else. For example, if I make a Facebook post or Tweet about "Girly", it'll go unnoticed, but if I post a picture of a Critter, a Jason mask or a Freddy glove, voila, all the "likes" and "retweets" bring the lowest common denominators out of the woodwork, and it sickens me. You bunch of easily-led plebs! You know who you are.
Even taking other people's ages into consideration is no excuse. There may well be new horror fans sprouting up every day who haven't seen certain movies and think that everything is cool, but the stuff that the gormless, hipster douchebags rave about is the only aspect which horrifies me. You can shove those generic Bumhole (Blumhouse) Productions, zombies, slashers, horror-comedies, and faux "found footage" movies where the sun doesn't shine!
Mid-life crisis? Maybe. But I think I had that when I was 33, briefly. It's taken a very long time, but I've been growing-up and further away from what used to interest me every day since. I never did like Critters, Jason or Freddy though.
10. I have nothing better to write about. Horror movie blogging is dead.
Unless you are a sell-out like the big name horror sites or you have a novelty gimmick like being morbidly obese or a girl (although there are far too many girl horror bloggers/vloggers for that to make as much difference as it used to), nobody other than the occasional nerdy "man-child" cares about horror blogs or movie reviewers. Too many people are doing it, and 99% of them just write out the stories in their own words and slap a couple of pictures up.
After becoming totally dissatisfied with the lack of discernment, ability, and journalistic integrity among "movie reviewers", I don't read anyone else's blogs nowadays. I've also just wiped the GFC widget (which Google/Blogger is phasing out in favour of Google+). Although I keep getting thousands of pageviews every day, nobody actually reads or comments my blog either so what's the point of writing it? Monetisation? Yeah, the 37¢ that I make each year through affiliate links makes so much difference.
Anyway, in the coming series of occasional posts which I'm writing for my own cathartic benefit, I'll be posting pictures of my de-hoarding process as and when it happens. If you still like to live vicariously through blogs, you might even find some amusement here... especially as I'm going to bitch like never before about the DVDs which I'm getting rid of.
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